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Information and Incrementality in Syntactic Bootstrapping ABSTRACT Title of dissertation: INFORMATION AND INCREMENTALITY IN SYNTACTIC BOOTSTRAPPING Aaron Steven White, Doctor of Philosophy, 2015 Dissertation directed by: Professor Valentine Hacquard Department of Linguistics Some words are harder to learn than others. For instance, action verbs like run and hit are learned earlier than propositional attitude verbs like think and want. One reason think and want might be learned later is that, whereas we can see and hear running and hitting, we can't see or hear thinking and wanting. Children nevertheless learn these verbs, so a route other than the senses must exist. There is mounting evidence that this route involves, in large part, inferences based on the distribution of syntactic contexts a propositional attitude verb occurs in|a process known as syntactic bootstrapping. This fact makes the domain of propositional attitude verbs a prime proving ground for models of syntactic bootstrapping. With this in mind, this dissertation has two goals: on the one hand, it aims to construct a computational model of syntactic bootstrapping; on the other, it aims to use this model to investigate the limits on the amount of information about propo- sitional attitude verb meanings that can be gleaned from syntactic distributions. I show throughout the dissertation that these goals are mutually supportive. In Chapter 1, I set out the main problems that drive the investigation. In Chapters 2 and 3, I use both psycholinguistic experiments and computational mod- eling to establish that there is a significant amount of semantic information carried in both participants' syntactic acceptability judgments and syntactic distributions in corpora. To investigate the nature of this relationship I develop two computa- tional models: (i) a nonnegative model of (semantic-to-syntactic) projection and (ii) a nonnegative model of syntactic bootstrapping. In Chapter 4, I use a novel variant of the Human Simulation Paradigm to show that the information carried in syntactic distribution is actually utilized by (simulated) learners. In Chapter 5, I present a proposal for how to solve a standing problem in how syntactic bootstrap- ping accounts for certain kinds of cross-linguistic variation. And in Chapter 6, I conclude with some future directions for this work. INFORMATION AND INCREMENTALITY IN SYNTACTIC BOOTSTRAPPING by Aaron Steven White Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2015 Advisory Committee: Professor Valentine Hacquard, Chair/Advisor Professor Jeffrey Lidz, Co-Advisor Professor Philip Resnik Professor Naomi Feldman Professor Hal Daum´eIII c Copyright by Aaron Steven White 2015 Dedication To my grandparents Sally and Ken White, who instilled in me from a young age a deep curiosity about the natural world. To my parents Annette and Steve White, who unerringly supported me through the course of my career as a student. And to my partner Bonnie O'Keefe, who made these six years at Maryland possible. ii Acknowledgments Finishing this dissertation is like waking from a dream in media res. Its be- ginnings are hard to discern; its course left no room for a waking world; and its narrative threads|only partially tied off—imply a thousand branching paths I still hope to realize. Here, I'd like to thank some of the many people that played a role in winding those narrative threads. First and foremost, my sincere gratitude goes to my committee members: Valentine Hacquard, Jeff Lidz, Philip Resnik, Hal Daum´eIII, and Naomi Feldman. This dissertation is an exercise in interdisciplinary bridge-building, and these five| each a master engineer in their own right|were gracious enough to inspect my work and tell me when a span was structurally unsound. Valentine and Jeff deserve my deepest thanks in this right. It is very, very hard to do insightful research. Not only do both do what I consider to be some of the most insightful in semantics and language acquisition, but they are both able to demonstrate how to do it. I can only hope that this dissertation does some justice to their demonstration. Beyond their insight, Valentine and Jeff—and particularly Valentine|deserve thanks for their patience and generosity. Many a time did I bring them half-baked ideas, which they would patiently deconstruct. Most of the time very little was left after this deconstruction, but when there was something left, they were able to extract the kernel of the idea clean of the cruft. I'd similarly like to thank Philip for his patience and generosity. This disser- iii tation is, to some extent, about bringing ideas from linguistic theory down to earth. For this to be interesting, there needs to be a reason to bring those ideas down to earth