Divjak, D.S., Dabrowska, E. and Arppe, A. (2016) Machine meets man. Evaluating the psychological reality of corpus-based probabilistic models. Cognitive Linguistics. ISSN 0936-5907
Abstract
Linguistic convention allows speakers various options. Evidence is accumulating that the various options are preferred in different contexts yet the criteria governing the selection of the appropriate form are often far from obvious. Most researchers who attempt to discover the factors determining a preference rely on the linguistic analysis and statistical modeling of data extracted from large corpora. In this paper, we address the question of how to evaluate such models and explicitly compare the performance of a statistical model derived from a corpus with that of native speakers in selecting one of six Russian TRY verbs. Building on earlier work by Divjak (2003, 2004, 2010) and Divjak & Arppe (2013), we trained a polytomous logistic regression model to predict verb choice given the context. We compare the predictions the model makes for 60 unseen sentences to the choices adult native speakers make in those same sentences.1 We then look in more detail at the interplay of the contextual properties and model computationally how individual differences in assessing the importance of contextual properties may impact the linguistic knowledge of native speakers. Finally, we compare the probability the model assigns to encountering each of the 6 verbs in the 60 test sentences to the acceptability ratings the adult native speakers give to those sentences. We discuss the implications of our findings for both usage-based theory and empirical linguistic methodology.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2016 De Gruyter. This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in Cognitive Linguistics. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | statistical models; psychological reality; forced-choice task; acceptability ratings; synonymy |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > School of Languages and Cultures (Sheffield) > Russian Studies (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 16 Nov 2015 15:38 |
Last Modified: | 04 Jan 2017 23:11 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/cog-2015-0101 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | De Gruyter |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1515/cog-2015-0101 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:90779 |