Suzanne Stevenson


2023

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Investigating Online Community Engagement through Stancetaking
Jai Aggarwal | Brian Diep | Julia Watson | Suzanne Stevenson
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2023

Much work has explored lexical and semantic variation in online communities, and drawn connections to community identity and user engagement patterns. Communities also express identity through the sociolinguistic concept of stancetaking. Large-scale computational work on stancetaking has explored community similarities in their preferences for stance markers – words that serve to indicate aspects of a speaker’s stance – without considering the stance-relevant properties of the contexts in which stance markers are used. We propose representations of stance contexts for 1798 Reddit communities and show how they capture community identity patterns distinct from textual or marker similarity measures. We also relate our stance context representations to broader inter- and intra-community engagement patterns, including cross-community posting patterns and social network properties of communities. Our findings highlight the strengths of using rich properties of stance as a way of revealing community identity and engagement patterns in online multi-community spaces.

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What social attitudes about gender does BERT encode? Leveraging insights from psycholinguistics
Julia Watson | Barend Beekhuizen | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the 61st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)

Much research has sought to evaluate the degree to which large language models reflect social biases. We complement such work with an approach to elucidating the connections between language model predictions and people’s social attitudes. We show how word preferences in a large language model reflect social attitudes about gender, using two datasets from human experiments that found differences in gendered or gender neutral word choices by participants with differing views on gender (progressive, moderate, or conservative). We find that the language model BERT takes into account factors that shape human lexical choice of such language, but may not weigh those factors in the same way people do. Moreover, we show that BERT’s predictions most resemble responses from participants with moderate to conservative views on gender. Such findings illuminate how a language model: (1) may differ from people in how it deploys words that signal gender, and (2) may prioritize some social attitudes over others.

2021

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A Formidable Ability: Detecting Adjectival Extremeness with DSMs
Farhan Samir | Barend Beekhuizen | Suzanne Stevenson
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL-IJCNLP 2021

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Quantifying Cognitive Factors in Lexical Decline
David Francis | Ella Rabinovich | Farhan Samir | David Mortensen | Suzanne Stevenson
Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Volume 9

We adopt an evolutionary view on language change in which cognitive factors (in addition to social ones) affect the fitness of words and their success in the linguistic ecosystem. Specifically, we propose a variety of psycholinguistic factors—semantic, distributional, and phonological—that we hypothesize are predictive of lexical decline, in which words greatly decrease in frequency over time. Using historical data across three languages (English, French, and German), we find that most of our proposed factors show a significant difference in the expected direction between each curated set of declining words and their matched stable words. Moreover, logistic regression analyses show that semantic and distributional factors are significant in predicting declining words. Further diachronic analysis reveals that declining words tend to decrease in the diversity of their lexical contexts over time, gradually narrowing their ‘ecological niches’.

2020

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Exploration of Gender Differences in COVID-19 Discourse on Reddit
Jai Aggarwal | Ella Rabinovich | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on NLP for COVID-19 at ACL 2020

Decades of research on differences in the language of men and women have established postulates about the nature of lexical, topical, and emotional preferences between the two genders, along with their sociological underpinnings. Using a novel dataset of male and female linguistic productions collected from the Reddit discussion platform, we further confirm existing assumptions about gender-linked affective distinctions, and demonstrate that these distinctions are amplified in social media postings involving emotionally-charged discourse related to COVID-19. Our analysis also confirms considerable differences in topical preferences between male and female authors in pandemic-related discussions.

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Pick a Fight or Bite your Tongue: Investigation of Gender Differences in Idiomatic Language Usage
Ella Rabinovich | Hila Gonen | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Computational Linguistics

A large body of research on gender-linked language has established foundations regarding cross-gender differences in lexical, emotional, and topical preferences, along with their sociological underpinnings. We compile a novel, large and diverse corpus of spontaneous linguistic productions annotated with speakers’ gender, and perform a first large-scale empirical study of distinctions in the usage of figurative language between male and female authors. Our analyses suggest that (1) idiomatic choices reflect gender-specific lexical and semantic preferences in general language, (2) men’s and women’s idiomatic usages express higher emotion than their literal language, with detectable, albeit more subtle, differences between male and female authors along the dimension of dominance compared to similar distinctions in their literal utterances, and (3) contextual analysis of idiomatic expressions reveals considerable differences, reflecting subtle divergences in usage environments, shaped by cross-gender communication styles and semantic biases.

