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<DIV><BR>The Department of Linguistics at USC proudly presents: <BR><BR><SPAN
class=Apple-style-span style="BORDER-COLLAPSE: collapse"><SPAN
class=Apple-style-span style="FONT-SIZE: large"><SPAN class=Apple-style-span
style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Noise and memory in rational human language
comprehension</SPAN></SPAN></SPAN><BR><BR><SPAN class=Apple-style-span
style="FONT-SIZE: large">Roger Levy<BR>UC, San Diego</SPAN>
<DIV><SPAN class=Apple-style-span style="FONT-SIZE: small"><A
href="http://idiom.ucsd.edu/~rlevy/">http://idiom.ucsd.edu/~rlevy/</A></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=Apple-style-span style="FONT-SIZE: 18px"><BR></SPAN>
<DIV><BR>Monday, April 13, 2009 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm <BR>Grace Ford Salvatori 118
<BR><BR>Following the talk, dinner will be served in the Linguistics Conference
Room GFS 330 <BR><BR></DIV>
<DIV><BR>Abstract: <BR><BR>
<DIV><SPAN class=Apple-style-span style="BORDER-COLLAPSE: collapse">Considering
the adversity of the conditions under which linguistic<BR>communication takes
place in everyday life---ambiguity of the signal,<BR>environmental competition
for our attention, speaker error, our limited<BR>memory, and so forth---it is
perhaps remarkable that we are as<BR>successful at it as we are. Perhaps
the leading explanation of this<BR>success is that (a) the linguistic signal is
redundant, (b) diverse<BR>information sources are generally available that can
help us obtain<BR>infer the intended message (or something close enough)
when<BR>comprehending an utterance, and (c) we use these diverse
information<BR>sources very quickly and to the fullest extent possible.
This<BR>explanation can be thought of as treating language comprehension
as a<BR>rational, evidential process. Nevertheless, there are number
of<BR>prominent phenomena reported in the sentence processing literature
that<BR>remain clear puzzles for the rational approach. In this talk I
address<BR>three such phenomena: "good enough" sentence comprehension
(Christianson<BR>et al., 2001; Ferreira et al., 2002), local-coherence effects
(Tabor et<BR>al., 2004), and "digging-in" effects (Frazier & Rayner, 1987;
Tabor &<BR>Hutchins, 2004). The common thread underlying these three
phenomena is<BR>an apparent failure to use information available in a
sentence<BR>appropriately in global or incremental inferences about the
correct<BR>interpretation of a sentence. I argue that the apparent puzzle
posed<BR>by these phenomena for models of rational sentence comprehension
may<BR>derive from the failure of existing models to appropriately account
for<BR>the environmental and cognitive constraints---namely, noisy input
and<BR>limited memory---under which comprehension takes place. I present
two<BR>new computational models of language comprehension under noisy input
and<BR>limited memory, and show that these models lead to possible solutions
to<BR>the above puzzles. I also present new experimental results
supporting<BR>key distinctive predictions of the models. More generally,
these models<BR>suggest how appropriately accounting for environmental and
cognitive<BR>constraints can lead to a more nuanced and ultimately more
satisfactory<BR>picture of key aspects of human cognition.</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=Apple-style-span
style="BORDER-COLLAPSE: collapse"><BR></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=Apple-style-span
style="BORDER-COLLAPSE: collapse"><BR></SPAN><BR>Email inquiries to: <A
href="mailto:lingtalk@college.usc.edu">lingtalk@college.usc.edu</A> <BR><A
href="http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/ling/newsevents/colloquia.shtml">http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/ling/newsevents/colloquia.shtml</A>
<BR><BR></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>