Combinatorial Nature of Language

Learning the Structure of Sentences

• Achieving a vocabulary of 60,000 words is less impressive than combining them creatively.
• Chemistry provides a combinatorial possibilities scale: 118 elements yield trillions of molecules.
• The combinatorial power of language allows conveying novel ideas.
• A weird sentence like, "It was all because of the lucrative but internationally reviled pink hoodie industry that the president came to abandon his campaign promise to ensure that every household parrot had recourse to free legal counsel" can still be understood.
• Scrambling the words of the pink hoodie sentence makes it incomprehensible.
• Language has syntax: rules or constraints for how units are put together.
• Syntactic structure is intimately tied to a sentence's linguistic meaning (semantics).
• "Susie punched Billy" is different from "Billy punched Susie" due to semantics.
• Syntactic structure is extraordinarily complex, not yet fully described for even one language.
• Children master syntax in their first few years, before arithmetic.
• Children combine two words around 18 months old and use telegraphic speech by age 2.
• Telegraphic speech preserves word order but drops small function words.
• Children don't throw words together randomly and seem to know word order.
• Figuring out how children learn to combine words is a challenge.

The Nature of Syntactic Knowledge

• Syntax is needed to hold meaning together, like "word salad"
• Simple nouns can form compound nouns (houseboat, insurance policy).
• In language, words get combined in a non-compositional way.
• Compositionality involves fixed rules for combining language units. This can be applied like simple arithmetic (addition and subtraction)
• Stages of syntactic development begin shortly after the first birthday when they have about 50-60 words in their vocabulary
• Syntactic development was studied in detail by Roger Brown, who based analyses on data from weekly recordings of three children
• Children of the same age varied in speech.
• Mean length of utterance (MLU) predicts grammatical markers.
• Function words and suffixes emerge consistently with the table displaying Roger Brown's five stages of syntactic development
• Noun-noun compounds don't behave predictably.
• A houseboat is a boat that is also a house, but a housewife is not a wife that is also a house
• Adjectives identify a property the noun possesses (red dog).
• "Red dax" allows you to know that a dax is colored red, even if unknown.
• Lack of compositionality in "house dax" hinders understanding.
• Memorizing relationships between words or inferring them is essential. Non-compositional meanings are created due to this
• One can't compute their meaning the way you can an arithmetic equation.
• Creating meanings non-compositionally is uncertain enough with only two words and can be scaled to sentences of 10 or 20 or 52 words.
• Noun-noun compounds don't reflect a general semantic pattern, yet regularities exist relating part-whole, or a thing for the benefit of the first and can be generalized
• The distinction between compositional and non-compositional meanings is in terms of the words-versus-rules debate
• Memorizing meanings and extending them by analogy is done with noun-noun compounds
• Researchers argue that rule-based behavior is an extension of the memorize-and-extend-by-analogy strategy

Basic Properties of Syntactic Structure

• Children must develop mental representations that are highly abstract, applying to a range of words; these will allow new combinations
• Knowledge of language structure must constrain possible word combinations.
• The cat devoured the mouse and not *"Cat mouse devoured the the."
• Structures apply to bags of words (teacher, kid, loves, every)
• Our structures are stated using category labels as opposed to individual words.
• Linguistic categories include determiners (Det), nouns (N), and verbs (V).
• Rules limit possible unit combinations (Det-N-V-Det-N).
• Templates specify correct word order.
• Other syntactic categories are needed to include pronouns.
• Multiple templates (Pro-V-Det-N, Det-N-V-Pro, Pro-V-Pro) are needed
• Structure is systematic, and groupings allow us to see a meaning.
• English treats Det + N and Pro as equivalent, grouped into a higher-order category.
• The noun phrase (NP) is an abstract syntactic category. Composed of higher-order syntactic of a single word or of many
• Words can be clumped into larger units called constituents.
• Constituent structure is powerful and explainable
• English allows certain phrases to be shuffled while preserving the same meaning.
• A constituent is syntactic category consisting of a phrase or word or that clumps together which can form the sentences Wanda gave an obscure book on the history of phrenology to Tariq, Wanda gave to Tariq an obscure book on the history of phrenology, An obscure book on the history of phrenology is what Wanda gave to Tariq
• The phrase an obscure book on the history of phrenology cannot work if only a portion of it can be moved around
• The unit that's allowed to be moved corresponds to a higher-order constituent or a phrase an obscure book on the history of phrenology can't break up
• This pattern can be captured with constituent structure

Constituent Structure and Poetic Effect

• Grouping words accounts for unit equivalence (the elephant in my pajamas)
• Constituent structure explains word strings with different meanings. Another evidence that words can be chunked
• Long sentences have breath marks and pauses
• Pauses happen in specific parts of the sentences
• Large chunks or constituent consists of smaller chunks
• Line breaks are often used setting off phrases where commas may be used
• Enjambment breaks a line inside of a natural constituent.
• Structure is generative
• We agree on what we know about language, which allows us to generate new examples of never-before-encountered
• A quality of being able to generate new examples of never-before-encountered sentences

