ling 3p61 exam
evidence for constructivist
• Adults don't correct grammatical errors (only factual & pronunciation) • BUT adults do provide subtle feedback re: grammaticality: • Correct utterances: repeat verbatim • Incorrect utterances: repeat with correction or ask for clarification - Born knowing all the rules: principles & parameters - Born knowing some of the rules & figure the rest out by matching meaning with context: semantic bootstrapping - Use input & feedback to learn rules : constructivists/interactionists - Use input & feedback to strengthen nodes in network: connectionism
50 word milestone: overextension
- broad uses of words - calling all males "daddy" - why? - incomplete understanding --> child may not exactly think a horse is a dog - may not know or doesn't remember the exact word - declines as childs vocab grows - reflect underlying semantic representations - reflect lexical access processes, not word meanings - over extensions are word retrieval errors, made as speech is produced
solutions of mapping problem: social pragmatic understandings
- children figure out what words mean by using social cues to speaker's intentions - using conversational partners
brown (1957) research
- children use grammar as a clue to meaning by showing preschool children a picture of a pair of hands kneading a mass of material in a container - he described the picture as sibbing which is the action -a sib is the container - some sib is the material
solutions of mapping problem: pragmatic principles
- children use knowledge of how language is used to figure out what words mean
referential children
- children with more object labels in their vocabularies referential
expressive children
- children with relatively fewer object labels and more personal/social words
4 processes of word learning: word referent mapping
- does "dog" mean the whole animal? just the tail? its colour? - Mapping problem: infinite possibilities a word could mean and include - fast mapping: when a child has only heard a word once and has already made a hypothesis about it
articulatory phonetics
- every sound is described according to a set of phonetic features - "where" and "how is produced - place: where vocal tract is closed and narrow -manner: how airstream is affected - oral/nasal: velum open or closed -voicing : vibration or not
50 world milestone: relational relativity hypothesis
- gentner referred to linguistic work showing that noun meanings are more similar across languages than are verb meanings
4 processes of word learning: segmentation
- how kids segment words from speech stream 1. pick out sound patterns that freq occur together ex: thisisadog/lookatthedog/petthedog 2. stress patterns ex: ThisIsADog 3. phonotactic cues - rules about sounds that can occur together ex: Thisisabrowndog: could ndog be a word? 4. IDS
50 word milestone: nature of adult input
- how types of words and meanings are linked - certain nouns label things - other words can be linked to other things (adj) -easier words to learn --> how they were first approached - mapping nonlinguistic words - how the particular language illustrates nouns and verbs - the culture in which a language is used shapes input and affects children's vocal development
behaviourist models
- imitation and reinforcement evidence: - babies with responsive moms vocalize more problems: - babies appear to learn from the moms' contingent vocal responses - biological factors? - knowledge of sound system? - the development of phonology is bigger than just a growing repertoire - these sounds are not a conscious process
universalist approach
- innate knowledge: phonological component of UG contains all phonetics features for all languages - babies learn which rules operate for their ambient language
4 accounts for vocabulary gains
- naming insight - better phono abilities - more sophisticated cognitive abilities - new experiences
50 word milestone: underextension
- narrow uses of words - ex: dogs as one category for all dogs
non nativist/ constructivist view
- no abstract grammatical categories; no broad rules for sentence generation evidence: - verb island - limited variety in how verbs used ex: can say "walked" but not "licked" Cut and paste approach
connectionist approach
