We investigate a type of lossless source code called a grammar-based code, which, in response to any input data string over a fixed finite alphabet, selects a context-free grammar representing in the sense that is the unique string belonging to the language generated by . Lossless compression of takes place indirectly via compression of the production rules of the grammar . It is shown that, su...

Grammar competition has been proposed as a model for second language (L2) acquisition. Variational Learning provides framework within which to investigate the idea of grammar requires marriage quantitative properties input with Universal Grammar. A diachronic variational is extended acquisition (L2A) explore verb-second word order optionality in L2 English. Patterns L1-German–L2-English are rev...

It is a well known fact about German that animacy plays a role in determining the word order of verbal arguments. In children’s production, animacy not only affects the order of the direct and indirect object in non-canonical double object constructions, but it also has an influence on the overt dative case marking of the indirect object. Optimality Theory readily accounts for these data in usi...

A central claim of Optimality Theory is that grammars may differ only in how conflicts among universal well-formedness constraints are resolved: a grammar is precisely a means of resolving such conflicts via a strict priority ranking of constraints. It is shown here how this theory of Universal Grammar yields a highly general Constraint Demotion principle for grammar learning. The resulting lea...

A central claim of Optimality Theory is that grammars may differ only in how conflicts among universal well-formedness constraints are resolved: a grammar is precisely a means of resolving such conflicts via a strict priority ranking of constraints. It is shown here how this theory of Universal Grammar yields a highly general Constraint Demotion principle for grammar learning. The resulting lea...