Collocational bootstrapping: A hypothesis about the learning of subject-verb agreement in humans and neural networks
The article presents a hypothesis called collocational bootstrapping, which explores how statistical signals in language input can aid in learning subject-verb agreement. Researchers simulated language acquisition using neural networks and found that variability in subject-verb pairings supports robust learning. The findings suggest that collocational bootstrapping is a viable strategy for children acquiring language.
- ▪The hypothesis focuses on how word co-occurrence patterns can provide cues to syntactic dependencies.
- ▪Neural networks were trained on synthetic datasets to simulate language acquisition.
- ▪The variability in child-directed language aligns with the levels that supported robust generalization in simulations.
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| Original publisher | arXiv cs.AI |
| Canonical URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.20529 |
| Publication time | Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 -0400 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-22T04:02:00.009Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-22T04:02:00.009Z |
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| Summary source text | contentText |
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| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
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Computer Science > Computation and Language arXiv:2605.20529 (cs) [Submitted on 19 May 2026] Title:Collocational bootstrapping: A hypothesis about the learning of subject-verb agreement in humans and neural networks Authors:Claire Hobbs, R. Thomas McCoy View a PDF of the paper titled Collocational bootstrapping: A hypothesis about the learning of subject-verb agreement in humans and neural networks, by Claire Hobbs and R. Thomas McCoy View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:In what ways might statistical signals in linguistic input assist with the acquisition of syntax? Here we hypothesize a mechanism called collocational bootstrapping, in which regularities in word co-occurrence patterns can provide cues to syntactic dependencies.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at arXiv cs.AI.
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