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Probability smoothing for NLP: A case study for functional programming and little languages
Time: Tuesday, April 03, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm
Place: Memorial Hall (MM) 401
Wren Thornton
Designing functional libraries is a balancing act. To be effectively functional, the API must be declarative and intuitive to work with (e.g., eschewing side-effects which destroy the ability to reason locally). To be an effective library, it must not lose efficiency over hand-written code, or else efficiency-minded users will avoid it. In the field of modeling this tension is especially acute: on the one hand we'd like to separate models from the algorithms on them, but on the other hand efficiency is paramount. As a consequence, state-of-the-art modeling code typically forsakes functional clarity in pursuit of efficiency--- for example, by interleaving the choice of smoothing for probabilistic models with the algorithms which work over that model, since doing so allows for loop-invariant code motion (LICM) which can reduce algorithmic complexity. In this talk I will present an embedded domain-specific language (EDSL) which enables us to capture probabilistic models declaratively ---thereby reducing bugs in modeling code---, while simultaneously retaining the separation of concerns between models and algorithms ---by performing LICM dynamically.
In category: Computational linguistics
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Domain-general mechanisms for learning word-referent mappings: Empirical and modeling evidence
Time: Wednesday, April 04, 2012 12:10pm - 01:10pm
Place: PY 128 (Psychology conference room)
George Kachergis
Associative learning has been meticulously studied in many species, and diverse effects have been explained using a handful of basic assumptions and mechanisms. Human language acquisition proceeds remarkably quickly and is of great interest, but is arguably more difficult to capture under the microscope. Nonetheless, empirical investigations have led researchers to theorize a variety of language learning principles and constraints. While there may indeed be language-specific learning mechanisms that are distinct from more universal associative learning mechanisms, I seek to explain some basic principles of language acquisition using domain-general mechanisms. Using a model and several empirical findings, I show how the principles of mutual exclusivity--an assumption of 1-to-1 word-object mappings, contrast, and other constraints related to fast mapping nouns may result from attention mechanisms attributed to associative learning effects such as blocking and highlighting. However, unlike other associative models, the model I propose has selective attention directed by simple competing biases for familiar pairs and for uncertain stimuli. Given sufficient time and audience interest, I can address how the model accounts for effects resulting from varied pair frequency, contextual diversity, temporal contiguity, illusory correlation, and active learning.
In category: Child language acquisition
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A cross-sectional study of the effects of discourse cohesiveness and perseveration on subject expression in second language Spanish
Time: Wednesday, April 04, 2012 01:30pm - 02:15pm
Place: BH 205
Kimberly L. Geeslin and Bret Linford
Forms of subject expression in Spanish are one of the most widely studied areas in variationist research. Researchers have discovered that many factors (both linguistic and sociolinguistic) influence the variation between overt and null subject forms (Avila-Jiménez 1994; Bayley & Pease-Álvarez 1996; Cameron 1994, 1995; Cameron & Flores-Ferrán 2004; Enríquez 1984; Erker 2005; Flores-Ferrán 2005; Hochberg 1986; Morales 1986; Otheguy, Zentella & Livert 2007; Shin 2006; Shin & Cairns 2009; Shin & Otheguy 2009; Silva-Corvalán 1994; Travis & Torres-Cacoullos 2010). Among these, some of the most influential factors are Discourse Cohesiveness, which accounts for factors that make discourse more or less cohesive, including the form and distance of the previous mention of the referent and the (dis)continuity of TMA (Bayley and Pease-Álvarez 1997; Paredes Silva 1993), and Perseveration, which accounts for the tendency for the form of the previous mention of the referent to influence the next subject form produced (Cameron, 1994; Cameron & Flores-Ferrán 2004; Flores-Ferrán 2005). Similarly, research on the second language acquisition of subject form use has shifted from an error analysis to an analysis of the frequency with which learners use a grammatical form and the factors that influence such use. Research on a variety of variable structures has shown that depending on the form under examination, even advanced non-native speakers (NNSs) may differ from native speakers (NSs) in the frequency of use of a form (Geeslin & Gudmestad 2008), the factors that predict use (Linford 2009) and/or the degrees of strength with which these factors operate (Geeslin & Gudmestad 2008, 2010). In fact, previous research on forms of subject expression has shown that both NSs and NNSs demonstrate similar effects for the variables Discourse Cohesiveness and Perseveration but significantly different frequencies of use of null subject forms (Geeslin & Gudmestad 2011). Although variationist methods of analysis have been used to determine stages of acquisition for some variables structures (e.g., Geeslin 2000), developmental research does not exist for the forms of subject expression. Thus, the current study was designed to further examine the frequency and predictors of forms of subject expression by NSs and NNSs at a variety of proficiency levels in order to examine development in the use of this variable structure.
The current study employs an elicitation method in which the features of the discourse context are highly-controlled in order to isolate the effects of the linguistic and individual variables under examination. The participants of the current study were 20 NSs and 120 NNSs of Spanish who completed three tasks: a background questionnaire, a proficiency test, and a written contextualized task that manipulated the degree of Discourse Cohesiveness and the form of the previous referent while at the same time controlling the person and number of the referents (all 3 rd person singular referents), the clause type (all items found in main clauses), and the TMA of the verbs (all in either simple present or imperfect). The NNSs come from 6 levels of enrolment, including third semester, fourth semester, intermediate composition, advanced undergraduate and graduate courses. Results for all learner groups and for the NSs were analyzed in terms of frequency of selection of each subject form as well as the degree to which the two variables examined in the current study were shown to influence selection of those forms. Preliminary results show that even when discourse is tightly controlled there are significant differences in frequency of selection of forms across levels of proficiency and between the most advanced group and the NSs. Nevertheless, learners do acquire sensitivity to the same discourse factors that predict NS subject form selection.
In category: Second language acquisition
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Computer-based perceptual training as a major component of adult instruction in a foreign language
Time: Friday, April 06, 2012 02:30pm - 04:00pm
Place: Ballantine Hall 208
Charles S. Watson, James D. Miller, Ward Morrow, and Gary Kidd
Millions of adult learners have acquired good-to-excellent literacy in English, but most of them continue to have difficulty with oral communication in that language. The more obvious of their problems is with pronunciation, which varies from just noticeably “foreign” to very difficult to understand. Less apparent, but possibly fundamental to their overall skill level in English, is their difficulty in recognizing the spoken sounds, words, and phrases of that language. Contemporary research has shown that adults are capable of learning to perceive a new language quite accurately, through systematic training. Perceptual skills acquired through such training are likely to contribute to continuing improvement in pronunciation and to an increasing vocabulary. Such a training program is described in this presentation, the Speech Perception Assessment and Training Program for ESL (SPATS-ESL). After 20-30 hours of training with this program, most advanced ESL students are shown to achieve near-native or native-like recognition of the sounds of English and of words in sentences spoken at normal conversational rates in a background of multi-talker babble.
