Dissertation Information for Nina WacholderNAME:
DEGREE:
DISCIPLINE:
SCHOOL: ADVISORS: COMMITTEE MEMBERS: MPACT Status: Incomplete - Not_Inspected Title: Acquiring syntactic generalizations from positive evidence: An HPSG model
Abstract: "This dissertation investigates how children can acquire, from positive evidence only, a correct grammar which does not miss significant generalizations or license ungrammatical constructions. A learning model based on the GPSG prototype of Fodor (1992) is adapted to HPSG. Fodor showed that correct, compact, language-particular syntactic generalizations can be acquired from input tree structures, if the learning mechanism strips out of syntactic trees all universally determined feature values, including, crucially, default values. However, HPSG differs from GPSG in that it assumes that all language-particular information is lexical rather than syntactic, and it renounces syntactic defaults because of their computational intractability. Two questions are therefore addressed: (i) Can apparently syntactic phenomena be acquired by lexical learning? and (ii) How can the work of syntactic defaults be done in HPSG? |
MPACT Scores for Nina WacholderA = 1 Advisors and Advisees Graphgenerating graph, please reload |
Students under Nina Wacholder
ADVISEES:
- Liu Ying-Hsang - Rutgers University (2009)
COMMITTEESHIPS:
- Yang-Woo Kim - Rutgers University (2004)
- Ying Sun - Rutgers University (2005)
- Robert John Rittman - Rutgers University (2007)
- Catherine L. Smith - Rutgers University (2009)
- Heather Lea Moulaison - Rutgers University (2010)
- Catherine L Smith - Rutgers University (2010)