Construction Driven Language Processing May 2007 Jerry T. Ball Senior Research Psychologist Air Force Research Laboratory Mesa, AZ

Conceptual Ontology Object –anything construed as distinct from everything else Relation –property or attribute of a single object, relation or situation, or relationship between more than one objects, relations or situations Situation –action, state, process, location, direction, path, time, manner or other relation, including the participants in the relation

Grammatical Functions Referring Expression –Specifier –Head Relational Expression –Relational Head –Complements Subject Direct Object Indirect Object Relational Complement

Modifier Coordinator Part of Speech –Relational Verb, Adjective, Preposition, Adverb, Coordinator –Objective Noun, Pronoun, Proper Noun –Functional Determiner, Auxiliary Verb, Modal Verb

Referring Expressions Head –word or expression describing the type of object, relation or situation that the larger expression as a whole refers to Specifier –referential marker of a referring expression which determines the type of referring expression Referring Expression (RE) –expression that functions to refer to an object, relation or situation Reference Point (RefPt) –a complement that ties a referring expression to a described object, relation or situation via reference to an associated object, relation or situation

SpecifierHead Referring Expression (of relational type head) Object SpecifierHead Object Referring Expression (of relational type head) Predicate Specifier Head Predicate Referring Expression (of relational type head) the book is happy [ Spec Head ] RE [ the spec book head ] ORE [ is spec happy head ] PRE

Head Referring Expression (of relational type head) RefPt-SpecifierHead Object Referring Expression (of relational type head) John’s book Specifier RefPt-SpecifierHead Situation Referring Expression (of relational type head) I’m hungry [ John’s refpt-spec book head ] ORE [ I’m refpt-spec hungry head ] SRE [ RefPt Spec Head ] RE RefPt

Relational Expression (RelExpr) –expression with one or more complements that is headed by a word or expression describing a relation Relational Head (RelHead) Complement (Comp) –referring expression that is a participant in a relational expression Relational Expressions

RelHeadComps(0..3) Relational Expression Comp subj [Comp subj RelHead … ] RelExpr Comp subj RelHead Relational Expression John smiled [ John subj smiled relhead ] RelExpr Comp subj RelHead Relational Expression he likes [ he subj likes relhead you obj ] RelExpr you Comp obj

Modifier (Mod) –word or expression that constrains the meaning of the word or expression it modifies without changing the grammatical function (GF) of the word or expression Coordinator (Coord) –word or expression that combines two or more parts of speech or grammatical functions of the same type, with the resulting expression retaining the grammatical function of the conjuncts

GF i Mod GF i Mod GF i ConjGF i GF(0..n) i

Head Mod Head red book RelHead Mod RelHead fast run Coord Head apples and Head oranges [ apples head and coord oranges head ] head [ red mod book head ] head [ run head fast mod ] relhead

Construction Driven Language Processing Words and expressions in linguistic input activate constructions Some subset of activated constructions is selected for subsequent processing Selected constructions are integrated into an evolving representation Basic Process: Construction Activation, Selection and Integration

He is kicking the ball Construction Activation he  [ he ] PRON he  [ he SPEC-HEAD ] ORE is  [ is ] AUX-VERB he is  [ REF-PT COMP be SPEC PREDICATION HEAD ] SRE kicking  [ kicking ] VERB kicking  [ SUBJ COMP kick HEAD OBJ COMP ] RELEXPR is kicking  [ be SPEC V-ing HEAD ] PREDICATOR the  [ the ] DET the  [ the SPEC HEAD ] ORE ball  [ ball ] NOUN the ball  [ the SPEC ball HEAD ] ORE kicking the ball  [ V HEAD OBJ COMP ] PREDICATION

Construction Selection In the simplest case all activated constructions may be selected for integration Competing constructions may result in one construction being preferred Depth of processing (e.g. skimming vs. reading for full understanding) may affect construction selection and integration process Assume simplest case in examples that follow…

He Construction Integration he ORE [he ] spec-head

He is SRE he is [is] aux-verb [ref-pt comp be spec predication head ] ORE [he ] spec-head

He is kicking SRE he kicking is [is] aux-verb [ref-pt comp be spec predication head ] [be spec V-ing head ] ORE PREDICATOR [he ] spec-head [kicking] verb PREDICATION [kick head obj comp ]

He is kicking the SRE he is [is ] aux-verb [ref-pt comp be spec predication head ] [be spec V-ing head ] ORE PREDICATOR [he ] spec-head the ORE [the spec head] kicking [kicking] verb PREDICATION [kick head obj comp ]

SRE he kickingthe ball is [is] aux-verb [ref-pt comp be spec predication head ] [be spec V-ing head ] ORE PREDICATOR [he ] spec-head [the spec ball head ][kicking] verb [v head obj comp ] PREDN He is kicking the ball

Serial processing without backtracking! If current input is unexpected given the prior context, then accommodate the input Related to Lewis’ “Limited Repair Parsing”, but accommodation is “part and parcel” of the processing mechanism The following example is from the Computational Cognitive Model which is under development –“no airspeed or altitude restrictions” Tree structures were automatically generated from model output using phpSyntaxTree (Eisenbach & Eisenbach) Context Accommodation

No airspeed

No airspeed or altitude

No airspeed or altitude restrictions