In category: Second language acquisition
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Perception of foreign accent in Spanish by native and nonnative listeners
Time: Friday, April 06, 2012 03:00pm - 04:00pm
Place: BH 148
Elena Schoonmaker-Gates
Previous research on the perception of foreign accent has focused on the ratings of native and near-native listeners and few studies have explored the perception of degree of foreign accent by nonnative listeners, despite the fact that it could shed light on what language learners perceive as foreign-accented and potentially tell us about their developing system. The present dissertation aims to investigate the perception of degree of foreign accent in Spanish by both native and nonnative listeners, exploring the effects of various listener-specific characteristics, including proficiency, on listeners’
perception. This thesis also explores the role of VOT and speech rate in nonnative listeners’ perception of foreign accent in Spanish, two cues that have been found to influence native listeners’ perception of foreign-accented English in previous studies.
In order to accomplish these goals the read speech of 2 native and 2 nonnative Spanish speakers, in addition to 11 distracter speakers, was recorded and Praat’s duration tool was used to create VOT and rate-modified versions of the read sentences. A total of 26 native speakers and 140 nonnative learners of Spanish heard and rated 210 modified and unmodified utterances on a 9-point scale of degree of foreign accent. The statistical analyses revealed significant differences between native and nonnative listeners’ ratings of unmodified speech. In the analyses that compared listener ratings of modified and unmodified utterances, both sets of listeners rated speech as more accented when it had longer (less native-like) VOTs and when it was slower. Conversely, listeners also rated nonnative speech as less foreign-accented when it was reproduced with shorter VOTs and at a faster rate. A number of listener-specific factors including proficiency, course enrollment, pronunciation training, comprehension, and native dialect exposure were also found to be significant predictors of listeners’ foreign accent perception. The results show that both linguistic and listener characteristics affect the perception of foreign accent by native and nonnative listeners of Spanish, and that contrary to previous findings these two listener groups do not necessarily perceive degree of foreign accent the same.
In category: Second language acquisition
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Speaker-independent perception of human speech by songbirds
Time: Saturday, April 07, 2012 11:50am - 12:20pm
Place: Student building, Room 150
Verena Ohms
Department of Biology, Indiana University
One of the most important characteristics of human speech is our ability to recognize speech sounds produced by different speakers independent of audible differences between voices and sexes. Scientists have attributed this to the human capacity for intrinsic and extrinsic speaker normalization. Intrinsic speaker normalization accounts for the fact that sounds which are perceived as the same phoneme can have different acoustic realizations by assuming that every speech sample can be categorized using a normalizing transformation. At the same time it is well known that there is a speaker effect on speech perception which might initially hamper discrimination across speakers. This difficulty, however, is overcome by establishing a reference frame from different speech sound samples. Using operant conditioning techniques we trained zebra finches to discriminate between the two naturally produced words ‘wit’ and ‘wet’ which differ in their vowels sounds and hence mainly in their formant patterns. When confronted with unfamiliar voices of both the same and the opposite sex the birds were still able to discriminate between the two words and categorize them independent of speaker identity. Our analysis revealed that the essential feature enabling categorization was the different formant patterns and that the birds, just like humans, employed a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic speaker normalization to accomplish the task. This result indicates that the way formants are perceived is either widely spread in the animal kingdom or evolved convergently in birds and humans.
Part of the "Symposium on Animal Cognition" of the 19th Annual Animal Behavior Conference.
Other talks on animal communication:
* Repertoire size and phrase variation in the song of the Bell's Vireo (vireo bellii) in southern Indiana
* Transmission and reception of structurally distinct song phrases in the White-Crowned Sparrow
* Songbird frequency selectivity and temporal resolution vary with sex and season
* Differences in female- and male-directed song in brown-headed cowbirds (molothrus ater)
* Effects of habitat and urbanization on the active space of brown-headed cowbird song
* Does the Gray squirrel's response to heterospecific alarm calls depend on familiarity or similarity?
* Conspecific communication functions of vibrational signals produced by immatures of treehopper tylopela gibbera (hemiptera membracidae)
* Mating songs of parasitized cricket populations: Sexy but dangerous
See [ http://www.indiana.edu/~animal/conference/2012%20ABConf%20Program.pdf ] for more details.
In category: Phonetics and phonology
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Bilingual Children with Primary Language Impairment: Profile and Treatment Studies
Time: Friday, April 13, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm
Place: Speech and Hearing, C141
Kathryn Kohnert
This talk is focused at the intersection of bilingualism, primary language impairment and cognitive processing skills. Approximately 20% of the U.S. population over age 5 speaks a language other than English at home (U.S. Bureau of Census, 2000); more than five million children in U.S. public schools learn English as their second language (NEA, 2009). Primary language impairment (PLI, also known as SLI or specific language impairment) is a high incidence, chronic developmental condition presumed due to innate factors interacting with language-learning demands. PLI is characterized by significant delays in language in the face of otherwise typical development. For bilingual children with PLI, both languages are affected. Although low language is the defining feature in PLI and the focus of conventional assessments, subtle nonlinguistic cognitive processing weaknesses are well-documented in monolingual children with PLI. Cognitive and language profiles of bilingual children with and without PLI have the potential to advance basic understanding of the PLI phenotype which, in turn, provides critical direction for clinical services. Cognitive and language treatment studies with bilingual children with PLI can speak to the nature of cross-domain and cross-language relations and advance evidence-based practice. I will describe methods and results from recent profile and in-progress treatment studies with bilingual learners with PLI.
In category: Child language acquisition
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Projections above NP in Mandarin
Time: Friday, April 13, 2012 01:15pm - 01:45pm
Place: Ballantine Hall 007
Yu-Yin Hsu
My point of departure is Boškovic’s (2005) generalization that adjunct extraction is never allowed in DP languages such as English (1a), but it is allowed in NP languages such as Serbo-Croatian (1b). Although proponents of the DP/NP analysis often treat Mandarin as a NP language based on the fact that no overt article is available in Mandarin, we can see that Mandarin behaves in the same way as English, with respect to the ability of extracting adjuncts: example (2) shows that an adjective can never be extracted in Mandarin. If Mandarin is analyzed as a NP language, one may wonder why it behaves like English but never like NP languages. In this paper, I would like to show that nominals in Mandarin involve a syntactic structure larger than Noun Phrase.
