Related papers: Collocational Grammar
Semantics, morphology and syntax are strongly interdependent. However, the majority of computational methods for semantic change detection use distributional word representations which encode mostly semantics. We investigate an alternative…
We prove a theorem stating that any semantics can be encoded as a compositional semantics, which means that, essentially, the standard definition of compositionality is formally vacuous. We then show that when compositional semantics is…
A structural time series model additively decomposes into generative, semantically-meaningful components, each of which depends on a vector of parameters. We demonstrate that considering each generative component together with its vector of…
The evolution of grammatical systems of syntactic and semantic composition is modeled here with a novel application of reinforcement learning theory. To test the functionalist thesis that speakers' expressive purposes shape their language,…
Standard methods in deep learning for natural language processing fail to capture the compositional structure of human language that allows for systematic generalization outside of the training distribution. However, human learners readily…
Many studies were recently done for investigating the properties of contextual language models but surprisingly, only a few of them consider the properties of these models in terms of semantic similarity. In this article, we first focus on…
A sharp tension exists about the nature of human language between two opposite parties: those who believe that statistical surface distributions, in particular using measures like surprisal, provide a better understanding of language…
Whether language models (LMs) have inductive biases that favor typologically frequent grammatical properties over rare, implausible ones has been investigated, typically using artificial languages (ALs) (White and Cotterell, 2021;…
This thesis develops the translation between category theory and computational linguistics as a foundation for natural language processing. The three chapters deal with syntax, semantics and pragmatics. First, string diagrams provide a…
The functional approach to compositional distributional semantics considers transitive verbs to be linear maps that transform the distributional vectors representing nouns into a vector representing a sentence. We conduct an initial…
Log-linear models provide a statistically sound framework for Stochastic ``Unification-Based'' Grammars (SUBGs) and stochastic versions of other kinds of grammars. We describe two computationally-tractable ways of estimating the parameters…
This paper proposes to use dialgebras to specify the semantics of interactive systems in a natural way. Dialgebras are a conservative extension of coalgebras. In this categorical model, from the point of view that we provide, the notions of…
A new account of parameter setting during grammatical acquisition is presented in terms of Generalized Categorial Grammar embedded in a default inheritance hierarchy, providing a natural partial ordering on the setting of parameters.…
Construction grammar posits that constructions, or form-meaning pairings, are acquired through experience with language (the distributional learning hypothesis). But how much information about constructions does this distribution actually…
Statistical models of word-sense disambiguation are often based on a small number of contextual features or on a model that is assumed to characterize the interactions among a set of features. Model selection is presented as an alternative…
Leveraging the compositional nature of our world to expedite learning and facilitate generalization is a hallmark of human perception. In machine learning, on the other hand, achieving compositional generalization has proven to be an…
Language sciences rely less and less on formal syntax as their base. The reason is probably its lack of psychological reality, knowingly avoided. Philosophers of science call for a paradigm shift in which explanations are by mechanisms, as…
We develop a comprehensive theory of the stable representation categories of several sequences of groups, including the classical and symmetric groups, and their relation to the unstable categories. An important component of this theory is…
Classic grammars and regular expressions can be used for a variety of purposes, including parsing, intent detection, and matching. However, the comparisons are performed at a structural level, with constituent elements (words or characters)…
According to the principle of compositional generalization, the meaning of a complex expression can be understood as a function of the meaning of its parts and of how they are combined. This principle is crucial for human language…