We present an approach to grammar induction that utilizes syntactic universals to improve dependency parsing across a range of languages. Our method uses a single set of manually-specified language-independent rules that identify syntactic dependencies between pairs of syntactic categories that commonly occur across languages. During inference of the probabilistic model, we use posterior expect...

This paper argues that the generalized quantifier theory does not directly apply to Japanese quantifiers because of the following reasons: (i) the number of noun phrase (NP) arguments is underspecified and (ii) quantities are often expressed by predicative adjectives. It further claims that the word order changes the interpretation. For example, non-split quantifiers correspond to definite NPs ...

In his grammar of ancient Sanskrit, Pān. ini represents the phonological classes as intervals of a list. This representation method and especially the actual list constructed by Pān. ini, which is called the Śivasūtras, earns universal admiration. The legend says that god Śiva revealed the Śivasūtras to Pān. ini in order to let him start developing his grammar of Sanskrit. A question still disc...

This paper discusses some of the ways that the “statistical revolution” has changed and continues to change the relationship between linguistics and computational linguistics. I claim that it is more useful in parsing to make an open world assumption about possible linguistic structures, rather than the closed world assumption usually made in grammar-based approaches to parsing, and I sketch tw...

The special issue of The Linguistic Review on “The Role of Linguistics in Cognitive Science” presents a variety of viewpoints that complement or contrast with the perspective offered in Foundations of Language (Jackendoff 2002a). The present article is a response to the special issue. It discusses what it would mean to integrate linguistics into cognitive science, then shows how the parallel ar...

Universal Dependencies is a recent initiative to develop crosslinguistically consistent treebank annotation for many languages, with the goal of facilitating multilingual parser development, cross-lingual learning, and parsing research from a language typology perspective. In this paper, I outline the motivation behind the initiative and explain how the basic design principles follow from these...

We investigate a model of language evolution, based on population game dynamics with learning. First, we examine the case of two genetic variants of universal grammar (UG), the heart of the human language faculty, assuming each admits two possible grammars. The dynamics are driven by a communication game. We prove using dynamical systems techniques that if the payoff matrix obeys certain constr...

Evidence of children’s sensitivity to statistical features of their input in language acquisition is often used to argue against learning mechanisms driven by innate knowledge. At the same time, evidence of children acquiring knowledge that is richer than the input supports arguments in favor of such mechanisms. This tension can be resolved by separating the inferential and deductive components...

In this paper we describe the encoding of a Unification-Based Generalised Categorial Grammar for English, in terms of a default inheritance network of types, implemented with YADU, which is an order independent default unification operation on typed feature structures. We then propose to use this framework to encode a Universal Grammar (UG) and associated parameters, following the Principles an...

We extend the monodic fragment of first-order linear temporal logic to include right-linear grammar operators and quantification of propositional variables. Unlike propositional temporal logic, the use of grammar operators in first-order temporal logic is not equivalent to general propositional quantification, as the latter admit satisfiable formulae without countable models. We consider the de...