Charles Yang
Biographic Data
| ID | 3592435 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Charles Yang |
| GIVEN NAMES | Charles |
| FAMILY NAME | Yang |
| SIGNATURE | YANG C |
| AFFILIATIONS | California University of Pennsylvania |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4160-265X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 75 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
The learnability of bridge effects
The distinction between bridge verbs, which allow long-distance questions out of their CP complement, and non-bridge verbs, which do not, is found in a range of languages. In the previous literature, this distinction has been variably attributed to the lexical semantic/discourse properties of the CP-embedding verbs, or the syntactic positioning of the dependent CP. In this study, we provide evidence for an alternative, learning-based account, whe…
Close enough isn’t good enough in word learning: Successful cross-situational word mappings are semantically independent of previous mappings
A User’s Defense of the Tolerance Principle: Reply to Enger (2022)
I provide an overview of the Tolerance Principle, its motivation, supporting evidence, and applications, with particular focus on how it can be used recursively to discover linguistic regularities of varying scopes. It corrects the misunderstandings in Enger’s recent article but the more important goal is to provide rigorously formulated predictions and quantitative data to the structural analysis of language
Miller's monkey updated: Communicative efficiency and the statistics of words in natural language
Using the Tolerance Principle to predict phonological change
Language acquisition is a well-established avenue for language change (Labov, 2007). Given the theoretical importance of language acquisition to language change, it is all the more important to formulate clear theories of transmission-based change. In this paper, we provide a simulation method designed to test the plausibility of different possible transmission-based changes, using the Tolerance Principle (Yang, 2016) to determine precise points …
Syntactic Structures after 60 Years: The Impact of the Chomskyan Revolution in Linguistics
A formalist perspective on language acquisition
Language acquisition is a computational process by which linguistic experience is integrated into the learner’s initial stage of knowledge. To understand language acquisition thus requires precise statements about these components and their interplay, stepping beyond the philosophical and methodological disputes such as the generative vs. usage-based approaches. I review several mathematical models that have guided the study of child language acq…
Some consequences of the Tolerance Principle
Preview this article: Some consequences of the Tolerance Principle, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/lab.00022.yan-1.gif
The Price of Linguistic Productivity: How Children Learn to Break the Rules of Language
An investigation of how children balance rules and exceptions when they learn languages. All languages have exceptions alongside overarching rules and regularities. How does a young child tease them apart within just a few years of language acquisition? In this book, drawing an economic analogy, Charles Yang argues that just as the price of goods is determined by the balance between supply and demand, the price of linguistic productivity arises f…
Learning datives: The Tolerance Principle in monolingual and bilingual acquisition
We study the learnability problem concerning the dative alternations in English (Baker, 1979; Pinker, 1989). We consider how first language learners productively apply the double-object and to-dative constructions ( give the book to library/ give the library the book), while excluding negative exceptions ( donate the book to the library/* donate the library the book). Our solution for first language acquisition is based on The Tolerance Principle…
For and against frequencies
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Negative knowledge from positive evidence
Why can't we say the asleep cat ? There is a class of adjectives in English, all of which start with a schwa (e.g. afraid, alone, asleep, away , etc.), that cannot be used attributively in a prenominal position. A frequently invoked strategy for the acquisition of such negative constraints in language is to use indirect negative evidence. For instance, if the learner consistently observes paraphrases such as the cat that is asleep , then the cons…
Recursive misrepresentations: A reply to Levinson (2013)
Levinson 2013 (L13) argues against the idea that ‘recursion, and especially recursive center-embedding, might be the core domain-specific property of language’ (p. 159), citing crosslinguistic grammatical data and specific corpus studies. L13 offers an alternative: language inherits its recursive properties ‘from the action domain’ (p. 159). We argue that L13’s claims are at best un-warranted and can in many instances be shown to be false. L13’s …
The mystery of language evolution
Understanding the evolution of language requires evidence regarding origins and processes that led to change. In the last 40 years, there has been an explosion of research on this problem as well as a sense that considerable progress has been made. We argue instead that the richness of ideas is accompanied by a poverty of evidence, with essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved. We show that…
Knowledge and Learning in Natural Language
Three factors in language variation
The great number crunch
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
On productivity
Language learning is a remarkably robust process. The child is incredibly good at recognizing systematic regularities even when faced with lexically and contextually restricted exceptions This paper sketches out a preliminary model that recognizes productive processes and exceptions as such; accordingly, the learner can proceed to internalize each as different kinds of linguistic knowledge. We argue that if a linguistic process is conjectured to …
Universal Grammar, statistics or both?
