Language & Mind

LanguageAcquisition

Language Acquisition

Language & Mind

Acquisition: the big picture issues

• The contributions of nature and experience: noacquisition without both.

• Regularity in what is acquired exceeds the regularity inthe data.

• Errors are limited & characteristic.

• The nature of the experience (primary linguistic data) andthe poverty of the stimulus.

» instruction?

» negative evidence?

Language & Mind

Primary linguistic data provides positive evidenceabout the grammar to be acquired

Negative evidence [negative feed-back] is both unreliableand typically ignored;

Instruction is entirely absent with regard to the mostcomplex parts of the central system of rules (speakers whohave attained mastery of the grammar are unaware of whatthe generalizations are to begin with).

Language & Mind

Poverty of the StimulusInadequacy of imitation:

Children acquire a grammar that allows them to understand andproduce an infinite number of sentences that they themselves havenever encountered.

Inadequacy of analogy:I painted the red barn I painted the barn redI painted the blue barn I painted the barn blueI saw the blue barn *I saw the barn blue

I saw John with Mary. I saw John and Mary.Who did you see John with —? *Who did you see John and —?

Why is it that children never make these types of errors?

Language & Mind

Acquisition can create a language

… even where there was no language before:

the story of Pidgins & Creoles.

Language & Mind

Pidgins

generally the vocabulary of the dominant or conquering lg.reduced vocabularymostly nouns & verbs (almost no function words)no inflectional agreement: only word order syntaxslowed speech rate

me cape buy, me check , make(he bought my coffee; he made me out a check)

or(I bought coffee; I made him out a check)

Language & Mind

Creoles

kids tend to treat the pidgin as a real languagestarts to show function wordsgrammaticization (e.g., by-and-by example; derivation of

English past tense -ed from did—he hammer, did)begins to show articulate tensescomplications in syntax show upspeech rate increases

A language can be born in one generation, taking on featuresthat did not exist in the language learners’ experience (theeffect of nature).

Language & Mind

Critical Periods

• Myelinization and brain plasticity

• Acquisition by children & by adults

» unlike children, adults require:

o explicit instruction

o negative feed-back

o strong motivation

and adults still don’t typically attain native fluency.

• Genie

Genie

Language & Mind

Stages of Acquisition: Production

• Language acquisition unfolds over time inidentifiable stages (as defined in terms of productionperformance)

• Grammatical abilities in comprehension typicallyoutpace abilities that are apparent in production

• Stages of acquisition are the same across individualsand across languages

Language & Mind

Babbling: ~ 6 months

Infants begin to produce CV sequences withsegments from both ambient and non-ambientlanguages

Some sounds [p b m t d n k g s h w j] aremore likely to be produced at this stage thanothers [f v T D S Z C J l r 4].

CVs are organized into prosodic groupings withintonational peaks & downsteps.

Language & Mind

One Word Stage: ~12 months

Forms target

dada daddy

dus juice

dO dog

bO ball

m{m{ blanket

bI fish

context

father enters the room

asking for juice

calling the dog

pointing to new toy

pulling blanket away from sibling

showing mother fish at aquarium

Single word utterances used to convey a variety of message types.

Language & Mind

One Word Stage: phonological ‘simplification’

phonological ‘simplification’

reduction to minimal f-word

reduction to minimal f-word

continuant Æ stop

loss of stops in codas

coda loss ([l] a late acquired sound)

reduplicated syllables

cluster simplification, coda loss

cluster simplification

Forms target

pas, pap{s hippopotamus

tedo potato

dus juice

dO dog

bO ball

m{m{ blanket

ta, tap stop

sip sleep

´´

´

Language & Mind

Two Word Stage: ~ 1:6

Agent - ThemeKen is drinking water.Ken wants water. …Ken water

Action - ThemeI hit the dog.hit doggie

Agent - ActionThe dog is barkingdoggie bark

Theme - LocationThe baby is (sitting) inthe chairbaby chair

Semantic RelationAdult formChild’s utterance

Language & Mind

Telegraphic Stage: ~ 1:10 - 2:00

Chair all brokenDaddy like this bookWhat her name?Man ride bus todayCar make noiseMe wanna show MommyI good boy

Why are the inflections & function words omitted?• Grammatical discontinuity (different grammar)• Processing (phonological performance) constraint

Language & Mind

Telegraphic Stage: ~ 1:10 - 2:00Why are the inflections & function words omitted?• Grammatical discontinuity (different grammar)• Phonological performance constraints

Turkish children use inflectional endings earlier thanSerbo-Croation or Russian speaking children. UnlikeSerbo-Croation and Russian inflectional endings,Turkish inflectional affixes are a full syllable long,stressed, are not phonologically deformed by thesurrounding context.

