@mastersthesis{Nematzadeh:2010:thesis,
  author = "Aida Nematzadeh",
  title = "The Role of Statistical Evidence in Child Acquisition of Multiword Verbs",
  year = "2010",
  school = "Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto",
  month = "January",
  abstract = "<p>Multiword expressions convey a single meaning while allowing syntactic variations.  Their meanings range from entirely literal to non-literal (e.g., ``give a shout'' versus ``give me an apple'').  These expressions are very frequent in many languages and children successfully learn them in addition to the lexicon and grammar of their language. An important question is how children identify non-literal multiword expressions.  We argue that statistical regularities of non-literal expressions are useful in separating them from literal ones.  We devise different statistical measures drawn on properties of non-literal expressions. By evaluating these measures on the CHILDES database, we show that these regularities are available in and easily extractable from child-directed speech.</p>,
  download = "http://ftp.cs.toronto.edu/pub/gh/Nematzadeh-MSc-2010.pdf"
}