JLP315 Midterm
PLD → LAD → grammar The Primary Linguistic Data (PLD) serves as input to a Language Acquisition Device (LAD), which makes use of this information to produce a grammar of the language being learned.
ug language acquisition schema
English children go by color Navajo children go by shape
which go together
Have a uniqueness constraint, which allows them to check a feature of either T or Agr but not both
In the Tense Omission Model, children: Have a uniqueness constraint, which allows them to check a feature of either T or Agr but not both Lack the tense and checking constraints present in adult grammar Are unable to assign tense to verbs in matrix clauses Have a tenseless constraint, which requires that T not contain a D-feature
True
Infants can visually recognize an object they have not seen, but only touched before, as early as two months. T/F
Brain imaging technologies suggest that when L2 is acquired during the sensitive period, L1 and L2 tend to be represented in the same areas
L1 and L2 representation in the brain depending on when acquired
pidgins -- Trade Languages, Forced Labor Pidgins - Workers communicate via pidgin based on colonial language. Creoles Children born into a community whose means of communication is a pidgin. Children do not simply acquire the pidgin — Pidgin words suddenly used in sophisticated ways, using grammatical mechanisms attested in natural languages around the world. The children often also acquire the language(s) of their parents; But they adopt the creole as their primary language, use it with their peers. The creole achieves uniformity almost overnight. Creoles from remote areas tend to share grammatical features. Often these grammatical features are not found in any of the contact languages that formed the pidgin. Common Creole Features Creoles around the world share the same features: - Same distinction between neutral and singular/plural number - Same distinction between accomplished and unaccomplished purposes - Word order almost always SVO.
Language Creation
True
Late onset of canonical babbling may predict speech disorders at a later stage of development. T/F
articulatory awareness motor control memory, attention Some features of words are more salient than others 'tip of the tongue' phenomenon Realizations of a single word may vary greatly in the same child's speech Errors appear more random at first, and become less erratic during the second half of the second year
Limitations in words production
also called REFERENTIAL/ANALYTIC (bottom up - syllable, word, more words)
Minimalist style
The case of Christopher: IQ 60-70 but remarkable language skills learned language fast, 20 languages could not learn manmade language w artificial negation rule pattern recognition and other cognitive ability lacking language ability diff from general cognition Dyslexia: developmental, appears during acquisition Specific Language Impairment (SLI) (hardly "specific") - No brain lesions - Acquisition delayed - No other cognitive deficits (normal IQ) => language ability ≠ general cognition
Modularity of the brain: more evidence
states that children's early language is organized and structured around individual verbs
The Verb Island Hypothesis A. argues for the existence of abstract, verb-general schema for transitive SVO constructions B. states that children's early language is organized and structured around individual verbs C. claims that young children possess abstract, adult-like syntactic categories D. suggests that children's early multiword utterances result from their mastery of notions such as `subject' and `object' and `agent' and `patient'
c. the sensation of sound
The angular gyrus controls: a. speech decoding b. speech encoding c. the sensation of sound d. semantics e. syntax
Hebrew
The children who, according to experimental studies, are likely to become aware of gender identity earliest are speakers of Hebrew English French Finnish
b. underspecified to some extent
The earliest lexical representations are a. not recognized when spoken with different intonation patterns b. underspecified to some extent c. fully specified d. fully underspecified
a. has been used successfully with very young, day or week old infants
The high-amplitude sucking (HAS) or nonnutritive sucking procedure a. has been used successfully with very young, day or week old infants b. is also known as the Aversive Coercive Procedure c. has not generally produced useful scientific data due to its unreliability d. is superior to the Preferential Looking Paradigm
the speech signal contains acoustic cues marking prosodic boundaries (pauses, syllable lengthening, F0 resetting) which infants are able to perceive/display a preference for (newborns can discriminate between stimuli that include a prosodic boundary and stimuli that do not) infants were found to be sensitive to word shapes (by 6 months), distributional regularities (by 8 months), and phonotactic constraints (by 9 months) Phonological bootstrapping
The phonological bootstrapping theory is supported by the fact that
How do infants know that words have reference? initial disposition to refer to things, and recognize the same intention in other humans? specific word meanings arrived at through hypothesis formation and testing procedure the meaning of a word is associated with what is perceived when the word is spoken: word-to-world mapping procedure
The problem of acquiring word meanings - what do infants do
True
The results of psycholinguistic studies suggest that the clause has psychological reality as a unit.
Complete: consistent response, indicates unambiguously "grammatical" or "ungrammatical." Partial: IF there is a response, it indicates "grammatical" or "ungrammatical" Noisy: response given to both grammatical and ungrammatical sentences, but with different/detectable frequency.
Three possible types of feedback for negative evidence
unequal proficiency levels in the two languages
Unbalanced bilingualism is characterized by native level in one of the languages and beginner level in the other the mastery of three languages unequal proficiency levels in the two languages equal proficiency levels in both languages
d. after 6 months
Canonical babbling generally appears a. after 6 weeks b. after 12 months c. at birth d. after 6 months
infants have categorical perception for ALL the possible phonemes in human languages The acquisition process is gradually learning to ignore the difference between sounds that aren't phonemic in your language
Categorical perception
Meaning depends on location of intonational boundary They invited Sue and Jim and Steve got rejected. Someone shot the maid of the actress who was on the balcony. (high versus low attachment)
Contribution of prosody to sentence interpretation
has a strong imitative component
Cultural learning can explain the unlimited productivity of human language has a strong imitative component is not important in language development is only important to language development in the case of deaf children
c. around 9 months of age
Differentiating between two languages that differ in phonotactic properties but not prosodic properties is possible a. after the age of 1 b. as early as 6 months c. around 9 months of age d. at birth
Listen to a sentence Try out one of the possibilities If it works, 'reward' that possibility If it doesn't work, 'punish' that possibility Eventually, the right possibilities will eliminate the others Learning by Unlearning start with options A, B, C → more reward for option C → C used
How do children learn the parameters?
build (some kind of) structural representation parse sentences categorize words figure out grammatical function of arguments To do all of these, children must "break into" syntax.
How do children use syntactic info to acquire verb meanings?
continuity assumption -- Children already have full grammatical competence Problem with continuity assumption; adult language does not resemble child language One defence of this; any differences found between adult and child language could be attributed to external factors like memory or processing limitations - Problems No serious attempts to measure and assess children's performance limitations The control procedures in the experiments ruled out performance limitations and external factors: Reluctant to use newly learned words in novel ways, Production is more demanding than comprehension, Difficult to use newly learned verbs in transitive utterances This means they cannot be used as explanations for any differences found between adults and children. - Children DO NOT possess fully adult-like performance capabilities
against continuity assumption 1
d. all of the above
Vocal babbling a. displays syllabic organization b. includes sounds not necessarily present in one's native language c. is modulated by linguistic experience d. all of the above
Both of the above.
What are some hypotheses for the disappearance of Root Infinitives from children's speech? The uniqueness constraint disappears around 3 years of age. The CP = Root of the Clause axiom becomes fully operative around 3 years Both of the above. None of the above.
a. any language disorder resulting from brain damage
What is aphasia? a. any language disorder resulting from brain damage b. a brain disorder that impairs syntax but leaves pronunciation intact c. a brain disorder that impairs the ability to name vegetables d. a type of brain damage that leads to swearing and cursing e. a developmental disorder that causes children to have difficulty in reading
of process
What type of continuity between young children and adults does Tomasello assume exists? of UG of process of linking of structure
the head direction parameter (order of constituents) the verb movement parameter (whether, and which, verbs raise in their language) the V2 parameter (second position for finite verbs in V2 languages) the structure-dependence of agreement relations (subject-verb) But we also find deviations from adult grammar: root infinitives.
When children start combining words (2-3 y.o.), they demonstrate knowledge of:
e. saying something like ottle
Which alteration of the word bottle would be least likely to be recognized by a child around the age of 11 months? a. saying something like boddle b. modifying the intonation c. speaking it in a different voice d. saying something like pottle e. saying something like ottle
c. Wernicke's Aphasia
Which of the following can be used as evidence for the modularity of the brain? a. Primitive languages b. Franz Joseph Gall c. Wernicke's Aphasia d. Noam Chomsky e. Bird songs
b. clicks
Which of the following does not typically serve as a cue for speech segmentation? a. rhythm b. clicks c. intonation d. stress
postverbal subjects
Which of the following is not a good (sufficient) diagnostic for determining whether subject-verb agreement is semantic? non-agent subjects impersonal constructions copular constructions postverbal subjects
They have one meaning system for their L1 and L2 but two different means of expression
Which of the following is true of Compound Bilinguals: They tend to be low-proficiency in one of their languages They have two separate sets of meaning and two linguistic systems They have one meaning system for their L1 and L2 but two different means of expression They use their stronger language to interpret their weaker language
It leads to cognitive delays.