2019

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Say Anything: Automatic Semantic Infelicity Detection in L2 English Indefinite Pronouns
Ella Rabinovich | Julia Watson | Barend Beekhuizen | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the 23rd Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning (CoNLL)

Computational research on error detection in second language speakers has mainly addressed clear grammatical anomalies typical to learners at the beginner-to-intermediate level. We focus instead on acquisition of subtle semantic nuances of English indefinite pronouns by non-native speakers at varying levels of proficiency. We first lay out theoretical, linguistically motivated hypotheses, and supporting empirical evidence, on the nature of the challenges posed by indefinite pronouns to English learners. We then suggest and evaluate an automatic approach for detection of atypical usage patterns, demonstrating that deep learning architectures are promising for this task involving nuanced semantic anomalies.

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CodeSwitch-Reddit: Exploration of Written Multilingual Discourse in Online Discussion Forums
Ella Rabinovich | Masih Sultani | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the 2019 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing and the 9th International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing (EMNLP-IJCNLP)

In contrast to many decades of research on oral code-switching, the study of written multilingual productions has only recently enjoyed a surge of interest. Many open questions remain regarding the sociolinguistic underpinnings of written code-switching, and progress has been limited by a lack of suitable resources. We introduce a novel, large, and diverse dataset of written code-switched productions, curated from topical threads of multiple bilingual communities on the Reddit discussion platform, and explore questions that were mainly addressed in the context of spoken language thus far. We investigate whether findings in oral code-switching concerning content and style, as well as speaker proficiency, are carried over into written code-switching in discussion forums. The released dataset can further facilitate a range of research and practical activities.

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CodeSwitch-Reddit: Exploration of Written Multilingual Discourse in Online Discussion Forums
Ella Rabinovich | Masih Sultani | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Noisy User-generated Text (W-NUT 2019)

In contrast to many decades of research on oral code-switching, the study of written multilingual productions has only recently enjoyed a surge of interest. Many open questions remain regarding the sociolinguistic underpinnings of written code-switching, and progress has been limited by a lack of suitable resources. We introduce a novel, large, and diverse dataset of written code-switched productions, curated from topical threads of multiple bilingual communities on the Reddit discussion platform, and explore questions that were mainly addressed in the context of spoken language thus far. We investigate whether findings in oral code-switching concerning content and style, as well as speaker proficiency, are carried over into written code-switching in discussion forums. The released dataset can further facilitate a range of research and practical activities.

2018

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Predicting and Explaining Human Semantic Search in a Cognitive Model
Filip Miscevic | Aida Nematzadeh | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the 8th Workshop on Cognitive Modeling and Computational Linguistics (CMCL 2018)

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Modeling bilingual word associations as connected monolingual networks
Yevgen Matusevych | Amir Ardalan Kalantari Dehaghi | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the 8th Workshop on Cognitive Modeling and Computational Linguistics (CMCL 2018)

2016

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Comparing Computational Cognitive Models of Generalization in a Language Acquisition Task
Libby Barak | Adele E. Goldberg | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the 2016 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing

2015

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A Computational Cognitive Model of Novel Word Generalization
Aida Nematzadeh | Erin Grant | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the 2015 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing

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Perceptual, conceptual, and frequency effects on error patterns in English color term acquisition
Barend Beekhuizen | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the Sixth Workshop on Cognitive Aspects of Computational Language Learning

2014

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Learning Verb Classes in an Incremental Model
Libby Barak | Afsaneh Fazly | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the Fifth Workshop on Cognitive Modeling and Computational Linguistics

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A Usage-Based Model of Early Grammatical Development
Barend Beekhuizen | Rens Bod | Afsaneh Fazly | Suzanne Stevenson | Arie Verhagen
Proceedings of the Fifth Workshop on Cognitive Modeling and Computational Linguistics

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A Cognitive Model of Semantic Network Learning
Aida Nematzadeh | Afsaneh Fazly | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP)

2013

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Acquisition of Desires before Beliefs: A Computional Investigation
Libby Barak | Afsaneh Fazly | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the Seventeenth Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning

2012

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Modeling the Acquisition of Mental State Verbs
Libby Barak | Afsaneh Fazly | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Cognitive Modeling and Computational Linguistics (CMCL 2012)

