Efficiency of the Symmetry Bias in Grammar Acquisition

Abstract

It is well known that the symmetry bias much accelerates the vocabulary learning. In particular, the bias helps infants to connect objects with their names easily. However, grammar learning is another important aspect of language acquisition. In this study, we propose that the symmetry bias also would help to acquire grammar rules faster. We employ Iterated Learning Model, and revise it to include the symmetry bias. The result of the experiments shows that infants could abduce the meanings from incomprehensible utterances using the symmetry bias, and acquire the compositional grammar from a reduced amount of learning data.

Process Acceleration in the Iterated Learning Model with String Clipping

“…The expressivity and the number of grammar rules represent only quality of grammar in a single agent viz., two agents who own completely different grammar rules from each other may have the same scores. But, the distance in languages represents grammatical difference between the parent and infant agents [13], i.e., they can communicate with each other with their own grammar rules.…”