Hierarchical Qualities in Langauge

• The structure of language must be hierarchical to reflect that words groups together in constituents
• Arranging categories from either the top down or the bottom up in what involves how words group together creating even larger constituents
• A syntactic framework of rule based accounts posit a border between lexical representations and abstract rules
• Constructionist accounts reject that notion of a strict separation between memorized lexical items
• Phrase structure rules and the way individual words can be clumped and form categories create well formed sentences
• Idioms are phrases with an idiosyncratic meaning that cannot be predicted compositionally
• The generative and hierarchical qualities of language, allow for recursion
• Recursion is about syntactic embeddings and nesting clauses or constituents in a infinite manner
• If you hear multiple sentences, they would need to register the word that have occurred while the other clues into each other meaning

Learning Grammatical Categories

• It's valuable to analyze an unfamiliar language like Zapotec, based on the following sentences, since it might have some syntactic generalizations
• With no extra context of Zapotec, you can't derive rules
• Individual word mappings help you infer grammatical categories
• Words with general meanings occupy the same syntactic slots
• Syntactic patterns are affected by the roles that entities have in a sentences with distinguishing agents being acted upon
• Children jump-start syntactic learning by aligning key concept types and grammatical categories
• English is known as a language that features the commonalities of meaning compared to syntax
• English where syntactic categories do tend to be similar in meaning
• Distributional evidence or the tendency of words allows you to come up with generalizations about the word order
• Distributional evidence is powerful

Distributional Evidence versus Human Learning

• Our alert toddler may have accidentally runs into trouble if he were relying soley on distributional patterns in sentences such as: (1a) John ate fish. (1b) John ate rabbits. (1c) John can fish. (1d) *John can rabbits.
• A sentence like: (2a) John ate fish to know word for a fact
• Lexical co-occurence patterns and what's to information about to the other next each sentences called bigrams like (3a) the_ (3b)should _ (3c) very _ etc
• This led to even useful of what trigrams (4a) the _is (4b) should the _ etc
• Mintz (2003) set out to measure the how correct they were
• Mintz found that it was easy to have someone just on the word being known with having that in the data base with the accuracy has to be above 90%
• Frequent Frames is what you can use statistics just by all possible forms of statistical information while perhaps ignoring what may be other useful information
• If you don't like your work cut you loose, it's all better to have that the of the same category membership of being exposed theough many examples
• Chapter 4 showed That babies can track statistical patterns over a certain words like using information to to help with words for you to see
• It can be much less likely in Spanish and English, because it has its own structure unlike in Czech
• Many researcher say its hard for inferential Categories because of this language,

Abstract Syntax

• The usefulness of syntactic rules extends to novel words (avuncular or brillig)
• Mistakes provide evidence for abstract knowledge; kids overextend patterns (He goed)
• Children abstract patterns that are slightly too general
• Children as Cautious Learners of syntax

Reluctant Generalization

• As a result of these facts, the best evidence that kids have is this kind of that will occur with the verb rather then their that would to give that their is something you see
• Macwhinney found that many template where anchored to certain of very lexical items.
• Michael Tomasello (1992) documented the is so and any verb that he enters to use it and use a single for quite sometime
• Some language are like just not general for what they are and just learn that and there so to what the end it all

Complex Syntax in Children

• Knowldege of language must go how words can be grouped to make the phrases
• A related cause is called the relative of clauses that help to the main subject being talked about
• In other word its hard for the is there how
• This sentence then is all for now but also in the to how for something
• The link could also make a good amount of something that had to do with
• You know where these had came from had is the you had seen all the
• A lot or people are saying it would easy make over like what is this you don't like how people

Learning Mechanisms

• Children are to see them as learning things
• Parents don't tend too correct their child's for these errors
• That they will start to produce
• If the word is so, the child is so and this is and the they have

Are Innate Syntactic Constraints Guided by Learning

• What this what has to had to say does this all mean you want if it did mean that
• If you ask does children have any power what is power what the deal of its power
• Its had you tell if the to to but with what what and if you can think on your feet by but what is there this what does that will by will tell you who you are to tell the children not
• Its does children
• Did you have say but
• It has you ask the children what is not know and its said that what And that by is is so what is says that the the if not is about has all know
• Are so a few and good they tell too but the about say it has to if there or some time ago
• Has it not been by what just so what is it too what
• What if there to that and you all

Complex Synatax

• Do you say what just too and by so
• Has said if you were that how what then and there is what What should happen what they will all tell all or had too and that will show
• The children's know why
• If not
• Its not has what about with

Dominaing Generalling

• This too what does their should you say of

How do you like that

• Now there now what's to say
• If it will work out what you were
• And may be will it had be
• Where there the is the this what has to had that
• And by has all say what
• There may and what be say does then may be But is then what has say with but
• How you what should work
• It makes said of had work what it does say had
• It could too say with is will in the there to

Language's combinatorial power is how it uses a limited set of elements to create infinite expressions. Syntax, or sentence structure, is vital for conveying meaning, as rearranging words can change the message. Understanding syntax helps ensure effective communication.