Exploring the adaptive structure of the mental lexicon

The mental lexicon is a complex structure organised in terms of phonology, semantics and syntax, among other levels. In this thesis I propose that this structure can be explained in terms of the pressures acting on it: every aspect of the organisation of the lexicon is an adaptation ultimately related to the function of language as a tool for human communication, or to the fact that language has to be learned by subsequent generations of people. A collection of methods, most of which are applied to a Spanish speech corpus, reveal structure at different levels of the lexicon.• The patterns of intra-word distribution of phonological information may be a consequence of pressures for optimal representation of the lexicon in the brain, and of the pressure to facilitate speech segmentation.• An analysis of perceived phonological similarity between words shows that the sharing of different aspects of phonological similarity is related to different functions. Phonological similarity perception sometimes relates to morphology (the stressed final vowel determines verb tense and person) and at other times shows processing biases (similarity in the word initial and final segments is more readily perceived than in word-internal segments).• Another similarity analysis focuses on cooccurrence in speech to create a representation of the lexicon where the position of a word is determined by the words that tend to occur in its close vicinity. Variations of context-based lexical space naturally categorise words syntactically and semantically.• A higher level of lexicon structure is revealed by examining the relationships between the phonological and the cooccurrence similarity spaces. A study in Spanish supports the universality of the small but significant correlation between these two spaces found in English by Shillcock, Kirby, McDonald and Brew (2001). This systematicity across levels of representation adds an extra layer of structure that may help lexical acquisition and recognition. I apply it to a new paradigm to determine the function of parameters of phonological similarity based on their relationships with the syntacticsemantic level. I find that while some aspects of a language's phonology maintain systematicity, others work against it, perhaps responding to the opposed pressure for word identification.This thesis is an exploratory approach to the study of the mental lexicon structure that uses existing and new methodology to deepen our understanding of the relationships between language use and language structure

A typological approach to the morphome

407 p.Esta tesis constituye la primera monografía de orientación eminentemente tipológica sobre morfomas. Este término denota estructuras morfológicas sistemáticas cuya extensión paradigmática no se corresponde con distinciones semánticas o morfosintácticas como 'plural', 'genitivo singular' etc.El Capítulo 1 presenta y discute la literatura previa y cuestiones terminológicas, y el Capítulo 2 clarifica cuestiones relativas a la definición e identificación de los morfomas en casos concretos. La discusión se traslada a continuación a un plano más empírico. El Capítulo 3 discute las nociones de 'clase natural' y 'economía', y explora la relación entre morfomicidad y otras desviaciones morfológicas. La diacronía se convierte en protagonista en el Capítulo 4, donde se presentan y discuten las diferentes maneras en que pueden surgir, cambiar o desaparecer los morfomas en las lenguas.El Capítulo 5 es el central de la tesis y presenta 110 morfomas identificados por el autor en lenguas de todo el mundo. Todas estas estructuras son presentadas detalladamente junto con su historia en muchos casos. En base a la variedad observada entre morfomas, se ha definido una docena de variables independientes en torno a las cuales se estructura dicha variación. Tras operacionalizar dichas variables y establecer su valor en los 110 morfomas mencionados, se explora estadísticamente su correlación.Otro resultado derivado de esta base de datos sincrónica se refiere a la recurrencia cross-lingüística de morfomas concretos. Algunas estructuras, arbitrarias desde el punto de vista morfosintáctico o semántico (SG+3PL, 1SG+3, PL+1SG etc.), se encuentran presentes en lenguas independientes, es decir, no emparentadas ni relacionadas arealmente. Esto supone una novedad con respecto a la literatura anterior.La tesis concluye reiterando en el Capítulo 6 los resultados principales de la investigación y explorando sus implicaciones en relación a nuestro conocimiento de los morfomas en particular y del campo de la tipología y la morfología en general