Which of the following statements about bilingualism is a myth? It can delay the onset of dementia. It leads to cognitive delays. It can have positive effects on linguistic cognition. It has been associated with slower lexical retrieval as compared to monolinguals.
the English speaking mother who addressed her 20-month old child more like an adult
Which of the parents from videos shown in class during Lecture 7 appeared to interact with his/her child differently compared to the other parents? the English speaking mother, who asked the child to repeat words and pointed at objects in order to cause the child to produce their names the French father, who was initially engaged but did not have enough patience to listen to his daughter's unintelligible speech for long the French mother, who asked the child to repeat words and pointed at objects in order to cause the child to produce their names the English speaking mother who addressed her 20-month old child more like an adult
This 'continuity assumption': weak empirical support; recently contradicted by systematic analyses of children's spontaneous speech and from controlled experiments Children's early linguistic competence is item based Language development: piecemeal fashion, no evidence of system-wide syntactic categories, schemas, or parameters These findings: not easily explained in terms of the development of children's skills of linguistic performance, pragmatics, or other 'external' factors New data: young children's creativity with language grossly overestimated; beginning language learners produce novel utterances in only limited ways, suggesting that their underlying syntactic competence is NOT adult-like.
alternative, usage-based theory of child language acquisition
Cortex/gray matter (surface of brain) Cerebral hemispheres - Left hemisphere: supervises right side of body - Right hemisphere: supervises left side of body Corpus callosum connects hemispheres, integrates information between them
brain anatomy - 4 parts
in brain (r → l, l → r)
contralateral control
corrections (rare and ineffective) more subtle parental reactions - not understanding, looking disappointed, rephrasing the ungrammatical sentence grammatically
examples of negative evidence
Cerebellum: intonation, inflection of voice Right Hemisphere: discourse, prosody, overall structure BILINGUALS - Increased right activity, different degrees of recovery for each language after stroke
language outside left hemisphere
semantic subclasses of verbs I.e. verbs can be used in transitive construction if it denotes 'manner of locomotion', but not if it denotes 'motion in a lexically specified direction' Works later - 4;6 and after entrenchment more frequently children hear a verb used in a particular construction the less likely they will extend it to something new Works early - 3;0 or before preemption if children hear a verb that serves the same function as another generalization, they infer that the generalization is not conventional less likely to generalize a verb to a new construction of adult told them otherwise Works later - 4;6 and after Preemption and entrenchment often work together
Constraints on overgeneralization of verbs
Equivalences between touch and sight (2 months!) Match facial movements to spoken syllables (5 months) More elaborate forms of imitation after 5 months interactive behaviors Vocalizations elicited by parents Exchange of looks, greetings Games (hide and go seek)
Intermodal processing:
Friederici, Meyer, & Cramon, 2000: fMRI study The hungry cat chased the fast mouse. The mumphy folofel fonged the apole trecon. The cook silent cat velocity yet honor. The norp burch orlont kinker deftey glaunch legery. Certain areas of the brain, in the left inferior frontal cortex exclusively recruited when processing input that contains syntactic relations (1-2) but not simple word lists (3-4) Speech processing has psychological reality as well as specific physiological correlates
Is semantic information crucial?
Experimental approaches to infant cognition Babies are born with certain intuitions about the nature and behavior of objects 3 months and a half: aware of constraints on physical objects wrt solidity and continuity in space Visual cliff experiment Other early distinctions: Animate vs. inanimate
Is the baby a physicist?
Logical problem Kids don't make as many mistakes as would be needed for hypothesis testing. Kids seem to receive no relevant negative evidence while learning language anyway. Kids learn fast. Kids become adults with all the relevant grammatical knowledge (uniform, highly complex). Kids come to know abstract principles without access to evidence determining them. In many cases, these principles are observed in all human languages: "Poverty of the stimulus"
"Poverty of the stimulus"
Having language = being human The linguistic capacity is part of being human. Like having two arms, ten fingers, a vision system, humans have a language faculty. Specification of having arms instead of wings, etc., is somehow encoded genetically. Structure of the language faculty is predetermined, like the structure of the vision system is. The language faculty (tightly) constrains what kinds of languages a child can learn ="Universal Grammar" (UG).
"Universal Grammar" (UG)
Paul Broca (French) in 1864 intelligence not necessarily affected Understanding affected in subtle way (does real-world knowledge compensate for syntactic deficits?) production severely impaired - Labored speech - Fragmentary - Trouble with function words aphasia = any language disorder resulting from brain damage (phasis = utterance, a = without, Greek) "Yes ... Monday ... Dad, and Dad ... hospital, and ... Wednesday Broca's aphasia: damage to left hemisphere, where the frontal, parietal, and temporal lobes meet
Language in the brain - Broca's aphasia
FEMALES: /m, n, h, g/ MALES: /m, n/ Intelligibility 2;0 = 26-50% intelligible
1 to 2 y.o. Acquired sounds
0-6 weeks = reflexive vocalizations: cry, fuss; 6-16 weeks = coo and laughter: vowel-like; 16-30 weeks = syllable-like vocalizations ; 0-0;2 mths = phonation, quasivowels and glottals; 0;2-0;3 = primitive articulation stage; 0;4-0;5 = expansion stage: full vowels, raspberries, marginal babbling.
0 to 1 y.o. Vocalizations
Perlocutionary stage (0 - 0;6+) Listeners infer intentions: imposing communicative significance on children's verbal and nonverbal behaviors (e.g., cry, gaze, social smiles). Turn-taking dialogues (protoconversations). Motherese important. Illocutionary stage (0;6 -1;0+) Intentionality: behavior consciously directed towards influencing others to act on an object. Joint reference and joint action with others. Protodeclaratives (shared attention - often achieved by pointing or showing) and protoimperatives (requests for action). Primitive speech acts include: calling, greeting, requesting an action, protesting an action, repeating or practicing.
0 to 1 y.o. language
NOT just a communication system Language unique to humans (likely to be part of their genetic make-up) No other animals use language (but yes communication No other animals can be taught language (debatable? - Washoe, Koko, Lana, Kanzi) What is missing? Creativity + formal complexity http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VttrAY0g9DM&feature=related language is not just a communication system, alert calls no other animals use language animal communication has properties diff from properties of human language no other animals can be taught language missing from primate communication -- creativity and formal complexity vocalization, gesture, smells, etc for animals creativity -- can say anything in any language human language is infinitely recursive
1 language = species-specific
Invented words: used frequently in a phonetically consistent manner without a recognizable adult model. Called "protowords" (Menn 1978) or "phonetically consistent forms" (Dore et al., 1976). MLU (mean length of utterance) from 1;0 to 2;2: 1.0 - 2.0 First words; Semantic roles expressed in simple sentences. Single word utterances. Semantic roles (e.g. agent + action)
1 to 2 y.o. Language
1;6-2;0 = monitor own utterances: repair spontaneously, adjust speech to different listeners, practice sounds, words, sentences
1 to 2 y.o. Metalinguistic skills
Deciduous teeth continue to emerge
1 to 2 y.o. Oral mechanism
Consonants: b, d, g, p, t, k, m, n, h, w, s; Vowels: i, I, u, E, e, o, O, A, æ
1 to 2 y.o. Phonetic inventory
MLU: 2;0 = 2.1 to 3;0 = 3.8 (range 3.3-4.7); Modulation of meaning. Emergence of grammatical morphemes (e.g. plurals); Development of sentence form. Noun phrase elaboration and auxiliary development (questions and negatives).
2 to 3 y.o. Language
Oral space enlarges. Growth of lower jaw + other bony structures. Disappearance of sucking pads. Increased muscle tone and "skilled" tongue movement. Lowering and more sophisticated movement of larynx. Separation of epiglottis and soft palate. DDK (diadochokinetic syllable rates): under 4 syllables per seconds; Maximum phonation time: 5.5 s
2 to 3 y.o. Oral mechanism
Present: cluster reduction, fronting of velars, fronting /S/, stopping /v, T, ð, Ù, Ã/, gliding, context sensitive voicing; Most prevalent = cluster reduction and liquid deviations (gliding) Declining: final consonant deletion, affrication, gliding, metathesis, prevocalic voicing, vowel changes
2 to 3 y.o. Phonological processes
"The literature on vowel development suggests that vowels are acquired early, both in production and perception. There is considerable variability in their production, but most studies suggest that vowel production is reasonably accurate by age 3, although some studies call this into question."
2 to 3 y.o. Vowels
Selected: currently being spoken Active: plays a role in ongoing processing (works parallel to 'selected') Dormant: stored in long-term memory, no role in ongoing processing Techniques used to investigate bilingual representation and processing
3 levels of language activation in bilinguals
Consonants (>15%) n→ ŋ; r→ w; v→b; theta→f; ð→ d; s→ dentalized; Consonant clusters (>15%) pr→pw; br→bw; tr→tw; dr→dw; kr→kw; gr→gw; fr→fw; theta r→fr; st→ theta t; skw→ theta kw; spl→ theta pl, spw; spr→ theta pr, spw; str→ theta tr, stw; skr→ theta kr, skw
3 to 4 y.o. Common mismatches
"3-year-olds had acquired all major phoneme classes, except liquids... sibilant lisps were still common until the age of 7 years" FEMALES:(3;6 - 4;0): j, v, ð, sh, tsh, b, g, s, l, zh, dzh; MALES (3;6 - 4;0): j, f, sh, tsh, dzh, s, k, l
3 to 4 y.o. Consonants
adult-like swallow, DDK just under 5 syllables/s, maximum phonation time just under 8 s.
