Modeling the effect of cross-language ambiguity on human syntax acquisition

Authors:
William Gregory Sakas
Affiliations:
City University of New York, New York, NY
Venue:
ConLL '00 Proceedings of the 2nd workshop on Learning language in logic and the 4th conference on Computational natural language learning - Volume 7
Year:
2000

Citing 2
Cited 1

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Ambiguity and the computational feasibility of syntax acquisition
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Abstract

A computational framework is presented which is used to model the process by which human language learners acquire the syntactic component of their native language. The focus is feasibility --- is acquisition possible within a reasonable amount of time and/or with a reasonable amount of work? The approach abstracts away from specific linguistic descriptions in order to make a 'broad-stroke' prediction of an acquisition model's behavior by formalizing factors that contribute to cross-linguistic ambiguity. Discussion centers around an application to Fodor's Structural Trigger's Learner (STL) (1998) and concludes with the proposal that successful computational modeling requires a parallel psycholinguistic investigation of the distribution of ambiguity across the domain of human languages.