A typological approach to the morphome

407 p.Esta tesis constituye la primera monografía de orientación eminentemente tipológica sobre morfomas. Este término denota estructuras morfológicas sistemáticas cuya extensión paradigmática no se corresponde con distinciones semánticas o morfosintácticas como 'plural', 'genitivo singular' etc.El Capítulo 1 presenta y discute la literatura previa y cuestiones terminológicas, y el Capítulo 2 clarifica cuestiones relativas a la definición e identificación de los morfomas en casos concretos. La discusión se traslada a continuación a un plano más empírico. El Capítulo 3 discute las nociones de 'clase natural' y 'economía', y explora la relación entre morfomicidad y otras desviaciones morfológicas. La diacronía se convierte en protagonista en el Capítulo 4, donde se presentan y discuten las diferentes maneras en que pueden surgir, cambiar o desaparecer los morfomas en las lenguas.El Capítulo 5 es el central de la tesis y presenta 110 morfomas identificados por el autor en lenguas de todo el mundo. Todas estas estructuras son presentadas detalladamente junto con su historia en muchos casos. En base a la variedad observada entre morfomas, se ha definido una docena de variables independientes en torno a las cuales se estructura dicha variación. Tras operacionalizar dichas variables y establecer su valor en los 110 morfomas mencionados, se explora estadísticamente su correlación.Otro resultado derivado de esta base de datos sincrónica se refiere a la recurrencia cross-lingüística de morfomas concretos. Algunas estructuras, arbitrarias desde el punto de vista morfosintáctico o semántico (SG+3PL, 1SG+3, PL+1SG etc.), se encuentran presentes en lenguas independientes, es decir, no emparentadas ni relacionadas arealmente. Esto supone una novedad con respecto a la literatura anterior.La tesis concluye reiterando en el Capítulo 6 los resultados principales de la investigación y explorando sus implicaciones en relación a nuestro conocimiento de los morfomas en particular y del campo de la tipología y la morfología en general

Generic named entity extraction

This thesis proposes and evaluates different ways of performing generic named entity recognition, that is the construction of a system capable of recognising names in free text which is not specific to any particular domain or task. The starting point is an implementation of a well known baseline system which is based on maximum entropy models that utilise lexically-oriented features to recognised names in text. Although this system achieves good levels of performance, both maximum entropy models and lexically-oriented features have their limitations. Three alternative ways in which this system can be extended to overcome these limitations are then studied: [> more linguistically-oriented features are extracted from a generic lexical source, namely WordNet®, and then added to the pool of features of the maximum entropy model [> the maximum entropy model is bias towards training samples that are similar to the piece of text being analysed [> a bootstrapping procedure is introduced to allow maximum entropy models to collect new, valuable information from unlabelled text Results in this thesis indicate that the maximum entropy model is a very strong approach that accomplishes levels of performance that are very hard to improve on. However, these results also suggest that these extensions of the baseline system could yield improvements, though some difficulties must be addressed and more research is needed to obtain more assertive conclusions. This thesis has nonetheless provided important contributions: a novel approach to estimate the complexity of a named entity extraction task, a method for selecting the features to be used by the maximum entropy model from a large pool of features and a novel procedure to bootstrap maximum entropy models

On looking into words (and beyond): Structures, Relations, Analyses

On Looking into Words is a wide-ranging volume spanning current research into word structure and morphology, with a focus on historical linguistics and linguistic theory. The papers are offered as a tribute to Stephen R. Anderson, the Dorothy R. Diebold Professor of Linguistics at Yale, who is retiring at the end of the 2016-2017 academic year. The contributors are friends, colleagues, and former students of Professor Anderson, all important contributors to linguistics in their own right. As is typical for such volumes, the contributions span a variety of topics relating to the interests of the honorand. In this case, the central contributions that Anderson has made to so many areas of linguistics and cognitive science, drawing on synchronic and diachronic phenomena in diverse linguistic systems, are represented through the papers in the volume. The 26 papers that constitute this volume are unified by their discussion of the interplay between synchrony and diachrony, theory and empirical results, and the role of diachronic evidence in understanding the nature of language. Central concerns of the volume include morphological gaps, learnability, increases and declines in productivity, and the interaction of different components of the grammar. The papers deal with a range of linked synchronic and diachronic topics in phonology, morphology, and syntax (in particular, cliticization), and their implications for linguistic theory

