Subject omission in children's language; The case for performance limitations in learning.

Several theories have been put forward to explain the phenomenon that children who are learning to speak their native language tend to omit the subject of the sentence. According to the pro-drop hypothesis, children represent the wrong grammar. According to the performance limitations view, children represent the full grammar, but omit subjects due to performance limitations in production. This paper proposes a third explanation and presents a model which simulates the data relevant to subject omission. The model consists of a simple learning mechanism that carries out a distributional analysis of naturalistic input. It does not have any overt representation of grammatical categories, and its performance limitations reside mainly in its learning mechanism. The model clearly simulates the data at hand, without the need to assume large amounts of innate knowledge in the child, and can be considered more parsimonious on these grounds alone. Importantly, it employs a unified and objective measure of processing load, namely the length of the utterance, which interacts with frequency in the input. The standard performance limitations view assumes that processing load is dependent on a phrase’s syntactic role, but does not specify a unifying underlying principle

Negotiated Tutoring: An Approach to Interaction in Intelligent Tutoring Systems

This thesis describes a general approach to tutorial interaction in Intelligent Tutoring Systems, called "Negotiated Tutoring". Some aspects of the approach have been implemented as a computer program in the 'KANT' (Kritical Argument Negotiated Tutoring) system. Negotiated Tutoring synthesises some recent trends in Intelligent Tutoring Systems research, including interaction symmetry, use of explicit negotiation in dialogue, multiple interaction styles, and an emphasis on cognitive and metacognitive skill acquisition in domains characterised by justified belief. This combination of features has not been previously incorporated into models for intelligent tutoring dialogues. Our approach depends on modelling the high-level decision-making processes and memory representations used by a participant in dialogue. Dialogue generation is controlled by reasoning mechanisms which operate on a 'dialogue state', consisting of conversants' beliefs, a set of possible dialogue moves, and a restricted representation of the recent utterances generated by both conversants. The representation for conversants' beliefs is based on Anderson's (1983) model for semantic memory, and includes a model for dialogue focus based on spreading activation. Decisions in dialogue are based on preconditions with respect to the dialogue state, higher level educational preferences which choose between relevant alternative dialogue moves, and negotiation mechanisms designed to ensure cooperativity. The domain model for KANT was based on a cognitive model for perception of musical structures in tonal melodies, which extends the theory of Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1983). Our model ('GRAF' - GRouping Analysis with Frames) addresses a number of problems with Lerdahl and Jackendoff's theory, notably in describing how a number of unconscious processes in music cognition interact, including elements of top-down and bottom-up processing. GRAF includes a parser for musical chord functions, a mechanism for performing musical reductions, low-level feature detectors and a frame-system (Minsky 1977) for musical phrase structures

A Comparison of Two Developmental Models of Concept Learning.

Recent research has identified changes in the strategies used and the shape of learning curves of children learning concepts as a function of developmental level. Two recent models have been proposed to explain these changes. One model views these changes as an improvement of hypothesis-testing strategies. The other model views these changes as a switchover from reliance on one type of learning process to a second type of learning process. The present study compared the two models with respect to the strategies used and the shape of the learning curves of four grade levels of subjects. One hundred twenty-nine children from grades 1, 5, and 7 and 40 college undergraduates were tested using a concept task consisting of a list of items in which a keyword was followed by five choices (e.g. yourself: smoke, else, chief, field, five). The correct choice was the word consisting entirely of letters in the keyword (else in the above example). Each subject was tested individually with one of two instructions: to try to find a rule relating the correct choice word and the keyword, or, to memorize which choice word goes with each keyword. After each block of 10 trials, subjects were asked Why did you pick this word? . Results showed that there were age-related differences in concept learning among the four grade levels with respect to: (a) steepness of the learning curves (transition phase length), (b) the trial block of last error, and (c) the number of subjects who eventually discovered the concept rule. A high correlation between the trial block where performance began to rise above chance (performance cutpoint) and the point where subjects\u27 verbal response indicated some knowledge of the concept rule (verbal cutpoint) was found in all grade levels. The findings generate some support for both models

