evidence for the centrality of experience. psycholinguistic studies of entrenchment catherine l....
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Evidence for the centrality of experience
Evidence for the centrality of experience Psycholinguistic Studies of Entrenchment
Catherine L. Harris (1997) Constrains on Statistical learning
Jenny R. Saffran (2002)
Outline of Lecture The big picture Idiom-level representation Collocation level representation Statistical learning Conclusions
The big picture
• Psycholinguistics
• Computation
Evidence for the Centrality of Experience Entrenchment Statistics Performance
Entrenched expressions Words (Carr 1986) Common word combinations (collocations) Multi word idioms
Does “Idiom Level” of Representation exist ? (Harris 1997)
Priming Semantic priming
Spreading activation Semantic integration
Great minds think alike Great minds alike Minds think alike
Idiom levelGreat minds think alike
42 - 4 words idiom Contiguous with target Noncontiguous with target
30 – first two words best eliciting 12 – middle two words best eliciting.
Associative and Semantic trios baby, cradle -> bottle -semantic ear, foot -> mouth -associative doctor, nurse -> surgeon -both
Results Degree of priming
Semantic – 57 Associated – 42 Both - 65 Idioms – 44
No difference between the groups
Results
0102030405060708090
First two(30/42)
Middle Two(12/42)
First two
Middle two
Prime was:
Best elicited idioms
Conclusions so Far… Idiom Level of Representation exist Syntactic schema
Does Collocation Level of Representation exist ? (Harris 1997)
Is priming good enough? Cradle -> baby
Processing letters Word Superior Effect -Carr(1986)
Random word pairs vs. collocation
Collocation
TAX BILL
X
G
CollocationSingle word
CollocationCollocation neighbor
Non-collocation
letters
TaxTax billTax bellTax deepX G
NightNight clubNight clueNight wallN E
worldFree worldTree worldOpen worldR U
Collocation Letter detection was better in the
collocation than in other stimuli. “sophisticated guessing” Collocation “friends”
Bog down/bow down Superiority of detection of words in
collocation remains
Collocation Are collocations activated in response to
partial input? Trick items
Tag bill Eight club
Accuracy impaired 65% trick condition 90% collocation condition
Conclusions so Far… Idiom Level of Representation exist Syntactic schema Collocation level representation exist
Polysemous words interpretation Child language acquisition Computation
Constraints on Statistical Learning (Safran 2002) Predictive dependencies affect learnability
of sequential structures Domains
Constraints on Statistical Learning (Safran 2002) Combinatorial explosion Source of the constraints Linear input to Nonlinear structure
(the professor (graded (the exam)) Innate knowledge Dependency relations between categories
Word categories
Language P vs. Language N
Rules for both languages
ResultsSequential/ simultaneously
StimuliLinguistic?result
SequentialAuditoryYes/no P>n>½
SequentialVisuallyYes/noP=n>½
simultaneouslyVisuallyYes/noP>n>½
Results Adults p > n Children p>n Other domains
Conclusions Language evolved to fit the human learner Similarities among human languages may
reflect constrains to fit human learner Bridge between nature and nurture
Summary Entrenchment
Representation of idioms Representation of collocations Representation of words
Statistics Between words Between word categories Phonemes Letters
Performance Acquiring predictable language using idioms or collocations