Simulating Language 2015, pre-reading 6 questions Question Title * 1. In your own words, what is the structural difference between a recursively consistent and recursively inconsistent grammar? Question Title * 2. Which of the following statements captures the simulation results from Christiansen & Devlin's neural network model? Grammars exhibiting recursive inconsistency lead to higher Mean Squared Error after a fixed period of training. Grammars exhibiting recursive inconsistency lead to lower Mean Squared Error after a fixed period of training. Question Title * 3. Which of the following statements captures Christiansen & Devlin's analysis of cross-linguistic variation? Grammars exhibiting recursive inconsistency are relatively rare Grammars exhibiting recursive inconsistency are relatively common Question Title * 4. Why do you think Christiansen & Devlin use an SRN to test the learnability of different grammars? Unlike basic feedforward networks, SRNs are capable of sequence learning Like basic feedforward networks, SRNs are capable of sequence learning SRNs have language-specific knowledge built in. SRNs do not have language-specific knowledge built in. Running neural network simulations is easier than running experiments with humans. Question Title * 5. In your own words, explain why learnability of a language might be correlated with the frequency of that language type in the world's languages.[Edit: This question previously said "inversely correlated", sorry! Thanks to the person who pointed this out. I was thinking of MSE being inversely correlated with frequency. Plus I am a goof.] Question Title * 6. Is there anything you would like me to know before the lecture - any stuff you want me to go over again, anything you struggled with, any worries you have? Done