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A Computational Model of Memory, Attention, and Word Learning
Aida Nematzadeh | Afsaneh Fazly | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Cognitive Modeling and Computational Linguistics (CMCL 2012)

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Unsupervised Disambiguation of Image Captions
Wesley May | Sanja Fidler | Afsaneh Fazly | Sven Dickinson | Suzanne Stevenson
*SEM 2012: The First Joint Conference on Lexical and Computational Semantics – Volume 1: Proceedings of the main conference and the shared task, and Volume 2: Proceedings of the Sixth International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation (SemEval 2012)

2011

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Incorporating Coercive Constructions into a Verb Lexicon
Claire Bonial | Susan Windisch Brown | Jena D. Hwang | Christopher Parisien | Martha Palmer | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the ACL 2011 Workshop on Relational Models of Semantics

2010

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Automatically Identifying Changes in the Semantic Orientation of Words
Paul Cook | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'10)

The meanings of words are not fixed but in fact undergo change, with new word senses arising and established senses taking on new aspects of meaning or falling out of usage. Two types of semantic change are amelioration and pejoration; in these processes a word sense changes to become more positive or negative, respectively. In this first computational study of amelioration and pejoration we adapt a web-based method for determining semantic orientation to the task of identifying ameliorations and pejorations in corpora from differing time periods. We evaluate our proposed method on a small dataset of known historical ameliorations and pejorations, and find it to perform better than a random baseline. Since this test dataset is small, we conduct a further evaluation on artificial examples of amelioration and pejoration, and again find evidence that our proposed method is able to identify changes in semantic orientation. Finally, we conduct a preliminary evaluation in which we apply our methods to the task of finding words which have recently undergone amelioration or pejoration.

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No Sentence Is Too Confusing To Ignore
Paul Cook | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the 2010 Workshop on NLP and Linguistics: Finding the Common Ground

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A Graph-Theoretic Framework for Semantic Distance
Vivian Tsang | Suzanne Stevenson
Computational Linguistics, Volume 36, Number 1, March 2010

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Automatically Identifying the Source Words of Lexical Blends in English
Paul Cook | Suzanne Stevenson
Computational Linguistics, Volume 36, Number 1, March 2010

2009

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Proceedings of the Thirteenth Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning (CoNLL-2009)
Suzanne Stevenson | Xavier Carreras
Proceedings of the Thirteenth Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning (CoNLL-2009)

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An Unsupervised Model for Text Message Normalization
Paul Cook | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the Workshop on Computational Approaches to Linguistic Creativity

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Unsupervised Type and Token Identification of Idiomatic Expressions
Afsaneh Fazly | Paul Cook | Suzanne Stevenson
Computational Linguistics, Volume 35, Number 1, March 2009

2008

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Special Issue Introduction: Semantic Role Labeling: An Introduction to the Special Issue
Lluís Màrquez | Xavier Carreras | Kenneth C. Litkowski | Suzanne Stevenson
Computational Linguistics, Volume 34, Number 2, June 2008 - Special Issue on Semantic Role Labeling

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Fast Mapping in Word Learning: What Probabilities Tell Us
Afra Alishahi | Afsaneh Fazly | Suzanne Stevenson
CoNLL 2008: Proceedings of the Twelfth Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning

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An Incremental Bayesian Model for Learning Syntactic Categories
Christopher Parisien | Afsaneh Fazly | Suzanne Stevenson
CoNLL 2008: Proceedings of the Twelfth Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning

2007

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A Cognitive Model for the Representation and Acquisition of Verb Selectional Preferences
Afra Alishahi | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the Workshop on Cognitive Aspects of Computational Language Acquisition

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Distinguishing Subtypes of Multiword Expressions Using Linguistically-Motivated Statistical Measures
Afsaneh Fazly | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the Workshop on A Broader Perspective on Multiword Expressions

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Pulling their Weight: Exploiting Syntactic Forms for the Automatic Identification of Idiomatic Expressions in Context
Paul Cook | Afsaneh Fazly | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the Workshop on A Broader Perspective on Multiword Expressions

2006

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Automatically Constructing a Lexicon of Verb Phrase Idiomatic Combinations
Afsaneh Fazly | Suzanne Stevenson
11th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics

