Extraction, Gradedness, and Optimality

How Do Humans Deal with Ungrammatical Input? Experimental Evidence and Computational Modelling

We show how psycholinguistic methods can be used to investigate degrees of grammaticality and report experimental results for gradedness in extraction from complex NPs. We argue for the theoretical relevance of psycholinguistic evidence and sketch a model for gradedness based on ranked constraints. Our approach builds on results from optimality theory and can be computationally implemented usin...

Extraction, Gradedness, and Optimality * Studentship and of a Daad Doctoral Grant (program Hsp Iii)

Recently, a number of researchers have proposed the use of experimental methods to elicit acceptability judgments, thus addressing the shortcomings of the conventional intuitive way of gathering linguistic data (cf. Bard et al. 1996; Cowart 1997; Schütze 1996). The use of experimental methods allows to handle interand intraspeaker variation and to control for known biases on judgment behavior (...

Team Pilgrim Gradedness, imprecision and data mediation in database management systems

Degrees of Grammaticality as Evidence for Suboptimal Linguistic Structures

Intuitive judgments of the acceptability of linguistic utterances constitute the primary source of evidence in linguistic theory. However, our understanding of what speakers actually do when they make such judgments is far from complete. Recently, two psycholinguistic studies bearing on this question have become available: Schütze (1996) provides a broad review of the relevant psychological fin...

Variability and Stability in the Rank Relations of Nonhuman Primate Females: Analysis by Computer Simulation

This paper summarizes results of simulation analyses aimed at elucidating the way in which two important dimensions of female rank orders-nepotism and age-gradedness-are affected by variation in individual strategies of rank acquisition on the one hand and by variation in population-wide demographic parameters (eg, birth rate, death rate, etc) on the other. Female rank orders in simulated prima...