LSTMs Can Learn Basic Wh- and Relative Clause Dependencies in Norwegian
Bibliographic record
Abstract
One of the key features of natural languages is that they exhibit long-distance filler-gap dependencies (FGDs): In the sentence "What do you think the pilot sent __?" the wh-filler "what" is interpreted as the object of the verb "sent" across multiple words. The ability to establish FGDs is thought to require hierarchical syntactic structure. However, recent research suggests that recurrent neural networks (RNNs) without specific hierarchical bias can learn complex generalizations about wh-questions in English from raw text data (Wilcox et al. 2018; 2019). Across two experiments, we probe the generality of this result by testing whether a long short-term memory (LSTM) RNN model can learn basic generalizations about FGDs in Norwegian. Testing Norwegian allows us to assess whether previous results were due to distributional statistics of the English input or whether models can extract similar generalizations in languages with different syntactic distributions. We also test the model's performance on two different FGDs: wh-questions and relative clauses, allowing us to determine if the model learns abstract generalizations about FGDs that extend beyond a single construction type. Results from Experiment 1 suggest that the model expects fillers to be paired with gaps and that this expectation generalizes across different syntactic positions. Results from Experiment 2 suggest that the model's expectations are largely unaffected by the increased linear distance between the filler and the gap. Our findings provide support for the conclusion that LSTM RNN's ability to learn basic generalizations about FGDs is robust across dependency type and language.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".