The Language Instinct Talking Heads

Construing the Meaning Comprehension involves a process of finding subjects, verbs, objects and so on, that it takes place unconsciously A dog bites a man. A man bites a dog. A man is bitten by a dog.

A definition of parser Parser - the mental programme that analyses sentence structure during language comprehension

Components of a Simple Sentence S NP VP NP det N VP V NP N boy, girl, dog, cat, ice cream, candy, hot dogs, etc. V eats, likes, bites, etc.

The dog likes ice cream det | the...

NP det N the...

The dog likes ice cream S NP VP det N the...

Difficulties with understading long, complicated phrases Memory - one has to keep track of phrases that need particular words to complete them Decision-making - when a word or phrase belongs to two different cagetories (eg. VP, NP), one has to decide which to use to build the next branch of the tree

Memory Short term memory is the key tool in human information processing Only a few items - plus or minus seven can be held in mind at once The items are immediately subject to fading or being overwritten

Memory Memory-stretching sentences Onion sentences

The Memory-Stretching Sentence He gave the girl that he met in New York while visiting his parents for ten days around Christmas and New Year´s the candy.

He gave the candy to the girl that he met in New York while visiting his parents for ten days around Christmas and New Year´s.

Onion Sentences The dog the stick the fire burned beat bit the cat. The malt that the rat that the cat killed ate lay in the house. If if if it rains it pours I get depressed I should get help.

Onion Sentences Onion sentences show that a grammar and a parser are different things A person can recognise constructions that he or she can never understand.

“Can you do addition. ” the White Queen asked “Can you do addition?” the White Queen asked. “What´s one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one? “I don´t know,” said Alice. “I lost count.” “She can´t do Addition,” the Red Queen interrupted.

The human sentence parser keeps track of where it is in a sentence by writing a number in a slot next to each phrase type on a master checklist. When a type of a sentence has to be remembered more than once - so that both it and the identical type of phrase it is inside of can be completed in order - there is not enough room on the checklist for both numbers to fit, and the phrases cannot be completed properly.

The cheese that some rats that were chased by the cats that I feed ate turned out to be rancid.

Decision Making Many words have more than one lexical entry (e.g. one can be either a determiner or a noun) thus a parser has to decide which option fits a sentence the best Phrases can also go inside either a NP or a VP - so that it also may lead to ambiguities

The plastic pencil marks... The plastic pencil marks were ugly. The plastic pencil marks easily.

Ingres enjoyed painting his models nude. Visiting relatives can be boring. Vegetarians don´t know how good meat tastes. I saw the man with the binoculars.

The Two Ways of Decision Making Breadth-first search Depth-first search

Garden Path Sentences Sentences are not laid out with clear markers allowing the reader to stride confidently through to the end Delays Dog Deaf-Mute Murder Trial British Banks Soldier On Family Leave Law a Landmark Not Only for Newborn´s Parents

Background Knowledge Understanding is not possible unless interlocutors share the same background assumptions. This involves, for instance, cultural background, knowledge of recent facts, etc. Woman: I´m leaving you. Man: Who is he?

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