Language & Mind

Telegraphic Stage: ~ 1:10 - 2:00Why are the inflections & function words omitted?• Grammatical discontinuity (different grammar)• Processing constraint

Quiche Mayan (Pyle, 1983) suffixes may be stressed orunstressed depending on properties of the stem &affix.

adult form child form

CVCV-CV-CV [CVCV]-CVCV

CVCV-CVCV-CV CVCV-[CVCV]-CV

CVCV-CV-CV CV[CV-CV]-CV

´ ´

´´

´ ´

Language & Mind

The Fifth Stage: The Opened Flood Gate

Recursive structures fully evident, although there are stillaspects of the syntactic system that are left to bemastered, e.g.:

subject-auxiliary inversion (Can I can do that?)

wh-movement (What he see what doggie?)

co-reference (I see me. [learning to identify reflexives])

Language & Mind

Phonological constraints (at early stages)

Articulatory control develops in parallel with the developmentof syntax:

• early words limited to single syllable or trochee ( s s ) [aphonological minimal word in many languages]

• consonant clusters reduced to a single consonant

• consonants in syllable onsets, not in codas

• continuants, nasals Æ stops

• liquids Æ glides

´

Language & Mind

Memory/Computational Constraints1. See hole? Why not me drink it?

I ride train? What we think?Ball go? Why you smiling?Sit chair? Where that?

2. Can I can do that?Is he is sad?

3. Did mommy pinch it? Why she can’t stand up?Do I have it? Where I should put it?

4. Why you can’t sit down?Where did my mitten go?

Language & Mind

Learning Morphology: Regular & irregular inflection

reliablewentplayedadult-likeperformance

reliablewent, goed,wented played

over-regularization

[2:0 - 2:6]

intermittentgo, wentplay, playedearlyemergence

—goplayno inflectedforms

Reliability ofuse

Irregularinflection

RegularinflectionStages

Language & Mind

Over-regularization: Its significance

Children develop starting with item-specificknowledge about morphological forms, but soonidentify the rule-governed elements of the linguisticsystem.

Regular morphological forms are subsequentlygenerated using item-specific knowledge aboutbasic word forms (e.g., lift [lIft], push [pUS]) andcombinatory mechanisms for deriving the inflectedforms (lifted [lIftId], pushed [pUSt]).

Language & Mind

Landmarks in acquisition: Comprehension

show awareness of clausal structure (prefer pausesinserted at clause boundaries over insertionswithin clauses) [selective head turning]

0:7-0:10

sensitive to presence of novel words after briefexposure [selective head turning]

0:7

sensitive to language specific phonologicalproperties of speech [selective head turning w/ English vs.Estonian]

0:3

awareness of phonetic boundaries [adaptation suckingexperiments on categorical perception]

0:1

Language & Mind

Conceptual elements of language acquisitionThe emergence of object permanence & naming.

Awareness of what are possible lexical meanings.

Gavagai!

W. v. O. Quine= rabbit?

Language & Mind

Conceptual elements of language acquisitionThe emergence of object permanence & naming.

Awareness of what are possible lexical meanings.

Gavagai!

W. v. O. Quine= undetached rabbit parts?

Language & Mind

Conceptual elements of language acquisition

A strategy for identifying concepts in novel naming:animalmamal

˛ dogWeimaranerBess, Xena

Elinor Rosch

overextensions (doggie = dogs, cows, women in fur coats)

underextensions (Weimaraners, but not Chihuahuas)

Language & Mind

Learning in a parametric system

If the innate knowledge of language is what makeslearning possible, then the innate knowledge must besufficiently general as to apply to the acquisition of ALLlanguages; yet specific enough to ensure that children willconverge on the same grammar when confronted with thesame primary linguistic evidence.

Candidates:

Principles of: X-bar syntax; Subjacency; Binding Theory;q Theory; …

Language & Mind

Parametric Learning of Phrase Structure (in L)

Learned part:Specifiers {precede, follow} X'

Complements {precede, follow} X

Adjuncts {precede, follow} X'

Innate part:XP Æ Specifier, X'X' Æ X, Complement*X' Æ X', Adjunct

Xn Æ Xn conj Xn

Parametersof

Variation

Language & Mind

Language & Inheritance

Normal Language & Normal Cognition

Normal Language & Abnormal Cognition

Abnormal Language & Normal Cognition

Language & Mind

Language & InheritanceGenetic defects may severely disrupt one or more cognitivecapacities while leaving language relatively intact: E.g.,Williams Syndrome.

Language & Mind

Language & Inheritance: SLIGenetic defects may selectively disrupt language whileleaving all or most other cognitive capacities relativelyintact: Specific Language Impairment (SLI).

KE family. Affected individuals are indicated by filled symbols. Asterisks indicate thoseindividuals who were unavailable for genetic analyses. Squares are males, circles are

Language & Mind

Language & Inheritance: genetic marker for SLI (FOXP2)

C. Lai & al., A forkhead-domain gene is mutated in a severe speechand language disorder, Nature 413, 519 - 523 (2001)

Disruption of FOXP2 in patients with severe speech and languagedisorder: All affected individuals from the KE family were heterozygousfor this mutation.

Language & Mind

SummaryLanguage acquisition appears to be a mixture of learning(from the ambient linguistic environment) and “growth.”

Except where there is evidence of brain injury or geneticmutation, language emerges in every child according tothe same developmental path.

As language learners we come to know more than wehave experienced of language.

John is very happy.

John’s very happy.

John’s happier than Mary is.

*John’s happier than Mary’s.

Language & Mind

Summary

Evidence that the human language capacity is substantiallydetermined by the human genome includes:

• language universals that cannot be attributed to generallearning skills or to cultural and/or historical accident

• universals in language acquisition

• every child’s capacity to create a language fromdegraded input

• the selective effects of genetic mutation with regard tothe language capacity