- no rules (e.g. , phono processes) - children try to say a word and make an error why? - adult -like "connections" not established between a mental rep of a sound and its features (voicing, airflow) - with practice proper connections are formed - p 133 figure 4.3
solutions of mapping problems: input
- people talk about here and now - provide explicit instruction about word meanings
Methods of testing early comprehension
- picture pointing "Show me: Mommy's kissing baby" - acting out tasks "make the horse kiss the cow" - preferential looking tasks - measures word recognition and speed of word recognition
classification of consonant sounds
- place, manner and articulation of all consonant sounds
characteristics of early 2 word combinations
- possessives ex: daddy coffee - property indicating pattern ex: big balloon - recurrence, number, disappearance ex: more glass - locatives ex: hand hair --> "in" - actor/action ex: mommy sit - other combos ex: have it fork
individual variability in speech sound production
- rate - intonation babies vs.. word babies -sound preferences - adjustments (strategies) made for difficult sounds
factors as to why a child may be more referential than others
- ses - education of mother - amount of labels you are teaching your child - amount of nouns in a childs early vocab - first born children have stronger vocals whereas later born children have higher number of unanalyzed chunks in their vocab - analytic = referential - holistic= expressive - nelson study--> page 150
biologically based models
- sound production is shaped by motor capacity - humans first sounds are from the vocal human apparatus - sounds that appear early in infant development are common sounds among world's languages - prelinguistic infants prefer to listen to some vowels over others and these vowels are usually common among many languages evidence: - early sound repertoires are similar - cross linguistically problems: - role of ambient language? babbling drift - functional importance
50 word milestone: natural partitions hypothesis
- the physical worlds makes obvious the things that take nouns as labels, whereas the meanings that verbs encode have to be figured out from hearing the verb in use - verbs can be used in different ways and forms in different languages
proto words
- transitional phase between babbling and first word - "invented" word used recurrently with an intended meanings shows: - voluntary control of vocalization - recognition that sounds have meaning
solutions of mapping problem: syntax
- use knowledge of grammar as a cue to meaning
process of word learning: word extension
- what else does dog refer to? - Just my dog "fluffy" or other dogs? If other dogs- particular types of other dogs? (I.e., only poodles like fluffy?)
taxonomic assumption
- words refer to categories of things rather than themes - dogs refer to dogs and not to leashes, collars and bones - children who are 7 and older are able to classify and organize collections into groups
whole object assumption
- words refer to whole objects rather than to part of an object or to a property of the object - this eliminates "handle", "white" and "held in hand" being associated with cup
word spurt
-50 words/18 months 8-11 words added to vocab every month - childs vocab reaches a "critical mass" and rate of word acquisition dramatically increases
mutual exclusivity assumption
-different words refer to different kinds of things - example: members of dog do not overlap with members of cow
2 challenges of studying children's comprehension
1. Children can look like they comprehend when they may not a. response strategies - probably locations -probable events - word order strategy b. use of nonlinguistic context 2. children can look like they don't understand when they really do - inattention - noncompliance
Expressing Negation: 3 stages:
1. Place negative marker outside sentence: ❚ No go movies; no sit down; no mommy do it 2. Place negative marker in sentence next to main verb but NO auxiliary verb: ❚ I no go movies; I no like it; I not see you; I don't like you* 3. Auxiliaries appear ❚ I don't want to go to the movies; I didn't get cookies; I cannot see you
Yes/No questions 2 stages:
1. Say declarative with rising intonation: ❙ Mommy is tired?; It is naptime? 2. Reverse subject & auxiliary verb ❙ Is Mommy tired? ❙ Is it naptime?
