Graduality aspects on distributional learning of word's syntactic categories

• Grant number: 19/21976-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: April 01, 2020
• End date: March 31, 2021
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics
• Principal Investigator: Pablo Picasso Feliciano de Faria
• Grantee: Maria Paula Cardeliquio Orfanelli
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

In the context of language acquisition, the potential of distributional information in the learning of syntactic categories for Brazilian Portuguese (BP) words has been studied using computational modeling (Faria e Ohashi, 2019; Faria, 2019) in which experiments are conducted using a child-directed speech corpus compiled from the Collection "Oral Language Acquisition Project" (CEDAE/UNICAMP) and the CHILDES (MacWhinney, 2000) basis. The modeling evaluates assumes an instantaneous entry data presentation to the learner, a convenient idealization for a first approach of the problem, but it is far from the child's reality, who is exposed gradually to the speech and needs to build its language knowledge incrementally. This research project has as its goal, therefore, to start investigating - theoretically and computationally- in which ways the model can be improved to simulate this gradual data presentation.