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Realistic Grammar

Realistic Grammar. Chapter – 9. Constrained-Based-Lexicalism. Language production : - competence : the speakers knowledge of their language - performance : the way this knowledge is used in speaking and understanding (Chomsky; 1965). Chomsky 1965:. Chomsky 1965:

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Realistic Grammar

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  1. Realistic Grammar Chapter – 9

  2. Constrained-Based-Lexicalism • Language production: -competence: the speakers knowledge of their language -performance: the way this knowledge is used in speaking and understanding (Chomsky; 1965)

  3. Chomsky 1965: • Chomsky 1965: `In general, it seems that the study of performance models incorporating generative grammars may be a fruitful study; furthermore, it is difficult to imagine any other basis on which a theory of performance might develop`

  4. Does our grammar cooperate with recent psycholinguistic knowledge?

  5. Surface Oriented the simple structure is directly associated with the string of words that constitute each sentence. If a given sentence is grammatical according to our grammar its meaning is directly derivable from the properties of the words in the string.

  6. 2) Constraint-Based The grammar consists of constraints, like the grammar rules and the lexical entries, that interact with each other without rearranging, trimming or modifying each other.

  7. 3) Strongly Lexicalist Most of the grammatical and semantic information is transferred to the lexicon.The key elements of the sentence, namely the words, drive its construction of the semantic & syntactic structure.

  8. Constraint-Based-Lexicalism (CBL)  Any theory that has these three design properties exemplifies a viewpoint that will be referred to as CBL

  9. Modelling Performance The two most striking facts about language processing are: • Language processing is incremental • Language processing is rapid

  10. Incremental Processing ‚After finding the book on the atom, Sandy went into class, confident that there would be no further obstacles to getting that term paper done.‘  If the decision made was wrong, language processing is disrupted!

  11. The horse raced past the barn fell. • The boat floated down the river sank. The horse that was raced past the barn fell. The horse taken to the hospital died. The boat that was floated down the river sank. The boat seen down the river sank.  Garden Path Sentences

  12. Context • The right context can eliminate the garden path effect, it can even make the NOM-modifying interpretation the most natural one: ‚The horse that they raced around the track held up fine. The horse that was raced down the road faltered a bit. And the horse raced past the barn fell.‘

  13. Non-linguistic Information ‚The evidence that was assembled by the prosecution convinced the jury.‘ The structure keeps the same potential for ambiguity, but by changing the words one can eliminate the garden path effect.

  14. Rapid Processing The rapidity of language processing is increased because listeners use what ever information is available, as soon as it becomes available to them, to infer the speakers intention.

  15. For example: In an experiment with a head-mounted-eye-tracker participants were asked to view a grid with several objects on it. Two of these objects would normally be described with words whose initial partitions sound the same, like candle and candy (Competitors). The participants received instructions to pick up an object and to place it somewhere else on the grid (‚take the candle and put it above the fork‘). Eye movement to the object they picked up was significantly faster when no competitor was present.  The retrieval of lexical information begins before the end of the word.

  16. A Performance-Plausible Competence Grammar • Competing interpretations exist in parallel, but are active to varying degrees. Activity of the variations depends on frequency and plausibility.

  17. Surface - Orientation • Sentence processing proceeds on a word-by-word basis, which is basically what our grammar does.

  18. Short-Cuts Speaker A: „Senora Maria Consuelo Bustamente y Bacigalupo is coming to dinner tomorrow night!“ Speaker B: „WHO did you say is coming to dinner ************************* tomorrow night?“

  19. The words of our grammar provide partial information about the syntactic and semantic properties of any given sentence. This information may be enough to interpret the meaning of the whole utterance.

  20. Constraint-Based-Grammar • The grammar consists of a set of constraints that apply simultaneously to define which structures are well-formed. It does not matter which order the constraints are consulted in, they will always give the same collective result.

  21. The order of presentation of the words in an utterance largely determines the order of the mental operations. The sheep that was sleeping in the pen stood up. The sheep in the pen had been sleeping and were about to stand up.  Production activity and comprehension activity are closely related to each other.

  22. Strong Lexicalism • As much information as possible is put into the lexicon. It turns out that the psycholinguistic evidence on language processing points in the same direction.

  23. Lou forgot the umbrella... ... was broken! ... in the closet! Lou hoped the umbrella... / Lou put the umbrella ... ... was broken! *... was broken! *... in the closet! ... in the closet!

  24. other examples: • Dana learned the umbrella was broken. Dana learned a new theorem in class. • The artist drew the child with a pencil. The artist drew the child with the bicycle. • Lynn likes the hat on the shelf. Lynn bought the hat on the shelf.

  25. Universal Grammar: A mental Organ? • Chomsky: virtually all children become fluent speakers of a language, with little apparent effort or instruction. His solution how people can come to know so much about language so quickly and easily is that people‘s knowledge of language is for the most part innate, not learned.

  26. two different approaches: 1) Language is task-specific: (Chomsky) People are born with a mental organ for language which is distinct in its organization and functioning from other cognitive abilities. 2)Language is non-task-specific (others) People‘s capacity to learn language arises essentially as a side-effect of their general intelligence or of other abilities.

  27. How universal is the grammar developed so far? It contains many elements like the grammar rules, the definition of Well-Formed Tree Structure, the features and types that are plausible candidates for playing a role in a theory of universal grammar. Some elements like the binding-principles and some lexical rules probably have close analogous in many other languages.

  28. Thanks for your attention!

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