gquestion about LFG and Human Sentence Processing and Acquisition

[Arnold D J]

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a question to the list about
what recent work there might be in LFG and processing/acquisition.

I got several replies (see below), thanks to all of you.

In general, they confirm the impression that there has not been much
work in these areas.

Below you will find a summary of what the responses said, and then a
list of `classic' (i.e. non-recent) papers in the area that I put
together myself by searching the LFG bibliography.
#---------------------------------------------------------------

Wataru Nakamura <nakamura at e-one.uec.ac.jp> suggests:

    Manfred Pienemann (1998) Language Processing and Second Language
	Development: Processability Theory.  John Benjamins.

Peter Hancox <P.J.Hancox at bham.ac.uk> suggests:

    Gaylard, H. L. (1995), Phrase Structure in a Computational Model of
	Child Language Acquisition, PhD Thesis, University of
	Birmingham
	http://admin.ccl.umist.ac.uk/ra/heleng/#phd
	Abstract:
	This thesis describes a computational model of child
	language acquisition which acquires a recursive
	phrase-structure grammar in the absence of X-Bar Theory. The
	model assumes no grammar, lexicon, or segmentation. Input
	utterances include phrases as well as sentences, of no more
	than two levels of embedding, paired with their semantic
	representations.  The initial products of acquisition are a
	lexicon of unanalysed utterances and a finite-state
	grammar. The lexical items acquired guide further lexical
	acquisition, which results in their segmentation, and thus
	triggers the acquisition of a phrase-structure grammar. The
	Lexical-Functional Grammar formalism is used, so that
	acquiring C-Structure, or phrase structure, can be viewed as
	mapping the ordered utterance onto the unordered F-Structure,
	a shallow semantic representation. Generalization over the
	phrase structure rules acquired results in the induction of
	syntactic categories, and it is this which gives rise to
	recursion in the grammar. The model demonstrates both Degree-2
	learnability and incremental learning in accordance with the
	gradual nature of child language development.  Birmingham.

Joan Bresnan <bresnan at csli.Stanford.EDU> reports that:
     "Prof. Michiko Nakano gave several papers at AILA 99 in Tokyo on
     experimental results regarding second lg learning and their
     implications for LFG.  Peter Sells gave a review paper on this topic"

However, I haven't been able to trace any of these papers.

She also reminds us that Pinker's LFG based book on Lg Acquisition
(see below) has come out in a second edition, and notes that
Both DOP-LFG and OT-LFG have attracted some formal attention in
relation to learnability and/parsing.  (However, here `parsing' tends
not to mean `human' sentence processing). The relevant sites are:

    http://www-lfg.stanford.edu/lfg/lfg-dop/
    http://www-lfg.stanford.edu/lfg/ot-lfg/ot-lfg.html


And here are some `classic papers' on the subject of LFG and Human
Sentence Processing/Language Acquisition.

Maria Babyonyshev.  Acquisition of the Russian case system.  In MIT
      Working Papers in Linguistics 19, pages 1--43. MIT, Department
      of Linguistics and Philosophy, 1993.


Marilyn Ford. Parsing complexity and a theory of parsing.  In Greg
	N. Carlson and Michael K. Tanenhaus, editors, Linguistic
	Structure in Language Processing. D. Reidel, Dordrecht, 1988.


Rick Kazman. Simulating the child's acquisition of the lexicon and
     syntax-experiences with Babel.  Machine Learning, 160 (1-2):0
     87--120, 1994.

Jay Kim. Parsing the Korean verb. In Proceedings of the Sixth
    International Conference on Korean Linguistics, Seoul,
    1988. International Circle of Korean Linguistics.

Jeong-Ryeol Kim. Parsing light verb constructions in
	    Lexical-Functional Grammar.  Ohak Yonku / Language
	    Research, 290 (4):0 535--566, 1993.

Young-Joo Kim. Theoretical implications of complement structure
	  acquisition in Korean.  Journal of Child Language, 160 (3):0
	  573--598, 1989.

Steven  Pinker. A  theory of  the acquisition  of lexical-interpretive
	grammars.  In Joan  Bresnan, editor, The Mental Representation
	of  Grammatical  Relations,  pages  655--726. The  MIT  Press,
	Cambridge, MA, 1982.

Steven Pinker. Learnability and Cognition: The Acquisition of Argument
       Structure.  The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1989a.


#---------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks to

Wataru Nakamura <nakamura at e-one.uec.ac.jp>
Farrell Ackerman <fackerman at ucsd.edu>
Peter Hancox <P.J.Hancox at bham.ac.uk>
Joan Bresnan <bresnan at csli.Stanford.EDU>
kersti.borjars at man.ac.uk (Kersti Borjars)

------------------------------------------------------------------
Doug Arnold,  		     	   doug at essex.ac.uk
Dept. of Language & Linguistics,   http://clwww.essex.ac.uk/~doug
University of Essex,	     	
Wivenhoe Park,		     	   Tel: +44 1206 872084 (direct)
Colchester, CO4 3SQ, UK.     	   Fax: +44 1206 872198/872085
------------------------------------------------------------------