Discourse op Dinsdag 17 november

Posted on November 14, 2009 by benecla

Date & time: November 17; 15:30-17:00

Location: Utrecht University, Janskerkhof 13, Room 0.06

Fridolin Wild

Knowledge Media Institute, Milton Keynes, UK

The Geometry of Learning

Abstract

Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) is a mathematical technique for computationally modeling the meaning of words and larger units of texts. LSA works by applying a mathematical technique called Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) to a term*document matrix containing frequency counts for all words found in the corpus in all of the documents or passages in the corpus. After this SVD application, the meaning of a word is represented as a vector in a multidimensional semantic space, which makes it possible to compare word meanings, for instance by computing the cosine between two word vectors.

LSA has been successfully used in a large variety of language related applications from automatic grading of student essays to predicting click trails in website navigation. In Coh-Metrix (Graesser et al. 2004), a computational tool that produces indices of the linguistic and discourse representations of a text, LSA was used as a measure of text cohesion by assuming that cohesion increases as a functionof higher cosine scores between adjacent sentences.

Besides being interesting as a technique for building programs that need to deal with semantics, LSA is also interesting as a model of human cognition. LSA can match human performance on word association tasks and vocabulary test. In this talk, Fridolin will focus on LSA as a tool in modeling language acquisition. After framing the area of the talk with sketching the key concepts learning, information, and competence acquisition, and after outlining presuppositions, an introduction into meaningful interaction analysis (MIA) is given. MIA is a means to inspect learning with the support of language analysis that is geometrical in nature. MIA is a fusion of latent semantic analysis (LSA) combined with network analysis (NA/SNA). LSA, NA/SNA, and MIA are illustrated by several examples.

On Wednesday morning, November 18, Fridolin Wild will give a tutorial during which he will demonstrate the R-package he developed for LSA. For more information, please contact Rogier Kraf (r.kraf@uu.nl).

The Discourse op Dinsdag discussion group is intended for researchers working on discourse from a language use perspective, and offers a platform to discuss their work (in progress). For more information check our website http://www.let.uu.nl/vici.

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Promotie/Defense Rasmus Steinkrauss, Groningen

Posted on November 4, 2009 by benecla

Name: Rasmus Steinkrauss
Dissertation title: Frequency and Function in WH Question Acquisition –
A Usage-Based Case Study of German L1 Acquisition
Promotion date: 27.11.2009

Summary of the dissertation
English
My dissertation studies the early stages of first language acquisition. In particular, it studies the impact of the input, which is the language a child hears, on what a child says. Simply put, in usage-based linguistics is assumed that the more often a child hears something, the earlier and more often the child is going to say it. This applies
not only to single words but also to word combinations (‘constructions’) such as “where are…”. In my dissertation, I show that this is not always the case.

Using a very dense database of a boy learning German, I follow the boy’s early language development, especially the development of WH-questions, closely for one year (age 2-3) and show that not only input frequency, but also the function of linguistic constructions and the previous linguistic knowledge of the child play a role.
For example, even if a construction is very frequent in the input, the child might not use it because the construction does not serve any useful function for the child, because the child already knows a construction fulfilling the same function, or because the child does not know a more basic construction that the new construction
builds on. This shows that input frequency interacts with other factors in language acquisition.

Moreover, the dissertation shows that the acquisition of German differs from that of English because of the different composition of the input, and that the size of the corpus has a clear impact on the analysis of input frequency.

Dutch
Dit proefschrift beschouwt de invloed van de ‘input’, dus wat een kind hoort, op zijn/haar ontwikkeling van de moedertaal in de allereerste fasen van taalverwerving. Binnen de gebruiksgebaseerde (usage-based) linguïstiek wordt er over het algemeen van uitgegaan dat de input een sterke invloed uitoefent op wat een kind zelf leert te
zeggen. Simpel gezegd wordt aangenomen dat als een kind iets vaak hoort het kind dit zelf ook vaak en vroeg gebruikt. Dit geldt zowel voor enkele woorden als voor hele combinaties van woorden (‘constructies’) zoals ‘wat is dit voor…’.

