T. Florian Jaeger | University of Rochester (original) (raw)

Papers by T. Florian Jaeger

Research paper thumbnail of Maintenance of subcategorical information during speech perception: revisiting misunderstood limitations

Research paper thumbnail of Incremental Planning of Complex Noun Phrases in Sentence Production

Research paper thumbnail of Incremental Phonological Encoding during Unscripted Sentence Production

Frontiers in Psychology, 2012

Research paper thumbnail of Distributional learning

pr ed ict ed re sp on se predicted category boundary Supervised and unsupervised learning in phon... more pr ed ict ed re sp on se predicted category boundary Supervised and unsupervised learning in phonetic adaptation Do people use category labels during adaptation? Our question: Language learning doesn't stop once you reach adulthood: talkers use linguistic cues to realize their intentions in different ways. To adapt to a new talker, you have to learn the way they use cues. If you know their intented meaning, this learning should be a lot easier. Learning with known category labels is called supervised learning, and learning from cues only is called unsupervised learning.

Research paper thumbnail of Production is biased to provide informative cues early: Evidence from miniature artificial languages

Cognitive Science, 2015

The role of processing constraints on sentence structure has been a topic of central interest in ... more The role of processing constraints on sentence structure has been a topic of central interest in cognitive science. One proposal (Hawkins, 2004) suggests that language production system is organized to facilitate efficient parsing. We experimentally test this hypothesis using a miniature artificial language learning paradigm. Our findings support this account. Even though the input languages did not favor early placement of cues to grammatical function assignment (case and word order), participants used these cues in their own productions significantly more often in such a way as to allow early correct parsing commitments. This preference interacted with a bias to mark the less expected: Participants tended to use more case-marking in non-English OSV sentences. Our results underscore the potential of miniature artificial learning for language production research.

Research paper thumbnail of What do you expect from an unfamiliar talker?

Cognitive Science, 2016

Speech perception is made much harder by variability between talkers. As a result, listeners need... more Speech perception is made much harder by variability between talkers. As a result, listeners need to adapt to each different talker’s particular acoustic cue distributions. Thinking of this adaptation as a form of statistical inference, we explore the role that listeners’ prior expectations play in adapting to an unfamiliar talker. Specifically, we test the hypothesis that listeners will have a harder time adapting to talkers whose cue distributions fall outside the range of normal variation across talkers. We also show that it is possible to infer listeners’ shared prior expectations based on patterns of adaptation to different cue distributions. This provides a potentially powerful tool for directly probing listeners’ prior expectations about talkers that does not rely on speech produced by many different talkers, which is costly to collect and annotate, and only indirectly related to listeners’ subjective expectations.

Research paper thumbnail of A Rational Model of Incremental Argument Interpretation: The Comprehension of Swedish Transitive Clauses

Frontiers in Psychology, 2021

A central component of sentence understanding is verb-argument interpretation, determining how th... more A central component of sentence understanding is verb-argument interpretation, determining how the referents in the sentence are related to the events or states expressed by the verb. Previous work has found that comprehenders change their argument interpretations incrementally as the sentence unfolds, based on morphosyntactic (e.g., case, agreement), lexico-semantic (e.g., animacy, verb-argument fit), and discourse cues (e.g., givenness). However, it is still unknown whether these cues have a privileged role in language processing, or whether their effects on argument interpretation originate in implicit expectations based on the joint distribution of these cues with argument assignments experienced in previous language input. We compare the former,linguisticaccount against the latter,expectation-basedaccount, using data from production and comprehension of transitive clauses in Swedish. Based on a large corpus of Swedish, we develop a rational (Bayesian) model of incremental argum...

Research paper thumbnail of Production efficiency can cause grammatical change: Learners deviate from the input to better balance efficiency against robust message transmission

Research paper thumbnail of Big data suggest strong constraints of linguistic similarity on adult language learning

Research paper thumbnail of Changing expectations mediate adaptation in L2 production

Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 2019

Native language (L1) processing draws on implicit expectations. An open question is whether non-n... more Native language (L1) processing draws on implicit expectations. An open question is whether non-native learners of a second language (L2) similarly draw on expectations, and whether these expectations are based on learners’ L1 or L2 knowledge. We approach this question by studying inverse preference effects on lexical encoding. L1 and L2 speakers of Spanish described motion events, while they were either primed to express path, manner, or neither. In line with other work, we find that L1 speakers adapted more strongly after primes that are unexpected in their L1. For L2 speakers, adaptation depended on their L2 proficiency: The least proficient speakers exhibited the inverse preference effect on adaptation based on what was unexpected in their L1; but the more proficient speakers were, the more they exhibited inverse preference effects based on what was unexpected in the L2. We discuss implications for L1 transfer and L2 acquisition.

Research paper thumbnail of The interdependence of frequency, predictability, and informativity in the segmental domain

Linguistics Vanguard, 2018

It has long been noted that language production seems to reflect a correlation between message re... more It has long been noted that language production seems to reflect a correlation between message redundancy and signal reduction. More frequent words and contextually predictable instances of words, for example, tend to be produced with shorter and less clear signals. The same tendency is observed in the language code (e.g. the phonological lexicon), where more frequent words and words that are typically contextually predictable tend to have fewer segments or syllables. Average predictability in context (informativity) also seems to be an important factor in understanding phonological alternations. What has received little attention so far is the relation between various information-theoretic indices – such as frequency, contextual predictability, and informativity. Although each of these indices has been associated with different theories about the source of the redundancy-reduction link, different indices tend to be highly correlated in natural language, making it difficult to tease...

Research paper thumbnail of Thinking Is Modulated by Recent Linguistic Experience: Second Language Priming Affects Perceived Event Similarity

Language Learning, 2016

Can recent second language (L2) exposure affect what we judge to be similar events? Using a primi... more Can recent second language (L2) exposure affect what we judge to be similar events? Using a priming paradigm, we manipulated whether native Swedish adult learners of L2 Spanish were primed to use path or manner during L2 descriptions of scenes depicting caused motion events (encoding phase). Subsequently, participants engaged in a nonverbal task, arranging events on the screen according to similarity (test phase). Path versus manner priming affected how participants judged event similarity during the test phase. The effects we find support the hypotheses that (a) speakers create or select ad hoc conceptual categories that are based on linguistic knowledge to carry out nonverbal tasks, and that (b) short‐term, recent L2 experience can affect this ad hoc process. These findings further suggest that cognition can flexibly draw on linguistic categories that have been implicitly highlighted during recent exposure.Open PracticesThis article has been awarded an Open Data badge. All data ar...

