How semantic biases in simple adjacencies affect learning a complex structure with non-adjacencies in AGL: a statistical account

A major theoretical debate in language acquisition research regards the learnability of hierarchical structures. The artificial grammar learning methodology is increasingly influential in approaching this question. Studies using an artificial centre-embedded AnBn grammar without semantics draw confl...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological sciences 2012-07, Vol.367 (1598), p.2046-2054
Main Authors: Poletiek, Fenna H., Lai, Jun
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cognition
Generalization, Stimulus - physiology
Humans
Judgment
Language Acquisition
Learnability
Learning
Learning - physiology
Linguistics
Models, Neurological
Natural language
Observer Variation
Phonetics
Psychomotor Performance - physiology
Sampling bias
Semantic Biases
Semantics
Sentences
Statistical Learning
Syntactics
Training
Words
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Summary:A major theoretical debate in language acquisition research regards the learnability of hierarchical structures. The artificial grammar learning methodology is increasingly influential in approaching this question. Studies using an artificial centre-embedded AnBn grammar without semantics draw conflicting conclusions. This study investigates the facilitating effect of distributional biases in simple AB adjacencies in the input sample—caused in natural languages, among others, by semantic biases—on learning a centre-embedded structure. A mathematical simulation of the linguistic input and the learning, comparing various distributional biases in AB pairs, suggests that strong distributional biases might help us to grasp the complex AnBn hierarchical structure in a later stage. This theoretical investigation might contribute to our understanding of how distributional features of the input—including those caused by semantic variation—help learning complex structures in natural languages.
ISSN:0962-8436
1471-2970
DOI:10.1098/rstb.2012.0100