Gerhard Jäger

Topic‐Comment Structure and the Contrast Between Stage Level and Individual Level Predicates

The paper re-examines the relevance of Carlsons (1977) distinction between stage level predicates and individual level predicates for several modules of grammar. In the first part of the paper, it is argued that rather than assume a uniform stage level vs. individual level distinction, we have to distinguish several similar but independent contrasts. Thus it is demonstrated that a unified explanation of all linguistic phenomena that are considered to be sensitive for this distinction is not possible or desirable. The second part of the paper focuses on one group of apparent contrasts between stage level and individual level predicates: the distribution of weak subjects. We will argue that it is the well-established contrast between stative and eventive predicates that lies at the bottom of these effects. This simple picture is blurred by interaction with topic-comment structure. We will propose a dynamic semantics of topicality that enables us to derive the observed effects formally.

The winner takes it all — almost: cumulativity in grammatical variation

Abstract In this article we show that cumulativity is necessary to account for probabilistic variation found in actual language use, and we compare the accuracy of the predictions that different versions of stochastic OT make. We distinguish two versions of cumulativity, namely ganging-up cumulativity and counting cumulativity. We will compare how Paul Boersmas (1998) version of stochastic OT on the one hand and Maximum entropy models on the other hand deal with cumulativity. The second part of the article reports empirical data on English genitive variation. It turns out that both versions of cumulativity obtain in the empirical data. In the last part of the article, we compare the predictions of the two theories with respect to this empirical domain. The maximum entropy model proves to be clearly superior, both with respect to the accuracy of its predictions and to its learnability properties.

Learning Constraint Subhierarchies: The Bidirectional Gradual Learning Algorithm

It is a common feature of many case marking languages that some, but not all objects are case marked.1 However, it is usually not entirely random which objects are marked and which aren’t. Rather, case marking only applies to a morphologically or semantically well-defined class of NPs. Take Hebrew as an example. In this language, definite objects carry an accusative morpheme while indefinite objects are unmarked.

Some Notes on the Formal Properties of Bidirectional Optimality Theory

In this paper, we discuss some formal properties of the model ofbidirectional Optimality Theory that was developed inBlutner (2000). We investigate the conditions under whichbidirectional optimization is a well-defined notion, and we give aconceptually simpler reformulation of Blutners definition. In thesecond part of the paper, we show that bidirectional optimization can bemodeled by means of finite state techniques. There we rely heavily onthe related work of Frank and Satta (1998) about unidirectionaloptimization.

Formal language theory: refining the Chomsky hierarchy

The first part of this article gives a brief overview of the four levels of the Chomsky hierarchy, with a special emphasis on context-free and regular languages. It then recapitulates the arguments why neither regular nor context-free grammar is sufficiently expressive to capture all phenomena in the natural language syntax. In the second part, two refinements of the Chomsky hierarchy are reviewed, which are both relevant to the extant research in cognitive science: the mildly context-sensitive languages (which are located between context-free and context-sensitive languages), and the sub-regular hierarchy (which distinguishes several levels of complexity within the class of regular languages).

Priming and unidirectional language change

Abstract In this paper we argue that the psycholinguistic mechanism of priming may account for the empirical observation that grammaticalization processes typically proceed in one direction only. It is shown how two well-known unidirectional changes, i.e. the development from spatial to temporal expressions and phonological reduction, may be connected to cases of asymmetric priming as reported in the psycholinguistic literature. In these cases a form or concept A primes a form or concept B, but not vice versa, and this cognitive asymmetry corresponds precisely to the observed unidirectional pathway from A to B in diachronic change. Ultimately, then, we argue that what appears as diachronic trajectories of unidirectional change is decomposable into atomic steps of asymmetric priming in language use. More generally, we also suggest that priming is the ‘missing link’ in evolutionary models of language change in that it provides for a plausible linguistic replicating mechanism, i.e. an ‘amplifier’ of linguistic units. This is a programmatic paper which should bring to attention the potential of fruitfully applying insights from psycholinguistic research to some central issues of historical linguistics. Specifically, our approach allows for the formulation of falsifiable predictions that can be tested with present-day speakers, under the uniformitarian assumption that the same cognitive mechanisms that we find to be operating in present-day speakers also have operated in past speakers of a language.

An Introduction to Game Theory for Linguists

In a very general sense we can say that we play a game together with other people whenever we have to decide between several actions such that the decision depends on the choice of actions by others and on our preferences over the ultimate results. Obvious examples are card games, chess, or soccer. If I am to play a card to a trick, then it depends on the cards played by my playing partners whether or not I win the trick. Whether my move in chess leads to a win usually depends on the subsequent moves of my opponent. Whether I should pass the ball to this or that team member depends not in the least on my expectations about whether or not he will pass it on to a player in an even more favourable position. Whether or not my utterance is successful depends on how it is taken up by its addressee and the overall purpose of the current conversation. This provides the basis for applications of game theory in pragmatics.

Voronoi languages: Equilibria in cheap-talk games with high-dimensional types and few signals

We study a communication game of common interest in which the sender observes one of infinite types and sends one of finite messages which is interpreted by the receiver. In equilibrium there is no full separation but types are clustered into convex categories. We give a full characterization of the strict Nash equilibria of this game by representing these categories by Voronoi languages. As the strategy set is infinite static stability concepts for finite games such as ESS are no longer sufficient for Lyapunov stability in the replicator dynamics. We give examples of unstable strict Nash equilibria and stable inefficient Voronoi languages. We derive efficient Voronoi languages with a large number of categories and numerically illustrate stability of some Voronoi languages with large message spaces and non-uniformly distributed types.

Language structure: psychological and social constraints

In this article we discuss the notion of a linguistic universal, and possible sources of such invariant properties of natural languages. In the first part, we explore the conceptual issues that arise. In the second part of the paper, we focus on the explanatory potential of horizontal evolution. We particularly focus on two case studies, concerning Zipf’s Law and universal properties of color terms, respectively. We show how computer simulations can be employed to study the large scale, emergent, consequences of psychologically and psychologically motivated assumptions about the working of horizontal language transmission.

Phylogenetic Inference from Word Lists Using Weighted Alignment with Empirically Determined Weights

The paper investigates the task of inferring a phylogenetic tree of languages from the collection of word lists made available by the Automated Similarity Judgment Project. This task involves three steps: (1) computing pairwise word distances, (2) aggregating word distances to a distance measure between languages and inferring a phylogenetic tree from these distances, and (3) evaluating the result by comparing it to expert classifications. For the first task, weighted alignment will be used, and a method to determine weights empirically will be presented. For the second task, a novel method will be developed that attempts to minimize the bias resulting from missing data. For the third task, several methods from the literature will be applied to a large collection of language samples to enable statistical testing. It will be shown that the language distance measure proposed here leads to substantially more accurate phylogenies than a method relying on unweighted Levenshtein distances between words.