About

Lisa S. Pearl is the Principal Investigator and Director of CoLaLab at UC Irvine, focusing on the computation of language. Her research interests include language acquisition, with particular attention to syntactic categories, pragmatics, and the cognitive processes underlying language development. She has contributed to interdisciplinary dialogues about language development, collaborating with developmental psychologists, linguists, and computational modelers. Her work involves understanding how children acquire syntax, semantics, and pragmatic skills, often employing quantitative and computational approaches to analyze language learning processes. Pearl's research also explores the impact of socioeconomic factors on language development and the mechanisms of language processing in both typical and clinical populations.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Mathematics
• Linguistics
• Political Science
• Natural Language Processing
• Psychology
• Philosophy
• Epistemology
• Cognitive science
• Programming language
• Cognitive psychology

Selected publications

• Computational cognitive modeling for syntactic acquisition: Approaches that integrate information from multiple places

  Journal of Child Language · 2023-06-13 · 4 citations

  reviewOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Computational cognitive modeling is a tool we can use to evaluate theories of syntactic acquisition. Here, I review several models implementing theories that integrate information from both linguistic and non-linguistic sources to learn different types of syntactic knowledge. Some of these models additionally consider the impact of factors coming from children's developing non-linguistic cognition. I discuss some existing child behavioral work that can inspire future model-building, and conclude by considering more specifically how to build better models of syntactic acquisition.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Modeling syntactic acquisition

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2023 · 24 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Artificial Intelligence

  Abstract Informative computational modeling can be an invaluable tool for understanding syntactic acquisition. In this chapter, I describe how modeling can be used to both formalize specific proposals about syntactic acquisition and empirically evaluate those proposals. I then review several approaches to a key aspect of a model’s inference process: how the modeled learner updates the underlying representations, based on the data encountered. I survey several syntactic acquisition models (both parametric and non-parametric), highlighting the importance of the modeled learner’s assumptions in each case, and conclude with exciting future possibilities in syntactic acquisition modeling.

  PublisherDOI

• Corpus evidence for the role of world knowledge in ambiguity reduction: Using high positive expectations to inform quantifier scope

  Experiments in Linguistic Meaning · 2023-01-27

  articleOpen access

  Every-negation utterances (e.g., Every vote doesn’t count) are ambiguous between a surface scope interpretation (e.g., No vote counts) and an inverse scope interpretation (e.g., Not all votes count). Investigations into the interpretation of these utterances have found variation: child and adult interpretations diverge (e.g., Musolino 1999) and adult interpretations of specific constructions show considerable disagreement (Carden 1973, Heringer 1970, Attali et al. 2021). Can we concretely identify factors to explain some of this variation and predict tendencies in individual interpretations? Here we show that a type of expectation about the world (which we call a high positive expectation), which can surface in the linguistic contexts of every-negation utterances, predicts experimental preferences for the inverse scope interpretation of different every-negation utterances. These findings suggest that (1) world knowledge, as set up in a linguistic context, helps to effectively reduce the ambiguity of potentiallyambiguous utterances for listeners, and (2) given that high positive expectations are a kind of affirmative context, negation use is felicitous in affirmative contexts (e.g., Wason 1961).

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Future of Experimental Syntax

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2023-09-18

  book-chapter

  Abstract In this concluding chapter of the handbook, each contributor has written a 500 word mini-essay presenting their view of the future of experimental syntax, from the important theoretical questions on the horizon, to the methodological challenges that experimental syntacticians need to solve to answer those questions. The hope is that this final chapter will serve both as concrete inspiration for future studies in experimental syntax and as a benchmark for measuring the success of the field in the years to come.

  PublisherDOI

• Referee report. For: Testing a computational model of causative overgeneralizations: Child judgment and production data from English, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese and K’iche’ [version 2; peer review: 1 approved, 2 approved with reservations]

  Faculty of 1000 Research Ltd · 2022-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• A new way to identify if variation in children’s input could be developmentally meaningful: Using computational cognitive modeling to assess input across socio-economic status for syntactic islands

  Journal of Child Language · 2022-11-24 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract While there are always differences in children’s input, it is unclear how often these differences impact language development – that is, are developmentally meaningful – and why they do (or do not) do so. We describe a new approach using computational cognitive modeling that links children’s input to predicted language development outcomes, and can identify if input differences are potentially developmentally meaningful. We use this approach to investigate if there is developmentally-meaningful input variation across socio-economic status ( SES ) with respect to the complex syntactic knowledge called syntactic islands. We focus on four island types with available data about the target linguistic behavior. Despite several measurable input differences for syntactic island input across SES, our model predicts this variation not to be developmentally meaningful: it predicts no differences in the syntactic island knowledge that can be learned from that input. We discuss implications for language development variability across SES.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Every Quantifier Isn't the Same: Informativity Matters for Ambiguity Resolution in Quantifier-Negation Sentences