in the first place. Philip has a unique ability to see when there is reason and when there isn't. In meetings with colloquium speakers and other visitors, I've often heard that it seems like Maryland students are advised by the entire faculty. While Valentine and Jeff are certainly the most central figures in my graduate career, this really is true. In this respect, Alexander Williams and Norbert Hornstein deserve to be singled out. Alexander brings a deep subtlety of thought to every problem I have seen him tackle; he also has great taste in music. Besides Valentine and Jeff, Norbert did the most to show me what the important questions in the field are|in some cases, not without much convincing. I'll miss my semi-weekly impromptu meetings with him, in which he would wander into my office, pose some deep theoretical question|often one that would soon be posted to his blog Faculty of Language| and then discuss it with me and whoever else was in my office (often Dan Parker or Dustin Alfonso Chac´on)for an hour or more. Outside of the Maryland faculty, my deepest gratitude goes to Pranav Anand. This dissertation wouldn't exist without Pranav's mentorship. Pranav introduced me to both the syntactic bootstrapping literature|and thus Jeff's work|and the attitude verbs literature|and thus Valentine's work|in my final year as an under- graduate at UC Santa Cruz (2008-2009)|the former in his Foundations of Linguistic Theory class (Fall 2008) and the latter in his Semantics 3 class (Winter 2009). It was Pranav's mentorship that led me to apply to Maryland in the first place. iv Many of the ideas in this dissertation were developed in conversation with the attitude verbs group|Valentine Hacquard, Jeff Lidz, Erin Eaker, Shevaun Lewis, Kate Harrigan, Rachel Dudley, Naho Orita, Morgan Moyer, and Tom Roberts|as well as various visitors who were gracious enough to have discussions with us: Jane Grimshaw, Pranav Anand, Jill de Villiers, John Grinstead, Chris Kennedy, Keir Moulton, Paul Portner, Aynat Rubinstein, Meredith Rowe, Florian Schwarz, Noah Goodman, Jesse Snedeker, and Elizabeth Bogal-Allbritten. My cohort|Kate Harrigan, Dustin Alfonso Chac´on,Naho Orita, and Sayaka Funakoshi-Goto|were also integral in developing these ideas in less direct ways. Kate has helped me remember that there are aspects of life outside academia. I'm not sure how she put up with me for five years, but I'm grateful that she did, because I can't imagine having made it through graduate school without her friendship. Dustin is a brilliant linguist and a good friend who was somehow able to share an office with me while dissertating, tolerating my random outbursts and often joining in my silliness. Prior to Dustin, I shared an office with Dan Parker—off whom many an idea was bounced, by whom many a chillwave track was bumped, and with whom many a guitar jam was perpetrated|as well as Sol Lago|whose favorite pastime was to be exasperated by said chillwave tracks (or maybe just Dan and me more gener- ally). Dan and I were perpetually blasting off into the brotosphere, and Sol would sometimes join as honorary brodette. I really loved sharing an office with both Dan and Sol. For a very long time, I was convinced that Shevaun Lewis hated me. I am v now convinced that is not true and realize that what made me think that is exactly what I love about her personality. Shevaun is an extremely incisive thinker, and I'm happy that I'll be spending a year in her company at Johns Hopkins. My first experience of homebrewing was at Shevaun and Brad Larson's place, and though it took a few years to finally get going, Quincy St. Brewery owes its existence to their influence, as it does to Assistant Brewmaster, Peter Enns, and Chief Packaging Officer, Alix Kowalski. (The other position in the company, head of I-don't-drink- beer-so-why-would-I-drink-homebrew, is held by Zoe Schlueter.) Mike Fetters is a damn cool dude with some damn cool tattoos (and a bad influence in this regard). He also knows a ton about ellipsis, and some day, we may finally get one of the papers we've been working on together out. As far as I can tell, it's customary for acknowledgment of non-academics to come near the end (despite the often non-academic nature of the preceding thanks). I've followed convention here, but this should not be taken to imply depth of grat- itude. I'm deeply grateful to Bonnie O'Keefe, who has seen me through all six years of my time at Maryland. I can't imagine that dating an academic is the most pleasant experience, but Bonnie has taken it in stride. My final thanks (to flesh and blood people) go to my parents|Annette White and Steve White|my brother|Austin White|and my grandparents|Sally White, Ken White, Fred Roznowski, and Mary Roznowski.
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