Research paper thumbnail of Balancing Effort and Information Transmission During Language Acquisition: Evidence From Word Order and Case Marking

Research paper thumbnail of Phonological Optimization and Syntactic Variation: The Case of Optional That

Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 2006

Research paper thumbnail of Supervised and unsupervised learning in phonetic adaptation

Speech perception requires ongoing perceptual category learning. Each talker speaks differently, ... more Speech perception requires ongoing perceptual category learning. Each talker speaks differently, and listeners need to learn each talker's particular acoustic cue distributions in order to comprehend speech robustly from multiple talkers. This pho-netic adaptation is a semi-supervised learning problem, because sometimes a particular cue value occurs with information that labels the talker's intended category for the listener, but other times no such labels are available. Previous work has shown that adaptation can occur in both purely supervised (all labeled) and purely unsupervised (all unlabeled) settings, but the interaction between them has not been investigated. We compare unsupervised with (semi-) supervised phonetic adaptation and find, surprisingly, that adult listeners do not take advantage of labeling information to adapt more quickly or effectively , even though the labels affect their categorization. This suggests that, like language acquisition, phonetic adaptat...

Research paper thumbnail of Syntactic constraints and production preferences for optional plural marking in Yucatec Maya

Zwischen Kern und Peripherie, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of On language ‘utility’: processing complexity and communicative efficiency

WIREs Cognitive Science, 2010

Functionalist typologists have long argued that pressures associated with language usage influenc... more Functionalist typologists have long argued that pressures associated with language usage influence the distribution of grammatical properties across the world's languages. Specifically, grammatical properties may be observed more often across languages because they improve a language's utility or decrease its complexity. While this approach to the study of typology offers the potential of explaining grammatical patterns in terms of general principles rather than domain‐specific constraints, the notions of utility and complexity are more often grounded in intuition than empirical findings. A suitable empirical foundation might be found in the terms of processing preferences: in that case, psycholinguistic measures of complexity are then expected correlate with typological patterns. We summarize half a century of psycholinguistic work on ‘processing complexity’ in an attempt to make this work accessible to a broader audience: What makes something hard to process for comprehend...

Research paper thumbnail of Language learners restructure their input to facilitate efficient communication

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012

Languages of the world display many structural similarities. We test the hypothesis that some of ... more Languages of the world display many structural similarities. We test the hypothesis that some of these structural properties may arise from biases operating during language acquisition that shape languages over time. Specifically, we investigate whether language learners are biased toward linguistic systems that strike an efficient balance between robust information transfer, on the one hand, and effort or resource demands, on the other hand, thereby increasing the communicative utility of the acquired language. In two experiments, we expose learners to miniature artificial languages designed in such a way that they do not use their formal devices (case marking) efficiently to facilitate robust information transfer. We find that learners restructure such languages in ways that facilitate efficient information transfer compared with the input language. These systematic changes introduced by the learners follow typologically frequent patterns, supporting the hypothesis that some of th...

Research paper thumbnail of The source ambiguity problem: Distinguishing the effects of grammar and processing on acceptability judgments

Language and Cognitive Processes, 2013

Research paper thumbnail of Production preferences cannot be understood without reference to communication

Frontiers in Psychology, 2013

Research paper thumbnail of Maintenance of subcategorical information during speech perception: revisiting misunderstood limitations

Research paper thumbnail of Incremental Planning of Complex Noun Phrases in Sentence Production

Research paper thumbnail of Incremental Phonological Encoding during Unscripted Sentence Production

Frontiers in Psychology, 2012

Research paper thumbnail of Distributional learning

pr ed ict ed re sp on se predicted category boundary Supervised and unsupervised learning in phon... more pr ed ict ed re sp on se predicted category boundary Supervised and unsupervised learning in phonetic adaptation Do people use category labels during adaptation? Our question: Language learning doesn't stop once you reach adulthood: talkers use linguistic cues to realize their intentions in different ways. To adapt to a new talker, you have to learn the way they use cues. If you know their intented meaning, this learning should be a lot easier. Learning with known category labels is called supervised learning, and learning from cues only is called unsupervised learning.

Research paper thumbnail of Production is biased to provide informative cues early: Evidence from miniature artificial languages

Cognitive Science, 2015

The role of processing constraints on sentence structure has been a topic of central interest in ... more The role of processing constraints on sentence structure has been a topic of central interest in cognitive science. One proposal (Hawkins, 2004) suggests that language production system is organized to facilitate efficient parsing. We experimentally test this hypothesis using a miniature artificial language learning paradigm. Our findings support this account. Even though the input languages did not favor early placement of cues to grammatical function assignment (case and word order), participants used these cues in their own productions significantly more often in such a way as to allow early correct parsing commitments. This preference interacted with a bias to mark the less expected: Participants tended to use more case-marking in non-English OSV sentences. Our results underscore the potential of miniature artificial learning for language production research.

Research paper thumbnail of What do you expect from an unfamiliar talker?

Cognitive Science, 2016

Speech perception is made much harder by variability between talkers. As a result, listeners need... more Speech perception is made much harder by variability between talkers. As a result, listeners need to adapt to each different talker’s particular acoustic cue distributions. Thinking of this adaptation as a form of statistical inference, we explore the role that listeners’ prior expectations play in adapting to an unfamiliar talker. Specifically, we test the hypothesis that listeners will have a harder time adapting to talkers whose cue distributions fall outside the range of normal variation across talkers. We also show that it is possible to infer listeners’ shared prior expectations based on patterns of adaptation to different cue distributions. This provides a potentially powerful tool for directly probing listeners’ prior expectations about talkers that does not rely on speech produced by many different talkers, which is costly to collect and annotate, and only indirectly related to listeners’ subjective expectations.

Research paper thumbnail of A Rational Model of Incremental Argument Interpretation: The Comprehension of Swedish Transitive Clauses

Frontiers in Psychology, 2021

A central component of sentence understanding is verb-argument interpretation, determining how th... more A central component of sentence understanding is verb-argument interpretation, determining how the referents in the sentence are related to the events or states expressed by the verb. Previous work has found that comprehenders change their argument interpretations incrementally as the sentence unfolds, based on morphosyntactic (e.g., case, agreement), lexico-semantic (e.g., animacy, verb-argument fit), and discourse cues (e.g., givenness). However, it is still unknown whether these cues have a privileged role in language processing, or whether their effects on argument interpretation originate in implicit expectations based on the joint distribution of these cues with argument assignments experienced in previous language input. We compare the former,linguisticaccount against the latter,expectation-basedaccount, using data from production and comprehension of transitive clauses in Swedish. Based on a large corpus of Swedish, we develop a rational (Bayesian) model of incremental argum...

