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Natural Language Complexity and Machine Learning

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Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 801))

Abstract

Eventhough complexity is a central notion in linguistics, until recently, it has not been widely researched in the area. During the 20th century, linguistic complexity was supposed to be invariant. In general, recent work on language complexity takes an absolute perspective of the concept while the relative complexity approach –although considered as conceptually coherent– has hardly begun to be developed. In this paper, we introduce machine learning tools that can be used to calculate natural language complexity from a relative point of view by considering the process of first language acquisition.

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Acknowledgments

This research has been supported by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad and the Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional under the project number FFI2015-69978-P (MINECO/FEDER, UE) of the Programa Estatal de Fomento de la Investigación Científica y Técnica de Excelencia, Subprograma Estatal de Generación de Conocimiento.

The work of Leonor Becerra-Bonache has been performed during her teaching leave granted by the CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research) in the Computer Science Department of Aix-Marseille University.

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Correspondence to M. Dolores Jiménez-López .

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Becerra-Bonache, L., Jiménez-López, M.D. (2019). Natural Language Complexity and Machine Learning. In: Rodríguez, S., et al. Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence, Special Sessions, 15th International Conference. DCAI 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 801. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99608-0_27

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