3 to 4 y.o. Oral mechanism
Present: stopping /v, T, ð/, fronting /S, Ù, Ã/, gliding of liquids, weak syllable deletion, cluster reduction, final consonant deletion. Declining: cluster reduction, deaffrication, final consonant deletion, final devoicing, initial consonant deletion, stopping, unstressed syllable deletion, fricative simplification
3 to 4 y.o. Phonological processes
skills Emergence of complex sentences; embedding sentence elements; compound and conjoining sentences.
3 to 4 y.o. Skills Emerging
Australian: 94% correct for monosyllabic, 88% for polysyllabic words; American: 76-79% for rhotic vowels.
3 to 4 y.o. Vowels
Whether parents spend time actively teaching children how to speak or not, the outcome is the same (and the errors they make in the course of acquisition are the same) • Crucial: need to recognize intention (theory of mind?) - The case of Glen and Jim: hearing children of deaf parents; well cared for but no linguistic interaction (just TV); discovered at 3 yrs 9 months and 18 months of age - had a vocabulary, but no morphology/syntax • That enough two wing. • Off my mittens. • This not take off plane. language doesn't need to be actively taught there needs to be two-way interaction
3a language doesn't need to be actively taught
Nicaraguan sign language: emerged when schools for the deaf were founded in the 1970s - from many different 'home signs' to full-fledged language with systematic properties Pidgins and Creoles - similar point language production can't be suppressed -- nicaraguan sign language, pidgins and creoles go over pidgin and creole slides
3b language production can't be suppressed
Consonants (>15%) theta→ f; s → dentalized; Consonant clusters (>15%) pr→pw; br→bw; tr→tw; dr→dw; kr→kw; gr→gw; fr→fw; theta r → fr; st → theta t; skw → theta kw; spl → theta pl, spw; spr → theta pr, spw; str → theta tr, stw; skr → theta kr, skw
4 to 5 y.o. Common mismatches
FEMALES (4;6-5;0): dzh, s, z, r, v; MALES: v, z, s, sh, tsh, zh, r
4 to 5 y.o. Consonants
93% (73-100%) intelligible in conversational speech with unfamiliar listeners
4 to 5 y.o. Intelligibility
no increase in DDK (under 5 syllables/s) but slight increase in maximum phonation time: 8-9 s
4 to 5 y.o. Oral mechanism
FEMALES (5;6-6;0): ŋ, theta, r; some studies also mention v; MALES (5;6-6;0): ŋ, ð, theta, r, z, l
5 to 6 y.o. Consonants
intelligible Prosody significant differences found between children with language impairment and normally developing peers on form and function
5 to 6 y.o. Intelligibility
may lose front incisors; increase in DDK (5 syllables/s) and maximum phonation time (over 9 s)
5 to 6 y.o. Oral mechanism
5;0 - 5;5: syllable segmentation, rhyme awareness, alliteration awareness, phoneme isolation (+ letter knowledge, UK) 5;6 - 5;11: phoneme segmentation "By the time children start school, they have a fairly large vocabulary and can talk about relationships among objects and events; and they are able to produce and understand a variety of simple as well as complex sentences; and they are able to express various communicative intents, carry on conversations, and adapt their speech style to their listeners. However, language development is not complete."
5 to 6 y.o. Skills
around 95% correct for non-rhotic, and 80% for rhotic;
5 to 6 y.o. Vowels
Necessity of stimulation from and interaction with the environment - Isolated children; birds For a biological system, the environmental input is a stimulus that triggers internal development
5. Role of environment
> 15% for consonant clusters: tr → tw; skw→ Tkw; spl→ Tpl; spr→ Tpr, spw; str→ Ttr, stw; skr→ Tkr, skw
6+ y.o. Common mismatches
FEMALES: all; some studies [ð, theta] acquired around 7;6. MALES: [ð] acquired at 7;6; [theta] at 8;0; [v] and [z] not achieved by 9;0.
6+ y.o. Consonants
skull reaches adult size; permanent teeth emerge; mandible, tongue, lips continue growth until 16 (F) and 18 (M).
6+ y.o. Oral mechanism
6;0-6;5: syllable segmentation, rhyme awareness, alliteration awareness, phoneme isolation; 6;6-6;11: phoneme segmentation "During the school-age years, children are developing more sophisticated syntactics and semantic forms. They are becoming more effective communicators and conversationalists. They are developing the ability to reflect on the nature of the language system itself. And they are learning about the written language system."
6+ y.o. Skills
around 80% correct for American rhotic vowels; all other vowels mastered
6+ y.o. Vowels
False
A vocabulary spurt occurs around the age of 3 years.
2 years and a half
According to the textbook, parents should only worry if a child does not speak at all after the age of 2 years and a half 1 year 6 months 1 year and a half
The problem of finding words How do infants break into the lexical system? Consider the following: Speech is continuous (words are not highlighted as separate units) Words are not taught in isolation (even novel words presented in frames) Infants are not born with a lexicon Proposed solution: phonological bootstrapping.
Acquisition of the lexicon
First words produced around 10-12 months. How do children start learning words? Two-step process: Segment speech stream into words. Associate meaning with these words. Important concept: bootstrapping (using more concrete, available info to arrive at a more abstract concept).
Acquisition of the lexicon two steps
each word bears a 'language tag' (info about its language), e.g., 'English' activation and control (Green, 1986, 1993, 1998) a bilingual's language systems may take on different levels of activation (selected/active/dormant) a bilingual can suppress activation and output from one of the languages (i.e., items with particular language tags)
Bilingual processing: language-tagging
a language switch (on/off): accounts for the bilingual's ability to switch between L1 and L2 based on the situation (e.g., MacNamara & Kushnir, 1971) substantial evidence against such a switch: both languages can be activated at the same time e.g. apple pomme (both are activated) also, orthographic neighbors in both languages of a bilingual are activated during word recognition (Van Heuven et al. 1998): e.g. English target doom English neighbours: room, dorm, door Dutch neighbours: boom, drom, doos counter evidence: priming task Stroop effect: same as with monolinguals, processor cannot be shut off
Bilingual processing: the Switch Hypothesis (early proposal)
Code-switching = alternative use of two languages within the same utterance words are not yet acquired in both languages (children) words are more frequently used in this context (e.g. domains of language: family, friends, school, ...) words could be more easily pronounced or are simpler and more salient - (e.g."check" versus "verifier", "no van a" versus "they're not going to") words have no straightforward equivalent in L1 or L2 (e.g. "stage" versus "in-service training course)
Bilinguals borrow lexical items from one language to complement the other if
All of the above
Bilinguals commonly Mix L1 and L2 Translate from one language into another Experience interference from L1 to L2 and vice versa All of the above
receptive capabilities / "passive" competencies = aural comprehension = phonological and word meaning processing = language reception ... productive capabilities / "active" competencies = speech production, = vocal articulation = language planning and expression ...
Bilinguals vary in their...
argues against the existence of a language switch
Bilinguals' performance on a cross-language color naming Stroop task is accompanied by increased code-switching demonstrates that two languages cannot be active at the same time argues against the existence of a language switch supports the view of compound bilingualism
T
Children's behavior in language development can influence the parents' style and responsiveness. T/F
The finding that the birth of a word in the little boy's production was preceded by gradual reduction and simplification in the caregivers' production.
What is a theoretically important result from MIT researcher Deb Roy's study? The finding that the birth of a word in the little boy's production was preceded by gradual reduction and simplification in the caregivers' production. The discovery of space-time worms. The finding that 'water' is initially pronounced as 'gaaaa'. The finding that the nanny contributed to the little boy's language development as much as his parents did.
Coordinate, Subordinate, Compound
What three types of lexical access do bilinguals use? Coordinate, Subordinate, Compound Compound, Coordinate, Dormant Subordinate, Compound, Superordinate Active, dormant, selected
the child has not yet acquired consonant clusters
When a child produces [kəæ:k] for 'clown', this could mean that the child cannot produce disyllabic words yet the child has not yet acquired consonant clusters the child has trouble with occlusive sounds all of the above
All of the above
When children begin combining words, they demonstrate knowledge of: The head direction parameter The verb movement parameter The structure-dependence of agreement relations All of the above
d. stiffer vocal folds
Which is NOT a difference from adults in infants' articulatory apparatus? (NOTE: the choices below describe infants) a. different tongue shape b. shorter vocal tract c. higher larynx d. stiffer vocal folds
d. All of the above.