Knowledge and Learning in Natural Language
It is a simple observation that children make mistakes when they learn a language. Yet, to the trained eye, these mistakes are far from random; in fact, they closely resemble perfectly grammatical utterances by adults--who speak other languages. This type of error analysis suggests a novel view of language learning: children are born with a fixed set of hypotheses about language--Chomsky's Universal Grammar--and these hypotheses compete to match …
Empirical re-assessment of stimulus poverty arguments
It is a fact that the child learner does not entertain logically possible but empirically impossible linguistic hypotheses, despite the absence of sufficient disconfirming evidence. While Pullum & Scholz claim to have shown the existence of disconfirming evidence, they fail to demonstrate its sufficiency. By situating the acquisition problem in a quantitative and comparative framework, we show that the evidence is, after all, insufficient. Hence …
Internal and external forces in language change
If every productive form of linguistic expression can be described by some idealized human grammar, an individuals's variable linguistic behavior (Weinreich, Labov, & Herzog, 1968) can be modeled as a statistical distribution of multiple idealized grammars. The distribution of grammars is determined by the interaction between the biological constraints on human grammar and the properties of linguistic data in the environment during the course of …
Unordered Merge and its Linearization
In the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995), Merge is a set operation that imposes no intrinsic ordering among its members. However, syntactic structures are linearized into strings of words at PF. This paper proposes that in order for a Merger set to be linearized, its members must be either hierarchically displaced or morphologically fused into a single terminal node.The empirical study focuses on the structure of DP and its linearization in vario…
The mystery of language evolution
Understanding the evolution of language requires evidence regarding origins and processes that led to change. In the last 40 years, there has been an explosion of research on this problem as well as a sense that considerable progress has been made. We argue instead that the richness of ideas is accompanied by a poverty of evidence, with essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved. We show that…
Internal and external forces in language change
If every productive form of linguistic expression can be described by some idealized human grammar, an individuals's variable linguistic behavior (Weinreich, Labov, & Herzog, 1968) can be modeled as a statistical distribution of multiple idealized grammars. The distribution of grammars is determined by the interaction between the biological constraints on human grammar and the properties of linguistic data in the environment during the course of …
Recursive misrepresentations: A reply to Levinson (2013)
Levinson 2013 (L13) argues against the idea that ‘recursion, and especially recursive center-embedding, might be the core domain-specific property of language’ (p. 159), citing crosslinguistic grammatical data and specific corpus studies. L13 offers an alternative: language inherits its recursive properties ‘from the action domain’ (p. 159). We argue that L13’s claims are at best un-warranted and can in many instances be shown to be false. L13’s …
Three factors in language variation
Using the Tolerance Principle to predict phonological change
Language acquisition is a well-established avenue for language change (Labov, 2007). Given the theoretical importance of language acquisition to language change, it is all the more important to formulate clear theories of transmission-based change. In this paper, we provide a simulation method designed to test the plausibility of different possible transmission-based changes, using the Tolerance Principle (Yang, 2016) to determine precise points …
Unordered Merge and its Linearization
In the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995), Merge is a set operation that imposes no intrinsic ordering among its members. However, syntactic structures are linearized into strings of words at PF. This paper proposes that in order for a Merger set to be linearized, its members must be either hierarchically displaced or morphologically fused into a single terminal node.The empirical study focuses on the structure of DP and its linearization in vario…
The great number crunch
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Learning datives: The Tolerance Principle in monolingual and bilingual acquisition
We study the learnability problem concerning the dative alternations in English (Baker, 1979; Pinker, 1989). We consider how first language learners productively apply the double-object and to-dative constructions ( give the book to library/ give the library the book), while excluding negative exceptions ( donate the book to the library/* donate the library the book). Our solution for first language acquisition is based on The Tolerance Principle…
Negative knowledge from positive evidence
Why can't we say the asleep cat ? There is a class of adjectives in English, all of which start with a schwa (e.g. afraid, alone, asleep, away , etc.), that cannot be used attributively in a prenominal position. A frequently invoked strategy for the acquisition of such negative constraints in language is to use indirect negative evidence. For instance, if the learner consistently observes paraphrases such as the cat that is asleep , then the cons…
Unordered Merge and its Linearization
In the Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995), Merge is a set operation that imposes no intrinsic ordering among its members. However, syntactic structures are linearized into strings of words at PF. This paper proposes that in order for a Merger set to be linearized, its members must be either hierarchically displaced or morphologically fused into a single terminal node.The empirical study focuses on the structure of DP and its linearization in vario…
Internal and external forces in language change
If every productive form of linguistic expression can be described by some idealized human grammar, an individuals's variable linguistic behavior (Weinreich, Labov, & Herzog, 1968) can be modeled as a statistical distribution of multiple idealized grammars. The distribution of grammars is determined by the interaction between the biological constraints on human grammar and the properties of linguistic data in the environment during the course of …
Empirical re-assessment of stimulus poverty arguments
It is a fact that the child learner does not entertain logically possible but empirically impossible linguistic hypotheses, despite the absence of sufficient disconfirming evidence. While Pullum & Scholz claim to have shown the existence of disconfirming evidence, they fail to demonstrate its sufficiency. By situating the acquisition problem in a quantitative and comparative framework, we show that the evidence is, after all, insufficient. Hence …
Knowledge and Learning in Natural Language
It is a simple observation that children make mistakes when they learn a language. Yet, to the trained eye, these mistakes are far from random; in fact, they closely resemble perfectly grammatical utterances by adults--who speak other languages. This type of error analysis suggests a novel view of language learning: children are born with a fixed set of hypotheses about language--Chomsky's Universal Grammar--and these hypotheses compete to match …
Universal Grammar, statistics or both?
