Information theory and artificial grammar learning: inferring grammaticality from redundancy

In artificial grammar learning experiments, participants study strings of letters constructed using a grammar and then sort novel grammatical test exemplars from novel ungrammatical ones. The ability to distinguish grammatical from ungrammatical strings is often taken as evidence that the participants have induced the rules of the grammar. We show that judgements of grammaticality are predicted by the local redundancy of the test strings, not by grammaticality itself. The prediction holds in a transfer test in which test strings involve different letters than the training strings. Local redundancy is usually confounded with grammaticality in stimuli widely used in the literature. The confounding explains why the ability to distinguish grammatical from ungrammatical strings has popularized the idea that participants have induced the rules of the grammar, when they have not. We discuss the judgement of grammaticality task in terms of attribute substitution and pattern goodness. When asked to judge grammaticality (an inaccessible attribute), participants answer an easier question about pattern goodness (an accessible attribute).     

What Is Wrong with Hacker's Wittgenstein? On Grammar,Context and Sense‐Determination

Peter Hacker defends an interpretation of the later Wittgenstein's notion of grammar, according to which the inherently general grammatical rules are sufficient for sense‐determination. My aim is to show that this interpretation fails to account for an important contextualist shift in Wittgenstein's views on sense‐determination. I argue that Hacker attributes to the later Wittgenstein a rule‐based, combinatorial account of sense, which Wittgenstein puts forward in the Tractatus. I propose that this is not how we should interpret the later Wittgenstein because he insists that particular circumstances of use play a necessary role in determining the boundary between sense and nonsense.     

What explains the correlation between growth in vocabulary and grammar? New evidence from latent change score analyses of simultaneous bilingual development

A close relationship between children's vocabulary size and the grammatical complexity of their speech is well attested but not well understood. The present study used latent change score modeling to examine the dynamic relationships between vocabulary and grammar growth within and across languages in longitudinal data from 90 simultaneous Spanish–English bilingual children who were assessed at 6‐month intervals between 30 and 48 months. Slopes of vocabulary and grammar growth were strongly correlated within each language and showed moderate or nonsignificant relationships across languages. There was no evidence that vocabulary level predicted subsequent grammar growth or that the level of grammatical development predicted subsequent vocabulary growth. We propose that a common influence of properties of input on vocabulary and grammatical development is the source of their correlated but uncoupled growth. An unanticipated across‐language finding was a negative relationship between level of English skill and subsequent Spanish growth. We propose that the cultural context of Spanish–English bilingualism in the US is the reason that strong English skills jeopardize Spanish language growth, while Spanish skills do not affect English growth. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/qEHSQ0yRre0     

Is there a direct relation between the development of vocabulary and grammar?

Previous studies of individual differences have revealed strong correlations between children's vocabulary and grammatical abilities, and these data have been used to support theoretical accounts positing direct developmental relations between these two areas of language. However, between‐person differences do not necessarily reflect intra‐individual dynamics. Thus, in the present study, we analysed longitudinal data from three annual assessments of vocabulary and grammar in 217 children (M_age = 4 years and 3 months at first assessment) using a modelling strategy with some utility in distinguishing relations at the between‐ and within‐person levels. The results revealed strong correlations between grammar and vocabulary at the between‐person level, but the evidence of direct dependencies between the variables at the within‐person level was rather limited. Specifically, we found a small direct contribution from grammar to vocabulary for children between the ages of 4 and 5, but there was no evidence of any direct contributions from vocabulary to grammar. Further analyses suggested that the home literacy environment may represent a common source of individual differences in children's vocabulary and grammatical skills. In light of these results, we argue that the evidence of direct relations between vocabulary and grammatical development in preschool‐aged children may not be as strong as previously assumed.     

Experimental pragmatics: a Gricean turn in the study of language

Discerning the meaning of an utterance requires not only mastering grammar and knowing the meanings of words but also understanding the communicative (i.e., pragmatic) features of language. Although it has been an ever present aspect of linguistic analyses and discussions, it is only over the last ten years or so that cognitive scientists have been investigating--in a concerted fashion--the pragmatic features of language experimentally. We begin by highlighting Paul Grice's contributions to ordinary language philosophy and show how it has led to this active area of experimental investigation. We then focus on two exemplary phenomena--'scalar inference' and 'reference resolution'--before considering other topics that fit into the paradigm known as 'experimental pragmatics'.     

