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SUMMARY:Perceiving grammatical regularities - Doug Saddy (University of Re
 ading)
DTSTART:20070501T150000Z
DTEND:20070501T163000Z
UID:TALK7225@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Teresa Parodi
DESCRIPTION:Much recent research into rule and grammar learning has focuss
 ed on the potential role of statistical regularities in recognising gramma
 tically determined patterns. Considerable emphasis has been placed on tran
 sition probabilities in driving the perception of segmentation in strings 
 of syllables generated by Markovian grammars and the subsequent ability to
  discriminate between "legal" and "illegal" strings. An alternative approa
 ch has stressed the ability to recognize and extract algebraic (variable d
 ependent) regularities in similar artificial strings. In this talk I will 
 present the results of a recent series of investigations into our ability 
 to recognise and discriminate grammatical series generated by recursive gr
 ammars which generate strings with no local transition probabilities and w
 hose output cannot be easily characterized in algebraic terms. The observa
 tion that humans are very good at these tasks raises an number of importan
 t questions about the nature of statistical analyses being commonly appeal
 ed to and the principles underlying grammatical learning. 
LOCATION:GR-06/07\, English Faculty Building
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