Mijn proefschrift laat zien dat dit niet altijd het geval is. Met hulp van een bijzonder uitgebreid corpus wordt de vroege taalontwikkeling, specifiek de ontwikkeling van wvragen, van een Duits kind over de periode van een jaar (leeftijd 2-3) nauwlettend gevolgd. Er wordt aangetoond dat niet alleen de inputfrequentie, maar ook de functie
van constructies en de eerdere kennis van het kind invloed heeft op wat hij zegt. Zo gebruikt het kind bijvoorbeeld sommige constructies niet, hoewel zij frequent in de input voorkomen. Dit komt doordat zij voor hem geen nuttige functie vervullen, hij al een andere constructie met dezelfde functie gebruikt of doordat hij een andere, meer
basale constructie nog niet kent. Dit laat zien dat inputfrequentie met andere factoren samenwerkt.

Daarnaast toont het proefschrift aan dat de taalontwikkeling in het Duits door de andere compositie van de input anders verloopt dan in het Engels en dat de grootte van het gebruikte corpus van invloed is op de resultaten.

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Symposium Frequency and Function Groningen

Posted on November 4, 2009 by benecla

The Role of Frequency and Function in Language Development
Symposium, November 25, 2009
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
13.30 – 17.30
Senaatszaal, Academie Building, Broerstraat 5, Groningen

Frequency of occurrence is central to the process of learning: the frequency with which a person experiences an event or executes an action plays an significant role in building a mental representation of that event or action. This is an important reason why usage-based approaches to language in particular have considered the frequency
with which linguistic structures are used to be a central factor in the development of language. By now, many frequency-related effects such as the interplay between frequency and grammaticality judgements have been revealed. Therefore, frequency
increasingly finds its way as an explanatory factor also in other linguistic approaches.

At the same time, it seems clear that the communicative or semantic function of a linguistic structure plays a major part in language development as well, and that it is related to frequency. For example, some individual speakers might not use a linguistic structure in spite of a high overall frequency of occurrence in the speech community because the structure does not meet these speakers’ communicative
purposes. This in turn can feed back to these speakers’ representation of the structure and lower the overall frequency of that structure. Another example is the number of linguistic forms used in a language to carve up a given functional domain (e.g., colors or spatial relations). This ratio between linguistic form and semantic function affects
the amount of variation in a language in that domain. Again, this influences the frequency of occurrence, and possibly also the opacity of form-function-mappings and the ease with which linguistic forms may therefore be learnt. The symposium seeks to look at the two factors of frequency and function and illuminate their role.

Six invited speakers will present their work: Heike Behrens, Jack
Hoeksema, Angeliek van Hout, Elena Lieven, Rasmus Steinkrauss and Rosie van Veen. Dan Slobin will moderate the final discussion.
The symposium is supported by the School of Behavioral and Neurosciences Groningen (BCN).

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CogLing 2010: Antwerpen, 17 en 18 december

Posted on October 24, 2009 by benecla

Zoals afgesproken op de laatste CogLingDagen in Leiden (december 2008), zullen de CogLingDagen 2010 plaatsvinden in Antwerpen. Als data zijn inmiddels vastgesteld vrijdag 17 en zaterdag 18 december. CogLing 2010 zal gezamenlijk georganiseerd worden door de Lessius hogeschool (Paul Sambre) en de Universiteit Antwerpen (Tanja Mortelmans). Het plan is om de CogLingDagen ook over beide locaties te verdelen; vrijdag op Lessius, zaterdag op de UA. Beide campussen bevinden zich in het centrum van Antwerpen. Nadere informatie en de call for papers volgen later.

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Conferenties op komst

Posted on October 22, 2009 by benecla

Wat: 4th Conference on Language, Culture, and Mind (LCM)
Wanneer: 21-23 June 2010
Waar: Turku, Finland
Website: http://web.abo.fi/fak/hf/fin/LCM4/about.html
Deadline abstracts: 15 Dec. 2009

Wat: 8th biennial conference of the Researching and Applying Metaphor (RaAM) International Association
Wanneer: 30 June – 3 July 2010
Waar: Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, NL
Website: http://www.raam.org.uk/Amsterdam_2010.html
Deadline abstracts: 31 Dec. 2009

Wat: 3rd Biennial Conference of the UK Cognitive Linguistics
Association: Language, mind and social reality
Website: http://uk-clc3.org/
Wanneer: July 6th-8th inclusive 2010
Waar: University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield England (www.herts.ac.uk)
Deadline abstracts: 15 december 2009

Wat: Sixth International Conference on Construction Grammar (ICCG6)
Wanneer: 03-Sep-2010 – 05-Sep-2010
Waar: Prague, Czech Republic
Web Site: http://constructiongrammar.org/iccg6
Deadline abstracts: 1 maart 2010

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Construction Grammar Discussion Group, 19 juni

Posted on June 12, 2009 by benecla

De laatste bijeenkomst voor de zomer van de Construction Grammar Discussion Group vindt plaats op vrijdag 19 juni a.s. vanaf 15.30 uur in zaal 307 van het Lipsius-gebouw v/d Universiteit Leiden.

