A Bayesian Model for Discovering Typological Implications

4 Jul 2009  ·  Hal Daumé III, Lyle Campbell ·

A standard form of analysis for linguistic typology is the universal implication. These implications state facts about the range of extant languages, such as ``if objects come after verbs, then adjectives come after nouns.'' Such implications are typically discovered by painstaking hand analysis over a small sample of languages. We propose a computational model for assisting at this process. Our model is able to discover both well-known implications as well as some novel implications that deserve further study. Moreover, through a careful application of hierarchical analysis, we are able to cope with the well-known sampling problem: languages are not independent.

PDF Abstract

Datasets


  Add Datasets introduced or used in this paper

Results from the Paper


  Submit results from this paper to get state-of-the-art GitHub badges and help the community compare results to other papers.

Methods


No methods listed for this paper. Add relevant methods here