Following the view of de-phrases as ModifierPhrases (see Tang (2005), Hsieh (2005) and Paul (2005)), I argue that possessive-de phrases are not genitively Case marked possessors, but rather are possessive adjective phrases. Along this line of analysis, possessive-de phrases are APs, and thus, extraction is banned (3). Furthermore, when a possessor occurs in a nominal, the binding relation and restriction are observed, just like English (4). Next, I will argue that demonstratives and the indefinitive marker, you ‘exist’, belong to the determiner category that heads a projection similar to DP in English, and that between DP and NP, classifier is the head of a unit phrase, referred as Classifier Phrase. The proposal is supported by facts of nominal coordination. Aoun and Li (2003) argue that coordinators in Chinese show different categorial restrictions: jian ‘and’ connects two NPs, erqie ‘and’ coordinates two CPs or adjectives, and he ‘and’ connects two DPs. Example (5) shows that when two phrases lower than the classifier are coordinated, jian ‘and’ is used but not other coordinators (5a). Nonetheless, when two conjuncts have demonstratives, only he ‘and’ is used (5b).
http://www.indiana.edu/~iulc/images/2012ConferenceAbstracts/1%20yu-yin%20hsu.pdf
In category: Morphosyntax and semantics
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Demonstrative-blocking in complex NPs in Guianese French Creole
Time: Friday, April 13, 2012 01:45pm - 02:15pm
Place: Ballantine Hall 007
Jason Siegel
Guianese French Creole is unique among Atlantic French-based Creoles in having a DP-initial demonstrative determiner and a DP-final definite determiner, which must co-occur in demonstrative constructions (e.g. sa chen-an 'that dog', literally 'that dog the'). However, in at least the Cayenne dialect, the demonstrative sa is blocked in some complex DPs (*sa joujou timoun-an 'that toy of the child', literally 'that toy child the'). Such a restriction is not predicted by surface or memory constraints such as NP weight, as some long NPs with embedded relative clauses readily permit the determiner. Building off a proposal from Déprez (2007), which states that French-based creoles derive the order of their determiners from movement within a highly specified DP, as well as an analysis by Lumsden (1989), which states that Haitian Creole determiners in complex DPs have scope over only the most embedded NP, I propose that restrictions on sa come from a requirement that it be immediately dominated underlyingly by a definite determiner. Using this proposal, I also explore the possible etymologies of the plural demostrative sé, usually claimed to come from the creoles of the French Antilles, though it could possibly be borrowed directly from French.
http://www.indiana.edu/~iulc/images/2012ConferenceAbstracts/2%20jason%20siegel.pdf
In category: Morphosyntax and semantics
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Developing L2 Pragmatics
Time: Friday, April 13, 2012 02:30pm - 04:00pm
Place: Ballantine Hall 208
Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig
L2 Pragmatics attempts to balance the sometimes conflicting and sometimes compatible research traditions and goals of second language acquisition and pragmatics. For example, empirical L2 pragmatics addresses increasingly social definitions of pragmatics and continues to hone comparisons of tasks and conversation; in contrast, task effects attributable to planning and potential for accessing explicit knowledge have not yet been investigated. In this paper, development in the field of L2 pragmatics is assessed through 1) investigation of task effects for characteristics of conversation and tasks which simulate conversation (Bardovi-Harlig, 2010), 2) investigation of task effects resulting from planning time, mode, and activities which may increase learners’ potential to draw on explicit knowledge; 3) progress in measuring change in pragmatic systems (Kasper & Schmidt, 1996); 4) tracking the development of interlanguage as a pragmalinguistic resource, and 5) understanding treatment effects including both instructional studies and study abroad experiences.
In category: Second language acquisition
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Rhythmic patterns of prominence in Akan/Twi
Time: Friday, April 13, 2012 02:30pm - 03:00pm
Place: Ballantine Hall 007
Jonathan Anderson
In phonological theory, rhythm is described as the appearance of alternating patterns of prominent elements, e.g. alternating stressed syllables. However, metrical patterns are not so apparent in languages without stress or accent. In particular, how rhythm appears in tone languages without stress/accent is poorly understood. This study explores the rhythmic timing patterns of prominent elements in Akan/Twi, a West African tone language thought to be syllable-timed (Obeng, 1987), using the Speech Cycling Task (Cummins & Port, 1998; Port, 2003; Tajima & Port, 2003). In the Speech Cycling Task, speakers are asked to repeat a phrase several times along with a metronome. Prominent elements, such as stressed syllables in English or word-final syllables in Japanese, tend to occur at simple harmonic phases of 1/3, 1/2, and 2/3 of the fixed metronome period. These positions within the period are termed attractors and previous studies have shown that prominent syllables not only have a tendency to align in time with the attractors, but that these syllables also resist temporal displacement (Cummins, 1997; Tajima, 1998; Tajima, Zawaydeh, & Kitahara, 2001).
In this work, an experiment was devised to understand the prominence relations between syllables in Akan. As the previous literature suggests, all syllables in Akan have equal prominence in both their phonological representation, as well as their production (Abakah, 2005). The first hypothesis tested whether specific syllables in a phrase will align near 1/2 of the repetition period given a two-beat pattern. The second hypothesis was that syllables aligning with 1/2 would align with a different simple harmonic phase given a three-beat pattern. This is empirically verifiable by checking which syllables exhibit the tendency to occur at simple harmonic phases, which were controlled by manipulating the clicks of the metronome to occur at 1/2 of the period (a two-beat pattern), and 1/3 and 2/3 of the period (a waltz-like pattern). Subjects were instructed to align the first syllable of the phrase with the first click of the metronome. This task forces speakers to align prominent elements within the phrase with the clicks of the metronome, which are fixed to the simple harmonic phases. The data include four speakers asked to repeat a phrase eight times along with a metronome whose rate was fixed. The speech materials included 60 phrases ranging from 4-6 syllables in length and four tone melodies (H, L, HL, and LH). Tone was included as a condition since it also hypothesized that H toned syllables will be more prominent.
