Language comprehension in humans is very robust. With apparent ease, language users can grasp the meaning of utterances made in very bad acoustic conditions or containing grammatical errors. A key mechanism in achieving this robustness is the ability of the listener to predict what the speaker is likely to say. According to recent work in psycholinguistics, these predictions are made by covertl...

This paper reports further progress into a computational implementation of a new formalism for construction grammar, known as Fluid Construction Grammar (FCG). We focus in particular on how hierarchy can be implemented. The paper analyses the requirements for a proper treatment of hierarchy in grammar and then proposes a particular solution based on a new operator, known as the J-operator. The ...

public bathes have much importance in islamic cities, after the most significant structures like mosques and schools. there are a number of factors affecting the construction of bathes among which temperature regulation, humidity, access path, location in the urban texture, watercourses, and construction of exit paths are the most important. this study tries to make a comparative analysis of t...

the how and why of tehran development and construction of its citadel has always been of interest to researchers. at the same time, issues such as its time of obtaining importance and prosperity on the one hand, and establishing and appellation of its citadel as the most important official complex of the qajar period on the other, are among the concerns mostly ignored by the scholars. addressin...

Fluid Construction Grammar (FCG) is a formalism for defining the inventory of lexical and grammatical conventions that language processing requires and the operations with which this inventory is used to parse and produce sentences. This chapter introduces some of the key ideas and basic design principles behind the development of Fluid Construction Grammar.

German case syncretism is often assumed to be the accidental by-product of historical development. This paper contradicts this claim and argues that the evolution of German case is driven by the need to optimize the cognitive effort and memory required for processing and interpretation. This hypothesis is supported by a novel kind of computational experiments that reconstruct and compare attest...

Fluid Construction Grammar (FCG) is an open-source computational grammar formalism that is becoming increasingly popular for studying the history and evolution of language. This demonstration shows how FCG can be used to operationalise the cultural processes and cognitive mechanisms that underly language evolution and change.