Disambiguating Syntactic Triggers

We present data from an artificial language domain that suggest new contributions to the theory of syntactic triggers. Whether a learning algorithm is capable of matching the achievements of child learners depends in part on how much parametric ambiguity there is in the input. For practical reasons this cannot be established for the domain of all natural languages. Our tactic is to estimate the incidence of unambiguous triggers by examining a constructed domain of languages whose syntactic parameters and structural properties are precisely specified. We succeeded in identifying unambiguous triggers for all non-default parameter values in all languages in this domain. In order to do so, we had to invoke between-parameter relations which disambiguate triggers that otherwise would have been parametrically ambiguous. The discovery of unambiguous triggers in this artificial domain does not prove a sufficiency in natural languages, but it may revive investigation of the psychological plausibility of deterministic models of human language acquisition.

[1]  Janet D. Fodor.  Implementing the Subset Principle in Syntax Acquisition : Lattice-Based Models , 2007 .

[2]  R. Clark.  The Selection of Syntactic Knowledge , 1992 .

[3]  Luigi Rizzi,et al.  Grammatically-based Target-inconsistencies in Child Language , 2008 .

[4]  Ian Roberts,et al.  Language Acquisition and Learnability: Language change and learnability , 2001 .

[5]  Barbara C. Scholz,et al.  Empirical assessment of stimulus poverty arguments , 2002 .

[6]  Jeffrey Lidz,et al.  When Domain-General Learning Fails and When It Succeeds: Identifying the Contribution of Domain Specificity , 2009 .

[7]  M. R. Manzini.  Syntactic approaches to cliticization , 1998 .

[8]  Mark C. Baker.  The Atoms of Language , 1987 .

[9]  Janet Dean Fodor,et al.  Parsing to Learn , 1998 .

[10]  Elissa L Newport,et al.  Structural packaging in the input to language learning: Contributions of prosodic and morphological marking of phrases to the acquisition of language , 1987, Cognitive Psychology.

[11]  Jean-Yves Pollock.  Verb movement, universal grammar and the structure of IP , 1989 .

[12]  Janet Dean Fodor,et al.  Learning the Periphery , 1989 .

[13]  D. Lightfoot.  The development of grammars , 1998 .

[14]  Mari Fujimoto.  L1 acquisition of Japanese *particles: A corpus-based study , 2008 .

[15]  B. Dresher,et al.  A computational learning model for metrical phonology , 1990, Cognition.

[16]  Bart de Boer,et al.  The Atoms of Language: The Mind's Hidden Rules of Grammar; Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution , 2002, Artificial Life.

[17]  Charles D. Yang,et al.  Knowledge and learning in natural language , 2000 .

[18]  Ted Briscoe.  Grammatical acquisition: Inductive bias and coevolution of language and the language acquisition device , 2000 .

[19]  D. Gary Miller,et al.  How new languages emerge , 2022 .

[20]  Liliane Haegeman,et al.  Elements of Grammar: Handbook In Generative Syntax , 1998 .

[21]  L. Cheng,et al.  The second Glot international state-of-the-article book : the latest in linguistics , 2000 .

[22]  Marcello Modesto,et al.  Topic prominence and null subjects1 , 2008 .

[23]  Toben H. Mintz.  Frequent frames as a cue for grammatical categories in child directed speech , 2003, Cognition.

[24]  Janet D. Fodor.  Unambiguous Triggers , 1998, Linguistic Inquiry.

[25]  D. Lightfoot.  The development of language , 1999 .

[26]  Charles Yang,et al.  Who's Afraid of George Kingsley Zipf? , 2010 .

[27]  Lisa Pearl,et al.  Learning English Metrical Phonology:When Probability Distributions Are Not Enough , 2009 .

[28]  Aline Villavicencio.  The acquisition of a unification-based generalised categorial grammar , 2002 .

[29]  Rita M. Manzini,et al.  Parameters, binding theory and learnability , 1987 .

[30]  Marica de Vincenzi,et al.  Syntactic parsing strategies in Italian , 1991 .

[31]  Noam Chomsky,et al.  Of minds and language : a dialogue with Noam Chomsky in the Basque country , 2009 .

[32]  Amy Weinberg,et al.  Necessary bias in natural language learning , 2007 .

[33]  Janet Dean Fodor,et al.  Language Acquisition and Learnability: The Structural Triggers Learner , 2001 .

[34]  Robin Clark,et al.  A Computational Model of Language Learnability and Language Change , 2018, Diachronic and Comparative Syntax.

[35]  William Snyder,et al.  Child Language: The Parametric Approach , 2007 .

[36]  Cristina Guardiano,et al.  Three fundamental issues in parametric linguistics , 2008 .

[37]  Robin Clark.  On the Relationship between the Input Data and Parameter Setting , 1987 .

[38]  Edward Gibson,et al.  Characterizing learnability conditions for cue-based learners in parametric language systems , 1997 .

[39]  C. Huang.  On the distribution and reference of empty pronouns , 1984 .

[40]  L. Rizzi.  The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery , 1997 .

[41]  Janet D. Fodor,et al.  Evaluating Models of Parameter Setting , 2004 .

[42]  Noam Chomsky,et al.  Lectures on Government and Binding , 1981 .

[43]  J. Tenenbaum,et al.  Poverty of the Stimulus? A Rational Approach , 2006 .

[44]  Stefano Bertolo.  Learnability properties of parametric models for natural language acquisition , 1995 .

[45]  S. Kapur,et al.  On the use of triggers in parameter setting , 1996 .

[46]  Karen T. Kohl.  An analysis of finite parameter learning in linguistic spaces , 1999 .

[47]  Bezalel Elan Dresher,et al.  Charting the Learning Path: Cues to Parameter Setting , 1999, Linguistic Inquiry.

[48]  J. Elman.  Learning and development in neural networks: the importance of starting small , 1993, Cognition.

[49]  Noam Chomsky,et al.  The faculty of language: what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve? , 2002, Science.

[50]  Janet Dean Fodor,et al.  Decoding Syntactic Parameters: The Superparsers as Oracle , 2000 .

[51]  Nina Hyams,et al.  Language Acquisition and the Theory of Parameters , 1986 .

[52]  William Gregory Sakas,et al.  A Word-Order Database for Testing Computational Models of Language Acquisition , 2003, ACL.

[53]  Janet D. Fodor,et al.  The Subset Principle in syntax: costs of compliance , 2005, Journal of Linguistics.

[54]  T. Biberauer.  The limits of syntactic variation , 2008 .

[55]  James L. Morgan,et al.  From Simple Input to Complex Grammar , 1986 .

[56]  G. Cinque.  Adverbs and Functional Heads: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective , 1999 .

[57]  Ivan A. Sag,et al.  Syntactic Theory: A Formal Introduction , 1999, Computational Linguistics.