Research paper thumbnail of Production efficiency can cause grammatical change: Learners deviate from the input to better balance efficiency against robust message transmission

Research paper thumbnail of Big data suggest strong constraints of linguistic similarity on adult language learning

Research paper thumbnail of Changing expectations mediate adaptation in L2 production

Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 2019

Native language (L1) processing draws on implicit expectations. An open question is whether non-n... more Native language (L1) processing draws on implicit expectations. An open question is whether non-native learners of a second language (L2) similarly draw on expectations, and whether these expectations are based on learners’ L1 or L2 knowledge. We approach this question by studying inverse preference effects on lexical encoding. L1 and L2 speakers of Spanish described motion events, while they were either primed to express path, manner, or neither. In line with other work, we find that L1 speakers adapted more strongly after primes that are unexpected in their L1. For L2 speakers, adaptation depended on their L2 proficiency: The least proficient speakers exhibited the inverse preference effect on adaptation based on what was unexpected in their L1; but the more proficient speakers were, the more they exhibited inverse preference effects based on what was unexpected in the L2. We discuss implications for L1 transfer and L2 acquisition.

Research paper thumbnail of The interdependence of frequency, predictability, and informativity in the segmental domain

Linguistics Vanguard, 2018

It has long been noted that language production seems to reflect a correlation between message re... more It has long been noted that language production seems to reflect a correlation between message redundancy and signal reduction. More frequent words and contextually predictable instances of words, for example, tend to be produced with shorter and less clear signals. The same tendency is observed in the language code (e.g. the phonological lexicon), where more frequent words and words that are typically contextually predictable tend to have fewer segments or syllables. Average predictability in context (informativity) also seems to be an important factor in understanding phonological alternations. What has received little attention so far is the relation between various information-theoretic indices – such as frequency, contextual predictability, and informativity. Although each of these indices has been associated with different theories about the source of the redundancy-reduction link, different indices tend to be highly correlated in natural language, making it difficult to tease...

Research paper thumbnail of Thinking Is Modulated by Recent Linguistic Experience: Second Language Priming Affects Perceived Event Similarity

Language Learning, 2016

Can recent second language (L2) exposure affect what we judge to be similar events? Using a primi... more Can recent second language (L2) exposure affect what we judge to be similar events? Using a priming paradigm, we manipulated whether native Swedish adult learners of L2 Spanish were primed to use path or manner during L2 descriptions of scenes depicting caused motion events (encoding phase). Subsequently, participants engaged in a nonverbal task, arranging events on the screen according to similarity (test phase). Path versus manner priming affected how participants judged event similarity during the test phase. The effects we find support the hypotheses that (a) speakers create or select ad hoc conceptual categories that are based on linguistic knowledge to carry out nonverbal tasks, and that (b) short‐term, recent L2 experience can affect this ad hoc process. These findings further suggest that cognition can flexibly draw on linguistic categories that have been implicitly highlighted during recent exposure.Open PracticesThis article has been awarded an Open Data badge. All data ar...

Research paper thumbnail of Balancing Effort and Information Transmission During Language Acquisition: Evidence From Word Order and Case Marking

Research paper thumbnail of Phonological Optimization and Syntactic Variation: The Case of Optional That

Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 2006

Research paper thumbnail of Supervised and unsupervised learning in phonetic adaptation

Speech perception requires ongoing perceptual category learning. Each talker speaks differently, ... more Speech perception requires ongoing perceptual category learning. Each talker speaks differently, and listeners need to learn each talker's particular acoustic cue distributions in order to comprehend speech robustly from multiple talkers. This pho-netic adaptation is a semi-supervised learning problem, because sometimes a particular cue value occurs with information that labels the talker's intended category for the listener, but other times no such labels are available. Previous work has shown that adaptation can occur in both purely supervised (all labeled) and purely unsupervised (all unlabeled) settings, but the interaction between them has not been investigated. We compare unsupervised with (semi-) supervised phonetic adaptation and find, surprisingly, that adult listeners do not take advantage of labeling information to adapt more quickly or effectively , even though the labels affect their categorization. This suggests that, like language acquisition, phonetic adaptat...

Research paper thumbnail of Syntactic constraints and production preferences for optional plural marking in Yucatec Maya

Zwischen Kern und Peripherie, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of On language ‘utility’: processing complexity and communicative efficiency

WIREs Cognitive Science, 2010

Functionalist typologists have long argued that pressures associated with language usage influenc... more Functionalist typologists have long argued that pressures associated with language usage influence the distribution of grammatical properties across the world's languages. Specifically, grammatical properties may be observed more often across languages because they improve a language's utility or decrease its complexity. While this approach to the study of typology offers the potential of explaining grammatical patterns in terms of general principles rather than domain‐specific constraints, the notions of utility and complexity are more often grounded in intuition than empirical findings. A suitable empirical foundation might be found in the terms of processing preferences: in that case, psycholinguistic measures of complexity are then expected correlate with typological patterns. We summarize half a century of psycholinguistic work on ‘processing complexity’ in an attempt to make this work accessible to a broader audience: What makes something hard to process for comprehend...

Research paper thumbnail of Language learners restructure their input to facilitate efficient communication

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012

Languages of the world display many structural similarities. We test the hypothesis that some of ... more Languages of the world display many structural similarities. We test the hypothesis that some of these structural properties may arise from biases operating during language acquisition that shape languages over time. Specifically, we investigate whether language learners are biased toward linguistic systems that strike an efficient balance between robust information transfer, on the one hand, and effort or resource demands, on the other hand, thereby increasing the communicative utility of the acquired language. In two experiments, we expose learners to miniature artificial languages designed in such a way that they do not use their formal devices (case marking) efficiently to facilitate robust information transfer. We find that learners restructure such languages in ways that facilitate efficient information transfer compared with the input language. These systematic changes introduced by the learners follow typologically frequent patterns, supporting the hypothesis that some of th...

