Silvia Rădulescu

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gerken [2015/11/22 22:22] silviagerken [2015/11/22 22:51] (current) silvia
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 different formal systems make no generalization at all. Or, infants generalize based on the different formal systems make no generalization at all. Or, infants generalize based on the
 formal description that is more likely to have generated the input. formal description that is more likely to have generated the input.
 +\\
 +These data, coupled with infants’ failure to discriminate under the same
 +familiarization conditions in Exp. 1, suggest that infants in the column condition made
 +only the generalization involving the position of the syllable //di//.
 +\\
  
 +----
 +**Conclusions:**
 +\\
 +A question raised by the experiments
 +is **what caused infants in the column condition to generalize based on the location of
 +//di// rather than making the more abstract generalization**?
 +\\
 +One possibility is that the data are consistent with the **Subset Principle** (Manzini &
 +Wexler, 1987), in which learners select among possible parameter values based on which
 +value generates the smallest language compatible with the input data. Note that, if we
 +interpret ‘language’ to mean ‘set of sentences,’ a learner would need to generate all of the
 +sentences for each parameter value and determine which value generated fewer sentences
 +(but see Wexler, 1993). Wexler and Manzini reduce the computational task for the learner
 +by placing relevant parameters in a markedness hierarchy, in which the learner begins with
 +the least marked value, which generates the smallest language.
 +\\
 +Another possibility is consistent with the **Bayesian approaches** to generalization
 +(e.g., Tenenbaum & Griffiths, 2001), in which learners compare the subset of the input
 +they have received to the range of input generated by different formal descriptions. For
 +example, an infant might tacitly compute that it is extremely unlikely, given an AAB
 +grammar, the only input ends in di. Depending on its implementation, this approach might
 +also be computationally challenging. However, it has the advantage of applying to a more
 +general (e.g., non-parameterized) learning problems, and it allows increasing confidence
 +in hypothesis selection with increasing input set size. Importantly, this solution to the
 +induction problem entails learners choosing among formal descriptions that they have
 +already generated from the data using general purpose mechanisms (Saffran, Reeck,
 +Niebuhr, & Wilson, 2005) or that are part of their innate endowment for language
 +(e.g. Valian, 1990). For example, Saffran et al. (2005) demonstrated that the structure of
 +the input determines the primitives (in this case absolute vs. relative pitch) over which
 +generalizations are made. This type of research, in which learners ‘choose’ among
 +different generalizations allowed by input data, may ultimately allow us to distinguish
 +between theories of language development.