Inbal Arnon | The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (original) (raw)
Papers by Inbal Arnon
Encyclopedia of Language Development, Jun 20, 2014
Encyclopedia of Language Development, Jun 20, 2014
Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2021
Trends in language acquisition research, Aug 15, 2016
The chapter explores the distribution and content of frequent frames – recurring multiword sequen... more The chapter explores the distribution and content of frequent frames – recurring multiword sequences – appearing at the start of utterances in speech directed to young Hebrew-speaking children. Previous work has documented the existence and prevalence of such frames in several languages (English, German, and Russian). Here, analysis of a dense corpus of Hebrew child-directed speech was undertaken with two goals in mind. The first aims at examining the distribution of multiword elements in Hebrew child-directed speech, to ascertain whether frequent frames are found in a morphologically rich language like Hebrew and, if so, to see how pervasive they are compared to other languages, and how consistent across different caretakers. The second goal is to explore the content of frequent frames in Hebrew to address such questions as: Do they provide children with relevant morphological and syntactic information? Are they frequent enough to be employed in learning? Results show that frequent frames do occur in Hebrew, that they are relatively consistent across caretakers, and that they illustrate a range of grammatical relations. These findings expand our understanding of frequent frames in general, while also adding to the relatively sparse information on the nature of child-directed speech in Hebrew.
Cognitive Science, Apr 1, 2016
Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics, 2019
Cognition, Jun 1, 2022
While the languages of the world differ in many respects, they share certain commonalties, which ... more While the languages of the world differ in many respects, they share certain commonalties, which can provide insight on our shared cognition. Here, we explore the learnability consequences of one of the striking commonalities between languages. Across languages, word frequencies follow a Zipfian distribution, showing a power law relation between a word's frequency and its rank. While their source in language has been studied extensively, less work has explored the learnability consequences of such distributions for language learners. We propose that the greater predictability of words in this distribution (relative to less skewed distributions) can facilitate word segmentation, a crucial aspect of early language acquisition. To explore this, we quantify word predictability using unigram entropy, assess it across languages using naturalistic corpora of child-directed speech and then ask whether similar unigram predictability facilitates word segmentation in the lab. We find similar unigram entropy in child-directed speech across 15 languages. We then use an auditory word segmentation task to show that the unigram predictability levels found in natural language are uniquely facilitative for word segmentation for both children and adults. These findings illustrate the facilitative impact of skewed input distributions on learning and raise questions about the possible role of cognitive pressures in the prevalence of Zipfian distributions in language.
Encyclopedia of Language Development, Jun 20, 2014
Encyclopedia of Language Development, Jun 20, 2014
Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2021
Trends in language acquisition research, Aug 15, 2016
The chapter explores the distribution and content of frequent frames – recurring multiword sequen... more The chapter explores the distribution and content of frequent frames – recurring multiword sequences – appearing at the start of utterances in speech directed to young Hebrew-speaking children. Previous work has documented the existence and prevalence of such frames in several languages (English, German, and Russian). Here, analysis of a dense corpus of Hebrew child-directed speech was undertaken with two goals in mind. The first aims at examining the distribution of multiword elements in Hebrew child-directed speech, to ascertain whether frequent frames are found in a morphologically rich language like Hebrew and, if so, to see how pervasive they are compared to other languages, and how consistent across different caretakers. The second goal is to explore the content of frequent frames in Hebrew to address such questions as: Do they provide children with relevant morphological and syntactic information? Are they frequent enough to be employed in learning? Results show that frequent frames do occur in Hebrew, that they are relatively consistent across caretakers, and that they illustrate a range of grammatical relations. These findings expand our understanding of frequent frames in general, while also adding to the relatively sparse information on the nature of child-directed speech in Hebrew.
Cognitive Science, Apr 1, 2016
Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics, 2019
Cognition, Jun 1, 2022
While the languages of the world differ in many respects, they share certain commonalties, which ... more While the languages of the world differ in many respects, they share certain commonalties, which can provide insight on our shared cognition. Here, we explore the learnability consequences of one of the striking commonalities between languages. Across languages, word frequencies follow a Zipfian distribution, showing a power law relation between a word's frequency and its rank. While their source in language has been studied extensively, less work has explored the learnability consequences of such distributions for language learners. We propose that the greater predictability of words in this distribution (relative to less skewed distributions) can facilitate word segmentation, a crucial aspect of early language acquisition. To explore this, we quantify word predictability using unigram entropy, assess it across languages using naturalistic corpora of child-directed speech and then ask whether similar unigram predictability facilitates word segmentation in the lab. We find similar unigram entropy in child-directed speech across 15 languages. We then use an auditory word segmentation task to show that the unigram predictability levels found in natural language are uniquely facilitative for word segmentation for both children and adults. These findings illustrate the facilitative impact of skewed input distributions on learning and raise questions about the possible role of cognitive pressures in the prevalence of Zipfian distributions in language.
