Constraining generalisation in artificial language learning : children are rational too

Successful language acquisition involves generalization, but learners must balance this against the acquisition of lexical constraints. Examples occur throughout language. For example, English native speakers know that certain noun-adjective combinations are impermissible (e.g. strong winds, high winds, strong breezes, *high breezes). Another example is the restrictions imposed by verb subcategorization, (e.g. I gave/sent/threw the ball to him; I gave/sent/threw him the ball; donated/carried/pushed the ball to him; * I donated/carried/pushed him the ball). Such lexical exceptions have been considered problematic for acquisition: if learners generalize abstract patterns to new words, how do they learn that certain specific combinations are restricted? (Baker, 1979). Certain researchers have proposed domain-specific procedures (e.g. Pinker, 1989 resolves verb subcategorization in terms of subtle semantic distinctions). An alternative approach is that learners are sensitive to distributional statistics and use this information to make inferences about when generalization is appropriate (Braine, 1971). A series of Artificial Language Learning experiments have demonstrated that adult learners can utilize statistical information in a rational manner when determining constraints on verb argument-structure generalization (Wonnacott, Newport & Tanenhaus, 2008). The current work extends these findings to children in a different linguistic domain (learning relationships between nouns and particles). We also demonstrate computationally that these results are consistent with the predictions of domain-general hierarchical Bayesian model (cf. Kemp, Perfors & Tenebaum, 2007)

Variability, negative evidence, and the acquisition of verb argument constructions

We present a hierarchical Bayesian framework for modeling the acquisition of verb argument constructions. It embodies a domain-general approach to learning higher-level knowledge in the form of inductive constraints (or overhypotheses), and has been used to explain other aspects of language development such as the shape bias in learning object names. Here, we demonstrate that the same model captures several phenomena in the acquisition of verb constructions. Our model, like adults in a series of artificial language learning experiments, makes inferences about the distributional statistics of verbs on several levels of abstraction simultaneously. It also produces the qualitative learning patterns displayed by children over the time course of acquisition. These results suggest that the patterns of generalization observed in both children and adults could emerge from basic assumptions about the nature of learning. They also provide an example of a broad class of computational approaches that can resolve Baker's Paradox

Higher order inference in verb argument structure acquisition

Successful language learning combines generalization and the acquisition of lexical constraints. The conflict is particularly clear for verb argument structures, which may generalize to new verbs (John gorped the ball to Bill ->John gorped Bill the ball), yet resist generalization with certain lexical items (John carried the ball to Bill -> *John carried Bill the ball). The resulting learnability “paradox” (Baker 1979) has received great attention in the acquisition literature. Wonnacott, Newport & Tanenhaus 2008 demonstrated that adult learners acquire both general and verb-specific patterns when acquiring an artificial language with two competing argument structures, and that these same constraints are reflected in real time processing. The current work follows up and extends this program of research in two new experiments. We demonstrate that the results are consistent with a hierarchical Bayesian model, originally developed by Kemp, Perfors & Tenebaum (2007) to capture the emergence of feature biases in word learning

Learnability, representation, and language : a Bayesian approach

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 2008.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Includes bibliographical references (p. 225-243).Within the metaphor of the "mind as a computation device" that dominates cognitive science, understanding human cognition means understanding learnability not only what (and how) the brain learns, but also what data is available to it from the world. Ideal learnability arguments seek to characterize what knowledge is in theory possible for an ideal reasoner to acquire, which illuminates the path towards understanding what human reasoners actually do acquire. The goal of this thesis is to exploit recent advances in machine learning to revisit three common learnability arguments in language acquisition. By formalizing them in Bayesian terms and evaluating them given realistic, real-world datasets, we achieve insight about what must be assumed about a child's representational capacity, learning mechanism, and cognitive biases. Exploring learnability in the context of an ideal learner but realistic (rather than ideal) datasets enables us to investigate what could be learned in practice rather than noting what is impossible in theory. Understanding how higher-order inductive constraints can themselves be learned permits us to reconsider inferences about innate inductive constraints in a new light. And realizing how a learner who evaluates theories based on a simplicity/goodness-of-fit tradeoff can handle sparse evidence may lead to a new perspective on how humans reason based on the noisy and impoverished data in the world. The learnability arguments I consider all ultimately stem from the impoverishment of the input either because it lacks negative evidence, it lacks a certain essential kind of positive evidence, or it lacks suffcient quantity of evidence necessary for choosing from an infinite set of possible generalizations.(cont.) I focus on these learnability arguments in the context of three major topics in language acquisition: the acquisition of abstract linguistic knowledge about hierarchical phrase structure, the acquisition of verb argument structures, and the acquisition of word leaning biases.by Amy Perfors.Ph.D

Language learning, language use and the evolution of linguistic variation

Linguistic universals arise from the interaction between the processes of language learning and language use. A test case for the relationship between these factors is linguistic variation, which tends to be conditioned on linguistic or sociolinguistic criteria. How can we explain the scarcity of unpredictable variation in natural language, and to what extent is this property of language a straightforward reflection of biases in statistical learning? We review three strands of experimental work exploring these questions, and introduce a Bayesian model of the learning and transmission of linguistic variation along with a closely matched artificial language learning experiment with adult participants. Our results show that while the biases of language learners can potentially play a role in shaping linguistic systems, the relationship between biases of learners and the structure of languages is not straightforward. Weak biases can have strong effects on language structure as they accumulate over repeated transmission. But the opposite can also be true: strong biases can have weak or no effects. Furthermore, the use of language during interaction can reshape linguistic systems. Combining data and insights from studies of learning, transmission and use is therefore essential if we are to understand how biases in statistical learning interact with language transmission and language use to shape the structural properties of language

Epistemic trust: modeling children's reasoning about others' knowledge and intent

A core assumption of many theories of development is that children can learn indirectly from other people. However, indirect experience (or testimony) is not constrained to provide veridical information. As a result, if children are to capitalize on this source of knowledge, they must be able to infer who is trustworthy and who is not. How might a learner make such inferences while at the same time learning about the world? What biases, if any, might children bring to this problem? We address these questions with a computational model of epistemic trust in which learners reason about the helpfulness and knowledgeability of an informant. We show that the model captures the competencies shown by young children in four areas: (1) using informants’ accuracy to infer how much to trust them; (2) using informants’ recent accuracy to overcome effects of familiarity; (3) inferring trust based on consensus among informants; and (4) using information about mal-intent to decide not to trust. The model also explains developmental changes in performance between 3 and 4 years of age as a result of changing default assumptions about the helpfulness of other people.Patrick Shafto, Baxter Eaves, Daniel J. Navarro and Amy Perfor

The retreat from locative overgeneralisation errors : a novel verb grammaticality judgment study

Whilst some locative verbs alternate between the ground- and figure-locative constructions (e.g. Lisa sprayed the flowers with water/Lisa sprayed water onto the flowers), others are restricted to one construction or the other (e.g. *Lisa filled water into the cup/*Lisa poured the cup with water). The present study investigated two proposals for how learners (aged 5–6, 9–10 and adults) acquire this restriction, using a novel-verb-learning grammaticality-judgment paradigm. In support of the semantic verb class hypothesis, participants in all age groups used the semantic properties of novel verbs to determine the locative constructions (ground/figure/both) in which they could and could not appear. In support of the frequency hypothesis, participants’ tolerance of overgeneralisation errors decreased with each increasing level of verb frequency (novel/low/high). These results underline the need to develop an integrated account of the roles of semantics and frequency in the retreat from argument structure overgeneralisation