哲学的困境和黑格尔的幽灵——关于"中国无哲学的反思"

When Western science was introduced to modern China, more translated words were used to express fundamental concepts and terms than borrowed words. The process of academic translation, commensuration, and communication between Western and Chinese philosophy is a process of comparative philosophical research. Nowadays, however, it seems that Chinese philosophy is evaluated by a Western Hegelian criterion. This leads to the debate over whether or not China has philosophy. But it is meaningless to argue about whether or not China has the name of philosophy. The key issue is whether or not China has the actuality of philosophy. Looking at the history of Western philosophy, it seems that the Hegelian definition of philosophy was the only one that existed in Europe. However, during the last 200 years after Hegel that the two main philosophical trends of positivism (scientism) and irrationalism developed from anti-Hegelianism or “Spurning Metaphysics.” As metaphysics is being reconstructed, the ghost of Hegel has reappeared. It is clear that in the future, philosophy will evolve from the development of human metaphysics or cultural philosophy. It is a process of the “negation of negation”: from traditional metaphysics to the spurning of metaphysics, and then to human metaphysics. Translated by Wu Bo from Wenshizhe 文史哲 (Journal of Literature, History and Philosophy), 2005, (3): 18–25     

Pupil responses to grammatical complexity of sentences

Measurements of pupil size were taken of nine subjects while they listened to sentences of various length, construction, and content, with the instruction to rate them for comprehensibility. Twenty-one sentence types were rated. Each was assigned, via a transformational grammar, a value of grammatical complexity. Mean pupil dilation during listening as an index of psychological complexity was found to correlate more strongly with grammatical complexity than did subject ratings of sentence comprehensibility. These findings suggest that the pupil may have considerable use as an “on-line” monitor of cognitive load imposed by grammatical complexity of sentences.     

Semantics without Truth in Later Mohist Philosophy of Language

In this paper, I examine the concept of truth in classical Chinese philosophy, beginning with a critical examination of Chad Hansen’s claim that it has no such concept. By using certain passages that emphasize analogous concepts in the philosophy of language of the Later Mohist Canons, I argue that while there is no word in classical Chinese that functions as truth generally does in Western philosophy for grammatical reasons, the Later Mohists were certainly working with a notion of semantic adequacy in which a language-to-world relationship is made an object of investigation, challenging Hansen’s position that classical Chinese functions within a primarily pragmatic linguistic framework in which a language-to-user relationship determines the meaning of words.     

Biblical language instruction by the book: Rethinking the status quaestionis

Grammar‐translation pedagogy is the standard for biblical language instruction. Second language acquisition scholars have argued that grammar‐translation is ineffective and not empirically justified. Moreover, evidence suggests most seminary graduates do not use biblical languages effectively in ministry. Task‐based instruction is an important alternative pedagogy which focuses on the tasks students will be using the language for and designs the curriculum around those tasks. A task‐based approach de‐emphasizes translation and memorization of forms. Instead, the emphasis from the beginning is on biblical interpretation and exposition. Available software based resources offer new possibilities for task‐based teaching, as students can identify forms and vocabulary and have access to a library of resources. A task‐based pedagogy using these tools enables students to quickly develop skills in biblical interpretation that are normally reserved for the third or fourth semester of study. Task‐based pedagogy offers great promise for effective and efficient biblical language pedagogy.     

Frank Ebersole on Wittgenstein and Pictures in Philosophy

How do we get into trouble in philosophy, and what do pictures have to do with it? This article addresses Frank Ebersole's thoughts on (Wittgenstein's remarks on) pictures in philosophy. It identifies the puzzlement generated for Ebersole by what Wittgenstein says and also considers some puzzling aspects of Ebersole's own renderings of pictures. It distinguishes between the philosophical picture and the pictorial form in which it may be crystalized and shows how philosophy's reliance on situationally disembedded grammatical stories (pictorial or not) leads us into trouble. Accordingly, responding to such trouble consists not in recovering the picture, in the sense of a single “object” or image we had before our mind's eye, but in—what is better described as Ebersole's strategy of—supplying a grammatical example (pictorial or otherwise) to go with our thinking, an example that makes what we think and say clear to ourselves.     