Results show two patterns of rhythmic entrainment in the two-beat condition. In the first pattern, final syllables of four and five syllable phrases, and the penultimate phrase of six syllable phrases occur near 1/2. In the second pattern, syllables were added to phrases lengthening the phrase by that duration. The phrases in the three-beat condition were repeated with the second pattern. Furthermore, both H and L toned syllables occurred near simple harmonic phases. Implications for the stress-timing/syllable-timing dichotomy and how tonal melodies affect rhythmic patterns are also discussed.
http://www.indiana.edu/~iulc/images/2012ConferenceAbstracts/3%20jonathan%20anderson.pdf
In category: Phonetics and phonology
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Projecting Farsi POS data to tag Pashto
Time: Friday, April 13, 2012 03:00pm - 03:30pm
Place: Ballantine Hall 007
Mohammad Khan, Eric Baucom, Anthony Meyer, and Lwin Moe
We present our findings on projecting part of speech (POS) information from a well-resourced language, Farsi, to help tag a lower resourced language, Pashto, following Feldman and Hana (2010). We make a series of modifications to both tag transition and lexical emission parameter files generated from a hidden Markov model tagger, TnT, trained on the source language (Farsi). Changes to the emission parameters are immediately effective, whereas changes made to the transition information are most effective when we introduce a custom tagset. We reach our best results of 70.84% when we employ all emission and transition modifications to the Farsi corpus with the custom tagset.
http://www.indiana.edu/~iulc/images/2012ConferenceAbstracts/khan%20et%20al.pdf
In category: Computational linguistics
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Stress and Weight Management: Egyptian Loanword Adaptation of English Words
Time: Friday, April 13, 2012 03:45pm - 04:15pm
Place: Ballantine Hall 007
Elijah Reynolds
The present study provides evidence for a bimoraic word minimality constraint operating in Egyptian Arabic. The motivation for an analysis of Egyptian Arabic loanword adaptations is that it provides us with empirical data of “constraints that cannot be motivated by native language alternations because the relevant structural types do not occur in the native vocabulary”, (Broselow, 2006).
The purpose of this paper is twofold: 1) To identify the suprasegmental adaptation strategies observed in Egyptian Arabic borrowings from English monosyllabic words that violate the native syllable structure and prosodic constraints. 2) To provide an analysis of an Egyptian minimal word constraint of bimoraicity found during adaptation of underweight CVC English loanwords. The observed phenomena are based on a subset of 40 monosyllabic English loanwords into Egyptian Arabic; polysyllabic borrowings are presented for comparison. The preferred adaptation strategy of CVC loanwords into Egyptian Arabic is found to be gemination of word-final C as a phonological process, while vowel lengthening is viewed as a perceptual-mapping of phonemic categories at the phonetic-phonology interface.
Demands at suprasegmental levels such as stress patterns and syllable weight play a major role in the sequencing of elements at the segmental level. Focusing on monosyllabic loanwords, we observe the interaction of segmental and suprasegmental constraints. The results of the analysis support Davis’s (1999, 2003) claim that geminates are underlyingly moraic. The present study contributes to the phonetics versus phonology debate over loanword adaptations, as well as the phonology of Arabic dialects.
http://www.indiana.edu/~iulc/images/2012ConferenceAbstracts/4%20elijah%20reynolds.pdf
In category: Phonetics and phonology
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Learners' lexical encoding of the geminate/non-geminate contrast in Japanese and its implications
Time: Friday, April 13, 2012 04:15pm - 04:45pm
Place: Ballantine Hall 007
Chisato Kojima
Learners of Japanese often have difficulties acquiring the contrast between geminates and non- geminates (kata “shoulder” vs. katta “bought”). We examine the degree to which this contrast is encoded in learners’ lexical representations. Advanced (N=14) and intermediate (N=9) learners, along with native speakers of Japanese (N=11), were tested on two categorization tasks and one lexical decision task:
(i) A classical ABX task probing the distinction between geminates and non-geminates,
(ii) An ABX task where listeners had to ignore the length distinction (i.e. geminate or non-geminate), and
(iii) A lexical decision task examining learners’ lexical representations.
The results of (i) and (ii) revealed learners could discriminate the geminate contrasts even at the beginning level with very high accuracy. Moreover, advanced learners could successfully ignore length while native speakers had a hard time ignoring it. However, the results of (iii) revealed that advanced learners’ accuracy was higher than the beginning learners in all types of stimuli. Furthermore, native speakers’ accuracy in perception was not affected by the interactive effects of the stimuli’s lexical status and stimuli type, but learners’ accuracy was influenced by these effects. Given the fact that learners could discriminate geminates from non-geminates when engaged in ABX tasks, these results overall indicate a clear dissociation between the ability to discriminate geminates from non-geminates and the ability to encode this difference in long-term lexical representations. In terms of second language teaching, these results suggest that listening practice might be helping students to distinguish the two sounds but that it is not sufficient to store the L2 contrast in their brains. Besides the level of proficiency relevant for lexical encoding, future research is required to reveal what kind of exposure or practice facilitates or accelerates L2 lexical encoding, which in turn leads students to be more proficient in the language.
http://www.indiana.edu/~iulc/images/2012ConferenceAbstracts/5%20chisato%20kojima.pdf
In category: Second language acquisition
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Acoustic feedback and speech production
Time: Friday, April 13, 2012 04:45pm - 05:15pm
Place: Ballantine Hall 007
Elizabeth Casserly
Phoneticians and psychologists tend to think of language users as either speakers or hearers, depending on whether one is studying speech production or speech perception. But in reality we are all listeners and talkers simultaneously, and our perception plays an important role in the production of speech. Speakers adjust their production style when they hear themselves in a noisy environment and when they get weak acoustic feedback (Lane & Tranel, 1971), and experimental perturbation of particular acoustic feedback cues, such as f0 or vocalic F1/F2, causes speakers to alter the acoustic phonetics of their speech in response (Burnett et al., 1998; Houde & Jordan, 1998).
In this experiment, a portable, real-time vocoder (PRTV) was used to investigate the effects of a novel global transformation of speech feedback. The device captures acoustic signals and alters them in a simulation of the processing done by cochlear implants (Casserly et al., 2011). As a result, spectral resolution is degraded substantially (see Fig. 1) and very high- and low-frequency signals are eliminated (cf. Shannon et al., 1995). We hypothesized that the substantial loss in phonetic detail, particularly for fine-grained frequency contrasts, would have a substantial impact on speech production (cf. Matthies et al, 1996; Lane et al., 2007), and shed new light on the interaction between speech perception and production in normal language use.
