Proceedings of the 18th Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science

These proceedings contain the papers that were accepted for publication at AICS-2007, the 18th Annual Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, which was held in the Technological University Dublin; Dublin, Ireland; on the 29th to the 31st August 2007. AICS is the annual conference of the Artificial Intelligence Association of Ireland (AIAI)

The cognitive organisation of musical pitch

This thesis takes as its initial Premise the idea that the rationales for the forms of pitch organisation employed within tonal music which have been adopted by music theorists have strongly affected those theorists` conceptions of music, and that it is of critical importance to music theory to investigate the potential origination of such rationales within the human sciences. Recent studies of musical pitch perception and cognition are examined, and an attempt is made to assess their capacity to provide sustainable rationales for pitch organisation in tonal music. Theoretical and experimental studies that focus on sensory processes are critically reviewed, and it is suggested that these do not adequately characterise important aspects of musical pitch organisation. Studies that examine more central cognitive constraints are discussed, and a detailed critique is made of recent cognitive-structural approaches to the representation of musical pitch. It is proposed that a significant aspect of tonal pitch organisation, diatonic structure, is neither adequately investigated nor provided with any compelling rationale by these studies. Three series of experiments on the perception and representation of diatonic structure are presented: it is suggested that the sensitivity to properties of diatonic structure shown by listeners in these and in other experiments implies that a representation of diatonicinterval structure constitutes an important component of the cognitive organisation of musical pitch. A possible basis fort his sensitivity is further explored, and a group-theoretic rationale for the musical use of diatonicism is proposed. The nature of the cognitive representation of diatonic interval structure is discussed. and relationships between diatonic structure. other western scale forms. tonality and (briefly) atonality are outlined

Learning Functional Prepositions

In first language acquisition, what does it mean for a grammatical category to have been acquired, and what are the mechanisms by which children learn functional categories in general? In the context of prepositions (Ps), if the lexical/functional divide cuts through the P category, as has been suggested in the theoretical literature, then constructivist accounts of language acquisition would predict that children develop adult-like competence with the more abstract units, functional Ps, at a slower rate compared to their acquisition of lexical Ps. Nativists instead assume that the features of functional P are made available by Universal Grammar (UG), and are mapped as quickly, if not faster, than the semantic features of their lexical counterparts. Conversely, if Ps are either all lexical or all functional, on both accounts of acquisition we should observe few differences in learning. Three empirical studies of the development of P were conducted via computer analysis of the English and Spanish sub-corpora of the CHILDES database. Study 1 analyzed errors in child usage of Ps, finding almost no errors in commission in either language, but that the English learners lag in their production of functional Ps relative to lexical Ps. That no such delay was found in the Spanish data suggests that the English pattern is not universal. Studies 2 and 3 applied novel measures of phrasal (P head + nominal complement) productivity to the data. Study 2 examined prepositional phrases (PPs) whose head-complement pairs appeared in both child and adult speech, while Study 3 considered PPs produced by children that never occurred in adult speech. In both studies the productivity of Ps for English children developed faster than that of lexical Ps. In Spanish there were few differences, suggesting that children had already mastered both orders of Ps early in acquisition. These empirical results suggest that at least in English P is indeed a split category, and that children acquire the syntax of the functional subset very quickly, committing almost no errors. The UG position is thus supported. Next, the dissertation investigates a \u27soft nativist\u27 acquisition strategy that composes the distributional analysis of input, minimal a priori knowledge of the possible co-occurrence of morphosyntactic features associated with functional elements, and linguistic knowledge that is presumably acquired via the experience of pragmatic, communicative situations. The output of the analysis consists in a mapping of morphemes to the feature bundles of nominative pronouns for English and Spanish, plus specific claims about the sort of knowledge required from experience. The acquisition model is then extended to adpositions, to examine what, if anything, distributional analysis can tell us about the functional sequences of PPs. The results confirm the theoretical position according to which spatiotemporal Ps are lexical in character, rooting their own extended projections, and that functional Ps express an aspectual sequence in the functional superstructure of the PP

Factors affecting reading comprehension in primary pupils

This thesis addresses the problem of 8-11 year old pupils who, although appearing to read text fluently, frequently misunderstand it. This problem was studied through Scottish school-based research using classroom materials and subjects from natural class groups. Data were collected from language assignments in daily work programmes, with response material in either written or illustrated form. Nine feasibility studies and a main study involving eighty subjects were carried out. The effects of five variables, text, presentation mode, age, ability and geographic location, on the totals and types of miscomprehensions displayed by the subjects in directed and free-recall comprehension tasks were calculated. 'Errors' are considered to be divergences from the author's supposed meaning. It is found that the collected errors are not random but may be classified into groups. Ten types of error were identified as regularly occurring and the category system developed was validated by teachers and others involved in the field of education. The effects of the five variables on the numbers and categories of error collected and the interactions between these variables were subjected to statistical analysis. Text and presentation mode are found to be the factors having most effect on the quantity and type of error produced. This finding is at variance with the generally accepted assumption that age, ability and possibly environment are determinants of potential pupil achievement. Miscomprehensions are discovered to be widely distributed across the ability range but they may be concealed by pupils in their pursuit of acceptable responses. The progress expected with increasing age is not always evident. The value of the category system as a teaching tool in comprehension development across the curriculum and pupil age range is assessed and suggestions given for its use. Implications of the findings for pupil assessment procedures and classroom practice are also discussed

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