  Scholarworks (University of Massachusetts Amherst) · 2021-03-05 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Empirical work on quantifier-not sentences has focused primarily on universal quantifiers, exploring the ambiguity that arises when logical operators interact (e.g., Everyone didn’t go could mean No one went or Not all went). In their Rational Speech Act model of this ambiguity resolution, Savinelli et al.(2017) demonstrate that pragmatic factors (such as model priors over the likely world states) stand to explain divergent behavior between children and adults. We extend this work to a broader empirical base, exploring the model's predictions for sentences with a wider range of quantifiers (some, no); we then test those predictions against behavioral data collected in a series of experiments. We find that a straightforward extension of the Savinelli et al. model captures the range of quantifier-not behavior we gather, thereby providing strong support for this cognitive model of probabilistic ambiguity resolution. In particular, the model explains interpretation preferences on the basis of informativity and prior beliefs over world states, such that interpretations that are more informative are preferred.

  PublisherDOI

• Pragmatic factors can explain variation in interpretation preferences for quantifier-negation utterances: A computational approach

  eScholarship (California Digital Library) · 2021-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Traditional investigations of quantifier-negation scope ambiguity (e.g., Everyone didn't go, meaning that no one went or not everyone went) have focused on universal quantifiers, and how ambiguity in interpretation preferences is due to the logical operators themselves and the syntactic relation between those operators. We investigate a broader range of quantifiers in combination with negation, observing differences in interpretation preferences both across quantifiers and also within the same quantifier (confirmed by corpus analysis). To explain this variation, we extend a computational cognitive model that incorporates pragmatic context-related factors, and which previously accounted for every-negation, to predict human interpretation preferences also for some and no. We evaluate the model's predictions against human judgments for quantifier-negation utterances, finding a strong qualitative and quantitative match when the listener has particular expectations about the world in which the utterance occurs. These results suggest that pragmatic factors can explain variation in interpretation preferences.

  Publisher

• The link between lexical semantic features and children’s comprehension of English verbal <i>be</i>-passives

  Language Acquisition · 2021-09-13 · 8 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  Children seem to be relatively delayed in their comprehension of the verbal be-passive in English, compared to their acquisition of other constructions of object-movement such as wh-questions and unaccusatives. Prior work has found that children’s performance on these passives can be affected by the verb’s lexical semantics. Through a meta-analysis of experimental studies assessing English-speaking children’s age of acquisition for the verbal be- passive, we identify a developmental trajectory composed of five classes, where each class has a distinct lexical semantic profile. A Truth-Value Judgment (TVJ) Task assessing English-speaking children’s comprehension of verbal be-passives supports this developmental trajectory. Together, the meta-analysis and TVJ study underscore the importance of lexical semantics for understanding the development of the English verbal be-passive.

  PublisherDOI

• When pragmatics matters more for truth-value judgments: An investigation of quantifier scope ambiguity

  Glossa a journal of general linguistics · 2021-08-15 · 9 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Investigations of linguistic meaning rely crucially on truth-value judgments, which assess whether a sentence can truthfully describe a given scenario. In investigations of language acquisition, truth-value judgments are used to assess both the target knowledge adults have and the developing knowledge children have at different ages. On the basis of truth-value judgments, researchers have concluded that differences between how children resolve ambiguous utterances and how adults do so persist until at least age five. Current explanations compatible with the experimental data attribute these differences to both grammatical processing and pragmatic factors. Here, we use computational cognitive modeling to formally articulate one hypothesis about the ambiguity-resolution process that underlies child and adult judgments in a truth-value judgment task; crucially, the model can separate out the individual contributions of specific grammatical processing and pragmatic factors to the resulting judgment behavior. We find that pragmatic factors play a larger role than grammatical processing factors in explaining children’s non-adult-like ambiguity resolution behavior. Interestingly, the model predicts qualitative similarity between child and adult ambiguity resolution. Given this prediction, we then extend our model to show how the same processes may be active in adult ambiguity resolution. This result supports continuity in the development of ambiguity resolution, where children do not qualitatively change how they resolve ambiguity in order to become adult-like. We discuss the implications of our results for acquisition more generally, including both theories of development and methods for assessing that development, as well as the generalizability of this model of ambiguity resolution beyond the specific cases we consider.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: An Integrated Theory of Syntactic Acquisition - Realistic input, quantitatively defined target states, and computational models of the learning strategy

  NSF · $142k · 2014–2017

• Testing the Universal Grammar Hypothesis

  NSF · $177k · 2009–2013

Frequent coauthors

• Ivano Caponigro

  University of California, San Diego

  24 shared

• David Barner

  21 shared

• Neon Brooks

  Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research

  21 shared

• Jon Sprouse

  New York University Abu Dhabi

  14 shared

• Gregory Scontras

  University of California, Irvine

  7 shared

• Mark Steyvers

  6 shared

• Lawrence Phillips

  6 shared

• Bonnie J. Dorr

  5 shared

Labs

• CoLaLabPI