Solving learnability problems in the acquisition of semantics  

Oleh:

Gualmini, Andrea ; Schwarz, Bernhard

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Journal of Semantics (Sebagian Full Text) vol. 26 no. 2 (May 2009), page 185–215.
Topik: Solving Learnability; Acquisition of Semantics; Readings
Fulltext: vol 26, no 2, p 185-215.pdf (196.77KB)

Isi artikel

This paper proposes solutions to two semantic learnability problems that have featured prominently in the literature on language acquisition. Both problems have often been deemed unsolvable for language learners as a matter of logic, and they have accordingly been taken to motivate principles making sure they will not actually arise in the course of language acquisition. One problem concerns the acquisition of ambiguous sentences whose readings are related by entailment. Crain et al.’s (1994) Semantic Subset Principle is intended to preempt the problem by preventing acquisition of the weaker reading before the stronger reading has been acquired. In contrast, we demonstrate that this very order of acquisition becomes feasible in principle if children can exploit non-truth-conditional evidence of various kinds or evidence from sentences containing downward entailing operators. The other learnability problem concerns the potential need for expunction of certain readings of ambiguous sentences from a child’s grammar. It has often been assumed that, in the absence of negative evidence, such expunction is impossible, andWexler and Manzini (1987) posit a Subset Principle to preempt the problematic learning scenario. We argue, however, that if the evidence available to the child includes dialogues, and if listeners are expected to interpret speakers’ utterances charitably, then expunction of unavailable readings is possible in principle.

Opini Anda

Klik untuk menuliskan opini Anda tentang koleksi ini!

Kembali