Choosing a grammar : learning paths and ambiguous evidence in the acquisition of syntax
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Choosing a grammar : learning paths and ambiguous evidence in the acquisition of syntax
（Linguistik aktuell, v. 238）
J. Benjamins, c2017
- : hb
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Note
Originally presented as the author's thesis (Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2015) under title: Syntactic learning from ambiguous evidence: errors and end-states
Includes bibliographical references (p. [317] -325) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
This book investigates the role that ambiguous evidence can play in the acquisition of syntax. To illustrate this, the book introduces a probabilistic learning model for syntactic parameters that learns a grammar of best fit to the learner's evidence. The model is then applied to a range of cross-linguistic case studies - in Swiss German, Korean, and English - involving child errors, grammatical variability, and implicit negative evidence. Building on earlier work on language modeling, this book is unique for its focus on ambiguous evidence and its careful attention to the effects of parameters interacting with each other. This allows for a novel and principled account of several acquisition puzzles. With its inter-disciplinary approach, this book will be of broad interest to syntacticians, language acquisitionists, and cognitive scientists of language.
Table of Contents
- 1. Preface
- 2. Introduction
- 3. The learning model
- 4. The acquisition of verb movement in Swiss German: Modeling child production errors and variability
- 5. Head-finality and verb movement in Korean: Modeling variability and non-variability across learners
- 6. The case of zero-derived causatives in English: Learning from implicit negative evidence
- 7. Learning biases
- 8. Final summary
- 9. References
- 11. Swiss German input types and corresponding compatible grammars
- 12. Additional evidence for a Root-selecting grammar in English?
- 13. Index
by "Nielsen BookData"