Study in the referential functions of English noun phrases

The present work attempts to establish a theory of reference from a linguistic - rather than philosophical - point of view. PART Is The Preliminaries (pp. lo-113) surveys various linguistic and philosophical problems associated with ref¬ erence; it argues against predicational analysis as a vi¬ able framework for dealing with reference; and it estab¬ lishes the field of referentiality as the domain divided between deixis (spatio-temporal location) and denotation (categorial location). PART II: The Theory (pp. 114-233) begins by drawing a fundamental distinction (based on Frege) between syntactico- semantic (SS) and referential-semantic (RS) analysis, and by setting up the notion "referential potential" as a property of linguistic items. The common — metaphysical — basis for the calculus of classes and the referential theory is demonstrated, and the formal framework developed. Four RS-categories are recognized, associated with "all", "kind" (i.e. genus), "some", and "one". These categories are considered to be the 'heads' in referential phrases, each one of which consists of one of the functional (deictic) categories and one lexical (denotative) category. The referential phrases are ordered hierarchically in a referential branch under which NP is generated. Two different serialization-types (appositive and delimitative) are considered referentially significant. A transformational component is introduced to account for serialization within the NP; three transformational pro¬ cesses are recognized. After a number of data from languages other than Eng¬ lish has been adduced in support of various aspects of the theory, PART IIIi The Application (pp. 234-413) be¬ gins by establishing the (closed) class of referential functives in English. These fall into four subclasses: quantifiers, E-classifiers, determinatives, and pronouns. These subclasses are established distributionally on the basis of the serialization-types they may enter. The remainder of PART III applies the theory to English NP's which contain a referential functive. Finally, a number of other areas are briefly mentioned for which RS-analysis is likely to prove insightful

Reflexive constructions in the world's languages

Synopsis: This landmark publication brings together 28 papers on reflexive constructions in languages from all continents, representing very diverse language types. While reflexive constructions have been discussed in the past from a variety of angles, this is the first edited volume of its kind. All the chapters are based on original data, and they are broadly comparable through a common terminological framework. The volume opens with two introductory chapters by the editors that set the stage and lay out the main comparative concepts, and it concludes with a chapter presenting generalizations on the basis of the studies of individual languages

On the left periphery of Latin embedded clauses

The main topic of the present thesis is word order in Latin embedded clauses. More specifically, it deals with a specific surface order in which one ore more constituents are found in the left periphery of the embedded clause, to the left of a subordinating conjunction. This particular pattern is referred to as 'Left Edge Fronting', henceforth LEF. The theoretical framework used is the so called 'cartographic' variety of generative grammar, which assumes a richly articulated (functional) structure to form the syntactic backbone of clauses and noun phrases. The first chapter provides some background concerning the theoretical framework one the one hand and the 'discourse configurational' nature of Latin on the other hand. Chapter 2 focuses on the syntax of the particular subtype of embedded clauses that I investigate, namely adverbial clauses (ACs). Special attention is given to the distribution and availability of so called Main Clause Phenomena in ACs. Chapter 3 gives an overview of the results of a large-scale corpus study on word order in ACs, in which texts from 180 BC to 120 AD were taken into account. These results reveal a quantitative left-right asymmetry: it is shown that LEF occurs most frequently in clause-initial ACs. Moreover, relative and demonstrative pronouns are exclusively found in an LEF-position in clause-initial ACs. These two observations give rise to a distinction between two types of LEF: pronoun fronting in initial ACs (LEF1) and XP-fronting in both initial and final ACs (LEF2). The syntax of LEF1 is analyzed in chapters 4 (on relative pronouns) and 5 (on demonstratives): the phenonenon is characterized as a type of topicalization, which is derived in two steps. First, the pronoun undergoes 'internal movement' to the edge of the embedded clause. This step is followed by an operation of clausal pied-piping, targeting the left periphery of the superordinate clause. A derivation along these successfully explains the left-right asymmetry mentioned earlier. LEF2 on the other hand is argued to be a type of non-contrastive focalization (chapter 6), which can occur in initial and final ACs alike. Chapter 7 focuses on the diachronic evolution of LEF2. The observed decline of this phenomenon is related to a change that took place in the same period, viz. the decreasing frequence of INFL-final clauses

Implicit Learning As A Means Of Tonal Jazz Pitch-Listening Skills Acquisition

In this dissertation, I present a method for developing tonal jazz pitch-listening skills (PLS) which is rooted in scientific experimental findings from the fields of music cognition and perception. Converging experimental evidence supports the notion that humans develop listening skills through implicit learning via immersive, statistically rich exposure to real music from a particular musical idiom, such as tonal jazz. Therefore, I recommend that to acquire tonal jazz pitch-listening skills, learners should (1) immerse themselves in the real music of that idiom, (2) remediate their listening skills, where necessary, by listening to slowed-down versions with exaggerated features, and (3) organize their listening experiences with explicit theoretical labels for particular pitch structures, if they want to communicate about those pitch structures in speech or writing. In order to aid in the practical application of this process, I offer a four-semester learning sequence for the development of tonal jazz pitch-listening skills as well as a variety of formal assessment methods

In search of syntactic symmetry : on the parallels between clausal and nominal hierarchical structure.

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