three types of passive forms
1. Truncated passives: no agent The window was broken 2. Full passives with animate agents The window was broken by the dog 3. Full passives with inanimate agents The window was broken by the rock
models of phonological development
1. behaviourist 2. universalist 3. biologically based 4. connectionist
first words
1. context bound--> later becomes decontextualized (used in other contexts) 2. referential why are some words context bound? - lexical contexts - frequency use of more context bound words: - holistic vs analytic - risk taker vs. cautious - sociable vs. reserved
variability of acquisition
1. environmental factors - ses - first born children= 1-1 interaction - mother and child mutual engagement - value of info - longer sentences 2. child factors: - joint attention - sociability - phono memory - gender
2 types of telegraphic speech
1. function words: determiners: a the prep: in on aux: mommy is sitting 2. bound morphemes - word endings: ing, ed, s etc example: daddy eat vs. daddy is eating
2 techniques of the babbling drift
1. judge differences in babbling of babies with different languages 2. analyze babbling to see if they have features found in the adult language
major milestones in conversation development
1. learning to take turns 2. learning to initiate 3. learning to repair breakdown 4. learning to sustain
solutions to the mapping problem
1. lexical principles: - child uses assumptions about what word can mean so doesn't consider every possible option
3 stages of development of pragmatic competence
1. perlocutionary (birth-10 months) joint attention 2. Illocutionary (10-12 months) ex: protoimperatives & protodeclaratives 3. Locutionary (12 months +)
early "sound strategies"
1. phonological processes - systemic adjustments which alter the sounds of the target language so they fit within the repertoire of sounds the child can produce 2. avoidance 3. assimilation to common canonical forms (CVC, CVCV)
3 ways babies move through stages:
1. physical growth of vocal tract 2. nervous system maturation 3. experience
Starks 5 stages of presocial development
1. reflexive crying and vegetative sounds (birth) 2. cooing and laughter (2 months) 3. vocal play (4 months) 4. babbling (reduplicated) (6-9 months) 5. babbling (variegated) (12 months)
4 processes of word learning
1. segmentation: THISISADOG 2. word-referent mapping: dog= tail, walking, brown...? 3. word extension: dog can also be used to refer to dogs un books and those on the street 4. word form encoding: remember what "dog" sounds like and means so we can use it later
2 types of private speech
1. solitary - when child is alone - language practice language play 2. collective monologues - in conversation contexts
50 word milestone
1. specific nominals (mommy, daddy) 2. general nominals (nouns= dog, duck) 3. action words (go up and look) 4. modifers (outside, big, all gone) 5.personal social words (no, want and please) 6. grammatical function words (what, is and for) noun bias: 45% nouns and 3% verbs
transitional from one-word speech
1. vertical constructions: - utterance that builds on the 1 before - string of related single words - pause between words - intonation of single words - ow, hurt, knee 2. word chunks 3. jargon + word
3 differences between referential and expressive children
1. what these differences reflect about the language learner 2. where these differences may come from 3. what other sorts of differences in language acquisition these styles may be related to
Early comprehension abilities: Summary
12 months: know what normal word combinations sound like 13-15 months: know that words together mean something more that both words individually 16-18 months: know the meaning carried by basic word order MLU 1.5 (18-31 months): know something about grammatical morphemes 28 months: distinguish among sentence structures 5 years: still acquiring comprehension of complex sentence types
initiating topics
3 changes (Foster, 1986): i. initiate more topics ii. Verbal vs. nonverbal means iii. Type: -About self - About things in environment - About absent, abstract things
semantic bootstrapping
Children are born with some syntactic knowledge. They know how to identify nouns & verbs in the sentences they hear. this is because they know: • agents & objects are nouns and actions are verbs • agent-nouns are subjects of sentences & object- nouns are direct objects of sentences therefore: - the rules for putting nouns & verbs in order How do they figure this out? • matching speech to what they see
wh-questions: 3 stages
a. No auxiliary verb ❚ What that? b. Auxiliary verb but NO inversion ❚ Where Daddy is going? c. Auxiliary verb with Inversion ❚ Where is Daddy going?