Individual behavior in learning of an artificial grammar

Artificial grammar learning (AGL) is a widely used experimental paradigm that investigates how syntactic structures are processed. After a familiarization phase, participants have to distinguish strings consistent with a set of grammatical rules from strings that violate these rules. Many experiments report performance solely at a group level and as the total number of correct judgments. This report describes a systematic approach for investigating individual performance and a range of different behaviors. Participants were exposed to strings of the nonfinite grammar A ⁿ B ⁿ . To distinguish grammatical from ungrammatical strings, participants had to pay attention to local dependencies while comparing the number of stimuli from each class. Individual participants showed substantially different behavioral patterns despite exposure to the same stimuli. The results were replicated across auditory and visual sensory modalities. It is suggested that an analysis that looks at individual differences grants new insights into the processes involved in AGL. It also provides a solid basis from which to investigate sequence-processing abilities in special populations, such as patients with neurological lesions.     

Differences in the types of musical regularity learnt in incidental- and intentional-learning conditions

Several studies have found learning of biconditional grammars only under intentional rule-search conditions (e.g., Johnstone & Shanks, 2001). Memorization of strings merely led to the learning of chunks. We used a musical grammar, a diatonic inversion, that is a type of biconditional grammar. Participants either were required to memorize a set of grammatical tunes (incidental learning), or were asked to search for the underlying rule whilst being given feedback about their performance (intentional learning). The results showed that participants in the incidental-learning condition did not learn the inversion rule and merely acquired explicit knowledge about chunks. However, participants in the intentional-learning condition learnt both the inversion rule and chunks.     

Artificial grammar learning by 1-year-olds leads to specific and abstract knowledge.

Four experiments used the head-turn preference procedure to assess whether infants could extract and remember information from auditory strings produced by a miniature artificial grammar. In all four experiments, infants generalized to new structure by discriminating new grammatical strings from ungrammatical ones after less than 2 min exposure to the grammar. Infants acquired specific information about the grammar as demonstrated by the ability to discriminate new grammatical strings from those with illegal endpoints (Experiment 1). Infants also discriminated new grammatical strings from those with string-internal pairwise violations (Experiments 2 and 3). Infants in Experiment 4 abstracted beyond specific word order as demonstrated by the ability to discriminate new strings produced by their training grammar from strings produced by another grammar despite a change in vocabulary between training and test. We discuss the implications of these findings for the study of language acquisition.     

Differences in the types of musical regularity learnt in incidental- and intentional-learning conditions

Several studies have found learning of biconditional grammars only under intentional rule-search conditions (e.g., Johnstone & Shanks, 2001). Memorization of strings merely led to the learning of chunks. We used a musical grammar, a diatonic inversion, that is a type of biconditional grammar. Participants either were required to memorize a set of grammatical tunes (incidental learning), or were asked to search for the underlying rule whilst being given feedback about their performance (intentional learning). The results showed that participants in the incidental-learning condition did not learn the inversion rule and merely acquired explicit knowledge about chunks. However, participants in the intentional-learning condition learnt both the inversion rule and chunks.     

Grammatical gender and inferences about biological properties in german-speaking children

In German, nouns are assigned to one of the three gender classes. For most animal names, however, the assignment is independent of the referent's biological sex. We examined whether German-speaking children understand this independence of grammar from semantics or whether they assume that grammatical gender is mapped onto biological sex when drawing inferences about sex-specific biological properties of animals. Two cross-linguistic studies comparing German-speaking and Japanese-speaking preschoolers were conducted. The results suggest that German-speaking children utilize grammatical gender as a cue for inferences about sex-specific properties of animals. Further, we found that Japanese- and German-speaking children recruit different resources when drawing inferences about sex-specific properties: Whereas Japanese children paralleled their pattern of inference about properties common to all animals, German children relied on the grammatical gender class of the animal. Implications of these findings for studying the relation between language and thought are discussed.     

The contribution of phonological short-term memory to artificial grammar learning

Three experiments investigated the contribution of phonological short-term memory (STM) to grammar learning by manipulating rehearsal during study of an auditory artificial grammar made up from a vocabulary of spoken Mandarin syllables. Experiment 1 showed that concurrent, irrelevant articulation impaired grammar learning compared with a nonverbal control task. Experiment 2 replicated and extended this finding, showing that repeating the grammatical strings at study improved grammar learning compared with suppressing rehearsal or remaining silent during learning. Experiment 3 found no effects of rehearsal on grammar learning once participants had learned the component syllables. The findings suggest that phonological STM aids artificial grammar learning via effects on vocabulary learning.