A little help with the trace program.
To compile:
make
To run:
trace -p pfile -l lexfile
where pfile is a parameter file and lexfile is a lexicon file.
The program should be run on a regular terminal or in a
terminal-emulator window.
Two parameter files are provided:
params -- these are the basic parameters used in McC&Elman, 1986
copars -- parameters used for categorical perception simulations
in the above article; used with cptrace, see below.
One lexicon file is provided:
slex -- this is the lexicon described in McC&Elman.
Different definitions of some phonemes were used in the
trading relations and categorical perception simulations.
A different version of the program must be comstructed for these,
called cptrace. To compile:
make cptrace
it takes the -p and -l arguments, also.
[cptrace differs from trace in using a different set of
phoneme declarations. The standard versio of this stuff is
in gfv.c; for cptrace, it is in cpfv.c]
Once the program is running, if you type ? you will see
a list of possible commands. Some are self-explanatory.
Some of those that may not be or are very important are:
test: prompts for a string of phonemes to test, resets
all activations to resting levels, and executes
nreps processing cycles.
cycle: continues processing for nreps more cycles.
pfreq: determines the frequency in cycles of redisplay of
activations at phoneme and word levels. Prompts with
"change? " Enter 'n' or a new value.
nreps: determines the number of cycles executed when the
test or cycle commands are entered.
alpha: displays excitation parameters with labels. Prompts
with "change? " Enter the label then the new value for
each one you wish to change.
gamma: displays inhibition parameters also with labels.
finput: reads commands from a file, prompts for file name.
commands that begin with s are often commands that save
things in a file.
Some of the commands are not used, such as grace, coart.
Many of the commands have to do with saving files
for producing figures like those in McC&Elman, for
use by the leroy program; these probably will not
be of use to you since you probably do not have
leroy.
NOTES:
only the following phonemes are defined:
pbtdkgsSrlaiu^
- means one phoneme's worth of silence.
This can be changed, but requires making up
feature codes for additional phonemes and
defining them in a new version of the file gfv.c, also adding
them to the list of "phonchars" and redefining
a few things to take the changes into account. All the
stuff that needs to be changed is in the files
"defs.h" and "gfv.c"
The model can take word frequency into account,
but we have not explored this. The command
freqscale
is used to scale log frequencies and add to
the resting level of word units. Use a
small value (e.g., .0005) and use the rest
command to set the word level resting level
to about -.06. With this, the resting level
of all word units will be scaled between
-.06 and about -.01. To compress the range,
use a smaller freqscale value (.0002) and
higher resting level (-.03). You should
make sure that rest + 11*freqscale is less
than 0, since the log frequency of the highest
frequency word is about 11.
You can also prime particular words using the
topdown
command -- it takes a list of word, prime
pairs followed by 'q'
The display is somewhat hard to read.
It presents the word and phoneme activations,
words above phonemes. It is not true to
life, in that actavations top out on the display
before they really do internally. You can get
separate displays of the word and phoneme
activations using the wordacts and phonacts
commands.
Let me know if you have any problems!!
-- jlm@cnbc.cmu.edu