Speech samples were recorded from seven subjects, both under normal speaking/listening conditions and while wearing the PRTV. In each condition, speakers produced a short passage, 12 “phoneme specific sentences” (Huggins & Nickerson, 1985), 16 sentences with contrasting prosodic focus, and 114 English words in isolation, containing 10 tokens each of [i, æ, ɑ, u], 16 of [s, ʃ] and 8 of [p, t, k]. Acoustic phonetic analysis of the recorded speech revealed significant changes as a result of real-time feedback transformation. Overall, subjects’ speech was slower while their feedback was perturbed, and they produced more pauses (MANOVA, p < 0.01). Fricatives and stops experienced global, general changes, both in duration (p < 0.01) and in the frequency of frication in sibilants (p < 0.001). Vowel quality, by contrast, was affected locally: speakers consistently altered vowel F1 (height) in particular areas of the vowel space, e.g. lowering high vowels [i, u] or raising the low vowels [æ, ɑ], while F2 remained unchanged (significant Condition*Vowel interaction in F1, p < 0.01).
In addition, when subjects were exposed to the feedback transformation, they appeared to focus more heavily on the articulation of consonants as opposed to vowels; the ratio of consonant to vowel articulation duration (for stops, fricatives, and affricates) increased significantly across speaking conditions (p < 0.01). When faced with uncertain acoustic feedback, it appears that speakers begin to rely more on the unperturbed somatosensory feedback from consonants.
Overall, subjects’ speech was significantly impacted by the introduction of a novel change to their acoustic feedback. The challenges introduced by the feedback alteration appear to increase subjects’ cognitive load, resulting in slower speech with more pauses, and the reduced spectral resolution of the transformed feedback results in substantial changes in segmental acoustic phonetics as well. Investigating these relationships between speech perception and production continues to shed light on the interconnectedness of the two processes, and will hopefully lead to better understanding of how spoken language is produced and monitored in normal conditions.
http://www.indiana.edu/~iulc/images/2012ConferenceAbstracts/6%20beth%20casserly.pdf
In category: Phonetics and phonology
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Evolving minds: Using ALE [Activation Likelihood Estimate] to investigate the presence of a common neural substrate for syntax and stone tool making
Time: Sunday, April 15, 2012 05:00pm - 06:30pm
Place: Informatics East
Katharine Babcock
Early stone tool technology (~2.5 - 0.5 mya) and modern language both exhibit sequential and hierarchical structure. This has led many to hypothesize that these two distinctly human attributes may utilize a common neural substrate. This pilot study explores this possible homology by conducting a meta-analysis of functional imaging data on both stone tool making and syntactical processing tasks. Studies were selected from online databases using the following criteria: 1. they comprised whole brain scans 2. were not region of interest studies 3. involved a comparison of either task of interest alongside a baseline control task, and 4. reported the stereotactic (x, y, z) coordinates of each brain activation. In total, eight different experimental conditions were collected to represent syntax. Two experimental conditions were obtained for stone tool making. A relatively new meta-analysis technique known as activation likelihood estimate (ALE) was employed to quantify the clusters of neural activations based on their stereotactic coordinates across and between both types of data sets. Shared activation between stone tool making and syntactical processing was observed in six activation clusters, including Brodmann areas 46, 44/45, and 40. This pilot study supports for the hypothesis that stone tool making and syntax share a common neural substrate. Shifts in the complexity of tool technology, such as that occurring ~1.7 mya between Oldowan and Acheulean technologies, may index important changes in human linguistic capacities.
Part of the poster session of the Midwest Undergraduate Cognitive Science Conference
In category: Morphosyntax and semantics
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Space and early word learning
Time: Sunday, April 15, 2012 05:00pm - 06:30pm
Place: Informatics East
Kelly Dakarian
Research has shown that spatial information has been linked with multimodal object memories and that the spatial information can be used as an index to access those memories. . In that study, the infants were presented with novel objects using a pop up box and named in either spatially consistent locations or spatially inconsistent locations. The infants were later tested to see if they had learned the novel object's names. The results showed that 16-18 month olds are better able to learn novel words for objects if the objects are presented in the same constant location opposed to varied locations. The current experiment investigates this phenomenon in realistic and real life situations with natural social cues such as pointing and looking while naming an object. This study was done as a follow up to the pop up study in order to see if constant location of novel objects actually improves learning in a more life-like situation. Infants age 16-18 months old were presented a novel object on a tray divided into three different locations. Each presentation consisted of labeling the object by saying, “Look! That's a Dax! See! It's a Dax! Can you get the Dax!” while pointing and looking at the object each time it was named. Afterwards, the tray was pushed forward and the infant was instructed to grab the object at that specific location. One group of infants was presented with objects at consistent locations (object 1 always appeared at location 1), while a second group of infants were presented with objects at varied locations (object 1 appeared at locations 1, 2, and 3). All infants were then tested for learning. The training phase consisted of 18 presentations. In the testing phase the infants were presented with either 3 familiar objects or the 3 novel objects in a novel location and were asked for a specific (“Where's the Dax? Get the Dax!”). There was a filler familiar testing trial in between each novel testing trial to ensure that the children were continually reminded to pick the item that the experimenter labeled. Each novel object was asked for twice in order to see if the infants had learned the novel words. The results will help to further understand how location and spatial indexing help infants learn in a naturalistic, multimodal environment.
Part of the poster session of the Midwest Undergraduate Cognitive Science Conference
In category: Child language acquisition
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Acoustic characteristics of the English vowels of speakers of East Asian languages
Time: Sunday, April 15, 2012 05:00pm - 06:30pm
Place: Informatics East
Emily Garl
Previous studies have shown that a talker's first language (L1) has a strong effect on the production of a second language (L2). Differences in the vowel inventories of the L1 and L2 influence the production of an L2, which leads to variation that may be perceived as a 'foreign accent'. In order to better understand the effect of the L1 on L2 vowels, and how this interacts with the perception of foreign accent, the current study investigated the English vowels of twelve native speakers of Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean. These languages contain markedly different vowel inventories than American English, as well as one another, but talkers of these languages are commonly perceived as having a similar, or even the same, accent by native American English listeners. Acoustic measurements, including vowel duration and first (F1) and second (F2) formant frequency, were collected from hVd words featuring 11 English monopthong vowels produced by the four L2 groups and an American English group. Results revealed that the non-native talkers' English vowels deviated from the native talkers' vowels with respect to both F1 and F2 and duration. Additionally, each L2 group differed in their realizations of the English vowels, which reflected the vowel systems of their unique L1s. Although there was a high degree of individual variability, these results support previous research suggesting that L2 sounds not found in the L1 will be the most difficult to acquire. Results of the acoustic analysis and theoretical motivations for the study will be discussed.
