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