Nederlands als constructietaal

Ton van der Wouden

Dankzij corpora zoals het Corpus Gesproken Nederlands kunnen we meer te weten komen over eigenaardigheden van gesproken Nederlands. In mijn voordracht zal ik een aantal typische spreektaalfenomenen van zeer uiteenlopende aard bespreken, en ik zal proberen aannemelijk te maken dat een constructiegrammatica-aanpak daarbij dikwijls zijn vruchten afwerpt.

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Construction Grammar Discussion Group: 24 april, Egbert Fortuin

Posted on April 9, 2009 by benecla

Date and time: Friday April 24, 15h30-17h

Location: Leiden University, Eyckhof 1, 001A.

Syntax or semantics?

A construction based approach to verb ellipsis & voice switch

Egbert Fortuin

In construction based approaches to ellipsis, elliptical structures are treated as constructions that are associated with a specific meaning (e.g., Culicover & Jackendoff 2005). This differs from generative approaches that account for ellipsis in terms of non-audible syntactic structure. Recently, Merchant (2007) has argued that the ‘what-you-see-is-what-you-get’ approach to ellipsis by Culicover & Jackendoff (2005) is fundamentally flawed. Merchant points at the relation between elliptical constructions where the verb is elided, and voice switch. Merchant notices that in some types of elliptical constructions, for example sluicing, the elided material and the antecedent phrase must match in voice, e.g.:

(1) *Joe was murdered but we don’t know who Joe murdered.

(2) *Someone murdered Joe, but we don’t know who Joe was murdered by.

This is, however, not a general phenomenon of verbal ellipsis. In the case of VP-ellipsis (verbal phrase ellipsis) , voice switch is acceptable:

(3) The janitor must remove the trash whenever it is apparent that it should be removed.

(4) The system can be used by anyone who wants to use the system.

According to Merchant, models that try to explain ellipsis from a semantic point of view cannot deal with the phenomenon of voice switch in the context of ellipsis in an adequate way. In this talk, I will explain the data within a construction based approach to ellipsis My explanation is based on the following principles:

I. Semantic-syntactic incompatibility

Verbal ellipsis presupposes that the verbal information is easily retrievable from the context. Voice switch disturbs the principle of ‘ease of retrieval’ because of the difference semantics and correlated structure associated with passive and active sentences.

II. Semantic-syntactic dependency

The more semantically-syntactically independent the elliptical construction is from its antecedent, the easier it is to have ellipsis under voice switch:

– The more semantic-syntactic integration between elliptical clause and antecedent, the stronger the requirement of semantic-syntactic identity between antecedent and ellipsis site.

– If the elliptical construction contains a verb with information about voice, voice switch is possible.

Culicover, P. and R. Jackendoff. 2005. Simpler syntax. Oxford : OUP

Merchant, J. 2007.Voice and ellipsis.
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Discourse op Dinsdag, 21 april: Sarah van Vliet

Posted on April 9, 2009 by benecla

Date & time: April 21; 15:30-17:00

Location: Utrecht University, Janskerkhof 13, Room 0.06

 Sarah van Vliet

VU University Amsterdam

 

The use of proper nouns and pronouns in narrative discourse:

Towards a process model of reference maintenance

 Abstract

When narrators refer to the characters in their stories, they typically alternate between explicit referential expressions such as proper nouns (‘Henry’), and attenuated expressions such as pronouns (‘he’). In this talk I report an analysis of maintained protagonist references within a large corpus of elicited written Dutch narratives (van Vliet 2008). The analysis focuses on the consecutive choices between pronouns and repeated proper nouns, relative to a number of grammatical and discourse factors. On the basis of the results I present a model of reference maintenance in which the choice between proper nouns and pronouns is guided by both linear factors such as referential distance, and hierarchical factors such as episode structure.  I will discuss the role of referent salience (cf. Ariel 2001 inter alia) and attention fluctuation in this model of referential choice, and the question whether referential choice can best be explained in terms of speaker-based or addressee-oriented mechanisms (cf. Arnold 2008)

References

Ariel, M. 2001. Accessibility Theory: An overview. In T. Sanders & J. Schilperoord & W. Spooren (Eds.), Text Representation: Linguistic and Psycholinguistic Aspects. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Arnold, J.E. (2008). Reference production: production-internal and addressee-oriented processes. Language and Cognitive Processes, 23 (4), 495-527.