Part of the poster session of the Midwest Undergraduate Cognitive Science Conference
In category: Second language acquisition
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Scripts, Smudges, and Static: Materializing a Minority Language of Siberia
Time: Monday, April 16, 2012 04:00pm - 05:00pm
Place: Redbud Room, IMU
Kathryn Graber
Mass media make fleeting, inchoate language into the tangible “stuff” of daily life, fixing speech into writing, newsprint, airwaves, and binary code. What is enabled and obscured in these semiotic transitions, and how might it matter for minority language revitalization? In this talk, Kathryn Graber will discuss her current research on language, media, and materiality in contemporary Buryatia, an ethnic republic of the Russian Federation.
In category: Sociolinguistics and pragmatics
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Anytime n-best extraction for HMMs (and higher-order HMMs, if time)
Time: Tuesday, April 17, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm
Place: Memorial Hall (MM) 401
It is easy to find the first-best HMM state sequence given an observation. However, finding the n-best sequences is harder. Moreover, we'd like to get the n-best sequences without specifying n beforehand (that is, we'd like an "anytime" algorithm), so that we can just keep taking as many sequences as we need. Nilsson & Goldberger (2001) presented an algorithm for anytime n-best extraction on first-order HMMs. I've simplified their algorithm considerably by applying insights about recursion which are made obvious when implementing their algorithm in a functional language. In addition, effective HMMs for NLP require more than bigram language models, so I have generalized their algorithm to work for higher-order HMMs.
In this talk I will present the simplified algorithm from a high-level perspective, and if there is time (and interest) then I can also present the proofs for why the algorithm actually works.
In category: Computational linguistics
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Comparing interaction and use of space in innovative and traditional Spanish classrooms
Time: Wednesday, April 18, 2012 01:30pm - 02:15pm
Place: BH 205
Department of Spanish & Portuguese Hispanic Linguistics Brown Bag Series
Comparing interaction and use of space in innovative and traditional Spanish classrooms
Laura Gurzynski-Weiss, Avizia Y. Long, & Megan Solon
In category: Second language acquisition
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Pragmatics Festival
Time: Thursday, April 19, 2012 10:00am - 12:30pm
Place: Indiana Memorial Union (IMU)
Oak Room: Colloquium #1 - ”Pragmatic Development in Study Abroad Contexts”
Walnut Room: Oral presentations
http://www.indiana.edu/~pragfest/home.php
In category: Sociolinguistics and pragmatics
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Pragmatics Festival
Time: Thursday, April 19, 2012 02:00pm - 03:00pm
Place: Indiana Memorial Union (IMU)
Oak Room and Walnut Room: Oral presentations
http://www.indiana.edu/~pragfest/home.php
In category: Sociolinguistics and pragmatics
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Meaning as a hidden variable in the use of conventional expressions in L2 pragmatics
Time: Thursday, April 19, 2012 03:00pm - 03:30pm
Place: Oak Room, Indiana Memorial Union
Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig (Indiana University)
http://www.indiana.edu/~pragfest/home.php
In category: Sociolinguistics and pragmatics
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Pragmatics Festival
Time: Thursday, April 19, 2012 03:45pm - 04:45pm
Place: Indiana Memorial Union (IMU)
Oak Room and Walnut Room: Oral presentations
http://www.indiana.edu/~pragfest/home.php
In category: Sociolinguistics and pragmatics
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Variation in Cross-Cultural and Intercultural Pragmatics: The Case of Service Encounters
Time: Thursday, April 19, 2012 05:00pm - 06:15pm
Place: Oak Room, Indiana Memorial Union (IMU)
César Félix-Brasdefer (Indiana University)
Plenary #1
http://www.indiana.edu/~pragfest/home.php
In category: Sociolinguistics and pragmatics
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Pragmatics Festival
Time: Friday, April 20, 2012 08:30am - 10:30am
Place: Indiana Memorial Union (IMU)
Oak, Maple, and Walnut Rooms: Oral presentations
http://www.indiana.edu/~pragfest/home.php
In category: Sociolinguistics and pragmatics
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Pragmatics Festival
Time: Friday, April 20, 2012 10:45am - 11:45am
Place: Indiana Memorial Union (IMU)
Oak and Maple Rooms: Oral presentations
Walnut Room: Pedagogy Workshop for Less Commonly Taught Languages (Alwiya Omar, Indiana University)
http://www.indiana.edu/~pragfest/home.php
In category: Sociolinguistics and pragmatics
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Pragmatics Festival
Time: Friday, April 20, 2012 10:45am - 11:45am
Place: Indiana Memorial Union (IMU)
Oak and Maple Rooms: Oral presentations
Walnut Room: Pedagogy Workshop for Less Commonly Taught Languages (Alwiya Omar, Indiana University)
http://www.indiana.edu/~pragfest/home.php
In category: Sociolinguistics and pragmatics
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Pragmatics Festival
Time: Friday, April 20, 2012 11:45am - 12:45pm
Place: Indiana Memorial Union (IMU)
Oak, Maple, and Walnut Rooms: Oral presentations
http://www.indiana.edu/~pragfest/home.php
In category: Sociolinguistics and pragmatics
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Pragmatics Festival
Time: Friday, April 20, 2012 02:00pm - 03:30pm
Place: Indiana Memorial Union (IMU)
Oak Room: Pragmatics research and the language classroom
Maple and Walnut Rooms: Oral presentations
http://www.indiana.edu/~pragfest/home.php
In category: Sociolinguistics and pragmatics
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Pragmatics Festival
Time: Friday, April 20, 2012 03:45pm - 04:45pm
Place: Indiana Memorial Union (IMU)
Oak Room: Colloquium 2 – “Pragmatics research and the language classroom”
Maple and Walnut Rooms: Oral presentations
http://www.indiana.edu/~pragfest/home.php
In category: Sociolinguistics and pragmatics
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Why Are They So Weird?: Pragmatics and Miscommunication Across Cultures
Time: Friday, April 20, 2012 05:00pm - 06:15pm
Place: Oak Room, Indiana Memorial Union (IMU)
Diana Boxer (University of Florida)
Plenary #2
http://www.indiana.edu/~pragfest/home.php
In category: Sociolinguistics and pragmatics
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Pragmatics Festival
Time: Saturday, April 21, 2012 09:00am - 10:30am
Place: Indiana Memorial Union (IMU)
Oak and Walnut Rooms: Oral presentations
http://www.indiana.edu/~pragfest/home.php
In category: Sociolinguistics and pragmatics
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Language of Healthcare (Pragmatics Festival Colloquium #3)
Time: Saturday, April 21, 2012 11:00am - 01:30pm
Place: Maple Room, Indiana Memorial Union (IMU)
http://www.indiana.edu/~pragfest/home.php
In category: Sociolinguistics and pragmatics
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Second language fluency and cognition: The study of Spanish second language development in an overseas immersion program and an at-home foreign language classroom
Time: Monday, April 23, 2012 09:35am - 10:35am
Place: Ballantine Hall 004
Lorenzo Garcia-Amaya
This dissertation investigates the development of oral fluency and L2-specific measures of cognitive abilities for two groups of L2 learners of Spanish (L1 English) in two different learning contexts: a 7-week overseas intensive immersion program (IM) in León, Spain and a 15-week domestic foreign language classroom in an at-home (AH) context at a large Midwestern institution in the United States. In total, 56 native speakers of English participated in the study – 27 in the IM program and 29 in the AH program. All learners performed a video-retell oral production task in addition to a detailed language contact profile and a proficiency test, and IM learners performed three cognitive tasks designed to elicit L2-specific measures of lexical access, lexical retrieval, and attention control. Data collection was longitudinal for both learner groups. Overall, the findings show significantly greater fluency gains for IM learners over AH learners, which can be attributed to the significantly greater amount of exposure of IM learners to the L2, as indicated in the language contact profile. In terms of cognitive tasks, IM learners show significantly faster Spanish lexical access over time, but significantly slower English lexical access over time. However, no significant longitudinal differences were seen for IM learners regarding lexical retrieval in Spanish (which requires articulation and morphophonological and phonetic encoding in addition to lexical access). The results have implications for models of speech production and processing and their applications to L2 acquisition; they also prove the methodological importance of collecting data in situ instead of after learners’ return to their country of origin. Finally, this dissertation is designed to account for the role of context of learning in second language acquisition.
