Revisiting the Uniform Information Density Hypothesis
Revisiting the Uniform Information Density Hypothesis
复制标题
重新审视统一信息密度假说
DOI：
10.18653/v1/2021.emnlp-main.74
复制
发表时间：
2021
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
R. Levy
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Clara Meister;Tiago Pimentel;Patrick Haller;Lena A. Jager;Ryan Cotterell;R. Levy
统一的信息密度（UID）假设在构造的话语中提出了语言使用者的偏好，因此在信号上均一探索了该信息，而对语言生产的影响进行了很好的探索，该假设可能会预测语言理解性和语言可接受性好吧，还不清楚应该衡量语言信号或缺乏语言的统一性，并且在哪个语言单位（例如，句子或语言水平）上，我们应该在这里调查UID假设的这些方面。使用阅读时间和可接受性数据。信息密度的非均匀性可预测我们的可接受性。拟议的操作表明，强烈的趋势可能是对整个语言的平均惊喜的回归，而不是短语，句子或文档 - 这一发现支持对UID的典型解释，即语言用户的副产品是使语言用户最大化的副产品使用（假设的）通信渠道。
The uniform information density (UID) hypothesis posits a preference among language users for utterances structured such that information is distributed uniformly across a signal. While its implications on language production have been well explored, the hypothesis potentially makes predictions about language comprehension and linguistic acceptability as well. Further, it is unclear how uniformity in a linguistic signal—or lack thereof—should be measured, and over which linguistic unit, e.g., the sentence or language level, this uniformity should hold. Here we investigate these facets of the UID hypothesis using reading time and acceptability data. While our reading time results are generally consistent with previous work, they are also consistent with a weakly super-linear effect of surprisal, which would be compatible with UID’s predictions. For acceptability judgments, we find clearer evidence that non-uniformity in information density is predictive of lower acceptability. We then explore multiple operationalizations of UID, motivated by different interpretations of the original hypothesis, and analyze the scope over which the pressure towards uniformity is exerted. The explanatory power of a subset of the proposed operationalizations suggests that the strongest trend may be a regression towards a mean surprisal across the language, rather than the phrase, sentence, or document—a finding that supports a typical interpretation of UID, namely that it is the byproduct of language users maximizing the use of a (hypothetical) communication channel.
DOI：
10.1162/tacl_a_00290
发表时间：
2019-01-01
影响因子：
10.9
作者：
Warstadt, Alex;Singh, Amanpreet;Bowman, Samuel R.
通讯作者：
Bowman, Samuel R.
影响因子：
4.3
作者：
Brothers, Trevor;Kuperberg, Gina R.
通讯作者：
Kuperberg, Gina R.