personalpages.manchester.ac.uk
In this chapter, we address the debate between single-system and dual-system models of language b... more In this chapter, we address the debate between single-system and dual-system models of language by looking at the processing of multi-word phrases. We present findings that challenge the distinction between ‘stored’ and ‘computed’ linguistic forms via two experiments. The first demonstrates parallels in the processing of words and phrases: frequent four-word phrases are processed more quickly than less frequent ones, without any evidence of a frequency threshold. The second experiment shows that idiomatic phrases prime their construction just as well as non-idiomatic phrases, suggesting that they are not stored as analyzed wholes, but instead have internal structure. Taken together, the findings undermine the empirical criteria traditionally used to distinguish between ‘stored’ and ‘computed’ forms: compositional phrases showed frequency effects, even though such effects are often thought to be a marker of lexical storage, while non-compositional forms (idioms) showed evidence of internal structure, unexpected if they are stored as unanalyzed wholes. The findings show that linguistic structures are processed in qualitatively the same way regardless of where they fall on the frequency and compositionality continua, and highlight the utility of models that deal with all linguistic experience in a qualitatively similar fashion, and allow for experience to influence the learning, representation and processing of all linguistic patterns.
The Acquisition of Relative Clauses: Processing, …, Jan 1, 2011
In this chapter, I outline the developmental path of relative clauses in Hebrew while asking more... more In this chapter, I outline the developmental path of relative clauses in Hebrew while asking more general questions about how constructions are learned. I argue that Hebrew-speaking children show a gradual expansion of uses that is sensitive to the distributional patterns in their input. This pattern, found both in comprehension and production, is consistent with usage-based predictions about how constructions are learned. Taking Hebrew relative clauses as a case-study, I show how children’s own uses become more semantically and structurally complex, and how their understanding develops to rely less on morphological cues. By looking closely at production and comprehension patterns we can see that children’s use of relative clauses, like that of other constructions, develops gradually over time in ways that are sensitive to language-general and language specific cues. Finally, I suggest that the frequency of multi-word sequences (larger than one lexical word) plays a role in children’s expansion of uses: Other things being equal, children prefer to produce construction variants with a higher chunk frequency.
Experience, Variation and Generalization: Learning a …, Jan 1, 2011
Text-book descriptions of how production develops in first language acquisition often move from b... more Text-book descriptions of how production develops in first language acquisition often move from babbling (producing syllables), through single-word utterances, to multi-word combinations. This progression emphasizes the small-to-big aspect of language learning where each stage involves larger, more structured linguistic units. In this chapter, I discuss an equally important, but often neglected, process: the move from large unanalyzed units to the identification and analysis of smaller more structured ones. I present evidence for such Gestalt processes in a range of linguistic domains (phonetics, morphology, and syntax), and suggest that they play an important role in first language learning by offering children another route into linguistic structure. I discuss implications for identifying early building blocks for language learning.
Relative clauses (RCs) have been studied extensively in language acquisition and adult processing... more Relative clauses (RCs) have been studied extensively in language acquisition and adult processing. Studies show that both children and adults find object relatives harder than subject relatives [1, 2]. Despite the similar pattern, adult difficulty is taken to reflect the increased processing demands of object relatives [1] while child difficulty is often interpreted as evidence for children's lack of adult-like knowledge of the structure, attributed to under-developed syntax [2] or to the use of non-adult processing heuristics which are ...
Are speakers sensitive to four-gram frequency? Production is affected by the frequency (and predi... more Are speakers sensitive to four-gram frequency? Production is affected by the frequency (and predictability) of linguistic material of varying sizes. Words are phonetically reduced in more predictable semantic and syntactic environments (eg, Jurafsky et al. 2001; Gahl & Garnsey, 2004; Tily et al., 2009), and in highly collocated phrases (eg I don't know, Bybee & Schiebman, 1999). Such investigations uncover the range of distributional information speakers are sensitive to.
ABSTRACT Children find object relative clauses difficult. They show poor comprehension that lags ... more ABSTRACT Children find object relative clauses difficult. They show poor comprehension that lags behind production into their fifth year. This finding has shaped models of relative clause acquisition, with appeals to processing heuristics or syntactic preferences to explain why object relatives are more difficult than subject relatives. Two studies here suggest that children (age 4; 6) do not find all object relatives difficult: a corpus study shows that children most often hear and produce object relatives with pronominal subjects.
Page 1. Phonetic Production Reflects Syntactic Probability: Evidence from Duration and Disfluency... more Page 1. Phonetic Production Reflects Syntactic Probability: Evidence from Duration and Disfluency Harry Tily, Neal Snider, Anubha Kothari, Inbal Arnon and Joan Bresnan Department of Linguistics Stanford University AMLaP, Turku August 2007 Page 2. Is linguistic knowledge probabilistic?