process of word learning: Word form encoding
ability to recall from the lexicon the sound sequences for a word one wants to use
first words phonological characteristics:
acquired 10-15 months 1. whole word processes - weak syllable deletion (nana) - final consonant deletion (thought- fo) - reduplication (bottle- baba) - consonant harmony (duck- guck) 2. consonant cluster reduction (cracker- kak) 3. segment substitution processes - velar fronting ( key- ti) -stopping (sea- ti) - gliding (rabbit-wabbit)
age of acquisition of speech sounds
age: 1--> p, m,h,n,w,b 2--> k,g,d,t,ng 3--> f,y 4--> r, l, s 5--> ch, sh, z 6--> j, v 7--> th, th 8--> zh
non reduplicated babbling:
age: 12 months nonredupilcated/ variegated: - syllable strings with varying consonants and vowels - greater range of consonants and vowels - jargon: strings of sounds and syllables uttered with rich variety of stress and intonation
2. cooing and laughter
age: 2 months (laugh : 16 weeks) sounds: - coos - single long vowel-- series of vowel sounds strung together separated by intakes of breath - back vowels - some back consonants
3. vocal play
age: 4 months range of vocal qualities: - loud and soft -high and low - bilabial trills - sustained vowels - marginal babbling
4. reduplicated babbling
age: 6-9 months reduplicated/ canonical: - sequences of identical CV syllables with adult like timing - environment is important
1. reflexive crying and vegetative sounds
age: birth sounds: vibration and stop/start of airflow - crying (some vowel like sounds) - vegetative sounds
Browns 8 semantic relations
agent + action= daddy sit action+object= drive car agent+object= mommy sock agent+location= sit chair entity+location=toy floor possessive+pocession= my teddy entity+atribute=crayon big demonstrative + entity= this telephone
3 word combos
agent-action & action-object combined ex: agent-action-object mommy drink juice agent action location mommy sleep chair
examples of early pronunciations of common words
bottle: ball--> baw dog: doti--> gog cookie: tuti--> guki
Navist/ generativist ,view:
children have abstract grammatical categories and productive rules evidence: A. overregularization errors b. wug test
principle of contrast
different words have different meanings - allows multiple labels with different meanings ex: dog and animal
complex sentences: coordination
"And" as additive: ex: You carry the bear and I'll carry the cup "And" as temporal ex: She went home and took off her sweater "And" as causal ex: She put a bandage on it and it maked it feel better
word comprehension
"comprehension generally precedes production" - 5 months: respond to own name - 8 months: phrases: give me a hug - 8-10 months: individual words - 10 months: 11-154 words 16 months: 92-321 words
challenges of studying children's comprehension
(private mental event) - must infer comprehension based on behaviour.
swingley and aslin (2002)
- 13-23 month olds presented a word pronounced correctly (baby)) and incorrectly (vaby) - infants looked more toward matching picture (baby picture) whether pronounced correctly or incorrectly - infants were faster when word was pronounced correctly
werker et al. (2002)
- 14 month olds and 18 month olds 1. plastic molecule model- dih 2. toy crown= bih object sound pairing switched 1. plastic molecule model= bih 2. toy crown= dih 14 month olds: did not dishabituate unless target sounds were very different 18 month olds: did dishabituate for similar sounds
individual rate of acquisition
- 16 month olds: 0-160 words - 24 months: 50-550 words
complex sentences: relative clauses
- 2-4 years -often omit relative pronoun or substitute "what" - add clauses at end of sentence before middle 2 types of relative clauses: 1. object relative clauses ex: Let's eat the cake what i baked 2. subject relative clauses ex: the dog that bit me was yellow
Dore's primitive speech acts
- Labeling: label while attending to object -Repeating: Repeat part of adult utterance - Answering: Respond to adult question - Request action: address adult & wait for response - Request answer: address adult & wait for response - Call: used to obtain someone's attention - Greeting: marks arrival or leave-taking - Protest: expresses disapproval or dislike of object or action - Practice: not contingent on preceding utterances; does not address adult
connectionism
- Learning grammar (e.g., reg. past tense) is not about learning rules - It's about forming strong connections between the nodes in a network - Certain types of input cause some nodes to be strengthened *comparing words to other known words
MLU
- Major indicator of syntactic & morphological development: - length & complexity of utterances - MLU (Mean Length of utterance) - MLUm = # of morphemes / # of utterances refer back to MLU chart
Dual process model
- Maybe kids (& adults) have BOTH abstract productive grammars AND sometimes rely on memorized sequences • Irregular past tense: - memory • Regular past tense: - Application of Rules
repairing breakdown