Research paper thumbnail of The source ambiguity problem: Distinguishing the effects of grammar and processing on acceptability judgments

Language and Cognitive Processes, 2013

Research paper thumbnail of Production preferences cannot be understood without reference to communication

Frontiers in Psychology, 2013

Research paper thumbnail of Signal Reduction and Linguistic Encoding

Handbook of Psycholinguistics, 2017

Speakers can produce utterances with more or less articulatory detail or even completely omit cer... more Speakers can produce utterances with more or less articulatory detail or even completely omit certain words, while still conveying the same message. Similar reduction exists at higher levels of linguistic representation, allowing—in the appropriate context—the omission of entire words or even phrases without loss of (near) meaning-equivalence. Such reduction lets speakers adjust the amount of information they provide in a given span of time or amount of signal. This chapter is divided into two parts. The first part provides an empirical summary of psycholinguistics research on reduction and omission across levels of linguistic representation. We focus on the relation between signal reduction and the predictability of the message components encoded by that signal: speakers tend to reduce the signal of predictable message components. The second part of this chapter discuss possible explanations of this correlation. One type of explanation focuses on the attentional and memory pressures inherent to linguistic encoding. Another type of explanation focuses on the role of communicative goals in linguistic encoding. Finally, we discuss to what extent reduction is best explained in terms of changes to linguistic representations or biases operating during online language production.

Research paper thumbnail of Speech perception and generalization across speakers and accents

The seeming ease with which we usually understand each other belies the complexity of the process... more The seeming ease with which we usually understand each other belies the complexity of the processes that underlie speech perception. One of the biggest computational challenges is that different talkers realize the same speech categories (e.g., /p/) in physically di erent ways. We review the mixture of processes that enable robust speech understanding across talkers despite this lack of invariance. These processes range from automatic pre-speech adjustments of the distribution of energy over acoustic frequencies (normalization) to implicit statistical learning of talker-specific properties (adaptation, perceptual recalibration), to the generalization of these patterns across groups of talkers (e.g., gender di erences).

Research paper thumbnail of Head-marking and agreement: Evidence from Yucatec Maya

Fleischhauer, J. Latrouite, A. & Osswald, R. (eds.) Exploring the Syntax-Semantics-Pragmatics Interface, 49-87. Düsseldorf: dup., 2016

Research paper thumbnail of Miniature artificial language learning as a complement to typological data.

Research paper thumbnail of Butler, L.K., Bohnemeyer, J, and Jaeger, T.F. 2014. Syntactic constraints and production preferences for optional plural marking in Yucatec Maya. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.

We investigate the distribution of optional plural-marking on nouns and verbals in Yucatec Maya.

Research paper thumbnail of Klein, N., Carlson, G., Li, R., Jaeger, T.F., and Tanenhaus, M. (2012) Classifying and Massifying Incrementally in Chinese Language Comprehension.

Research paper thumbnail of Jaeger, T. F. 2011. Corpus-based Research on Language Production: Information Density and Reducible Subject Relatives. In Benders, E. M. and Arnold, J. E. (eds): Language from a Cognitive Perspective: Grammar, Usage, and Processing. Studies in honor of Tom Wasow, 161-197. Stanford: CSLI Publications.

This paper provides an introduction to corpus-based research on language production and the decis... more This paper provides an introduction to corpus-based research on language production and the decision a research has to face when conducting such research. The case study I discuss is on whiz-deletion (the optional mention of relativizer plus auxiliary) in passive subject-extracted relative clauses in written British English. I find that such reduction is more probable, the more predictable the relative clause is. Whiz-deletion hence turns out to resemble that-mentioning in complement and relative clauses (cf., for example, Jaeger, 2006, 2010; Levy and Jaeger, 2007; Wasow, Jaeger, and Orr, 2011).

Research paper thumbnail of Failure to replicate talker-specific syntactic adaptation

Sentence understanding is affected by recent experience. An important open question is whether th... more Sentence understanding is affected by recent experience. An important open question is whether this reflects adaptation to the statistics of the input. Support for this hypothesis comes from the recent finding that listeners can simultaneously learn and maintain the syntactic statistics of multiple talkers (Kamide, 2012). We attempt—and fail—to replicate this finding. This calls into questions whether recency effects in sentence processing originate in the same adaptive mechanisms operating during speech perception (for which talker-specific adaptation is well-established).

Research paper thumbnail of Maintenance of Perceptual Information in Speech Perception

Acoustic and contextual cues to linguistic categories (e.g., phonemes or words) tend to be tempor... more Acoustic and contextual cues to linguistic categories (e.g., phonemes or words) tend to be temporally distributed across the speech signal. Optimal cue integration thus requires maintenance of subcategorical information over time. At the same time, previous work suggests that finite sensory memory or processing capacity strongly limits how much subcategorical information can be maintained (or for how long). We argue that previous work might have over-interpreted the role of these limitations. In two perception experiments, we find no limit in the ability to maintain subcategorical information. We also find that maintenance seems to be the default, neither limited to perceptually particularly ambiguous signals, nor a learned strategy specific to our experiment. In contrast, listen-ers' decision for how long to delay categorization, we find, is a function of perceptual ambiguity. It is therefore crucial to distinguish between in-principle abilities (even when they reflect default processing), and decisions made within the bounds of those abilities.

Research paper thumbnail of Error-Driven Adaptation of Higher-Level Expectations During Reading

Fine et al. (2013) recently demonstrated that readers continually adapt their syntactic expectati... more Fine et al. (2013) recently demonstrated that readers continually adapt their syntactic expectations in order to accurately approximate the distributions of syntactic structures in a given communicative context. Here, we examine patterns of eye movements as subjects read sentences that contain an atypical distribution of syntactic structures to gain more fine-grained insight into the time-course and nature of this adaptive process. An adaptation effect was only elicited on a late measure— second-pass reading times—consistent with the claim that expectation adaptation to an atypical distribution of syntactic structures occurs at a higher level that is abstracted away from the physical properties of the visual input.

Research paper thumbnail of Linzen, T. and Jaeger, T. F. 2014. Investigating the role of entropy in sentence processing. Proceedings of CMCL, 10-18.

Proceedings of CMCL.

"We outline four ways in which uncertainty might affect comprehension difficulty in human sentenc... more "We outline four ways in which uncertainty might affect comprehension difficulty in human sentence processing. These four hypotheses motivate a self-paced reading experiment, in which we used verb subcategorization distributions to manipulate
the uncertainty over the next step in the syntactic derivation (single step entropy) and the surprisal of the verb’s complement.
We additionally estimate word-by-word surprisal and total entropy over parses of the sentence using a probabilistic context-free grammar (PCFG). Surprisal and total entropy, but not single step entropy, were significant predictors of reading times in different parts of the sentence. This suggests that a complete model
of sentence processing should incorporate both entropy and surprisal."

