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SUMMARY:Robust language acquisition – It just Zipf’s right along - Nic
 k Ellis\, English Language Institute\, University of Michigan
DTSTART:20110315T160000Z
DTEND:20110315T173000Z
UID:TALK28503@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Chris Cummins
DESCRIPTION:One of the mysteries of language development is that each of u
 s as learners has\nhad different language experiences and yet somehow we h
 ave converged on\nbroadly the same language system. From diverse\, often n
 oisy samples\, we end\nup with similar linguistic competence. How can that
  be? There must be some\nconstraints in our estimation of how language wor
 ks. Some views hold that\nthe constraints are in the learner\, as expectat
 ions of linguistic universals pre-programmed in some form of innate langua
 ge acquisition device. Others hold\nthat the constraints are in the dynami
 cs of language itself – that language form\,\nlanguage meaning\, and lan
 guage use come together to promote robust induction\nby means of statistic
 al learning over limited samples. The research described\nhere explores th
 is question with regard English verbs\, their grammatical\nform\, semantic
 s\, and patterns of usage. It exemplifies Complex Systems (CS)\nprinciples
  such as agent-based emergence and the importance of Zipfian scale-free di
 stributions\, and CS methods such as distributional analysis of usage\,\nc
 onnectionist modeling\, and networks analysis.
LOCATION:GR-06/07\, English Faculty Building
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