Predicting Grammatical Classes from Phonological Cues
-
Gert Durieux
Abstract
This paper investigates to what extent the grammatical class(es) of a word can be predicted on the basis of phonological and prosodic information only. We report on several experiments with an artificial learning system which has to assign English word forms to their appropriate grammatical class, using various types of phonological and prosodic information. First of all, we examine several phonological cues which were claimed by Kelly (1996) to be particularly good for distinguishing English nouns from verbs. Our results indicate that these cues are indeed partially predictive for the problem at hand and reveal that a combination of cues yields significantly better results than those obtained for each cue individually. We then show experimentally that ‘raw’ segmental information, augmented with word stress, allows the learning system to improve considerably upon those results . Secondly, we investigate several generalizations of the approach: basic segmental information also proves to be more predictive when the task is extended to encompass all open class words in English, and these findings can be replicated for a different (though related) language such as Dutch.
Abstract
This paper investigates to what extent the grammatical class(es) of a word can be predicted on the basis of phonological and prosodic information only. We report on several experiments with an artificial learning system which has to assign English word forms to their appropriate grammatical class, using various types of phonological and prosodic information. First of all, we examine several phonological cues which were claimed by Kelly (1996) to be particularly good for distinguishing English nouns from verbs. Our results indicate that these cues are indeed partially predictive for the problem at hand and reveal that a combination of cues yields significantly better results than those obtained for each cue individually. We then show experimentally that ‘raw’ segmental information, augmented with word stress, allows the learning system to improve considerably upon those results . Secondly, we investigate several generalizations of the approach: basic segmental information also proves to be more predictive when the task is extended to encompass all open class words in English, and these findings can be replicated for a different (though related) language such as Dutch.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction vii
-
Part I
- Bootstrapping from the Signal 3
- Contributions of Prosody to Infants’ Segmentation and Representation of Speech 25
- Implicit Memory Support for Language Acquisition 47
- How Accessible is the Lexicon in Motherese? 71
- Bootstrapping a First Vocabulary 79
- Infants’ Developing Competence in Recognizing and Understanding Words in Fluent Speech 97
- Lemma Structure in Language Learning 125
-
Part II
- Signal to Syntax 147
- A Reappraisal of Young Children’s Knowledge of Grammatical Morphemes 167
- Predicting Grammatical Classes from Phonological Cues 189
- Pre-lexical Setting of the Head 231
- Discovering Word Order Regularities 249
- On the Prosody/Lexicon Interface in Learning Word Order 267
- Index 295
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction vii
-
Part I
- Bootstrapping from the Signal 3
- Contributions of Prosody to Infants’ Segmentation and Representation of Speech 25
- Implicit Memory Support for Language Acquisition 47
- How Accessible is the Lexicon in Motherese? 71
- Bootstrapping a First Vocabulary 79
- Infants’ Developing Competence in Recognizing and Understanding Words in Fluent Speech 97
- Lemma Structure in Language Learning 125
-
Part II
- Signal to Syntax 147
- A Reappraisal of Young Children’s Knowledge of Grammatical Morphemes 167
- Predicting Grammatical Classes from Phonological Cues 189
- Pre-lexical Setting of the Head 231
- Discovering Word Order Regularities 249
- On the Prosody/Lexicon Interface in Learning Word Order 267
- Index 295
