Beyond Grammar : An Experience-Based Theory of Language

Bod, Rens

ISBN 10: 157586150X / ISBN 13: 9781575861500

Editore: Center for the Study of Language and Inf, 1998

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Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Beyond Grammar : An Experience-Based Theory of Language
• Editore: Center for the Study of Language and Inf
• Data di pubblicazione: 1998
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 157586150X
• ISBN 13: 9781575861500
• Rilegatura: Brossura
• Condizione: As New

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

During the last few years, a new approach to language processing has started to emerge, which has become known under the name of "Data Oriented Parsing" or "DOP". This approach embodies the assumption that human language comprehension and production works with representations of concrete past language experiences, rather than with abstract grammatical rules. The models that instantiate this approach therefore maintain corpora of linguistic representations of previously occurring utterances. New utterance-representations are constructed by freely combining partial structures from the corpus. A probability model is used to choose from the collection of different structures of different sizes those that make up the most appropriate representation of an utterance. In this book, DOP models for several kinds of linguistic representations are developed, ranging from tree representations, compositional semantic representations, attribute-value representations, and dialogue representations. These models are studied from a formal, linguistic and computational perspective and are tested with available language corpora. The main outcome of these tests suggests that the productive units of natural language cannot be defined in terms of a minimal set of rules (or constraints or principles), as is usually attempted in linguistic theory, but need to be defined in terms of a large, redundant set of previously experienced structures with virtually no restriction on their size and complexity. I will argue that this outcome has important consequences for linguistic theory, leading to a new notion of language competence. In particular, it means that the knowledge of a speaker/hearer cannot be understood as a grammar, but as a statistical ensemble of language experiences that changes slightly every time a new utterance is processed.

Recensione

'Bod develops a theory of human language based on linguistic experience. Instead of rules or principles, previously derived chunks of representations constitute the knowledge base for language use. With empirical rigor and compelling argumentation the author develops the theoretical foundations for his data-oriented approach and extends it to semantics and the processing of spoken dialogue. All computational linguists with a sincere interest in corpus-based methods should definitely read this well-written book. Theoretical linguists and psycholinguists will find it illuminating and thought-provoking.' Hans Uszkoreit, DFKI Saarbrüken and Saarland University

'Beyond Grammar should be read by all theoretical linguists who feel intrigued or threatened by the renaissance of statistical natural language processing. Bod argues for the provocative thesis that knowledge of language should be understood not as a grammar, but as a 'statistical ensemble of language experience that changes slightly every time a new utterance is perceived or produced'. By building a conceptual theory that integrates formal language theory with statistical linguistics, he also shows why the coming statistical revolution need not put theoretical linguists out of business. This is a beautifully written, important, and accessible work.' Joan Bresnan, Stanford University