On productivity
Language learning is a remarkably robust process. The child is incredibly good at recognizing systematic regularities even when faced with lexically and contextually restricted exceptions This paper sketches out a preliminary model that recognizes productive processes and exceptions as such; accordingly, the learner can proceed to internalize each as different kinds of linguistic knowledge. We argue that if a linguistic process is conjectured to …
The great number crunch
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Three factors in language variation
Knowledge and Learning in Natural Language
Recursive misrepresentations: A reply to Levinson (2013)
Levinson 2013 (L13) argues against the idea that ‘recursion, and especially recursive center-embedding, might be the core domain-specific property of language’ (p. 159), citing crosslinguistic grammatical data and specific corpus studies. L13 offers an alternative: language inherits its recursive properties ‘from the action domain’ (p. 159). We argue that L13’s claims are at best un-warranted and can in many instances be shown to be false. L13’s …
The mystery of language evolution
Understanding the evolution of language requires evidence regarding origins and processes that led to change. In the last 40 years, there has been an explosion of research on this problem as well as a sense that considerable progress has been made. We argue instead that the richness of ideas is accompanied by a poverty of evidence, with essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved. We show that…
For and against frequencies
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Negative knowledge from positive evidence
Why can't we say the asleep cat ? There is a class of adjectives in English, all of which start with a schwa (e.g. afraid, alone, asleep, away , etc.), that cannot be used attributively in a prenominal position. A frequently invoked strategy for the acquisition of such negative constraints in language is to use indirect negative evidence. For instance, if the learner consistently observes paraphrases such as the cat that is asleep , then the cons…
The Price of Linguistic Productivity: How Children Learn to Break the Rules of Language
An investigation of how children balance rules and exceptions when they learn languages. All languages have exceptions alongside overarching rules and regularities. How does a young child tease them apart within just a few years of language acquisition? In this book, drawing an economic analogy, Charles Yang argues that just as the price of goods is determined by the balance between supply and demand, the price of linguistic productivity arises f…
Learning datives: The Tolerance Principle in monolingual and bilingual acquisition
We study the learnability problem concerning the dative alternations in English (Baker, 1979; Pinker, 1989). We consider how first language learners productively apply the double-object and to-dative constructions ( give the book to library/ give the library the book), while excluding negative exceptions ( donate the book to the library/* donate the library the book). Our solution for first language acquisition is based on The Tolerance Principle…
Syntactic Structures after 60 Years: The Impact of the Chomskyan Revolution in Linguistics
A formalist perspective on language acquisition
Language acquisition is a computational process by which linguistic experience is integrated into the learner’s initial stage of knowledge. To understand language acquisition thus requires precise statements about these components and their interplay, stepping beyond the philosophical and methodological disputes such as the generative vs. usage-based approaches. I review several mathematical models that have guided the study of child language acq…
Some consequences of the Tolerance Principle
Preview this article: Some consequences of the Tolerance Principle, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/lab.00022.yan-1.gif
Using the Tolerance Principle to predict phonological change
Language acquisition is a well-established avenue for language change (Labov, 2007). Given the theoretical importance of language acquisition to language change, it is all the more important to formulate clear theories of transmission-based change. In this paper, we provide a simulation method designed to test the plausibility of different possible transmission-based changes, using the Tolerance Principle (Yang, 2016) to determine precise points …
Miller's monkey updated: Communicative efficiency and the statistics of words in natural language
A User’s Defense of the Tolerance Principle: Reply to Enger (2022)
I provide an overview of the Tolerance Principle, its motivation, supporting evidence, and applications, with particular focus on how it can be used recursively to discover linguistic regularities of varying scopes. It corrects the misunderstandings in Enger’s recent article but the more important goal is to provide rigorously formulated predictions and quantitative data to the structural analysis of language
The learnability of bridge effects
The distinction between bridge verbs, which allow long-distance questions out of their CP complement, and non-bridge verbs, which do not, is found in a range of languages. In the previous literature, this distinction has been variably attributed to the lexical semantic/discourse properties of the CP-embedding verbs, or the syntactic positioning of the dependent CP. In this study, we provide evidence for an alternative, learning-based account, whe…
Close enough isn’t good enough in word learning: Successful cross-situational word mappings are semantically independent of previous mappings
Linguistics (16 works) · Computer Science (15 works) · Artificial Intelligence (11 works) · Language and cultural evolution (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (10 works) · Natural Language Processing Techniques (9 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Language Development and Disorders (8 works) · Natural language processing (7 works)