Empty Categories Help Parse the Overt

This paper is concerned with whether deep syntactic information can help surface parsing, with a particular focus on empty categories. We consider data-driven dependency parsing with both linear and neural disambiguation models. We find that the information about empty categories is helpful to reduce the approximation error in a structured prediction based parsing model, but increases the search space for inference and accordingly the estimation error. To deal with structure-based overfitting, we propose to integrate disambiguation models with and without empty elements. Experiments on English and Chinese TreeBanks indicate that incorporating empty elements consistently improves surface parsing

Towards a complete multiple-mechanism account of predictive language processing [Commentary on Pickering & Garrod]

Although we agree with Pickering & Garrod (P&G) that prediction-by-simulation and prediction-by-association are important mechanisms of anticipatory language processing, this commentary suggests that they: (1) overlook other potential mechanisms that might underlie prediction in language processing, (2) overestimate the importance of prediction-by-association in early childhood, and (3) underestimate the complexity and significance of several factors that might mediate prediction during language processing

An integrated theory of language production and comprehension

Currently, production and comprehension are regarded as quite distinct in accounts of language processing. In rejecting this dichotomy, we instead assert that producing and understanding are interwoven, and that this interweaving is what enables people to predict themselves and each other. We start by noting that production and comprehension are forms of action and action perception. We then consider the evidence for interweaving in action, action perception, and joint action, and explain such evidence in terms of prediction. Specifically, we assume that actors construct forward models of their actions before they execute those actions, and that perceivers of others' actions covertly imitate those actions, then construct forward models of those actions. We use these accounts of action, action perception, and joint action to develop accounts of production, comprehension, and interactive language. Importantly, they incorporate well-defined levels of linguistic representation (such as semantics, syntax, and phonology). We show (a) how speakers and comprehenders use covert imitation and forward modeling to make predictions at these levels of representation, (b) how they interweave production and comprehension processes, and (c) how they use these predictions to monitor the upcoming utterances. We show how these accounts explain a range of behavioral and neuroscientific data on language processing and discuss some of the implications of our proposal

Pointing as an Instrumental Gesture : Gaze Representation Through Indication

The research of the first author was supported by a Fulbright Visiting Scholar Fellowship and developed in 2012 during a period of research visit at the University of Memphis.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Onward and upward? An empirical investigation of gender and promotions in Information Technology Services

The shaky ascent of women up the organizational ladder is a critical factor that may contribute to the lack of women in information technology (IT). In this study, we examine the effect of gender on the likelihood of employee promotions. We further examine whether women get an equal lift in promotion likelihood from performance improvements, work experience, and training as men. We analyze archival promotion data, as well as demographic, human capital, and administrative data for 7,004 employees at a leading IT services firm located in India for the years 2002–2007 and for multiple levels of promotion. We develop robust econometric models that consider employee heterogeneity to identify the differential effect of gender and performance on promotions. We find that, contrary to expectations, women are more likely to be promoted, on average. However, looking deeper into the heterogeneous main effects using hierarchical Bayesian modeling reveals more nuanced insights. We find that, ceteris paribus, women realize less benefit from performance gains than men, less benefit from tenure within the focal firm, but more benefit from training than men. These results suggest that despite the disparity in returns to performance and experience improvements, women can rely on signaling mechanisms such as training to restore parity in promotions. We find that the effects of gender and performance vary with the level of employee promotion; although not as much as men, women benefit more from performance gains at higher organizational levels. Our findings suggest several actionable managerial insights that can potentially make IT firms more inclusive and attractive to women

Towards a Robuster Interpretive Parsing

The input data to grammar learning algorithms often consist of overt forms that do not contain full structural descriptions. This lack of information may contribute to the failure of learning. Past work on Optimality Theory introduced Robust Interpretive Parsing (RIP) as a partial solution to this problem. We generalize RIP and suggest replacing the winner candidate with a weighted mean violation of the potential winner candidates. A Boltzmann distribution is introduced on the winner set, and the distribution’s parameter $T$ is gradually decreased. Finally, we show that GRIP, the Generalized Robust Interpretive Parsing Algorithm significantly improves the learning success rate in a model with standard constraints for metrical stress assignment

Phasage: a phase based account of English existential constructions

English existentials have received much attention in the generative literature as they exhibit certain properties that are difficult to capture under standard theoretical assumptions. The aim of this paper is to provide, in one fell swoop, an account of two pressing issues regarding English existentials: the non-canonical subject position, and their aspectual properties

Binding reconstruction and two modes of copy-chain interpretation

We present a theory for the interpretation of Ā-movement chains at LF in the copy theory of movement where the NP restrictor of a DP Ā-movement chain is interpreted in only one copy. Such a view is motivated for English by evidence from reflexive binding, building on observations in Barss 1986, and its interaction with parasitic gap licensing and weak crossover effects. Our approach offers a means for understanding the classification of Ā-movement types in Cinque 1990 and Postal 1994 in copy-theoretic terms

Graph Interpolation Grammars: a Rule-based Approach to the Incremental Parsing of Natural Languages

Graph Interpolation Grammars are a declarative formalism with an operational semantics. Their goal is to emulate salient features of the human parser, and notably incrementality. The parsing process defined by GIGs incrementally builds a syntactic representation of a sentence as each successive lexeme is read. A GIG rule specifies a set of parse configurations that trigger its application and an operation to perform on a matching configuration. Rules are partly context-sensitive; furthermore, they are reversible, meaning that their operations can be undone, which allows the parsing process to be nondeterministic. These two factors confer enough expressive power to the formalism for parsing natural languages.Comment: 41 pages, Postscript onl