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Proceedings of the Workshop on Multiword Expressions: Identifying and Exploiting Underlying Properties
Begoña Villada Moirón | Aline Villavicencio | Diana McCarthy | Stefan Evert | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the Workshop on Multiword Expressions: Identifying and Exploiting Underlying Properties

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Classifying Particle Semantics in English Verb-Particle Constructions
Paul Cook | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the Workshop on Multiword Expressions: Identifying and Exploiting Underlying Properties

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Context Comparison as a Minimum Cost Flow Problem
Vivian Tsang | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of TextGraphs: the First Workshop on Graph Based Methods for Natural Language Processing

2005

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The Acquisition and Use of Argument Structure Constructions: A Bayesian Model
Afra Alishahi | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the Workshop on Psychocomputational Models of Human Language Acquisition

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Automatically Distinguishing Literal and Figurative Usages of Highly Polysemous Verbs
Afsaneh Fazly | Ryan North | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the ACL-SIGLEX Workshop on Deep Lexical Acquisition

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Automatic Acquisition of Knowledge About Multiword Predicates
Afsaneh Fazly | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the 19th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation

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Exploiting a Verb Lexicon in Automatic Semantic Role Labelling
Robert Swier | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of Human Language Technology Conference and Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing

2004

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Statistical Measures of the Semi-Productivity of Light Verb Constructions
Suzanne Stevenson | Afsaneh Fazly | Ryan North
Proceedings of the Workshop on Multiword Expressions: Integrating Processing

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Calculating Semantic Distance between Word Sense Probability Distributions
Vivian Tsang | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the Eighth Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning (CoNLL-2004) at HLT-NAACL 2004

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Using Selectional Profile Distance to Detect Verb Alternations
Vivian Tsang | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the Computational Lexical Semantics Workshop at HLT-NAACL 2004

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Unsupervised Semantic Role Labellin
Robert S. Swier | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the 2004 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing

2003

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Semi-supervised Verb Class Discovery Using Noisy Features
Suzanne Stevenson | Eric Joanis
Proceedings of the Seventh Conference on Natural Language Learning at HLT-NAACL 2003

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Towards a Framework for Learning Structured Shape Models from Text-Annotated Images
Sven Wachsmuth | Suzanne Stevenson | Sven Dickinson
Proceedings of the HLT-NAACL 2003 Workshop on Learning Word Meaning from Non-Linguistic Data

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A General Feature Space for Automatic Verb Classification
Eric Joanis | Suzanne Stevenson
10th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics

2002

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A Multilingual Paradigm for Automatic Verb Classification
Paola Merlo | Suzanne Stevenson | Vivian Tsang | Gianluca Allaria
Proceedings of the 40th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics

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Crosslinguistic Transfer in Automatic Verb Classification
Vivian Tsang | Suzanne Stevenson | Paola Merlo
COLING 2002: The 19th International Conference on Computational Linguistics

2001

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Automatic verb classification using multilingual resources
Vivian Tsang | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the ACL 2001 Workshop on Computational Natural Language Learning (ConLL)

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Automatic Verb Classification Based on Statistical Distributions of Argument Structure
Paola Merlo | Suzanne Stevenson
Computational Linguistics, Volume 27, Number 3, September 2001

2000

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Establishing the Upper Bound and Inter-judge Agreement of a Verb Classification Task
Paola Merlo | Suzanne Stevenson
Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC’00)

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Automatic Lexical Acquisition Based on Statistical Distributions
Suzanne Stevenson | Paola Merlo
COLING 2000 Volume 2: The 18th International Conference on Computational Linguistics

1999

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Automatic Verb Classification Using Distributions of Grammatical Features
Suzanne Stevenson | Paola Merlo
Ninth Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics

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Supervised Learning of Lexical Semantic Verb Classes Using Frequency Distributions
Suzanne Stevenson | Paola Merlo | Natalia Kariaeva Rutgers
SIGLEX99: Standardizing Lexical Resources

1998

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Book Reviews: The Architecture of the Language Faculty
Suzanne Stevenson
Computational Linguistics, Volume 24, Number 4, December 1998

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What grammars tell us about corpora: the case of reduced relative clauses
Paola Merlo | Suzanne Stevenson
Sixth Workshop on Very Large Corpora

1993

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A Competition-Based Explanation of Syntactic Attachment Preferences and Garden Path Phenomena
Suzanne Stevenson
31st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics