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The Language Instinct
Talking Heads
Construing the Meaning
Comprehension involves a process of finding subjects, verbs, objects and so on, that it takes place unconsciously
• A dog bites a man.
• A man bites a dog.
• A man is bitten by a dog.
A definition of parser
• Parser - the mental programme that
analyses sentence structure during language
comprehension
Components of a Simple Sentence
• S NP VP
• NP det N
• VP V NP
• N boy, girl, dog, cat, ice cream, candy,
hot dogs, etc.
• V eats, likes, bites, etc.
The dog likes ice cream
det |the...
NP
det N
the...
The dog likes ice cream
S
NP VP
det N
the...
Difficulties with understading long, complicated phrases
• Memory - one has to keep track of phrases that need particular words to complete them
• Decision-making - when a word or phrase belongs to two different cagetories (eg. VP, NP), one has to decide which to use to build the next branch of the tree
Memory
• Short term memory is the key tool in human information processing
• Only a few items - plus or minus seven can be held in mind at once
• The items are immediately subject to fading or being overwritten
Memory
• Memory-stretching sentences
• Onion sentences
The Memory-Stretching Sentence
He gave the girl that he met in New York
while visiting his parents for ten days
around Christmas and New Year´s the
candy.
He gave the candy to the girl that he met in
New York while visiting his parents for ten
days around Christmas and New Year´s.
Onion Sentences
• The dog the stick the fire burned beat bit the
cat.
• The malt that the rat that the cat killed ate
lay in the house.
• If if if it rains it pours I get depressed I
should get help.
Onion Sentences
• Onion sentences show that a grammar and a
parser are different things
• A person can recognise constructions that
he or she can never understand.
“Can you do addition?” the White
Queen asked. “What´s one and one and one
and one and one and one and one and one
and one and one?
“I don´t know,” said Alice. “I lost count.”
“She can´t do Addition,” the Red Queen
interrupted.
• The human sentence parser keeps track of where it is in a sentence by writing a number in a slot next to each phrase type on a master checklist.
• When a type of a sentence has to be remembered more than once - so that both it and the identical type of phrase it is inside of can be completed in order - there is not enough room on the checklist for both numbers to fit, and the phrases cannot be completed properly.
• The cheese that some rats that were chased
by the cats that I feed ate turned out to be
rancid.
Decision Making
• Many words have more than one lexical entry (e.g. one can be either a determiner or a noun) thus a parser has to decide which option fits a sentence the best
• Phrases can also go inside either a NP or a VP - so that it also may lead to ambiguities
• The plastic pencil marks...
• The plastic pencil marks were ugly.
• The plastic pencil marks easily.
• Ingres enjoyed painting his models nude.
• Visiting relatives can be boring.
• Vegetarians don´t know how good meat
tastes.
• I saw the man with the binoculars.
The Two Ways of Decision Making
• Breadth-first search
• Depth-first search
Garden Path Sentences
• Sentences are not laid out with clear markers allowing the reader to stride confidently through to the end
• Delays Dog Deaf-Mute Murder Trial
• British Banks Soldier On
• Family Leave Law a Landmark Not Only for Newborn´s Parents
Background Knowledge
• Understanding is not possible unless interlocutors share the same background assumptions.
• This involves, for instance, cultural background, knowledge of recent facts, etc.
• Woman: I´m leaving you.
• Man: Who is he?
Thank you for your attention
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