Which is a claim made by the Bioprogram Hypothesis? a. Creoles emerge when children take a certain vocabulary available around them and use it with their innate grammar. b. Children are genetically programmed to learn language. c. Children learning a natural language will make mistakes on features that differ from creoles, and will make no mistakes on features that are found in creoles. d. All of the above. e. None of the above.
negation
Which of the following concepts does not provide a good example of linguistic relativity? social stratification gender color negation
French
Which of the following groups of children is MOST likely to talk about food (according to the studies reported in our textbook)? French American Japanese Swedish
c. the structural bias
Which of the following is NOT a bias on word meaning? a. the taxonomic bias b. the mutual exclusivity bias c. the structural bias d. the whole object bias
Non-active
Which of the following is NOT a level of language activation? Non-active Dormant Active
a. infants' larynx is higher than that of adults
Which of the following is a difference between adults' and infants' vocal apparatus? a. infants' larynx is higher than that of adults b. adults' vocal tract is shorter than that of infants c. infants do not have vocal folds d. adults are able to move their jaws
Bilingualism leads to linguistic confusion
Which of the following is a myth about bilingualism? Bilingualism is associated with certain cognitive advantages Bilingualism leads to linguistic confusion Bilingualism can be of different types All of the above
Mommy bring puppy
Which of the following is an example of a root infinitive? Come here baby Daddy shoes John eats not Mommy bring puppy
b. being able to visually recognize a object that was held in the hand moments before
Which of the following is an example of intermodal processing? a. focusing on the mouth of the speaker b. being able to visually recognize a object that was held in the hand moments before c. an exchange of greetings d. any sort of imitative behavior
All of the above
Which of the following is true of Root Infinitives (main clauses produced with nonfinite verb forms)? They do not occur in pro-drop languages They occur in declaratives, but not in wh-questions They are incompatible with auxiliaries All of the above
d. none of the above
Which of the following is/are a problem(s) with the word-to-world mapping procedure? a. there is usually only one possible interpretation for a given scene b. verb meaning is generally very transparent c. a child's initial biases on word meaning don't generally apply to nouns d. none of the above
d. all of the above
Which of the following poses problems to finding words in the initial stages of development? a. the fact that speech is continuous b. the fact that words are often not taught in isolation c. the fact that infants are not born with a lexicon d. all of the above
c. The mumphy folofel fonged the apole trecon.
Which of the sentences below is processed by the brain in the same way as "The angry dog befriended the bald eagle"? a. The cook silent cat velocity yet honor. b. The norp burch orlont kinker defey glaunch legery. c. The mumphy folofel fonged the apole trecon. d. None of the above
states and impressions
Which of the topics below is/are more likely to be found in Japanese children's early production? action sports money clothes states and impressions
different parts of brain
Why do reception and production differ?
= conceptual divisions of objects and actions onto phonological forms These mappings are not arbitrary, but the 'stretches of sound' often are Can you think of word forms that are NOT arbitrary? Association: not always a reliable method for learning meaning (e.g. where does a 'hand' stop?) Learning words: intuition + a lot of trial and error
Words
Common assumption: children learn language by imitating their parents problems: 1. Does not apply to comprehension at all 2. Children will create their own language - creoles (stable language, fully expressive, complete with grammatical markers, created by children raised in pidgin in language contact scenario) and nicaraguan sign language (created by children in congregated deaf program from their home sign) 3. Children say things their parents wouldn't (but somebody else's parents would) e.g. negative agreement Child English: I don't get nothing?! (age 3;4) Adult English: I don't get anything? Gianni non ha visto niente John not has seen nothing "John didn't see anything" (Italian)
imitation theory and problems
reward to options that have higher weight statistically based : learn associations between input/stimulus and output/response patterns, where input and output are connected by modifiable weighted links "goed" vs went -- went rewarded/repeated by parent more Successful modelling of verbal morphology acquisition (for English), simple word order acquire new verb past tenses by analogy to similar known ones
association theory
Broca's area controls: Syntax, speech encoding, speech production/comprehension Wernicke's area controls: Semantics, speech decoding speech encoding -- production decoding -- comprehension
broca's area vs wernicke's area
Language lateralization -- Wada test: inject sodium amytol into one hemisphere and observe subject behavior across different tasks (effect: paralysis of body side controlled by that hemisphere; if dominant for language - verbal behavior disrupted for several minutes) -- Brain mapping: expose brain and stimulate portions of it during speech production - associated with language: Broca's area in frontal lobe, Wernicke's area in temporal lobe -- Commisurotomy (split-brain): if corpus callosum severed, contralateral effect doesn't change, but the two hemispheres cannot communicate with each other => patients cannot verbally describe tactile info sent to right brain (left hand or left visual field) -- Dichotic listening: play different stimuli in different ears, see which one is processed faster; gender effect
Modularity of the Brain (4 tests)
In brief, infants initially extract a prelexical representation from the acoustic input recover from it prosodic boundaries also compute distributional regularities and identify permissible word-internal sequences in the language, as well as the most frequent word shapes using this information, identify other word boundaries
Phonological bootstrapping
Steps: First, identify larger units (the clause). Second, analyze these units into smaller items (little by little). To do so, use distributional regularities (statistical information), typical word shapes, and phonotactic information.
Phonological bootstrapping
The acoustic analysis of the speech stream provides learners with a prosodically segmented prelexical representation from which word forms can be extracted. Does the same process apply to the extraction of syntactic units? Between 6-9 months: infants become sensitive to prosodic coherence of units of different sizes By 7 months, infants can parse the speech stream into clause-sized units. By 9 months, they can parse the speech stream into phrase-sized units. These abilities allow infants to perform an initial rough segmentation and partial bracketing of the speech input, from which more fine-grained units will be extracted.
Phonological bootstrapping of syntax
it is unknown how universal grammar is linked to the particular language that is being learned Ex. How do we come to identify a 'subject' in a sentence even though there is no distinct perceptual feature that defines a 'subject' Proposed theories for linking: Biological analogy In animals, a spatial cognition map is built based on their local experience Maybe there is such a map in humans Led to: Pinker's theory Humans all have an innate set of: Syntactic categories Experiential categories Linking rules to connect the 2 categories Major problems: Ergative languages do not use subjects conventionally Too much variability across languages for the linking rules to encompass them all Early utterances by English children don't have an agent of action, which would disallow them from using the subject linking rule Also, subject hierarchy often violated Parametric setting theory Setting our parameters would allow for linking Problem: Paradoxical because setting parameters depends on linking
Problem of linking
Children who at this stage lag behind in expressive vocabulary but NOT in comprehension vocabulary usually catch up in about a year Children who at this stage lag behind in both production and comprehension do not catch up before 6 years of age Partial dissociation of production and comprehension skills?
Production versus Comprehension
Earliest reactions to words: 6-7 months Anecdotal evidence: babies waving 'goodbye' (7-9 months), clapping hands to 'bravo', refraining from touching objects upon hearing 'no' or 'hush'. Consensus: it is only towards 9 months that these behaviors are generalizable out of context What happens around that time? Decline in ability to discriminate non-phonemic speech contrasts Loss of ability to segment foreign languages New interest on the part of the child: words This comes with new tasks: Memorize and remember a phonetic pattern (ignore variability) Code the linguistic representation (associate it with stable meaning)
Recognizing and Understanding - meaning of words
Infants mostly communicate inner sensations Mothers bring in semantic content gradually Follow gaze (6 months) More precise gaze target identification - one of two identical objects (12 months) Determine location of gazed upon object outside of their visual field (18 months) Joint attention; pointing (receptive at 12 months, productive between 11 and 15 months); often used to ask for objects' names (fundamental for communication) Vocal communication: many other exchanges possible (but always supported by facial expression, affective messages)
Sharing Information about the Outside World
the L2 words are more easily pronounced or simpler
The English (L1)-Spanish (L2) code-switching example "No van a bring it up in the meeting." (They're not going to bring it up in the meeting) can be explained by the fact that the L2 words are more easily pronounced or simpler the words expressed in L2 have higher emotional content in L1 the L2 words have no straightforward equivalent in L1 L2 is superior to L1
Innate behaviors (Lenneberg 1967): often distinguished by the existence of critical periods during which the ability to acquire the competence reaches its peak (e.g. visual abilities in animals, bird songs, attachment in young of various species, etc.) Is language subject to critical period effects? The answer appears to be YES. Feral children (Victor of Aveyron, Genie) Deaf people exposed to a signed language at different ages SLA
The critical period
Two separate stores L1 and L2 words stored separately (in language-specific lexicons) One common store L1 and L2 words stored together (in a language-independent lexicon) More recently Distributed models of bilingual representation each word is represented as a collection of interconnected nodes some nodes are shared across L1 and L2
The Bilingual Lexicon: Common or Separate Storage?
all of the above
The following dataset of a French child's earliest words suggests a preference for for velar and labial consonants a preference for monosyllabic structures a preference for stops all of the above
All of the above.
