Language evolution seminar

Speaker: Fausto Carcassi (CLE, University of Edinburgh)

Title: The semantic structure of gradable adjectives: an experiment and a Bayesian model

Abstract: We describe a systematic difference between the semantic structure of nouns and of gradable adjectives in their bare use in terms of Gardenfors' conceptual spaces theory. We propose that the difference can be explained in terms of a difference in structure of the conceptual spaces underlying nouns and gradable adjectives. We present an experiment to support this proposal. The data did not support the hypothesis. We then present a cognitive Bayesian model of learning that encodes the theoretical proposal, and nest it within a hierarchical Bayesian model to do exploratory analysis.

Contact

Seminars are organised by the Centre for Language Evolution

Andres Karjus

Centre for Language Evolution