Work

What does memory retrieval leave on the table? Modelling the Cost of Semi-Compositionality with MINERVA2 and sBERT

Year: 2025

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: Despite being ubiquitous in natural language, collocations (e.g., kick+habit) incur a unique processing cost, compared to compositional phrases (kick+door) and idioms (kick+bucket).We confirm this cost with behavioural data as well as MINERVA2, a memory model, suggesting that collocations constitute a distinct linguistic category.While the model fails to fully capture the observed human processing patterns, we find that below a specific item frequency threshold, the model's retrieval failures align with human reaction times across conditions.This suggests an alternative processing mechanism that activates when memory retrieval fails.

Source: Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning

DOI: 10.18653/v1/2025.conll-1.19

Authors: Sydelle De Souza, Ivan Vegner, Francis Mollica, Leonidas A. A. Doumas

Institutions: University of Lisbon, Centro de Linguística, Centro de Linguística, University of Edinburgh, The University of Melbourne

Language: English

Topic: Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism

Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience

Field: Neuroscience

Domain: Life Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Funders: UK Research and Innovation, Universidade de Lisboa, Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia

Awards: G373773752, G397385073