The following is/are true based on the dataset of a French child's early productions presented below This child exhibits a (partially) minimalist style. This child has a preference for CV type syllables. This child has a preference for the liquid sound of French. All of the above.
b. there appears to be continuity between babbling and word production
The graph below shows that a. Japanese babies produce more labial consonants than all other groups b. there appears to be continuity between babbling and word production c. there is no continuity between babbling and word production d. babies generally produce significantly more labial consonants in words than when they babble
a. English babies produce more front vowels than babies from the other language groups at the age of 10 months
The graph below shows that: a. English babies produce more front vowels than babies from the other language groups at the age of 10 months b. children from different linguistic backgrounds produce completely different vowels at the age of 10 months c. at 10 months, there is no difference in the vowel production of babies from different language backgrounds d. French babies produce the highest vowels of all groups under consideration
Fetuses: can hear inside the womb and were shown to be sensitive to voices, native language, intonation, syllables (can their brain process individual sounds?) Due to liquid medium, individual sounds greatly distorted; prosody more pervasive 3-day olds recognize their mother's voice As early as 6 months children seem to understand words like mommy/daddy (preferential looking technique)
The infant's acoustic surroundings
False
The later the second language of a bilingual was acquired, the less right hemispheric activity in their brain. T/F
The mental representation of words By 11 months (possibly earlier) lexical access occurs → the lexicon (mental dictionary) must have been initiated in babies' brains The lexical entries - flexible (abstract) enough to allow recognition of the same word spoken by different voices, with different intonation patterns, under varying circumstances: idealized, schematic, underspecified for certain features First lexical representations rely more on prosodic aspects rather than fine-grained phonetic detail (holistic; global, syllabic structure with some articulatory features)
The mental representation of words
A grammar: mental generative procedure that uses finite means to generate an indefinite number of sentences UG tightly constrains the learning process. Study of syntax, phonology, etc., is generally trying to uncover properties of Language, to specify what kind of languages a child can learn, to see what kinds of restrictions UG places on language.
The notion of Grammar
True
There is evidence that, from an early age, children distinguish finite from nonfinite verbs. T/F
Stage 1: smiled, sang, held = all memorized Stage 2: smiled, singed/sanged, holded, = learned past, over-regularization Stage 3: smiled, sang, held = learned allomorphy At Stage 2 the child will over-regularize based on the weight of -ed, but then s/he will modify this weight for irregular verbs because s/he does not encounter these combinations (irregular verb stem + ed) in the input.
U-shaped curve of verbal morphology acquisition
Focus on babies: Phonetic/acoustic knowledge precedes linguistic knowledge Link between sound and meaning discovered later (9-11 months) Some months after that: vocabulary spurt (eagerness to learn about the world - the processing of reality) Tentative conclusion: language precedes our worldview and knowledge of how the world works
What comes first: our knowledge of the world, or the words to help us process information about the world and arrive at generalizations?
d. all of the above
What explains the advantage of nouns over verbs in children's early lexicons? a. the fact that the word-to-world mapping procedure works better with nouns b. the fact that the biases on word meaning are helpful in noun, not verb, comprehension c. the temporal gap between an utterance and the extralinguistic context of the verb(s) used in it d. all of the above
Nouns vs. Verbs Cross-linguistic asymmetry in early lexicons: children's early productive vocabularies are (almost) exclusively made up of nouns, while verbs appear later, and remain a minority for a while. word-to-world mapping procedure works better with nouns the biases on word meaning are helpful in noun, not verb, comprehension temporal gap between utterance and extralinguistic context of verb
What explains this "advantage" of nouns over verbs?
People eventually end up with a system with which they can produce (and rate) sentences: a grammar. Even if a native speaker of English has never heard a sentence before, they know if it's possible in English constraints on form and meaning Every native speaker of English knows these things. Nobody who speaks English as a first language was explicitly taught (growing up) "wanna-contraction is not possible when the questioned element is the subject of the infinitival clause" or "You can't use a proper name if it's c-commanded by something coindexed with it." Trying to use any simple kind of general learning principle based on (analogy to) other sentences seems almost sure to lead you astray.
knowledge of language
problems: 1 Children treat verbs differently depending on their grammatical status (over-regularization occurs with main verbs, but not auxiliaries in the case of DO or HAVE) 2 The patterns of over-regularization are different for children as opposed to connectionist models (e.g. more over-regularization of vowel-change verbs, sing-singed) - patterns of over-regularization in real children differ from lab models, maybe models don't imitate reality well 3 Connectionist models cease over-regularization only after abrupt change in training input, for children there is no change in input 4 Linguistic constraints (abstract aspects of linguistic knowledge) 5 Ambiguity (I shot an elephant in my pajamas. Whose pajamas did you shoot an elephant in?) 6 Degenerate/incomplete input (Creole languages: children expand on rudimentary linguistic input) mb more to story than wgts btwn input and output
problems with connectionist models (association theory)
Present: final consonant deletion, cluster reduction, fronting of velars, stopping, gliding, context sensitive voicing Declining: reduplication, consonant harmony
1 to 2 y.o. Phonological processes
1;6-2;0 = monitor own utterances: repair spontaneously, adjust speech to different listeners, practice sounds, words, sentences
2 to 3 y.o. Metalinguistic skills
Oral mechanism: oral space smaller, lower jaw smaller and retracted, sucking pads present, teeth emerge. Tongue large compared to size of oral cavity: more restricted movement. Epiglottis and soft palate are in approximation as a protective mechanism. Newborns breathe/swallow at same time. Larynx higher in newborn. Perception: "By at least 2 days of age, the neonate has an ability to discriminate language specific acoustic distinctions...The 12 month old human has developed the capacity to categorize only those phonemes which are in its native language"
0 to 1 y.o.
"Late onset of canonical babbling may be a predictor of disorders... [i.e.] smaller production vocabularies at 18, 24 and 36 mths" 31-50 weeks = reduplicated babbling: series of consonant and vowel-like elements 0;6+ = canonical stage: well-formed canonical syllables, reduplicated sequences (e.g., [babababa])
0 to 1 y.o. Babbling
2 aspects - All human babies: capable of learning any language - All languages: cut from the same mold (universal properties) Universal grammar: blueprint for language (same components, same organization and functions, same principles and parameters, variation = constrained; surface) any human infant is capable of learning any lang all languages share universal properties/components ug is blueprint for language variation is constrained languages have different words, have to be memorized remove surface variability and same skeleton emerges
2 language = universal
For both single consonants and clusters. Consonants (>15%) n → ŋ; l → w; r → w; v → b; theta→ f; ð→ d; s → dentalized; z→ d; sh→ s; tsh→ t/d; zh→ d (Smit, 1993a) Consonant clusters (>15%) pr→ p, pw; br → b, bw; tr → t, tw; dr → d, dw; kr → k, kw; gr → g, gw; fr → f, fw; theta r→ f, theta w; sw → w; sm → m; sn → n; sp → p, b; st→ t, d;
2 to 3 y.o. Common mismatches
FEMALES: add s, p, ŋ, w, t, d, k, f; MALES: add ŋ, d, p, b, h, w, k, g, j, g, Z
2 to 3 y.o. Consonants
"A client 3 years of age or older who is unintelligible is a candidate for treatment."
3 to 4 y.o. Intelligibility
"The majority of 4-year-old children will not exhibit phonological awareness other than syllable segmentation and the emergence of rhyme awareness." "Preschool children show significant growth in their ability to understand and use words, including a variety of relational terms. Their ability to produce and understand various types of sentences, including questions and complex sentences, also develops tremendously...These remarkable developments are accompanied by equally remarkable developments in the child's pragmatic abilities."
4 to 5 y.o. Skills
Australian: around 95% correct for monosyllabic, 92% for polysyllabic words; American: 86%-90% for rhotic
4 to 5 y.o. Vowels
Slobin 1972 - Motor development: roll over, sit up, crawl, walk - Language acquisition: coo, babble, one-word stage, two-word stage, sentences - Also: second language acquisition in adulthood and similar acquisition paths paths followed -- set sequence similar paths for second language acquisition hard to compare bc no two people have same bg
4. Similar acquisition paths for languages
none for single consonants; consonant clusters: pr→pw; br→bw; tr→tw; dr→dw; kr→kw; gr→gw; skw→ theta kw; spl→ theta pl, spw; spr→ theta pr, spw; str→ theta tr, stw; skr→ theta kr, skw
5 to 6 y.o. Common mismatches
build up his/her production starting with syllables, moving on to individual words, and only later combine words together
A child with a mostly analytic style is expected to produce long sentences that sound like the native language intonation-wise but cannot be parsed into individual words point at objects and display good comprehension but not produce any words yet express him/herself in short utterances, of 3-4 words at a time build up his/her production starting with syllables, moving on to individual words, and only later combine words together
False
A native speaker of Thai will not initially discriminate between tokens with -30 ms VOT and tokens with -10 ms VOT.
not to accept an utterance as a word if it is unintelligible
According to the textbook, a French mother taking to her child is likely to be very concerned with the child's early performance to encourage any type of production, regardless of the success of the child's attempts not to accept an utterance as a word if it is unintelligible to use a high percentage of nouns (above 35%)
all of the above
According to the usage-based theory, children's language acquisition is supported by vocal-auditory processing social interaction basic processes of cognition all of the above
1. Without explicit teaching 2. On the basis of positive evidence 3. Under varying circumstances, and in a limited amount of time 4. In very similar (identical) ways across languages
Acquiring a language is an effortless achievement that occurs:
No systematic instruction provided (unlike second language acquisition) L1 (first or native language) develops spontaneously by exposure to linguistic input (necessary condition) Even when children are corrected, this generally has no effect on their use of language
Acquiring a language occurs without explicit teaching:
if finite and nonfinite verbs do not differ formally in children's grammar (B), they should pattern similarly (no distributional differences). Verb placement in early V2 languages In adult Dutch and German matrix clauses, finite verbs appear in second position in the clause, while infinitives appear clause-finally. Finding: children display the same pattern 2-word utterances not helpful (V2=final position); need to look at 3-word utterances and above Poeppel and Wexler 1993: quantitative analysis confirms this Conclusion: children distinguish finite from nonfinite verbs in terms of verb placement (V2 languages).
