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SUMMARY:Optimal Ambiguity Resolution - Professor Ted Briscoe. University o
 f Cambridge\, Computer Laboratory.
DTSTART:20071120T160000Z
DTEND:20071120T173000Z
UID:TALK8363@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Napoleon Katsos
DESCRIPTION:Both ambiguity and `locality'\, the distance between syntactic
 ally-related constituents\, have been shown to contribute to on-line sente
 nce processing complexity. We'll describe a parsing model for Combinatory 
 Categorial Grammar which integrates them into a single-cost metric. The mo
 del makes more fine-grained predictions about both the step-by-step\, incr
 emental complexity of sentence processing and also leads to a more predict
 ive account of the role of extrasyntactic information -- such as lexical f
 requency\, semantic and pragmatic plausibility\, and prosody -- in resolvi
 ng ambiguity incrementally. \n\nWe'll review the experimental psycholingui
 stic evidence in favour of the model\, but mostly focus\, in the spirit of
  Hawkins (1994)\, on the predictions the model makes concerning the organi
 sation and usage of language\, and on the evolutionary trajectories of lan
 guages. We'll argue that: 1) it is supported by corpus-based evidence abou
 t usage and the distribution of prosodic boundaries\; 2) the model of ambi
 guity resolution is optimal from the perspective of an evolutionary model 
 of language development and change. 
LOCATION:GR-06/07\, English Faculty Building
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