In category: Second language acquisition
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On the Compatibility between SLA Corpus and Variationist Research
Time: Monday, April 23, 2012 02:30pm - 03:30pm
Place: IMU State Room East
Joseph Collentine
On the Compatibility between SLA Corpus and Variationist Research
In category: Second language acquisition
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Analyzing YouTube comments
Time: Tuesday, April 24, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm
Place: Memorial Hall (MM) 401
Shahab Khan, Markus Dickinson, and Sandra Kuebler
We have started working on automatically performing a linguistic analysis of comments on YouTube, with the aim of eventually classifying videos. We will report some early work on normalizing the text and attempts at parse revision.
In category: Computational linguistics
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L643 (Advanced Syntax) student presentations, Day 1
Time: Tuesday, April 24, 2012 11:15am - 12:05pm
Place: Ballantine Hall 147
Everyone is invited. If possible, please notify Dr. Yoshihisa Kitagawa beforehand so that your handout can be prepared.
11:15-11:40
Dative Alternation in Mandarin and Part-of-speech Assignment for gei
Yunwen Su
11:40-12:05
Analysis of Adjective Word Order in Spanish
Joe Ducey
In category: Morphosyntax and semantics
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Individual Differences in Second Language Acquisition Final Project Colloquium
Time: Wednesday, April 25, 2012 04:00pm - 07:15pm
Place: Sycamore 200
4:00 - 4:20 pm
Investigating instructor stated beliefs about pronunciation instruction
Lisa Baldwin & Avizia Y. Long
4:25-4:45 pm
Individual differences and subject pronoun variation in L2 Spanish
Bret Linford
4:50-5:10 pm
Instructors’ linguistic knowledge when teaching Spanish as a foreign language
Rosa M. Piqueres Gilabert & Rocío Martínez Galiano
5:15-5:35 pm
Analysis of L2 Spanish learners’ self-reported anxiety, willingness to communicate, and motivation
Patrick Moore
5:40-6:00 pm
Comparing physiological and questionnaire data of anxiety in the foreign language classroom
Sophia Rammell
6:00 - 6:20 pm
Motivation in heritage learners of Spanish
Beth Herring
6:25-6:45 pm
The study abroad experience and learner motivation
Melissa Whatley
6:50-7:10 pm
The interaction between explicit L2 phonological instruction and learning style and their effects on the improvement of L2 speech perception
Rob Bedinghaus
In category: Second language acquisition
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Studies in the History of the English Language / Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference
Time: Thursday, April 26, 2012 09:00am - 10:30am
Place: Oak, Maple, and Walnut Rooms (Indiana Memorial Union)
http://www.indiana.edu/~glacshel/program.php
In category: Unclassified
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Studies in the History of the English Language / Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference
Time: Thursday, April 26, 2012 11:00am - 12:30pm
Place: Oak, Maple, and Walnut Rooms (Indiana Memorial Union)
http://www.indiana.edu/~glacshel/program.php
In category: Unclassified
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L643 (Advanced Syntax) student presentations, Day 2 (Serbo-Croatian Day)
Time: Thursday, April 26, 2012 11:15am - 12:30pm
Place: Ballantine Hall 147
Everyone is invited. If possible, please notify Dr. Yoshihisa Kitagawa beforehand so that your handout can be prepared.
11:15-11:40
Sentential Negation in Serbo-Croatian and Czech
Muamera Begovic
11:40-12:05
Agreement Patterns in Italian and Macedonian
Melissa Witcombe
12:05-12:30
Control in Serbian Subjunctive Complements
Marija Jankovic
In category: Morphosyntax and semantics
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A Grammar of Hidatsa
Time: Thursday, April 26, 2012 12:00pm - 01:00pm
Place: Distinguished Alumni Room, IMU
Dissertation defense of Indrek Park
This dissertation describes the grammar of Hidatsa, a Siouan language spoken by about 100 people living on Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota. The dissertation follows a traditional descriptive form used in documenting undescribed languages, proceeding from phonology to morphology to sentence structure. The grammar is presented within the framework of Dixon's (1997) Basic Linguistic Theory.
In most respects, Hidatsa is a typical Siouan language. The Siouan characteristics include a limited phoneme inventory, split-intransitivity and the encoding of participant information on the verb, extensive deverbal nominalization and compounding, an elaborate set of modal and aspectual suffixes and clitics, two types of possession (alienable and inalienable), motion and posture verbs, etc.
However, Hidatsa has also developed various idiosyncratic properties, the unique combination of which sets it apart from other related languages. The most important hitherto undescribed traits include, but are not limited to, the pitch-accent system and ergative case marking on independent noun phrases. There is also an elaborate set of utterance-final obligatory modal particles that has been cited widely yet analyzed erroneously in theoretical linguistic works.