Against the small clause hypothesis - V2
Two lexicons Comprehension exceeds production Easier to imitate than produce words Very slow vocabulary increase at first Late talkers (wait till precise phonetic specification kicks in) But what about the [fis] phenomenon? Different access routes to the same lexicon?
Asymmetry production-perception - two different representations?
EARLY VIEW (Jakobson 1968): babbling and word production unrelated (no continuity) TODAY: there is continuity, babbling = fundamental step in development of language, direct connection to word production (allows babies to practice the sounds of their languages, which naturally leads up to their first words)
Babbling and word production
Generative grammar includes a core (mathematically elegant) grammar and peripheral (quirky syntactic) grammar. Core: Abstract, systematic aspects of language use. Periphery: Lexicon, pragmatics. Mature linguistic competence is a structured inventory of constructions, some core-like, some peripheral. Cognitive functional approaches: Explain competence as mastery of a language's linguistic symbols and structural schemas--highly canonical core and highly idiosyncratic periphery. By claiming that all linguistic knowledge is originally derived from the production and comprehension of specific utterances in specific contexts, this is a Usage Based Theory
Cognitive-Functional Linguistics: Generative grammar
Comprehension Hypothesis: adults understand grammatical sentences and do not understand ungrammatical ones Approval Hypothesis: adults respond positively to grammatical sentences and negatively to ungrammatical ones Brown & Hanlon (1970) found that adults understood and expressed approval after ungrammatical sentences at the same frequency as grammatical sentences This doesn't look good for comprehension or approval as a source of negative evidence for kids.
Do kids get "implicit" negative evidence?
Early on, children often... Stick to CV structures in early word production (just like in babbling) Simplify consonant clusters e.g. ke for clef Favor certain sounds (places or manners of articulation, e.g. labials, stops) Stick to disyllabic words, often with repeated syllables e.g. (dodo) Produce consonant harmony (e.g. geiger for tiger) Supress syllables e.g. efa for elephant Supress initial consonants (7%) e.g. apo for chapeau English-speaking babies produce more syllabic omissions (23%) - only keep the stressed syllable of a word e.g. raf for giraffe
Early on in word production, children often...
color
English children were shown experimentally to have a preference for categorizing objects based on functionality shape color size
also called HOLISTIC/EXPRESSIVE (top down - intonational phrase, some words, words in isolation).
Global style
Myers et al. 1996: 1 s pauses placed either between words or within words 11 months: clear preference for pauses at word boundaries 5 and 9 months: no preference (though previous studies did show preference for clause boundaries at these ages) Conclusion: prosodic and rhythmic cues alone not enough to permit word segmentation before 11 months What then are children using (most recognize individual words before this age)?
How are word boundary cues extracted?
a. right before the word 'Anna'
In a sentence like "In her hope of marrying, Anna was surely impractical" if a click were played in the middle of the word 'Anna', most subjects would report having heard it a. right before the word 'Anna' b. in the middle of the word 'marrying' c. in the middle of the word 'Anna' d. right after the word 'Anna'
have waited to develop full phonetic specification before speaking
Late talkers are extremely likely to: be female suffer from a language or developmental disorder have very high IQs (genius level) have waited to develop full phonetic specification before speaking
applies to the combination of units larger than the word
In the context of the usage-based theory, structure combining prevents children from producing complex sentences is used by adults but not by children applies to the combination of units larger than the word is a type of preemption
did not appear to behave very differently from American ones
In the videos we watched in class (Lecture 7), French parents did not appear to behave very differently from American ones encouraged the holistic strategy in their children behaved differently from American parents did not interact with their children when they could not understand the children's productions
refers to the localization of a specific function in one or the other hemisphere R : responsible for creative and emotional skills, spatial reasoning? L : responsible for logic, analysis, mathematics? Best evidence of lateralization for one specific ability: Ø LANGUAGE (left hemisphere) Ø L: speech Ø R: non-speech sounds, music
Lateralization
While speech perception is apparent from birth, speech production starts around 6 months of age. Between 6-8 months: babbling (manual or vocal) → identical timing suggests this is due to maturation of the neural substrate supporting language)
Infants' speech production
Children come 'equipped' with knowledge about language Principles: language universals that children are born knowing and so don't have to learn (e.g. an NP can't be moved out of another NP) Parameters: the choices that languages can make (e.g. ordering of elements in phrase structure rules, whether a subject is required to be present on the surface); children are born knowing the possibilities A large part of their task is to eliminate the possibilities that aren't part of their language Consequences: 1 there are some mistakes that children never make 2 the mistakes that children do make are possible in other languages -- English learning babies will use syntax from German/Mandarin.
Innateness Hypothesis
Karl Wernicke (German) in 1874 -Fluent speech -Good intonaIon -Lexical errors -Nonsense words -"Word salad" -Comprehension impaired "I felt worse because I can no longer keep in mind from the mind of the minds to keep me from mind and up to the ear which can be to find among ourselves." Wernicke's aphasia: damage to the brain in the parietal/temporal region in the left hemisphere
Language in the brain - Wernicke's aphasia
Slower speech, longer pauses Higher pitch, greater pitch range Exaggerated intonation and stress More varied loudness Fewer disfluencies More restricted vocabulary More rephrasings More repetitions Shorter, less complex utterances More imperatives and questions Fewer complex (multiclause) sentences
Some properties of "Motherese"
Some ways of overcoming it: Parentese: words often repeated, highlighted, and spoken in isolation Patterns (pauses, final lengthening, pitch excursions to signal clause boundaries, or single out words, e.g. focus) Bootstrapping: building from the bottom up
Problem: continuous speech (sound wave - no boundaries between words)
pragmatism
Some studies suggest that the early production of American children can be used as evidence for their aesthetic sense pragmatism hedonism taste for action
multiple hypotheses possible with the same scene (if two animals present, how does the baby know CAT does not refer to an elephant?) verbs are not as transparent (may refer to things in the past/future) problem of induction: multiple interpretations compatible with the same scene (e.g. giving is receiving, if something is under, something is above, etc.) Overcoming these problems Innate predisposition for joint attention with adults during speech + use nonverbal cues (e.g. pointing). But these cues: not uniformly available. What else might constrain (facilitate) word learning?
Problems with the word-to-world mapping procedure
True
Root infinitives are similar to small clauses. T/F
Linguistic determinism: the language we use to some extent determines the way in which we view and think about the world Strong determinism language actually determines thought, language and thought are identical Weak determinism thought is merely affected or influenced by our language
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis strong and weak
Sensitivity to consonant contrasts - Infants discriminate between consonantal contrasts very early. - Perception of consonantal contrasts is categorical. - Infants can discriminate native as well as nonnative contrasts. - Infants gradually lose the ability to distinguish nonnative contrasts - process complete by age 1 (same as adults).
Sensitivity to consonant contrasts
T
Studies have found that people tend to be less judgmental when evaluating morality scenarios in a second language. T/F
Syntactic context of a given verb: facilitates determining its meaning. sentence-to-world mapping procedure: "Show me a sib" vs. "Show me sibbing." Do children expect a correlation between syntax and semantics? (e.g. if a verb has a transitive frame, look for two participants, if it is intransitive, look for one) Still, no precise meaning: John gorped that Mary came. (?)
Syntactic cueing of verb meaning
Derek Bickerton (who studied Hawaiian Creole) argued that children are genetically programmed to learn language. Analogy: children are genetically programmed to learn to walk upright. He claims that features of creoles are already programmed into our heads. In most situations, children have to alter their preprogrammed grammar to conform to what they hear around them (English, French, etc.). In a pidgin situation, they don't have to (because of the lack of structure); they just take the words they hear and use them with their innate grammar. bioprogram hypothesis features of creoles are innate grammar don't have to alter pre-programmed grammar to conform to grammatical rules heard languages differ from ug due to imperfect acquisition, 'laziness factor' for sound change, innovation creoles around the world have similar grammar regardless of input language
The Bioprogram Hypothesis (1984)
Extensive brain development occurs as a child acquires speech during childhood. - the brain is shaped by the environment in which a child lives (genetic inheritance does NOT include a specialized body and mind fitted to a specific environmental niche) - ability to grasp complex patterns and a brain that grows through interacting with the environment - potential to learn from a wide number of possible environments narrowed to fit the actual one in which a child lives
The Infant Brain Development
Do infants recognize... - Specific words? NO - Mean energy? NO (backwards speech not recognized) - Segmental properties? NO (low-pass filtered speech still recognized) - Prosodic (suprasegmental) information? YES
The Source of Discrimination - how do infants tell languages apart when they don't know either
True
The biggest problem usage-based theories are faced with is that of linking. T/F
positive influence on aspects of linguistic processing, e.g. manipulate language in terms of discrete phonemic units (Bialystok et al. 2005; Bruck and Genesee 1995), novel word acquisition (Kaushanskaya and Marian 2009), auditory processing (Krizman et al. 2012), accent imitation positive effects on nonlinguistic cognition, e.g. multitasking, selective attention (e.g., Kovacs and Mehler 2009; Colzato et al. 2008; Costa et al. 2008), cognitive function (Bialystok et al. 2007, 2004; Bialystok 1999); onset and rate of decline in dementia (Bialystok et al. 2007) disadvantages also reported: lexical retrieval and fluency (Michael and Gollan, 2005)
The bilingual advantage
b. tested children's recognitory comprehension skills
The experimental studies we covered on the comprehension of words and short sentences with children between 9 and 17 months old a. were later rejected by the scientific community because the children they used as subjects were prodigies b. tested children's recognitory comprehension skills c. were not in agreement with parents' impressionistic accounts because most parents felt their children could not actually understand as many words as the results suggested d. tested children's symbolic comprehension skills
a preference for monosyllabic words
The following dataset of an English speaking child's earliest words demonstrates a preference for monosyllabic words a preference for ending words with a back vowel that this child can only produce longer words with consonant harmony all of the above
From birth to 4 months, infants' vocal tract: similar to that of apes. Differences from adults: higher larynx (starts descending around 4-6 months, process complete around 3 years of age) smaller throat shorter vocal tract different tongue shape Babbling can only occur once the configuration of the vocal tract is ready for it.