Research paper thumbnail of Fine, A. B., Frank, A., Jaeger, T. F., and Van Durme, B. 2014. Biases in Predicting the Human Language Model. Proceedings of ACL 2014, Baltimore, MD, June 22nd-27th, XXX-XXX.

Fine, A. B., Frank, A., Jaeger, T. F., and Van Durme, B. 2014. Biases in Predicting the Human Language Model. Proceedings of ACL 2014, Baltimore, MD, June 22nd-27th, XXX-XXX.

We consider the prediction of three human behavioral measures – lexical decision, word naming, an... more We consider the prediction of three human behavioral measures – lexical decision, word naming, and picture naming – through the lens of domain bias in language modeling. Contrasting the predictive ability of statistics derived from 6 different corpora, we find intuitive results showing that, e.g., a British corpus overpredicts the speed with which an American will react to the words ward and duke, and that the Google n-grams overpredicts familiarity with technology terms. This study aims to provoke increased consideration of the human language model by NLP practitioners: biases are not limited to differences between corpora (i.e. “train” vs. “test”); they can exist as well between corpora and the intended user of the resultant technology.

Research paper thumbnail of Butler, L. K., Bohnemeyer, J., and Jaeger, T. F. 2014. Order of nominal conjuncts in visual scene description depends on language. In TBA (eds.) Proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci14), TBA. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Previous work has found that experience with the directionality of a writing system (e.g., left-t... more Previous work has found that experience with the directionality of a writing system (e.g., left-to-right in English, right-to-left in Hebrew) can affect constituent ordering during spoken language production. Specifically, this work found that speakers of languages with left-to-right writing systems exhibit the same directionality bias in the sequential mentioning of objects when describing pictures with multiple objects. This tendency has been considered a general neuropsychological property (e.g., due to the order in which we scan visual scenes based on experience with particular writing systems). We present evidence inconsistent with this view. Two picture description experiments examined a highly bilingual population of speakers of Spanish and Yucatec Maya in Mexico. These speakers are literate in Spanish (left-to-right), but less so or non-literate in Yucatec (also left-to-right). When speaking Spanish (Experiment 1), participants exhibited a significant left-to-right bias, consistent with the europsychological hypothesis. However, when speaking Yucatec (Experiment 2), no such bias was observed. This suggests that the effects of writing systems on speech production are specific to the language associated with the writing system and thus not a general neuropsychological property. In addition, we discuss the potential influence of language-specific frames of reference, and their interaction with literacy, on directional cognitive biases.

Research paper thumbnail of Buz, E., Jaeger, T. F., and Tanenhaus, M. K. 2014. Contextual confusability leads to targeted hyperarticulation. In TBA (eds.) Proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci14), TBA. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

A central question in the field of language production is the extent to which the speech product... more A central question in the field of language production is the
extent to which the speech production system is organized for robust communication. One view holds that speakers’ decision to produce more or less clear signals or to speak faster or slower is primarily or even exclusively driven by the demands inherent to production planning. The opposing view holds that these demands are balanced against the goal to be understood. We investigate the degree of hyperarticulation in the presence of easily confusable minimal pair neighbors (e.g., saying "pill" when "bill" is contextually co-present and thus a plausible alternative). We directly test whether production difficulty alone can explain such hyperarticulation. The results argue against production-centered accounts. We also investigate how specific hyperarticulation is to the segment that contrasts the target against the contextually plausible alternative. Our evidence comes from a novel web-based speech recording paradigm.

Research paper thumbnail of Farmer, T. A., Fine, A. B., Yan, S., Cheimariou, S. and Jaeger, T. F. 2014. Error-Driven Adaptation of Higher-Level Expectations During Natural Reading. In TBA (eds.) Proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci14), TBA. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Farmer, T. A., Fine, A. B., Yan, S., Cheimariou, S. and Jaeger, T. F. 2014. Error-Driven Adaptation of Higher-Level Expectations During Natural Reading. In TBA (eds.) Proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci14), TBA. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Fine et al. (2013) recently demonstrated that readers continually adapt their syntactic expectati... more Fine et al. (2013) recently demonstrated that readers continually adapt their syntactic expectations in order to accurately approximate the distributions of syntactic structures in a given communicative context. Here, we examine patterns of eye movements as subjects read sentences that contain an atypical distribution of syntactic structures to gain more fine-grained insight into the time-course and nature of this adaptive process. An adaptation effect was only elicited on a late measure— second-pass reading times—consistent with the claim that expectation adaptation to an atypical distribution of syntactic structures occurs at a higher level that is abstracted away from the physical properties of the visual input.

Research paper thumbnail of Karuza, E. A., Farmer, T. A., Fine, A. B., Smith, F. X., and Jaeger, T. F. 2014. On-­‐line Measures of Prediction in a Self-­‐Paced Statistical Learning Task. In TBA (eds.) Proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci14), TBA. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Karuza, E. A., Farmer, T. A., Fine, A. B., Smith, F. X., and Jaeger, T. F. 2014. On-­‐line Measures of Prediction in a Self-­‐Paced Statistical Learning Task. In TBA (eds.) Proceedings of the 36th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci14), TBA. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

As lifelong statistical learners, humans are remarkably sensitive to the unfolding of elements an... more As lifelong statistical learners, humans are remarkably sensitive to the unfolding of elements and events in their surroundings. In the present work, we examined the time-course of non-local dependency learning using a self-paced moving window display. We exposed participants to an artificial grammar of shape sequences and extracted processing times, or how long they viewed each shape, over the course of the experiment. On-line learning was quantified
as the growing difference in viewing duration between predictable and predictive items. In other words, as participants learned, they processed predictable items increasingly faster. Our results indicate that participants who make implicit predictions as they learn, and have their expectations met, achieve higher learning outcomes on an offline post-test. Potential links between these findings, obtained
with novel stimuli in an experimental context, and the role of prediction in natural language comprehension are considered.