Abstract Speakers frequently have a choice among multiple ways of expressing one and the same tho... more Abstract Speakers frequently have a choice among multiple ways of expressing one and the same thought. When choosing between syntactic constructions for expressing a given meaning, speakers are sensitive to probabilistic tendencies for syntactic, semantic or contextual properties of an utterance to favor one construction or another. Taken together, such tendencies may align to make one construction overwhelmingly more probable, marginally more probable, or no more probable than another.
What does it mean to 'learn'a syntactic construction? Looking at relative clause acquisition in H... more What does it mean to 'learn'a syntactic construction? Looking at relative clause acquisition in Hebrew, I argue for a usage-based approach where learning constructions involves a gradual expansion of uses (from formulaic to more productive,[1]) that is sensitive to the distributional patterns in the input, and a gradual reduction of lexical specificity [2].
Language and Cognitive Processes, 2012
The dative alternation the pirate will send the necklace to the princess (PP) the pirate will sen... more The dative alternation the pirate will send the necklace to the princess (PP) the pirate will send the princess the necklace(DO)• dative verbs also display bias effects:• p (PP| send)> p (DO| send)• p (PP| show)< p (DO| show)• this cannot be reduced to a difference in meaning• the two constructions mean basically the same thing• controlling for semantic properties of the arguments, Bresnan et al (2007) still find e ects of verb bias
Are all children exposed to the same linguistic input, and do they follow the same route in acqui... more Are all children exposed to the same linguistic input, and do they follow the same route in acquisition? The answer is no: The language that children hear differs even within a social class or cultural setting, as do the paths individual children take. The linguistic signal itself is also variable, both within and across speakers - the same sound is different across words; the same speech act can be realized with different constructions. The challenge here is to explain, given their diversity of experience, how children arrive at similar generalizations about their first language. This volume brings together studies of phonology, morphology, and syntax in development, to present a new perspective on how experience and variation shape children’s linguistic generalizations. The papers deal with variation in forms, learning processes, and speaker features, and assess the impact of variation on the mechanisms and outcomes of language learning.
ABSTRACT Why are children better language learners than adults? Intuitively, there is a differenc... more ABSTRACT Why are children better language learners than adults? Intuitively, there is a difference between the unstructured (yet successful) way a child learns language and the effortful and often frustrating experience of trying to master a new language as an adult. On an empirical level, non-native speakers rarely reach native proficiency in pronunciation, morphological and syntactic processing, or in the use of formulaic language and idioms.
Unpublished …, 2010
Eastern Michigan University. RSS Feed. Submit; Site Map; Advanced Search; Read LINGUIST. Reviewer... more Eastern Michigan University. RSS Feed. Submit; Site Map; Advanced Search; Read LINGUIST. Reviewer Login; search. LINGUIST List > Publications > Dissertation Abstracts > Dissertation Details. About Us: Index; Our History; Our Staff; Our Supporters; Our Policies; ...
CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing. March, Mar 1, 2007
Relative clauses have been extensively studied in language acquisition due to their complex struc... more Relative clauses have been extensively studied in language acquisition due to their complex structure and the apparent difficulty children have with them. Their study has been made more intriguing by the well-documented asymmetry between subject and object relatives. It has long been noted that children comprehend subject relatives better than they do object relatives (Correa, 1995; Friedmann & Novogrodsky, 2004; de Villiers, 1979).
Proceedings of BLS, Jan 1, 2006
Design – 2 x 2 wh-FILLER (first wh-phrase: which NP vs. bare what) wh-INTERVENER (second wh-phras... more Design – 2 x 2 wh-FILLER (first wh-phrase: which NP vs. bare what) wh-INTERVENER (second wh-phrase: which NP vs. bare who) Manipulating the accessibility by choosing either the more accessible which-phrase or less accessible bare wh-phrases.
Poster presented at the Tenth International Congress …, 2005
In has long been noted, in a variety of languages (French, English, Hebrew) and tasks (act-out, p... more In has long been noted, in a variety of languages (French, English, Hebrew) and tasks (act-out, picture-selection) that children have difficulty in comprehending object relative clauses. Two studies examining the production and comprehension of both resumptive and non-...
Proceedings of the 31st …, Jan 1, 2010
Human infants and adults are able to segment coherent sequences from unsegmented strings of audit... more Human infants and adults are able to segment coherent sequences from unsegmented strings of auditory stimuli after only a short exposure, an ability thought to be linked to early
language acquisition. Although some research has hypothesized that learners succeed in these tasks by computing transitional probabilities between syllables, current experimental results do not differentiate between a range of models of different computations that learners could perform. We created a set of stimuli that was consistent with two different lexicons—one consisting of two-syllable words and one of three-syllable words—but where transition probabilities would not lead learners to segment sentences consistently according to either lexicon. Participants’ responses formed a distribution over possible segmentations that included consistent segmentations into both two- and three-syllable words, suggesting that learners do not use pure transitional probabilities to segment but instead impose a bias towards parsimony on the lexicons they learn.
Proceedings of the 29th Boston University Conference …, Jan 1, 2005