The maturation of the vocal apparatus
early grammar: lexical-thematic system (based more on meaning than structure) although functional categories part of UG, their availability is subject to maturation and only become operative around age 3 strongest evidence for the SC hypothesis: English (not supported by cross-linguistic studies) General view: functional categories present from the start (though not clear how much structure available at each developmental stage)
The small clause hypothesis
d. by 9-month old Hebrew babies
The studies we looked at show that iambic rhythm is preferred a. by 6-month old American babies b. by 9-month old American babies c. by 6-month old Hebrew babies d. by 9-month old Hebrew babies e. (c) and (d) above
e. none of the above
The theory that language is acquired by children through imitation can easily account for: a. the errors made by children during acquisition b. the creation by children of full-blown languages (e.g. creoles, Nicaraguan Sign Language) from flawed and limited input c. the fact that children do not learn from explicit attempts to teach them d. all of the above e. none of the above
a holistic strategy in early production
The video of the child speaking on the phone shown during Lecture 7 was illustrative of inadequate parenting an analytic strategy in early production a holistic strategy in early production the mutual exclusivity bias
The nature of infants' perception ability - On the one hand, infants can discriminate between non-linguistic stimuli (not language-specific) - On the other hand, other species (chinchillas, macaques) also have categorical perception (not human-specific) Ramus et al. (2000): "some aspect of human speech perception may have built upon preexisting sensitivities of the primate auditory system"
Where does categorical perception come from
Understanding words (nouns, verbs, short sentences) Various experiments tested comprehension of nouns, verbs, and short sentences at different ages 9-11 months: 1 out of 10 children looks longer systematically at objects whose names are being presented 12-14 months: 5 out of 10 children look longer (when animals are involved). Interest facilitates learning? 15-17 months: 8 out of 10 children Also: verbs recognized later. These experiments Not in agreement with parents' impressionistic accounts OUT of context Do not recreate the usual process of communication
Various experiments tested comprehension of nouns, verbs, and short sentences at different ages referential vs symbolic understanding
initially uses subset of possible human sounds (not restricted to native language); by 8-10 months, modulated by linguistic experience (infants' production mirrors statistical tendencies of native language: vowel quality, segment frequency, syllable type) not associated with meaning Reduplicated or variegated Manual babbling: very similar features Language capacity: amodal, or flexible enough to allow reorganization to a different means of expression, not originally selected for it?
Vocal babbling - syllabic organization
b. the construction of a partial sentential representation
Which is NOT a step involved in phonological bootstrapping of lexical acquisition? a. the computation of distributional regularities and identification of permissible word-internal sequences in the language, as well as the most frequent word shapes b. the construction of a partial sentential representation c. the recovery of prosodic boundaries from an extracted representation d. the extraction of a prelexical representation from the acoustic input
e. Fast tracking
Which is NOT a test that can be employed to demonstrate language lateralization? a. Dichotic listening b. Brain mapping c. Commisurotomy d. the Wada test e. Fast tracking
a. until 20 months of age
Words that resemble each other phonetically like pear and bear like are possibly hard to differentiate a. until 20 months of age b. until 14 months of age c. until 12 months of age d. until the age of 2 years
The second continuity assumption approach assumes: children have UG principles and grammatical categories when they begin to produce sentences however, constraints restrict availability to a certain stage Tomasello argues against this; he states: new acquisition data can override any previously known knowledge without genetic consultation or independent assessment children did not produce transitive utterances with novel verbs, despite the same genetic basis when they produced transitive utterances with known verbs in spontaneous speech
against continuity assumption 2: Full competence plus maturation
Eskimo language? There are dozens. What is a word/root? Do we count derived forms? Does this make Inuit people more aware of snow properties? Not if they grow up in Florida Does this make non-Inuit people blind to snow properties? Not if they are passionate about snow (skiers, skateboarders, etc.) What of slush, blizzard, and sleet?
against snow hoax for sapir-whorf
comprehension ability
better predictor of speech delays/disorders.
Findings: - relationship between VOT and % identification of each category is non-linear but S-shaped. At a certain point on the scale, subjects' ability to identify a category is no better than chance (50% correct). S-shaped curve - for a certain range of vot it is definitively one phoneme, then at a sharp boundary it is unknown, range of responses, then once in another certain range it is definitively a different phoneme - If ability to discriminate stimuli is sharp around this point → categorical perception. - Away from category boundary, identification of stimuli approaches 100% correct, but discrimination is typically poor. Subjects find it more difficult to tell the difference between tokens with slightly different VOTs in this region. ie can tell the difference between two sounds with vots 5 ms apart on opposite sides of category boundary, but don't identify sounds with vots 5 ms apart on the same side of the category boundary as being different sounds Why are these findings important? Show that listeners only hear those sound differences that are phonemic (capable of distinguishing one word from another in a language) ⇒ spoken language perceived more efficiently Perceptual effort not wasted on aspects of speech that are not linguistically functional NOTE: CP pattern found for several other phonological contrasts, but not all. Vowel perception is less categorical: the identification is similar, but discrimination is not so sharp.
cp
General view now: language sets up a filter between human being and surrounding world that heightens certain perceptions and dims others
current view of linguistic determinism
ug exists but kids don't just enter the world speaking like adults—there's development. adults don't all end up speaking the same language or dialect — there is learning.
development vs learning
Mono- and disyllabic words Listening preference procedure: 2 speakers, 2 ears, 2 stories (see a problem with that?) 7-8 month old subjects Results: clear preference for 'words' they had been familiarized with Moreover, this preference still present 15 days later Interesting finding: infants can generalize across voices and prosodies, but CANNOT recognize the words if they undergo phonetic modification (change one C or V) Conclusion: Early representations are stored in detailed form Radical change in word processing: attention to meaning + memorization (first from the bottom up, then more holistic) Primary interest: recognize familiar forms and their meaning
do babies prefer known word forms to unknown ones?
Other examples of linguistic relativity GENDER Hebrew, English, Finnish (most to least gender emphasis linguistically) Hebrew: nouns have gender; second person pronouns; plurals English Finnish: only man and woman show any differentiation Studies suggest that Hebrew children become aware of gender identity earlier than English speaking children, which in turn acquire the concept earlier than Finnish speaking children
gender - linguistic relativity in hebrew, english, finnish
does not successfully account for the fact that RI clauses are incompatible with clitic and weak pronoun subjects the fact that RIs do not occur in questions
problems with tense omission model of root infinitives
Bare verbs in early English do appear in wh-questions. Proposals: they are not true RIs, but forms selected by a null auxiliary (Guasti and Rizzi 1996); they are finite verbs missing the inflectional morpheme (Guasti and Rizzi 2002) compatibility with wh-questions asymmetry between English early bare forms and RIs in other languages: apply to both eventive and stative verbs in English, only eventive in other languages (French, Dutch, etc.) Finite verbs encountered that lack person agreement: He don't hear me.
problems with truncation model of root infinitives
One hypothesis suggests that parents actually help kids along (though not consciously). It's well known that people seem to instinctively talk to little kids in kind of a weird way; exaggerated intonation, simpler words, more repetition. "Baby talk" or as it is sometimes known, "Parentese", "Motherese". This simpler, more carefully articulated, speech might guide kids along the path of language acquisition. Common assumption: the way parents speak to their children is crucial Problems: not clear why this would help learning past a certain stage (but positive effects were noticed for the very early stages of language acquisition) Other cultures don't use baby talk; e.g. Kaluli (Papua New Guinea), Mohawk (North America), Inuit (North America) Does "Motherese" drive acquisition? Initially tempting, perhaps, but no. If "Motherese" were crucial for acquisition, it must be available to all language acquirers, universally. Does "Motherese" drive acquisition? If you give a 4-month old the choice of whether to listen to "Motherese" or to normal adult-directed speech, the kid will choose to listen to "Motherese"... ...so it is quite likely that "Motherese" is a significant part of the language acquisition experience of many kids, but it can't be necessary for successful language acquisition.
