# More than Just Statistical Recurrence: Human and Machine Unsupervised Learning of M=aori Word Segmentation across Morphological Processes

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.14444 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14444/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 3 of its 49 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Mar 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Neural Machine Translation of Rare Words with Subword Units](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1508.07909/) (2015)
- [Google's Neural Machine Translation System: Bridging the Gap between Human and Machine Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.08144/) (2016)
- [Subword Regularization: Improving Neural Network Translation Models with Multiple Subword Candidates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.10959/) (2018)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Non-M=aori-speaking New Zealanders (NMS)are able to segment M=aori words in a highlysimilar way to fluent speakers (Panther et al.,2024). This ability is assumed to derive through the identification and extraction of statistically recurrent forms. We examine this assumption by asking how NMS segmentations compare to those produced by Morfessor, an unsupervised machine learning model that operates based on statistical recurrence, across words formed by a variety of morphological processes. Both NMS and Morfessor succeed in segmenting words formed by concatenative processes (compounding and affixation without allomorphy), but NMS also succeed for words that invoke templates (reduplication and allomorphy) and other cues to morphological structure, implying that their learning process is sensitive to more than just statistical recurrence.