A Statistical Test for Grammar
Charles D Yang · 2011
We propose a statistical test for measuring grammatical productivity. We show that very young children’s knowledge is consistent with a systematic grammar that independently combines linguistic units. To a testable extent, the usage-based approach to language and language learning, which emphasizes the role of lexically specific memorization, is inconsistent with the child language data. We also discuss the connection of this research with developments in computational and theoretical linguistics. 1