[Colloquium] Guest Speaker Announcement

[Ponda Barnes]

Guest Speaker
 
Presented by: Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago
 
Speaker: Janet Pierrehumbert
Speaker's home page: http://www.ling.northwestern.edu/~jbp/
 
Date: Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Time: 11:00
Location: TTI-C Conference room
 
Title: Persistence in Morphology and Phonology 
 
Abstract:
 
The central role of frequency in the acquisition and use of linguistic
patterns is abundantly supported by a wide range of linguistic and
psycholinguistic results. However, a simple baseline model of frequency
effects has poor asymptotic behavior. In the simple baseline model, learners
acquire frequencies of patterns from the rate at which they encounter these
patterns while interacting with mature members of the linguistic community.
Their productions mirror the frequencies of exposure. Over long periods of
time, such models evolve towards ever more simple language systems due to
the combination of random walking and under sampling effects.
 
More complex models with systematic biases have already been studied by
Niyogi and others. I consider a different class of cases, cases  in which
complexity persists for an unexpectedly long time. The core example will be
a study of arbitrary morphological gaps in Russian verb conjugation,
analyzed using a Bayesian population-level learning model.
 
 
If you have any questions or meet the speaker, please contact Ponda Barnes
at pondabarnes at tti-c.org.
TTI-C 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637
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