Research paper thumbnail of Kurumada, C. and Jaeger, T. F. 2013. Communicatively efficient language production and case-marker omission in Japanese. In TBA (eds.) Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci13), XXX-XXX. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Recent studies hypothesize that language production is governed by the principle of efficient in... more Recent studies hypothesize that language production is governed
by the principle of efficient information transmission:
Speakers tend to omit elements whose information content is
contextually predictable, while providing more linguistic signal
to convey otherwise less predictable information. However,
previous findings in support of this hypothesis are also compatible
with alternative accounts based on production difficulty.
To distinguish between these competing accounts, we conducted
experiments on speaker’s preference in optional casemarking
in Japanese. The results suggest that Japanese speakers
are more likely to omit the object case-marker when an
associated noun has properties (e.g., animacy) that are prototypical to a grammatical object. Moreover, case-marker omission was facilitated when other elements in a sentence made
the grammatical function assignment more predictable. The
results were obtained with all the factors related to production
difficulty held constant, and thus provide support for the models
of communicatively efficient language production.

Research paper thumbnail of Fine, A. B. and Jaeger, T. F. 2013. Syntactic priming in language comprehension allows linguistic expectations to converge on the statistics of the input. In TBA (eds.) Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci13), XXX-XXX. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Human language is characterized by variability in that the way in which language is used varies d... more Human language is characterized by variability in that the way in which language is used varies depending, for example, on facts about the identity of the speakers or author, the social context, and surrounding linguistic material. Variability poses formidable challenges to the systems underlying language comprehension, which are known to exploit statistical contingencies in the input to overcome the inherent noisiness of perception; nevertheless, we seem to comprehend language with apparent ease. How is this possible? Here we argue that we are able to comprehend language efficiently in part by continuously adapting to the statistics of novel linguistic situations. We argue further that adaptation specifically allows comprehenders’ expectations to converge towards the actual statistics of the linguistic input. Concretely, we show that readers can adjust their linguistic expectations in light of recent experience such that (a) previously difficult structures become easier to process, and, even more strikingly, (b) previously easy to process structures come to incur a processing cost.

Research paper thumbnail of Fedzechkina, M., Jaeger, T. F., and Newport, E. 2013. Communicative biases shape structures of newly acquired languages. In TBA (eds.) Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci13), XXX-XXX. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Languages around the world share a number of commonalities known as language universals. We inves... more Languages around the world share a number of commonalities known as language universals. We investigate whether the existence of some recurrent patterns can be explained by the learner’s preference to balance the amount of information provided by the cues to sentence meaning. In an artificial language learning paradigm, we expose learners to two languages with optional case-marking – one with fixed and one with flexible word order. We find that learners of the flexible word order language, where word order is uninformative of sentence meaning, use significantly more case-marking than the learners of the fixed word order language, where case is a redundant cue. The learning outcomes in our experiment parallel a variety of typological phenomena, providing support for the hypothesis that communicative biases can shape language structures.

Research paper thumbnail of Yildrim, I., Degen, J., Tanenhaus, M., and Jaeger, T. F. 2013. Linguistic Variability and Adaptation in Quantifier Meanings. In TBA (eds.) Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci13), XXX-XXX. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

People’s representations of most and arguably all linguistic and non-linguistic categories are p... more People’s representations of most and arguably all linguistic and
non-linguistic categories are probabilistic. However, in linguistic
theory, quantifier meanings have traditionally been defined
set-theoretically in terms of categorical evaluation functions.
In 4 “adaptation” experiments, we provide evidence for
the alternative hypothesis that quantifiers are represented as
probability distributions over scales (e.g., Zadeh, 1965). We
manipulate exposure to different distributions of “some” and
“many” and find that listeners adapt to those distributions, as
predicted. Our results suggest that the interpretation of quantifiers
is best modeled as a process involving rich, probabilistic
representations

Research paper thumbnail of Kleinschmidt, D.F., Fine, A.B., and Jaeger, T.F. 2012. A belief-updating model of adaptation and cue combination in syntactic comprehension. The 34th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci12). Sapporo, Japan. July, 2012.

We develop and evaluate a preliminary belief-updating model which links intermediate-term (i.e., ... more We develop and evaluate a preliminary belief-updating model which links intermediate-term (i.e., over several days) syntactic adaptation to the joint statistics of syntactic structures and lexical cues to those structures. This model shows how subjects differentially depend on different cues to syntactic structure following changes in the reliability of those cues, as shown by Fine and Jaeger (2011). By relating syntactic adaptation and cue combination to rational inference under uncertainty, this work links learning and adaptation in sentence processing with adaptation in speech perception and non-linguistic domains.

Keywords: sentence processing, adaptation, Bayesian modeling

Research paper thumbnail of Kleinschmidt, D. and Jaeger, T.F. (2012). A continuum of phonetic adaptation: Evaluating an incremental belief-updating model of recalibration and selective adaptation. The 34th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci12). Sapporo, Japan. July, 2012.

We have previously proposed that incremental belief updating can provide a unified account of the... more We have previously proposed that incremental belief updating can provide a unified account of the effect of cumulative exposure on phonetic recalibration and selective adaptation (Kleinschmidt & Jaeger, 2011). This model predicts that these are not two distinct phenomena but rather two points on a continuum. We investigate that prediction here using adaptor stimuli intermediate between those which induce recalibration and selective adaptation, and find that the quantitative predictions of the model fit the data well. We also demonstrate that with the proper controls, Mechanical Turk provides a suitable online platform for speech perception experiments.

Research paper thumbnail of Butler, L. K., Jaeger, T. F., Bohnemeyer, J. and Furth, K. 2011. Learning to Express Visual Contrasts in the Production of Referring Expressions in Yucatec Maya. Proceedings of the PRE-CogSci 2011 workshop: Bridging the gap between computational, empirical and theoretical approaches to reference, Boston, MA, July 20th.

Butler, L. K., Jaeger, T. F., Bohnemeyer, J. and Furth, K. 2011. Learning to Express Visual Contrasts in the Production of Referring Expressions in Yucatec Maya. Proceedings of the PRE-CogSci 2011 workshop: Bridging the gap between computational, empirical and theoretical approaches to reference, Boston, MA, July 20th.

We examined rates of informativeness in the production of modifications in response to a visual c... more We examined rates of informativeness in the production of
modifications in response to a visual contrast In a video description task with speakers of Yucatec Maya. We analyzed modifications of referring expressions on the part of a speaker, and we also examined the effect of over- and under-informativeness on the listener’s comprehension. We found that prior experience with difficult comprehension did not significantly affect the listener’s rate of informativeness when in the role of speaker, but we found that experience as a speaker did result in reduced rates of under-informativeness. That is to say, as a speaker’s own experience progressed, the speaker became less under-informative. We discuss these results as audience design-based learning.

