Pauses and the temporal structure of speech

Natural-sounding speech synthesis requires close control over the temporal structure of the speech flow. This includes a full predictive scheme for the durational structure and in particuliar the prolongation of final syllables of lexemes as well as for the pausal structure in the utterance. In this chapter, a description of the temporal structure and the summary of the numerous factors that modify it are presented. In the second part, predictive schemes for the temporal structure of speech ("performance structures") are introduced, and their potential for characterising the overall prosodic structure of speech is demonstrated

Complex sentence as a structure for representing knowledge

Structural variations involving both morphological and syntactic features of the complex sentence of the type “When S, S” and their relevance for the interpretation of sentence meaning are analyzed. It is hypothesized that the constraints on certain sequences intuitively felt by native speakers are due to semantic contradictions that arise between the indexical content of the verbal tense and aspect and the syntactic structure of the sentence which iconically reflects the cognitive processing of perceptual data. The cognitive value of different syntactically acceptable sequences is assessed from the point of view of the relationship between the morphosyntactic categories of tense and as-pect and sentence iconicity

Third Person References: Forms and Functions in Two Spoken Genres of Spanish

This volume, a case study on the grammar of third person references in two genres of spoken Ecuadorian Spanish, examines from a discourse-analytic perspective how genre affects linguistic patterns and how researchers can look for and interpret genre effects. This marks a timely contribution to corpus linguistics, as many linguists are choosing to work with empirical data. Corpus based approaches have many advantages and are useful in the comparison of different languages as well as varieties of the same language, but what is often overlooked in such comparisons is the genre of language under examination. As this case study shows, genre is an important factor in interpreting patterns and distributions of forms. The book also contributes toward theories of anaphora, referentiality and Preferred Argument Structure. It is relevant for scholars who work with referentiality, genre differences, third person references, and interactional linguistics, as well as those interested in Spanish morphosyntax. [From the Publisher]https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/books/1096/thumbnail.jp

Lambek vs. Lambek: Functorial Vector Space Semantics and String Diagrams for Lambek Calculus

The Distributional Compositional Categorical (DisCoCat) model is a mathematical framework that provides compositional semantics for meanings of natural language sentences. It consists of a computational procedure for constructing meanings of sentences, given their grammatical structure in terms of compositional type-logic, and given the empirically derived meanings of their words. For the particular case that the meaning of words is modelled within a distributional vector space model, its experimental predictions, derived from real large scale data, have outperformed other empirically validated methods that could build vectors for a full sentence. This success can be attributed to a conceptually motivated mathematical underpinning, by integrating qualitative compositional type-logic and quantitative modelling of meaning within a category-theoretic mathematical framework. The type-logic used in the DisCoCat model is Lambek's pregroup grammar. Pregroup types form a posetal compact closed category, which can be passed, in a functorial manner, on to the compact closed structure of vector spaces, linear maps and tensor product. The diagrammatic versions of the equational reasoning in compact closed categories can be interpreted as the flow of word meanings within sentences. Pregroups simplify Lambek's previous type-logic, the Lambek calculus, which has been extensively used to formalise and reason about various linguistic phenomena. The apparent reliance of the DisCoCat on pregroups has been seen as a shortcoming. This paper addresses this concern, by pointing out that one may as well realise a functorial passage from the original type-logic of Lambek, a monoidal bi-closed category, to vector spaces, or to any other model of meaning organised within a monoidal bi-closed category. The corresponding string diagram calculus, due to Baez and Stay, now depicts the flow of word meanings.Comment: 29 pages, pending publication in Annals of Pure and Applied Logi

Computational and Robotic Models of Early Language Development: A Review

We review computational and robotics models of early language learning and development. We first explain why and how these models are used to understand better how children learn language. We argue that they provide concrete theories of language learning as a complex dynamic system, complementing traditional methods in psychology and linguistics. We review different modeling formalisms, grounded in techniques from machine learning and artificial intelligence such as Bayesian and neural network approaches. We then discuss their role in understanding several key mechanisms of language development: cross-situational statistical learning, embodiment, situated social interaction, intrinsically motivated learning, and cultural evolution. We conclude by discussing future challenges for research, including modeling of large-scale empirical data about language acquisition in real-world environments. Keywords: Early language learning, Computational and robotic models, machine learning, development, embodiment, social interaction, intrinsic motivation, self-organization, dynamical systems, complexity.Comment: to appear in International Handbook on Language Development, ed. J. Horst and J. von Koss Torkildsen, Routledg

The prompt hypothesis: clarification requests as corrective input for grammatical errors

The potential of clarification questions (CQs) to act as a form of corrective input for young children's grammatical errors was examined. Corrective responses were operationalized as those occasions when child speech shifted from erroneous to correct (E -> C) contingent on a clarification question. It was predicted that E -> C sequences would prevail over shifts in the opposite direction (C -> E), as can occur in the case of nonerror-contingent CQs. This prediction was tested via a standard intervention paradigm, whereby every 60s a sequence of two clarification requests (either specific or general) was introduced into conversation with a total of 45 2- and 4-year-old children. For 10 categories of grammatical structure, E -> C sequences predominated over their C -> E counterparts, with levels of E -> C shifts increasing after two clarification questions. Children were also more reluctant to repeat erroneous forms than their correct counterparts, following the intervention of CQs. The findings provide support for Saxton's prompt hypothesis, which predicts that error-contingent CQs bear the potential to cue recall of previously acquired grammatical forms