All the linguistic data on which the dissertation is based were collected directly from the speakers of Hidatsa on Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. The grammar includes descriptions of all attested derivational and inflectional morphemes and is illustrated with numerous examples and paradigms.
The grammar of Hidatsa sheds light on an inadequately described member of the Siouan language family. It resolves various misconceptions about the structure of Hidatsa that have affected the development of linguistic theory and offers new insights into the typology of languages.
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All faculty and graduate students are encouraged to attend. As a courtesy, if you are planning on attending, please send an e-mail to the chair of the dissertation committee, Robert Botne to let him know you plan to be there.
A reception will be held immediately following in Ballantine Hall 004.
In category: Unclassified
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Studies in the History of the English Language / Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference
Time: Thursday, April 26, 2012 02:00pm - 03:30pm
Place: Oak, Maple, and Walnut Rooms (Indiana Memorial Union)
http://www.indiana.edu/~glacshel/program.php
In category: Unclassified
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Studies in the History of the English Language / Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference
Time: Thursday, April 26, 2012 04:00pm - 05:30pm
Place: Oak, Maple, and Walnut Rooms (Indiana Memorial Union)
http://www.indiana.edu/~glacshel/program.php
In category: Unclassified
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Lexical Diffusion and Grammar
Time: Thursday, April 26, 2012 05:30pm - 06:30pm
Place: Frangipani Room (Indiana Memorial Union)
Marc van Oostendorp
Plenary lecture for Studies in the History of the English Language / Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference
http://www.indiana.edu/~glacshel/featured_speakers.php
In category: Sociolinguistics and pragmatics
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Studies in the History of the English Language / Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference
Time: Friday, April 27, 2012 09:00am - 10:30am
Place: Oak, Maple, and Walnut Rooms (Indiana Memorial Union)
http://www.indiana.edu/~glacshel/program.php
In category: Unclassified
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Studies in the History of the English Language / Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference
Time: Friday, April 27, 2012 11:00am - 12:30pm
Place: Oak, Maple, and Walnut Rooms (Indiana Memorial Union)
http://www.indiana.edu/~glacshel/program.php
In category: Unclassified
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Second language learners' perception of word-final vowels
Time: Friday, April 27, 2012 01:30pm - 03:00pm
Place: PSY 128 (conference room)
Sophia Rammell
For learners of Spanish, word-final vowel perception is important to indicate subject and mood of the verb. Specifically, the word-final vowel marks the subjunctive mood, a mood distinction which differs from learners’ native language of English. Learners’ perception of the subjunctive in written input as well as their oral production have been widely studied in second language literature, but perception studies using spoken input from native speakers are lacking. The proposed study will measure accuracy in perception of word-final vowels using three tasks of varying difficulty: a paragraph completion task, a sentence completion task, and a syllable completion task. Learners will hear the stimuli in both noise and quiet conditions. The study will investigate whether the task’s cognitive load affects perception in word-final vowels and if learners differ in accuracy by mood, final vowel, or noise condition. The proposed investigation will fill in gaps in second language acquisition literature about the perception of the subjunctive mood by learners, and it will also incorporate effects of background noise in order to show real-world applications to perception of word-final vowels.
In category: Second language acquisition
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Studies in the History of the English Language / Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference
Time: Friday, April 27, 2012 02:00pm - 03:30pm
Place: Oak, Maple, and Walnut Rooms (Indiana Memorial Union)
http://www.indiana.edu/~glacshel/program.php
In category: Unclassified
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Studies in the History of the English Language / Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference
Time: Friday, April 27, 2012 04:00pm - 05:30pm
Place: Oak, Maple, and Walnut Rooms (Indiana Memorial Union)
http://www.indiana.edu/~glacshel/program.php
In category: Unclassified
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Ambisyllabicity
Time: Friday, April 27, 2012 05:30pm - 06:30pm
Place: Frangipani Room (Indiana Memorial Union)
Donka Minkova
Plenary lecture for Studies in the History of the English Language / Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference
http://www.indiana.edu/~glacshel/ featured_speakers.php
In category: Phonetics and phonology
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Studies in the History of the English Language / Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference
Time: Saturday, April 28, 2012 09:00am - 10:30am
Place: Oak, Maple, and Walnut Rooms (Indiana Memorial Union)
http://www.indiana.edu/~glacshel/program.php
In category: Unclassified
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Studies in the History of the English Language / Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference
Time: Saturday, April 28, 2012 11:00am - 12:30pm
Place: Oak, Maple, and Walnut Rooms (Indiana Memorial Union)
http://www.indiana.edu/~glacshel/program.php
In category: Unclassified
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Studies in the History of the English Language / Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference
Time: Saturday, April 28, 2012 02:00pm - 03:30pm
Place: Oak, Maple, and Walnut Rooms (Indiana Memorial Union)
http://www.indiana.edu/~glacshel/program.php
In category: Unclassified
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Complex Systems and the History of the English Language
Time: Saturday, April 28, 2012 04:00pm - 05:00pm
Place: Frangipani Room (Indiana Memorial Union)
Bill Kretzschmar
Plenary lecture for Studies in the History of the English Language / Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference
http://www.indiana.edu/~glacshel/ featured_speakers.php
In category: Sociolinguistics and pragmatics
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How knowledge of linguistic structure and knowledge of the lexicon interact during language development and use
Time: Monday, April 30, 2012 04:00pm - 05:00pm
Place: PY 128
A child’s language development has enormous consequences. We know that most of children’s knowledge about language will not, and cannot, be acquired through explicit instruction. This has raised interest in implicit and statistical learning theories of language acquisition. One important criticism of statistical learning theories is that they are underspecified. What are the units over which they operate, both in terms of modality (linguistic vs. world knowledge) and grain size (features vs. objects, or phonemes vs. morphemes vs. words vs. phrases)?
In my talk, I will be discussing these issues in relation to some of my work, most of which has dealt with the relationship between a person's knowledge of the lexicon (or word meaning) and their knowledge of other aspects of linguistic knowledge, such as linguistic structure or syntax. Using a combination of corpus analyses, behavioral experiments with infants, children, and adults, and computational models, I will argue that knowledge of the lexicon and knowledge of linguistic structure form a bidirectional and coupled system, whereby learning about one can help bootstrap the learning of the other. Formalizing this system is an important step for statistical theories of learning and allowing it to make useful (and falsifiable) predictions about the nature of language acquisition.
In category: Child language acquisition
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