AttachmentAmbiguityandPhraseOrdering.pptVIP

Corpus Studies of Constituent Ordering Tom Wasow An example, from Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct, p. 131: In my laboratory we use it as an easily studied instance of mental grammar, allowing us to document in great detail the psychology of linguistic rules from infancy to old age in both normal and neurologically impaired people, in much the same way that biologists focus on the fruit fly Drosophila to study the machinery of the genes. One of the other 119 possible orders: In my laboratory we use it as an easily studied instance of mental grammar, allowing us to document the psychology of linguistic rules in great detail in both normal and neurologically impaired people, from infancy to old age in much the same way that biologists focus on the fruit fly Drosophila to study the machinery of the genes. And another order ?? In my laboratory we use it as an easily studied instance of mental grammar, allowing us to document in much the same way that biologists focus on the fruit fly Drosophila to study the machinery of the genes in both normal and neurologically impaired people, in great detail the psychology of linguistic rules from infancy to old age What makes some orders sound more natural than others? The answer might shed light on the psychological processes underlying language use. It might also have practical applications: for on-line style checkers for machine translation for other applications requiring robust generation The Alternations I Studied Heavy Noun Phrase Shift: We take too many dubious idealizations for granted. We take for granted too many dubious idealizations. The Verb-Particle Construction: We figured out the problem. We figured the problem out. Dative Alternation: Kim handed a toy to the baby. Kim handed the baby a toy. Factors I Looked At Structural complexity (or “weight”) Discourse status (or “newness”) Semantic connectedness of verb and following constituents Lexical biases of verbs Ambiguity avoidance Grammatical