Computational and communicative efficiency in language
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- As humans, we use language with ease and speed, solving the complex computational problem of processing form and meaning seemingly without effort. This dissertation studies how the properties of language enable us to achieve this, by investigating what is computationally difficult about language, and what is easy. We first investigate the principle of least effort, formalize it using contemporary machine learning methods, and argue that it can account for prominent typological patterns in word order. We then study the interplay of memory and surprisal in language processing, drawing on information-theoretic techniques to show that the order of words and morphemes efficiently trades off these aspects of complexity. Third, we investigate what makes language comprehension difficult for machines, proposing and validating a complexity metric that predicts the success of machine learning algorithms. Taken together, this dissertation introduces formal and computational techniques to precisely quantify the complexity of processing language, and to understand its implications for the structure of human language.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2022; ©2022 |
| Publication date | 2022; 2022 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Hahn, Michael Hermann |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Degen, Judith |
| Degree supervisor | Jurafsky, Dan, 1962- |
| Thesis advisor | Degen, Judith |
| Thesis advisor | Jurafsky, Dan, 1962- |
| Thesis advisor | Frank, Michael C, (Professor of human biology) |
| Degree committee member | Frank, Michael C, (Professor of human biology) |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Linguistics |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Michael Hermann Hahn. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Linguistics. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2022. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/np493db0254 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2022 by Michael Hermann Hahn
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