Formal Models of Human Sentence Processing: Techniques and Tools

人类语言与基于计算机的正式语言在哪些方面有相似之处？它们在哪些方面有不同？对人类语言的理解如何才能导致更有效的计算机语言，以及如何利用计算机语言提供的显式形式化来增加对人类如何使用语言的理解？这些问题是努力将语言理解为一种认知活动的核心，这一活动在交流、转换、存储和检索信息方面发挥着关键作用。在NSF的资助下，北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校的语言研究人员将汇集世界领先的研究人员，在2008年3月于北卡罗来纳州教堂山举行的第21届CUNY年度人类句子处理会议上用一句特殊的话来解决这些基本问题。在这次特别会议中，语言处理的形式模型的最新发展，将利用计算机科学、神经网络研究和统计学中开发的技术，应用于人类语言的使用。此外，特别会议将讨论共享正式工具(例如，模型模拟、数据集和统计程序)如何通过促进更广泛地使用正式方法，并提供一种方式，使这一研究界能够更有效地利用其他科学领域在建模和统计分析方面取得的进展，从而对人类句子处理研究产生变革影响。除了直接支持关于正式模型的特别会议，NSF的资金还将帮助支持初级研究人员的参与，包括初级教师、博士后研究人员和研究生，因此将促进新一代研究人员进入语言科学。

In what ways are human language and formal, computer-based languages similar? In what ways are they different? How can understanding of human languages lead to more effective computer languages and how can the explicit formalization offered by computer languages be used to increase understanding of how humans use language? These questions are central to efforts to understand language as a cognitive activity, an activity that plays a critical role in communicating, transforming, storing and retrieving information. With NSF funding, language researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will bring together the world's leading researchers to address these basic questions in a special sentence of the 21st Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in March 2008. In this special session, the latest developments in formal models of language processing, using techniques developed in computer science, neural network research and statistics will be applied to human language use. In addition, the special session will address how the sharing of formal tools (e.g., model simulations, datasets, and statistical procedures) could have a transformative effect on the study of human sentence processing by facilitating wider use of formal methods and by providing a way in which this research community could more effectively exploit advances in modeling and statistical analysis that have been developed in other scientific domains.The Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing is the most prominent meeting of high-level language-processing researchers in the world. In addition to directly supporting the special session on formal models, NSF funding will help support the participation of beginning investigators, including starting faculty, post-doctoral researchers and graduate students, and so will facilitate entry of new generations of researchers into the language sciences.