Keywords: referring expressions, informativeness, audience
design, learning, Yucatec Maya, field-based psycholinguistics

Research paper thumbnail of Farmer, T., Fine, A.B. & Jaeger, T.F. (2011). Implicit Context-Specific Learning Leads to Rapid Shifts in Syntactic Expectations. The 33rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci11). Boston, MA. July, 2011, 2055-2060..

During incremental language understanding, comprehenders draw on a rich base of probabilistic cue... more During incremental language understanding, comprehenders draw on a rich base of probabilistic cues to efficiently process the noisy perceptual input they receive. One challenge listeners face in employing such cues is that most cues are context-dependent. Here, we present an experiment that investigates the extent to which listeners learn situation-specific adjustments in the information and/or weight of the lexical bias of a verb. Specifically, we ask to what extent comprehenders are able to rapidly change their interpretation of lexical cues to syntactic structure, where such behavior would be rational due to situation-specific statistics in the environment.

Keywords: Language Comprehension; Ambiguity Resolution;
Learning Effects; Language Experience

Research paper thumbnail of Kleinschmidt, D. & Jaeger, T.F. (2011). A Bayesian belief updating model of phonetic recalibration and selective adaptation. ACL Workshop on Cognitive Modeling and Computational Linguistics.

The mapping from phonetic categories to acoustic cue values is highly flexible, and adapts rapidl... more The mapping from phonetic categories to acoustic cue values is highly flexible, and adapts rapidly in response to exposure. There is currently, however, no theoretical framework which captures the range of this adaptation. We develop a novel approach to modeling phonetic adaptation via a belief-updating model, and demonstrate that this model naturally unifies two adaptation phenomena traditionally considered to be distinct.

Research paper thumbnail of Qian, T. & Jaeger, T.F. (2011). Topic Shift in Efficient Discourse Production. The 33rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci11). Boston, MA. July, 2011, 3313-3318.

Speakers have been hypothesized to organize discourse content so as to achieve communicative effi... more Speakers have been hypothesized to organize discourse content so as to achieve communicative efficiency. Previous work
has focused on indirect tests of the hypothesis that speakers
aim to keep per-word entropy constant across discourses to
achieve communicative efficiency (Genzel & Charniak, 2002).
We present novel and more direct evidence by examining the
role of topic shift in discourse planning. If speakers aim for
constant per-word entropy, they should encode less unconditional per-word entropy (as estimated based on only sentence internal cues) following topic shifts, as there is less relevant context to condition on. Applying latent topic modeling to a large set of English texts, we find that speakers are indeed sensitive to the recent topic structure in the predicted way.

Keywords: discourse production; topic shift; communicative
efficiency

Research paper thumbnail of Tily, H.J., Frank, M.C. & Jaeger, T.F. (2011). The learnability of constructed languages reflects typological patterns. The 33rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci11). Boston, MA. July, 2011, 1364-1369.

A small number of the logically possible word order configurations account for a large proportion... more A small number of the logically possible word order configurations
account for a large proportion of actual human languages.
To explain this distribution, typologists often invoke principles
of human cognition which might make certain orders easier or
harder to learn or use. We present a novel method for carrying
out very large scale artificial language learning tasks over
the internet, which allows us to test large batteries of systematically designed languages for differential learnability. An exploratory study of the learnability of all possible configurations
of subject, verb, and object finds that the two most frequent
orders in human languages are the most easily learned, and
yields suggestive evidence compatible with other typological
and psycholinguistic observations.

Keywords: artificial grammar; language acquisition; language
typology; psycholinguistics; word order

Research paper thumbnail of Jaeger, T. F. (2006) Redundancy and syntactic reduction. Ph.D. thesis, Stanford University.

Comprehenders are sensitive to probabilistic distributions of linguistic events (Garnsey et al., ... more Comprehenders are sensitive to probabilistic distributions of linguistic events (Garnsey et al., 1997; Kamide et al., 2003; Konieczny, 2000; Staub and Clifton, 2006, inter alia). Expected words and structures are processed faster than unexpected ones. This raises the question whether syntactic production, too, is sensitive to probabilities of upcoming material. This thesis investigates cases of syntactic reduction, as in “I think (that) the commercial break is over”, where the word that can be omitted. I present evidence from corpus studies of spontaneous speech that syntactic reduction is more likely if the reduced constituent is predictable. Modern statistical regression models are used to guard against common challenges to corpus-based studies (such as clusters and multicollinearity). Taken together with evidence from phonetic reduction (in duration, formant quality, etc.; see, e.g., Aylett and Turk, 2004; Bell et al., 2003; van Son and Pols, 2003), phoneme omission (e.g. t/d deletion; see Bell et al., 2003; Gahl and Garnsey, 2004), and argument drop (Resnik, 1996), the evidence from syntactic reduction supports the Probabilistic Reduction Hypothesis (PRH): “Where grammar allows it, form reduction is more likely, the more redundant the information conveyed by the omitted form details is”. The PRH is compatible with production pressure (Ferreira and Dell, 2000, inter alia) and audience design accounts of reduction (Hawkins, 2004, inter alia). The results are also compatible with ‘uniform information density’ accounts (Aylett, 1999; Aylett and Turk, 2004; Genzel and Charniak, 2002): speakers may insert or omit that to avoid peaks or troughs in information density. Uniform information density accounts integrate both production and audience design accounts, as a uniform amount of information per time/unit optimizes successful information transfer while minimizing production effort. The same probabilities that I show to influence production are known to influence comprehension (Garnsey et al., 1997). Hence, the results may be taken to argue that language users’ representations of constituents contain probabilistic information. In short, knowledge of grammar may imply knowledge of probabilities (see Gahl and Garnsey, 2004). The final part of the thesis presents a new approach to studying what information speakers use to keep track of probabilistic distributions. In a first step, several predictability estimates of the same event are derived using different sets of cues or slightly different assumptions about what the relevant structure is that speakers keep track of. In a second step, these different predictability estimates are compared with regard to how much variation in syntactic reduction they account for. The results suggest that both structural and surface cues are used to keep track of the probability of structures and that speakers keep track of rather specific structures.

Research paper thumbnail of Bicknell, K., Tanenhaus, M. K., and Jaeger, T. F. submitted. Listeners can maintain and rationally update uncertainty about prior words.