- Preverbal negotiations of failed messages" (Golinkoff, 1980) - Repeat, revise or substitute a new signal (sound or gesture) -Increasingly successful Verbal repairs: - 1-3years: repeat - 3-5years: revise
Passive forms:
- Used to highlight recipient of action ex: The window was broken by the boy. vs. The boy broke the window. - Reversal of agent & object -Age 3 1⁄2
fis phenomenon
- a child who mispronounces a word may still have a correct mental representation of that word
research for babbling in different language
De Boysson- Bardies et al. (1984) - taped french, arabic and chinese babies babbling at 6, 8 , 10 months presented 15 sec segments of french/ arabic or french/ chinese to judges - french speakers were asked to judge which sample from each pair came from a french baby - they were only correct 70% of the time - the recordings of the 10 month olds were harder to tell apart - more complex consonants are used at 10 months and consonants are more noticeable 1992: - japanese and french words contain more nasal sounds than swedish and english -babbling of japanese and french babies also contain more nasal sounds than babbling of swedish and english babies
debate on word spurt
P Bloom (2000) - myth - change for children is gradual rather than abrupt in rate - lexical growth may be confused with a spurt Goldfield and Reznik (1990) - occurs in some children and other children show more even rates - children show a vocab spurt, larger concurrent increase with object labels Mervis and Bertrand (2000) - children eventually go through a spurt after 75 words or so
example of principle and parameter of innate grammar
Principle: All languages have Noun Phrases(NP) & Verb Phrases (VP) ex: The farmer with the straw hat milked the cow with the crumpled horn In all languages NPs & VPs consist of heads and modifiers • NP: The farmer with the straw hat • VP: milked the cow with the crumpled horn Parameter: - Direction of branching - Some languages are Right-branching [English] & others are Left-branching [Japanese]
innate grammar
Principles & parameters theory: - They're born knowing ALL the rules for all languages (rules are called principles ) - Each language is a bit different (parameters) (children set their parameters for a particular language) They do this by hearing input (Input triggers parameter setting)
constructivists/interactionist
Social interaction with other speakers + general cognitive ability = rules of grammar A. Do children have strong enough cognitive abilities? • Recall: Saffran et al. (1996) & Marcus et al. (1999) B. Is input sufficient? • Rich enough? • Useful feedback?
browns 14 grammatical morphemes
emerge 2-4 years of age 1. present progressive - ing (19-28) 2. in 3. prepositions in and on (27-30) 4. Plural -s (27-33) 5. Past irregular (came, went) (25-46) 6. Possessive 's (+s) (26-40) 7. Uncontractible copula (am, is, are, was, were) (27-30) 8. Articles (a, the) (28-46) 9. Past regular -ed (26-48) 10. Third person regular (she talks) (26-46) 11. Third person irregular (does has) (28-50) 12. Uncontractible auxiliary (am, is, are, has, have) (29-48) 13. Contractible copula ('m, 's, 're) (29-49) 14. Contractible auxiliary ('m, 's, 're when combined with +ing; 've, 's when combined with a past participle such was has been) (30-50)
course of development: words
first words (10-15 months) (8-11 new words/month) 50 word vocabulary (15-24 months) (22-37 new words/months) word spurt (during 2nd year)
1. learning to take turns
infants: turn-taking depends on the adult - Gradually infants learn to respond to another's speech i. respond with action ii. respond with speech - By 2 years grasp turn-taking
discontinuity:
initially: - children have holistic reps. of how words sound - children don't recognize that all sound differences in their language have meaning later: - move toward segmental reps. of words= phonological system why: - vocabulary growth necessitates segmental representations
semantic relations
meaning expressed by the "relationship" between the 2 words
principle of conventionality
meaning of word is determined by convention, has to be agreed upon and observed by all members of a language community
naigles (1990)
scene: rabbit pushing duck down while duck and rabbit both make circles in air with hands 1. the rabbit is gorping the duck 2. the rabbit and the duck are gorping two pictures: 1. rabbit is pushing the duck 2. rabbit and duck making hand circles find gorping - children must understand that gorping is a verb the rabbit and duck are both doing results: - the children who heard sentence 1. looked longer at picture 1. - the children who heard sentence 2. looked longer at picture 2.
protoimperative
speech act used for requesting objects or actions
protodeclarative
speech act when giving direct attention to object, action or entity
telegraphic speech
speech, typical of two year old children, includes primarily content words and omits such grammatical morphemes as determiners and endings of nouns and verbs.
private speech
when a child is talking to themself