Van Vliet, S. (2008). Proper Nouns and Pronouns: The production of referential expressions in narrative discourse.   Ph.D. diss., Tilburg University. LOT series 175.

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Discourse op Dinsdag: this monday (!)

Posted on March 26, 2009 by benecla

Discourse op Maandag

Date & time: March 30; 11:00-12:30

Location: Utrecht, Kromme Nieuwegracht 80, Stijlkamer van Ravesteyn 1.06

Jennifer Spenader

University of Groningen

Coherence Relations, Anaphora and Presupposition

Abstract:

Consider the following sentences and what the preferred interpretation of “he” is:

(1) Samuel threatened Justin with a knife, and he blindfolded Erin with a scarf (too). (Parallel)
(2) Justin was threatened by Samuel with a knife, and he blindfolded Erin with a scarf (too). (Parallel)
(3) Justin was threatened by Samuel with a knife, and he was arrested. (Cause-Effect)

The verb meaning makes clear that “he” should be interpreted as Justin in all three sentences, but somehow (2) is awkward. Kehler’s (2002) theory claims parallel coherence relations between two clauses constrains antecedent-anaphor relationships to parallel interpretations, e.g. object antecedents for object anaphora, etc. Because (2) has a passive-active voice mismatch, interpreting the pronoun in (2) is more awkward than in (1).  Cause-Effect relations are claimed to permit freer anaphoric links,  thus the same voice mismatch in a cause-effect relation in (3) is claimed not to influence anaphoric relationships.

Kehler illustrates his theory with convincing natural examples, but recently his theory has been tested experimentally, with a number of conflicting results (e.g. Frazier & Clifton, 2006, Kehler et al. 2008, Kertz 2008, Kobele et al. 2008). As a possible explanation, Frazier & Clifton (2006) and Hendriks (2002) have both suggested that the presence of presupposition triggers like “too” might influence pronoun interpretation possibilities.

In this talk I will present the motivation and set-up of a series of planned experiments to clarify the contribution of presuppositional triggers to pronoun interpretation in Parallel and Cause-Effect coherence relations, and discuss potential outcomes and their explanations.

The Discourse op Dinsdag discussion group is intended for researchers working on discourse from a language use perspective, and offers a platform to discuss their work (in progress). For more information check our website http://www.let.uu.nl/vici.

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ICLC 2009 Berkeley cancelled

Posted on March 16, 2009 by benecla

Official announcement by Laura Janda, president ICLA

Dear members of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association and other friends of Cognitive Linguistics,

I have recently been informed that the preparations for the International Cognitive Linguistics Conference in Berkeley in 2009 have reached an impasse and it is necessary to cancel the conference. This cancellation has come about despite sustained and laudable efforts to rescue the situation. However, responsibility for organization of the conference rests with the local organizers, who have made the decision to cancel.

We are at present working on an amended conference schedule over the next three years. We hope to honor the efforts of the hundreds of scholars who submitted abstracts for ICLC 2009 by integrating them into a future conference. Our colleagues in China have graciously offered us the possibility of moving the conference originally planned for 2011 to 2010, and our colleagues Sally Rice and John Newman have tentatively agreed to host the conference in Alberta, Canada in 2012. In addition, there are several alternatives for cognitive linguistic conferences this year, among them AFLiCo May 27-29 (http://www.aflico.fr/colloque.html) , SALC in Stockholm, June 10-12 (http://www.salc-sssk.org) , and the Slavic cognitive linguistics conference, October 15-17 in Prague (http://ucjtk.ff.cuni.cz/sclc/sclc_eng.htm) .

I realize that the cancellation of the ICLC 2009 in Berkeley is terrible news for many of us. The point in sending this message is to inform potential participants as early as possible, before concrete travel plans have been made.

It is important that we all work together toward the future of the ICLA. The current situation presents a challenge for our organization, but I believe that our combined efforts will lead to positive solutions.

I expect to have more information for you shortly. It will be necessary for us to make some important decisions for the ICLA and I appreciate the support of our members at this time.

Laura Janda

President ICLA

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