Related papers: Predictability maximization and the origins of wor…
The minimization of the length of syntactic dependencies is a well-established principle of word order and the basis of a mathematical theory of word order. Here we complete that theory from the perspective of information theory, adding a…
The word order of a sentence is shaped by multiple principles. The principle of syntactic dependency distance minimization is in conflict with the principle of surprisal minimization (or predictability maximization) in single head syntactic…
The sequential structure of language, and the order of words in a sentence specifically, plays a central role in human language processing. Consequently, in designing computational models of language, the de facto approach is to present…
It is often stated that human languages, as other biological systems, are shaped by cost-cutting pressures but, to what extent? Attempts to quantify the degree of optimality of languages by means of an optimality score have been scarce and…
Most natural languages have a predominant or fixed word order. For example in English the word order is usually Subject-Verb-Object. This work attempts to explain this phenomenon as well as other typological findings regarding word order…
The principle of DEPENDENCY LENGTH MINIMIZATION, which seeks to keep syntactically related words close in a sentence, is thought to universally shape the structure of human languages for effective communication. However, the extent to which…
Vocabulary learning by children can be characterized by many biases. When encountering a new word, children as well as adults, are biased towards assuming that it means something totally different from the words that they already know. To…
Dependency length minimization is a universally observed quantitative property of natural languages. However, the extent of dependency length minimization, and the cognitive mechanisms through which the language processor achieves this…
Languages vary considerably in syntactic structure. About 40% of the world's languages have subject-verb-object order, and about 40% have subject-object-verb order. Extensive work has sought to explain this word order variation across…
Most languages use the relative order between words to encode meaning relations. Languages differ, however, in what orders they use and how these orders are mapped onto different meanings. We test the hypothesis that, despite these…
It is well known that the length of a syntactic dependency determines its online memory cost. Thus, the problem of the placement of a head and its dependents (complements or modifiers) that minimizes online memory is equivalent to the…
Prior work on generating explanations in a planning and decision-making context has focused on providing the rationale behind an AI agent's decision making. While these methods provide the right explanations from the explainer's…
In learning-augmented online algorithms, predictions are usually valued for what they say: a value estimate, a solution, or an algorithmic recommendation. This paper shows that predictions can also be valuable solely due to their arrival…
Human beings possess the most sophisticated computational machinery in the known universe. We can understand language of rich descriptive power, and communicate in the same environment with astonishing clarity. Two of the many contributors…
Language model architectures are predominantly first created for English and subsequently applied to other languages. It is an open question whether this architectural bias leads to degraded performance for languages that are structurally…
In machine translation (MT) that involves translating between two languages with significant differences in word order, determining the correct word order of translated words is a major challenge. The dependency parse tree of a source…
Dependency distance minimization (DDm) is a well-established principle of word order. It has been predicted theoretically that DDm implies compression, namely the minimization of word lengths. This is a second order prediction because it…
We model learning in a continuous-time Brownian setting where there is prior ambiguity. The associated model of preference values robustness and is time-consistent. It is applied to study optimal learning when the choice between actions can…
Automated reasoning about uncertain knowledge has many applications. One difficulty when developing such systems is the lack of a completely satisfactory integration of logic and probability. We address this problem directly. Expressive…
Ferrer-i-Cancho (2015) presents a mathematical model of both the synchronic and diachronic nature of word order based on the assumption that memory costs are a never decreasing function of distance and a few very general linguistic…