Experiments using semantics for learning language comprehension and production

Several questions in natural language learning may be addressed by studying formal language learning models. In this work we hope to contribute to a deeper understanding of the role of semantics in language acquisition. We propose a simple formal model of meaning and denotation using finite state transducers, and an algorithm that learns a meaning function from examples consisting of a situation and an utterance denoting something in the situation. We describe the results of testing this algorithm in a domain of geometric shapes and their properties and relations in several natural languages: Arabic, English, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish. In addition, we explore how a learner who has learned to comprehend utterances might go about learning to produce them, and present experimental results for this task. One concrete goal of our formal model is to be able to give an account of interactions in which an adult provides a meaning-preserving and grammatically correct expansion of a child's incomplete utterance

Meaning Helps Learning Syntax

. In this paper, we propose a new framework for the computational learning of formal grammars with positive data. In this model, both syntactic and semantic information are taken into account, which seems cognitively relevant for the modeling of natural language learning. The syntactic formalism used is the one of Lambek categorial grammars and meaning is represented with logical formulas. The principle of compositionality is admitted and defined as an isomorphism applying to trees and allowing to automatically translate sentences into their semantic representation(s). Simple simulations of a learning algorithm are extensively developed and discussed. 1 Introduction Natural language learning seems, from a formal point of view, an enigma. As a matter of fact, every human being, given nearly exclusively positive examples ([25]), is able at the age of about five to master his/her mother tongue. Though every natural language has at least the power of context-free grammars ([22]), this cla..