3. Frequency and entrenchment

Divjak, Dagmar; Caldwell‐Harris, Catherine L.

doi:10.1515/9783110292022-004

Cited by 78 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 42 publications

(67 reference statements)

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“…A well-known fact about language use concerns human sensitivity to frequency information (Divjak and Caldwell-Harris 2015, Divjak and Gries 2012, Ellis 2002, Gries and Divjak 2012. It is a natural assumption that frequency effects in all their guises (semantic, lexical, morphological, syntactic) may influence the choice between the two constructions.…”

Section: Discussion: Corpus-based Predictions Vs Preferential Choicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are corpus-based predictions mirrored in the preferential choices and ratings of native speakers? Predicting the alternation between the Estonian adessive case and the adposition <i>peal</i> ‘on’

Klavan

Veismann

2017

ESUKA-JEFUL

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Abstract. Recent work in usage-based linguistics stresses the importance of combining corpus-based analyses with experimental studies. A number of studies have compared the performance of a corpus-based statistical model against the behaviour of native speakers in a linguistic experiment. The present paper takes this line of analysis further by combining corpus-based work with two sources of experimental data. A mixedeffects logistic regression model is fitted to the corpus data of the Estonian adessive case and the adposition peal 'on' in present-day written Estonian. In order to evaluate the goodness of the corpus-based model, its performance is compared to the behaviour of native speakers in a forced choice task and a rating task.

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Section: Discussion: Corpus-based Predictions Vs Preferential Choicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are corpus-based predictions mirrored in the preferential choices and ratings of native speakers? Predicting the alternation between the Estonian adessive case and the adposition <i>peal</i> ‘on’

Klavan

Veismann

2017

ESUKA-JEFUL

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“…If that novel information is never encountered again, the weighted connections that represent it will be overwritten as new patterns are encountered. But if that stimulus is repeatedly encountered, each exposure provides another training trial in which it can be integrated into long‐term memory structures (Divjak & Caldwell‐Harris, : 64). Conditional probabilities suffer from data sparseness, too, as smaller samples are less representative than larger ones.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Lexical Frequency in the Acceptability of Syntactic Variants: Evidence Fromthat‐Clauses in Polish

Divjak

2016

Cognitive Science

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A number of studies report that frequency is a poor predictor of acceptability, in particular at the lower end of the frequency spectrum. Because acceptability judgments provide a substantial part of the empirical foundation of dominant linguistic traditions, understanding how acceptability relates to frequency, one of the most robust predictors of human performance, is crucial. The relation between low frequency and acceptability is investigated using corpus- and behavioral data on the distribution of infinitival and finite that-complements in Polish. Polish verbs exhibit substantial subordination variation and for the majority of verbs taking an infinitival complement, the that-complement occurs with low frequency (<0.66 ipm). These low-frequency that-clauses, in turn, exhibit large differences in how acceptable they are to native speakers. It is argued that acceptability judgments are based on configurations of internally structured exemplars, the acceptability of which cannot reliably be assessed until sufficient evidence about the core component has accumulated.

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“…We know that humans are highly sensitive to frequency information (for reviews, see Ellis 2002;Divjak and Caldwell-Harris 2015), so it is not surprising that they tended to select the most frequent (and hence most general) verbs when they had no strong preference for a verb with a more specific meaning, i. e. when the contextual factors were not strong enough to clearly favour one outcome. This is especially the case in an experimental setting with only a small number of contexts, which limits the possibility of the effect of the estimated probabilities to emerge; (estimated) probabilities show their effect in the long run, and this typically requires more than a few dozen sentences.…”

Section: Analysis 1: Model Vs Average Participantmentioning

confidence: 99%

Machine Meets Man: Evaluating the Psychological Reality of Corpus-based Probabilistic Models

Divjak

Dąbrowska²,

Arppe

2016

Cognitive Linguistics

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Linguistic convention typically allows speakers several 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 we trained a polytomous logistic regression model to predict verb choice given the sentential context. We compare the predictions the model makes for 60 unseen sentences to the choices adult native speakers make in those same sentences. 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 six 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.

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3. Frequency and entrenchment

Cited by 78 publications

References 42 publications

Are corpus-based predictions mirrored in the preferential choices and ratings of native speakers? Predicting the alternation between the Estonian adessive case and the adposition <i>peal</i> ‘on’

Are corpus-based predictions mirrored in the preferential choices and ratings of native speakers? Predicting the alternation between the Estonian adessive case and the adposition <i>peal</i> ‘on’

The Role of Lexical Frequency in the Acceptability of Syntactic Variants: Evidence Fromthat‐Clauses in Polish

Machine Meets Man: Evaluating the Psychological Reality of Corpus-based Probabilistic Models

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