Dataset Information

Pronoun interpretation in Mandarin Chinese follows principles of Bayesian inference.

ABSTRACT: Successful natural language understanding requires that comprehenders be able to resolve uncertainty in language. One source of potential uncertainty emerges from a speaker's choice to use a pronoun (e.g., he, she, they), since pronouns often do not fully specify the speaker's intended referent. Nevertheless, comprehenders are typically able to interpret pronouns rapidly despite having limited cognitive resources. Here we report three pronoun interpretation experiments that investigate whether comprehenders reverse-engineer a speaker's referential intentions based on Bayesian principles, as documented in previous studies for English. Using Mandarin Chinese, we test the generality of the Bayesian pronoun interpretation theory, and further evaluate the predictions of the theory in ways that are not possible in English. Our results lend both qualitative and quantitative support to a cross-linguistically general Bayesian theory of pronoun interpretation.

SUBMITTER: Zhan M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7446932 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Pronoun interpretation in Mandarin Chinese follows principles of Bayesian inference.

Zhan Meilin M Levy Roger R Kehler Andrew A

PloS one 20200819 8

Successful natural language understanding requires that comprehenders be able to resolve uncertainty in language. One source of potential uncertainty emerges from a speaker's choice to use a pronoun (e.g., he, she, they), since pronouns often do not fully specify the speaker's intended referent. Nevertheless, comprehenders are typically able to interpret pronouns rapidly despite having limited cognitive resources. Here we report three pronoun interpretation experiments that investigate whether c ...[more]

PMID: 32813695

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Project description:The invasion ecology principles illustrated in many ecosystems have not yet been explored in the context of fomite transmission. We hypothesized that invaders in fomite transmission are trackable, are neutrally distributed between hands and environmental surfaces, and exhibit a proximity effect. To test this hypothesis, a surrogate invader, Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus, was spread by a root carrier in an office housing more than 20 participants undertaking normal activities, and the microbiotas on skin and environmental surfaces were analyzed before and after invasion. First, we found that the invader was trackable. Its identity and emission source could be determined using microbial-interaction networks, and the root carrier could be identified using a rank analysis. Without prior information, L. bulgaricus could be identified as the invader emitted from a source that exclusively contained the invader, and the probable root carrier could be located. In addition to the single-taxon invasion by L. bulgaricus, multiple-taxon invasion was observed, as genera from sputum/saliva exhibited co-occurrence relationships on skin and environmental surfaces. Second, the invader had a below-neutral distribution in a neutral community model, suggesting that hands accrued heavier invader contamination than environmental surfaces. Third, a proximity effect was observed on a surface touch network. Invader contamination on surfaces decreased with increasing geodesic distance from the hands of the carrier, indicating that the carrier's touching behaviors were the main driver of fomite transmission. Taken together, these results demonstrate the invasion ecology principles in fomite transmission and provide a general basis for the management of ecological fomite transmission. IMPORTANCE Fomite transmission contributes to the spread of many infectious diseases. However, pathogens in fomite transmission typically are either investigated individually without considering the context of native microbiotas or investigated in a nondiscriminatory way from the dispersal of microbiotas. In this study, we adopted an invasion ecology framework in which we considered pathogens as invaders, the surface environment as an ecosystem, and human behaviors as the driver of microbial dispersal. With this approach, we assessed the ability of quantitative ecological theories to track and forecast pathogen movements in fomite transmission. By uncovering the relationships between the invader and native microbiotas and between human behaviors and invader/microbiota dispersal, we demonstrated that fomite transmission follows idiosyncratic invasion ecology principles. Our findings suggest that attempts to manage fomite transmission for public health purposes should focus on the microbial communities and anthropogenic factors involved, in addition to the pathogens.

Dataset Information

Pronoun interpretation in Mandarin Chinese follows principles of Bayesian inference.

Publications

Pronoun interpretation in Mandarin Chinese follows principles of Bayesian inference.

Similar Datasets

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