Frequency in Language: Memory, Attention and Learning

ISBN-13: 9781107449978 / Angielski / Miękka / 2022 / 341 str.

Dagmar (University of Birmingham) Divjak

Opis

Re-examines frequency, entrenchment and salience, three foundational concepts in usage-based linguistics, through the prism of learning, memory, and attention.

Recenzje

'This eloquently written book brings to the front a foundational property of human language, our sensitivity to the frequency distribution of linguistic items. The work further discusses how this property serves as the atomistic component of several key cognitive abilities, making the book an essential read for a modern, probability-based understanding of human cognition.' Neguine Rezaii, Harvard Medical School

Spis treści

Introduction: 1. Frequency of experience; 2. A cognitive perspective on language; 3. What this book is not about; 4. What this book is about; Part I: 5. Counting occurrences: how frequency made its way into the study of language; 5.1. The frequency wars: the role of frequency in nativist and nurturist frameworks; 5.2. Lexical statistics and word (frequency) lists; 5.3. Word lists in psycholinguistics: the discovery of the (word) frequency effect; 5.4. Word frequency distributions and the beginning of quantitative linguistics; 5.5. Summary and outlook; 6. Measuring exposure: frequency as s linguistic game-changer; 6.1 Frequency and usage-based theories of language; 6.2. Frequency measures that have played an important role in the development of usage-based theories of language; 6.3. Summary and outlook; 7. More than frequencies: towards a probabilistic view on language; 7.1. Constructing a grammar from the ground up; 7.2. probabilistic grammar; 7.3. Probabilities link linguistics to information theory; 7.4. Summary and outlook; Part II: 8. Committing experiences to memory; 8.1. What is memory?; 8.2. The physiology or neurobiology of memory; 8.3. Memory systems, memory processes and neural mechanisms of memory storage; 8.4. Behavioural diagnostics of memory for language; 8.5. Summary and outlook; 9. Entrenching linguistic structures; 9.1. Entrenchment in the mind, or in society?; 9.2. Three types of entrenchment; 9.3. How are repeated experiences recorded?; 9.4. Frequently asked questions; 9.5. Summary and outlook; Part III: 10. The brain's attention-orienting mechanisms; 10.1. Grasping the phenomenon: what is attention and what does it do?; 10.2. Ways of deploying attention; 10.3. Attention and memory: encoding and retrieving information; 10.4. Summary and outlook; 11. Salience: capturing attention in and through language; 11.1. Capturing attention in language: linguistics versus psychology; 11.2. Attention and salience; 11.3. Conclusions and outlook; Part IV: 12. Predicting: using past experience to guide future action; 12.1. Predicting from stored memories; 12.2. Memoryless prediction: Bayesian predictive coding frameworks; 12.3. What does predictive processing mean for language cognition? 12.4. Conclusions and outlook; 13. Learning: navigating frequency, recency, context and contingency; 13.1. Background: learning theory; 13.2 Applications to linguistics; 13.3. Conclusions: the place of frequency in a learning theoretic approach to language; 14. Conclusions; 14.1. Why do frequencies of occurrence play an important role in usage-based linguistics?; 14.2 How can frequency be used to explain the construction of a grammar from the ground up?; 14.3. Memory, attention and learning in the emergence of grammar; 14.4. Looking forward: what lessons can we learn?; 14.5. By way of conclusion.