Exploring Word Order Universals: a Probabilistic Graphical Model Approach

Uncovering Probabilistic Implications in Typological Knowledge Bases

The study of linguistic typology is rooted in the implications we find between linguistic features, such as the fact that languages with object-verb word ordering tend to have post-positions. Uncovering such implications…

Emergent Word Order Universals from Cognitively-Motivated Language Models

The world's languages exhibit certain so-called typological or implicational universals; for example, Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) languages typically use postpositions. Explaining the source of such biases is a key goal of…

Rediscovering Greenberg's Word Order Universals in UD

Implicational Universals in Stochastic Constraint-Based Phonology

This paper focuses on the most basic implicational universals in phonological theory, called T-orders after Anttila and Andrus (2006). It shows that the T-orders predicted by stochastic (and partial order) Optimality The…

Communication Drives the Emergence of Language Universals in Neural Agents: Evidence from the Word-order/Case-marking Trade-off

Artificial learners often behave differently from human learners in the context of neural agent-based simulations of language emergence and change. A common explanation is the lack of appropriate cognitive biases in thes…