New EMNLP paper uses controlled rearing to explain how learners reject ungrammatical "X laughed Y"
EliasEskin · x · 2026-09-10
Kanishka Misra, Tom Yixuan Wang, and Freda Shi published a new EMNLP paper on a long-standing question: how language learners come to know that sentences like "X laughed Y" are ungrammatical.
Multiple competing hypotheses exist, and some have been nearly impossible to disentangle. The authors use controlled rearing to shed new light on which accounts hold up.
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