On looking into words (and beyond): Structures, Relations, Analyses

On Looking into Words is a wide-ranging volume spanning current research into word structure and morphology, with a focus on historical linguistics and linguistic theory. The papers are offered as a tribute to Stephen R. Anderson, the Dorothy R. Diebold Professor of Linguistics at Yale, who is retiring at the end of the 2016-2017 academic year. The contributors are friends, colleagues, and former students of Professor Anderson, all important contributors to linguistics in their own right. As is typical for such volumes, the contributions span a variety of topics relating to the interests of the honorand. In this case, the central contributions that Anderson has made to so many areas of linguistics and cognitive science, drawing on synchronic and diachronic phenomena in diverse linguistic systems, are represented through the papers in the volume. The 26 papers that constitute this volume are unified by their discussion of the interplay between synchrony and diachrony, theory and empirical results, and the role of diachronic evidence in understanding the nature of language. Central concerns of the volume include morphological gaps, learnability, increases and declines in productivity, and the interaction of different components of the grammar. The papers deal with a range of linked synchronic and diachronic topics in phonology, morphology, and syntax (in particular, cliticization), and their implications for linguistic theory

On looking into words (and beyond): Structures, Relations, Analyses

"On Looking into Words is a wide-ranging volume spanning current research into word structure and morphology, with a focus on historical linguistics and linguistic theory. The papers are offered as a tribute to Stephen R. Anderson, the Dorothy R. Diebold Professor of Linguistics at Yale, who is retiring at the end of the 2016-2017 academic year. The contributors are friends, colleagues, and former students of Professor Anderson, all important contributors to linguistics in their own right. As is typical for such volumes, the contributions span a variety of topics relating to the interests of the honorand. In this case, the central contributions that Anderson has made to so many areas of linguistics and cognitive science, drawing on synchronic and diachronic phenomena in diverse linguistic systems, are represented through the papers in the volume. The 26 papers that constitute this volume are unified by their discussion of the interplay between synchrony and diachrony, theory and empirical results, and the role of diachronic evidence in understanding the nature of language. Central concerns of the volume include morphological gaps, learnability, increases and declines in productivity, and the interaction of different components of the grammar. The papers deal with a range of linked synchronic and diachronic topics in phonology, morphology, and syntax (in particular, cliticization), and their implications for linguistic theory.

On looking into words (and beyond): Structures, Relations, Analyses

On Looking into Words is a wide-ranging volume spanning current research into word structure and morphology, with a focus on historical linguistics and linguistic theory. The papers are offered as a tribute to Stephen R. Anderson, the Dorothy R. Diebold Professor of Linguistics at Yale, who is retiring at the end of the 2016-2017 academic year. The contributors are friends, colleagues, and former students of Professor Anderson, all important contributors to linguistics in their own right. As is typical for such volumes, the contributions span a variety of topics relating to the interests of the honorand. In this case, the central contributions that Anderson has made to so many areas of linguistics and cognitive science, drawing on synchronic and diachronic phenomena in diverse linguistic systems, are represented through the papers in the volume. The 26 papers that constitute this volume are unified by their discussion of the interplay between synchrony and diachrony, theory and empirical results, and the role of diachronic evidence in understanding the nature of language. Central concerns of the volume include morphological gaps, learnability, increases and declines in productivity, and the interaction of different components of the grammar. The papers deal with a range of linked synchronic and diachronic topics in phonology, morphology, and syntax (in particular, cliticization), and their implications for linguistic theory