Abstract
Everyday natural language communication is normally successful, even though contemporary computational linguistics has shown that NL is characterised by very high degree of ambiguity and the results of stochastic methods are not good enough to explain the high success rate. Bayesian natural language interpretation and the combination with speaker self-monitoring are proposed as an explanation of the high success rates. The consequences of the model for language learning are briefly explored (inhibitory effects of production in understanding can only emerge when production is good enough, and inhibitory effects of comprehension in production only when comprehension is good enough) and applied to production-comprehension asymmetries.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Blackmer, E.R., Mitton, J.L.: Theories of monitoring and the timing of repairs in spontaneous speech. Cognition 39, 173–194 (1991)
Boersma, P.: Some listener-oriented accounts of h-aspire in french. Lingua 117 (2007)
Boersma, P., Hayes, B.: Empirical tests of the gradual learning algorithm. Linguistic Inquiry 32, 45–86 (2001)
Bresnan, J., Cueni, A., Nikitina, T., Baayen, R.H.: Predicting the Dative Alternation. Cognitive Foundations of Interpretation, pp. 69–94 (2007)
Clark, H.: Using language. CUP, Cambridge (1996)
Doya, K., Ishii, S., Pouget, A., Rao, R.P.N. (eds.): Bayesian Brain: Probabilistic Approaches to Neural Coding. MIT Press, Cambridge (2007)
Friston, K., Stephan, K.: Free energy and the brain. Synthese, 417–458 (2007)
Gil, D.: Word order without syntactic categories: How riau indonesian does it? In: Carnie, A., Harley, H., Dooley, S.A. (eds.) Verb First, pp. 243–263 (2005)
Goldwater, S., Johnson, M.: Learning OT constraint rankings using a maximal entropy model. In: Spenader, J., Eriksson, A., Dahl, O. (eds.) Proceedings of the Stockholm Workshop on Variation within Optimality Theory, pp. 111–120 (2003)
Hale, M., Reiss, C.: Formal and empirical arguments concerning phonological acquisition. Linguistic Inquiry 29, 656–683 (1998)
Hendriks, P., Spenader, J.: When production precedes comprehension: An optimization approach to the acquisition of pronouns. Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics 13, 319–348 (2005/2006)
Hobbs, J., Stickel, M., Appelt, D., Martin, P.: Interpretation as abduction. Technical Report 499, SRI International, Menlo Park, California (1990)
Jäger, G.: Learning constraint sub-hierarchies. the Bidirectional Gradual Learning Algorithm. In: Blutner, R., Zeevat, H. (eds.) Pragmatics and Optimality Theory. Palgrave, Oxford (2003)
Jurafsky, D., Martin, J.H.: Speech and Language Processing:An Introduction to Natural Language Processing, Speech Recognition, and Computational Linguistics, 2nd edn. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs (2009)
Kilner, J.M., Friston, K.J., Frith, C.D.: Predictive coding: an account of the mirror neuron system. Cognitive Processing 8(3), 159–166 (2007)
Levelt, W.J.: Monitoring and self-repair in speech. Cognition 14, 41–104 (1983)
Levelt, W.J.M.: Speaking: From Intention to Articulation. MIT Press, Cambridge (1989)
Mattausch, J., Gülzow, I.: A note on acquisition in frequency-based accounts of binding phenomena (2007)
Noveck, I.A.: When children are more logical than adults: Experimental investigations of scalar implicature. Cognition 78(2), 165–188 (2000)
Oaksford, M., Chater, N.: Bayesian Rationality. OUP (2007)
Pickering, M.J., Garrod, S.: Do people use language production to make predictions during comprehension? Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11(3), 105–110 (2007)
Postma, A.: Detection of errors during speech production: A review of speech monitoring models. Cognition 77, 97–131 (2000)
Reyle, U., Rossdeutscher, A., Kamp, H.: Ups and downs in the theory of temporal reference. Linguistics and Philosophy 30(5) (2007)
Rizzolatti, G., Arbib, M.: Language within our grasp. Trends in Neurosciences 21, 188–194 (1998)
Shipra, J.B., Dingare, S., Manning, D.C.: Soft constraints mirror hard constraints: Voice and person in english and lummi. In: Butt, M., King, T.H. (eds.) Proceedings of the LFG 2001 Conference. CSLI, pp. 13–32. CSLI Publications, Stanford (2001)
Smolensky, P.: On the comprehension/production dilemma in child language. Linguistic Inquiry 27, 720–731 (1996)
Smolensky, P., Legendre, G.: The harmonic mind: from neural computation to optimality-theoretic grammar. MIT Press, Cambridge (2006)
Tomasello, M.: Origins of Human Communication. MIT Press, Cambridge (2008)
Zeevat, H.: Freezing and marking. Linguistics 5, 1097–1111 (2006)
Zeevat, H.: Optimal interpretation as an alternative to Gricean pragmatics. In: Structuring Information in Discourse: The Explicit /Implicit Dimension. Oslo Studies in Language. OSLA, Oslo (2009a)
Zeevat, H.: Optimal interpretation for rhetorical relations. In: Kühnlein, P., Benz, A., Sidner, C.L. (eds.) Constraints in Discourse 2, pp. 35–60. John Benjamins, Amsterdam (2009b)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Zeevat, H. (2011). Bayesian NL Interpretation and Learning. In: Bezhanishvili, N., Löbner, S., Schwabe, K., Spada, L. (eds) Logic, Language, and Computation. TbiLLC 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 6618. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22303-7_22
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22303-7_22
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-22302-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-22303-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)