Accurate word recognition is facilitated by context. Some relevant context, however, occurs after... more Accurate word recognition is facilitated by context. Some relevant context, however, occurs after the word. Efficient use of such “right context” requires comprehenders to maintain uncertainty about the word, still allowing for consideration of multiple possible alternatives when they encounter relevant right context. However, influential models suggest that uncertainty is not maintained in this way. A classic study (Connine et al., 1991, Experiment 1) examined right context effects using word pairs that differed in voicing by manipulating VOT (e.g., dent/tent). The results were interpreted as evidence for limited uncertainty maintenance. Right context effects were limited to fewer than six syllables downstream and even then were only found for highly ambiguous VOTs near the category boundary. With small modifications in procedure and analysis, we report that uncertainty is maintained for at least six to eight syllables and equally so for the entire VOT continuum (rather than only ambiguous cases). We show that an ideal recognizer, which optimally combines acoustic information with right context, correctly predicts our results. This suggests that, at least under some conditions, listeners combine acoustic information with right context rationally.

Research paper thumbnail of The Message Shapes Phonology (updated version, October 2016)

* Based on a diverse and complementary set of theoretical and empirical findings, we describe an ... more * Based on a diverse and complementary set of theoretical and empirical findings, we describe an approach to phonology in which sound patterns are shaped by the trade-off between biases supporting message transmission accuracy and resource cost. We refer to this approach as Message-Oriented Phonology. The evidence suggests that these biases influence the form of messages, defined with reference to a language's morphemes, words or higher levels of meaning, rather than influencing phonological categories directly. Integrating concepts from information theory and Bayesian inference with the existing body of phonological research, we propose a testable model of phonology that makes quantitative predictions. Moreover, we show that approaching language as a system of message transfer provides greater explanatory coverage of a diverse range of sound patterns. * Acknowledgements. Approx. 22k words plus references.

Research paper thumbnail of Karuza, E., Farmer, T., Fine, A. B., Smith, F. X., and Jaeger, T. F. UNDER REVIEW. Evidence for the fine-tuning of expectations in self-paced non-adjacent dependency learning

As lifelong statistical learners, humans are remarkably sensitive to the unfolding of elements an... more As lifelong statistical learners, humans are remarkably sensitive to the unfolding of elements and events in their surroundings. In the present work, we examine the bi-directional influence of prediction-based processing and learning as adult participants were exposed to a visual artificial grammar containing a non-adjacent dependency. Using a self-paced moving window display, we recorded response times as learners progressed through a series of structured glyph sequences. After accounting for general task adaptation effects, we quantified the growing influence of element predictability on those response times. We find that, as a function of exposure, participants generally processed the grammar increasingly faster; however, the facilitatory benefit was significantly greater for the perfectly predictable items of the grammar. In turn, this progressive processing benefit on predictable elements was uniquely correlated with off-line performance on a post-test. Our results indicate that participants who develop implicit predictions as they learn, and have their expectations met, achieve higher learning outcomes. Links between these findings, obtained with novel stimuli in an experimental context, and the role of prediction in natural language comprehension are considered.

Research paper thumbnail of Prediction (or not) during language processing. A commentary on Nieuwland et al. (2017) and DeLong et al. (2005)

The extent to which language processing involves prediction of upcoming inputs remains a question... more The extent to which language processing involves prediction of upcoming
inputs remains a question of ongoing debate. One important data point comes from DeLong et al. (2005) who reported that an N400-like event-related potential correlated with a probabilistic index of upcoming input. This result is often cited as evidence for gradient probabilistic prediction of form and/or semantics, prior to the bottom-up input becoming available. However, a recent multi-lab study reports a failure to find these effects (Nieuwland et al., 2017). We review the evidence from both studies, including differences in the design and analysis approach between them. Building on over a decade of research on prediction since DeLong et al. (2005)’s original study, we also begin to spell out the computational nature of predictive processes that one might expect to correlate with ERPs that are evoked by a functional element whose form is dependent on an upcoming predicted word. For paradigms with this type of design, we propose an index of anticipatory processing, Bayesian surprise, and apply it to the updating of semantic predictions. We motivate this index both theoretically and empirically. We show that, for studies of the type discussed here, Bayesian surprise can be closely approximated by another, more easily estimated information theoretic index, the surprisal (or Shannon information) of the input. We re-analyze the data from Nieuwland and colleagues using surprisal rather than raw probabilities as an index of prediction. We find that surprisal is gradiently correlated with the amplitude of the N400, even in the data shared by Nieuwland and colleagues. Taken together, our review suggests that the evidence from both studies is compatible with anticipatory semantic processing. We do, however, emphasize the need for future studies to further clarify the nature and degree of form prediction, as well as its neural signatures, during language comprehension.

Research paper thumbnail of A single mechanism for language learning across the lifespan

It is often assumed that language development occurs during a critical period and that the plasti... more It is often assumed that language development occurs during a critical period and that the plasticity of the brain areas involved decreases afterwards, making language acquisition difficult or impossible. Yet, adults also exhibit implicit language learning, for example, when adapting to novel accents. However, these are typically regarded as separate processes because acquisition and adaptation occur over vastly different time-scales—a single mechanism would not seem to be sufficient. Focusing on one specific phonetic contrast (voicing), we find that the same statistical learning mechanism can explain speech development in infancy and adaptation in adulthood. This is achieved without any changes in plasticity or different learning mechanisms reflecting a critical period. The model we present calls into question the need for critical periods to explain phonological acquisition and adaptation, and it shows a way forward in addressing this question for a broader range of problems in language acquisition.

Research paper thumbnail of Only Always Associates Audibly. Even If Only is Repeated: The Prosodic Properties of Second Occurrence Focus In English. Ms

Unpublished ms., Stanford University, Jan 1, 2004

Research paper thumbnail of The art of the state: Mixed effects regression modeling in the visual world

21st Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 2008

Research paper thumbnail of The art of the state: Mixed effects regression modeling in the visual world

21st Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 2008

Research paper thumbnail of Speakers employ fine-grained probabilistic knowledge

85th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, 2011

Tests of readers’ judgments regarding optional ‘that’ introducing relative and complement clauses... more Tests of readers’ judgments regarding optional ‘that’ introducing relative and complement clauses provide evidence that fine-grained probabilistic knowledge is involved in such judgments and is arguably part of linguistic competence. Previous studies argue that probabilistic factors involved in production also influence judgment, but the predictive models involved here turn most significantly on the highly gradient predictability of an embedded clause. Lab tests were also replicated with crowdsourced populations with significantly correlated results. These results suggest that competence grammar includes not only some degree of probabilistic information, as suggested by prior work, but even access to rather fine-grained probability distributions.