reinforcement theory and problems
Important deviation from adult language Dormir petit bebe. (1;11) Mumma ride horsie. (2;6) main clauses produced with infinitive verbs, not finite ones phenomenon encountered in a wide variety of languages (Danish, Dutch, French, German, Russian, Swedish) starts with earliest productions and lasts until about 3 yrs of age RIs do not occur in languages that allow the subject to be absent on the surface (pro-drop languages). RI clauses are not introduced by nonsubject constituents in V2 languages RIs occur in declaratives, but not wh-questions RIs are incompatible with auxiliaries, clitic and weak pronoun subjects
root infinitives - challenge to continuity view
RIs arise from the option of leaving some functional feature underspecified RIs are clauses in which the tense is underspecified. Tense Constraint (present in adult and child grammar): a main clause must include a specification for tense. Checking Constraint (both adult and child grammar): Both Agr and T have a D-feature, which must be eliminated by being checked against the D-feature of a DP subject. Uniqueness Constraint (only child grammar): a subject can check the uninterpretable feature of either T or Agr, but not both. Minimize Violations: given two representations, choose the one that violates as few grammatical constraints as possible (Optimality Theory). If same number of constraints violated, then choose either (explains why finite clauses and RIs coexist in child grammar) This model accounts for: the fact that RI clauses are not introduced by nonsubject XPs in V2 languages (failure of infinitives to raise to C) the fact that RIs are incompatible with auxiliaries (lack of tense feature - TP) the absence of RIs from pro-drop languages (properties of Agr: licenses a null subject and does not have an uninterpretable D-feature to be checked)
tense omission model of root infinitives
Highly variable timing: gender, culture, social environment, linguistic environment, birth order, temperament all play a part Some generalizations: First words usually between 11-14 months Early vocabulary grows very gradually It takes about 5-6 months to build a vocabulary of 50 words; spurt usually noted after that (≈20 months) 13 months: 10 words; 17 months: 50 words; 24 months: 310 words. Rare for a child to have more than 50 words at 12 months and more than 300 words at 16 months
timing of first words
RIs are reduced structures that result from the option of truncating structures at different levels of clausal architecture Constraint on the identification of (anaphoric) tense (adult grammar): tense must be identified sentence-internally (explains why infinitives are not found in adult main clauses) Axiom on clausal representation: CP is the root of all clauses (finite and infinitive) - all clauses have a uniform representation The axiom on clausal representation is always operative in adult grammar, but children's clauses can be CPs, AgrPs, TPs, or VPs (truncation below CP) How truncation works every projection above the truncation site (dominating it) is removed every projection dominated by the truncation site: present RIs are structures truncated below TP (they are VPs or may include some functional layer immediately above VP) Evaluating the truncation model This model accounts for the fact that RI clauses are not introduced by nonsubject XPs in V2 languages (lack of CP) the fact that RIs are incompatible with auxiliaries (lack of TP) the absence of RIs from pro-drop languages (infinitives raise to AgrP and include TP, enforcing the constraint on the identification of anaphoric tense) the fact that RI clauses are incompatible with clitic and weak pronoun subjects (lack of AgrP) the fact that RIs do not occur in questions (lack of CP)
truncation model of root infinitives
Parents respond differently (CHILDES corpus) Eve and Sarah's parents ask clarification questions after ill-formed wh-questions. Adam's parents ask clarification after well-formed wh-questions and after past tense errors. Are kids able to figure out what correlates with grammaticality in their situation? And if so, how? Piedmont Carolinas: Heath (1983): Trackton adults do not see babies or young children as suitable partners for regular conversation...Unless they wish to issue a warning, give a command, provide a recommendation, or engage the child in a teasing exchange, adults rarely address speech specifically to young children. Linguistic input (environment, type and number of speakers available to interact with the child, time spent talking to child, number of languages in environment) varies greatly Nevertheless, all children attain the same competence in a limited amount of time (by age 4)
varying circumstances in language acquisition
Children's production: 20-24 months: vocabulary spurt (learn 5-9 words/day up to the age of 6 years) when vocabulary is 50-200 words, most children start combining words together after around 400 words, correlation observed between vocabulary size and sentence complexity Proposal (Gleitman et al.): correlation due to the fact that children have access to some new source of information = SYNTACTIC INFORMATION
vocab timeline
Hypothesis 1: Move the first is (or modal, auxiliary) to the front. Hypothesis 2: Move the first is after the subject noun phrase to the front. [The man who is here]NP is eating dinner.
"invisible" structure: yes-no questions
Objects and words gavagai example Many possible, even plausible interpretations, but kids often get it right early on Most obvious choice or bias for certain interpretations? Ontological constraints restrict the number of hypotheses (just like parameters are assumed to restrict the number of choices for certain aspects of syntax). Examples?
"the scandal of induction" (Quine 1960)
"By at least 2 days of age, the neonate has an ability to discriminate language specific acoustic distinctions...The 12 month old human has developed the capacity to categorize only those phonemes which are in its native language"
0 to 1 y.o. Perception
2;0 = 26-50% intelligible; 2;6 = 51-70% intelligible; 3;0 = 71-80% intelligible; 3;0 = 73% (50-80%) intelligible judged by three unfamiliar listeners. The children who used more complex sentences were more difficult to understand.
2 to 3 y.o. Intelligibility
oral space smaller, lower jaw smaller and retracted, sucking pads present, teeth emerge. Tongue large compared to size of oral cavity: more restricted movement. Epiglottis and soft palate are in approximation as a protective mechanism. Newborns breathe/swallow at same time. Larynx higher in newborn.
0 to 1 y.o. Oral mechanism
Brain weight increase from 25% of adult weight at birth to 80% of adult weight during first years of life; aids in grasp of complex patterns (e.g. those underlying speech) Selective elimination - brain begins with "extra" cell connections in areas responsible for speech learning: if used → strengthened and retained, while if unused → eliminated Growth and elaboration of cell connections, including those for speech learning; enriched environment → increased numbers of synapses per neuron in both children and adults; environmental deprivation decreases # of cell connections Myelin sheaths - insulator speeding electrical transmission of signals between cells (gross and fine motor movements). Myelination begins 3 months before birth; peak growth between birth and end of year 1; growth continues until adulthood. Wernicke's area - functional region in left temporal lobe; language comprehension; peak in # of cell connections during first half of year 1; mature # reached during second half of year 1. Girls at 9: more dendritic connections in Wernicke's area than boys. University education: more dendritic connections than high school diploma. Broca's area - functional region in left frontal hemisphere; controls speech; density of cell connections peaks around 15 months, and reaches mature # around 6-8 y.o. Hippocampus - working memory and speech activities (memory retention, word retrieval); develops after birth, especially year 2. Prefrontal cortex - cognitive activities underlying speech (reasoning, planning, judgment, attention); cell connections in prefrontal lobes develop slowly during childhood, mature after adolescence.
8 major aspects of brain development
c. good intonation
A Broca's aphasic will not typically display a. problems with speech production b. frequent pauses c. good intonation d. trouble with function words e. fragmentary speech
trouble with function words
A Wernicke's aphasic will not typically display a. lexical errors b. trouble with function words c. impaired comprehension d. good intonation e. fluent speech
The first clausal constituent in V2 clauses Asymmetry present in V2 languages: nonsubject constituent (object/adverb) can occupy clause-initial position only in finite clauses (subjects can occupy this position regardless of the finiteness of the verb). What happens in child language? asymmetry observed in German also observed in Swedish Conclusion: children distinguish finite from nonfinite verbs in terms of type of initial constituent (V2 languages).
Against the small clause hypothesis - V2 clauses
Learners of Danish, Dutch, French, German, Swedish, DO produce finite clauses. if finite and nonfinite verbs do not differ formally in children's grammar (B), they should pattern similarly (no distributional differences). Finding: the placement of a verb wrt negation in children's speech depends on its finiteness (NegP in between IP and VP in adult grammar). finite verbs placed before negation (e.g. Marie ne mange pas.) nonfinite verbs placed after negation (e.g. Pas manger la poupée.) Conclusion: children distinguish finite from nonfinite verbs wrt negation.
Against the small clause hypothesis - negation
whole object bias mutual exclusivity bias taxonomic bias
Biases on word meaning:
the gender of the speaker
Bilingual language proficiency is NOT influenced by the gender of the speaker the age of acquisition of each language the amount of exposure to each language the environment where each of the two languages is learned
Fisher et al. 1994: first, fix meaning of certain nouns (word-to-world mapping) e.g. Daddy gave the book to grandma. then build partial sentential representation containing nouns and an unknown word that is analyzed as a verb (due to a predicate-argument structure expectation) expand on verbal properties from the number and type of arguments (objects) involved arrive at partial structural representation In brief: bootstrapping into syntax achieved through exploiting info supplied by phonological bootstrapping. Crucially, grammatical functions are assigned on the basis of pre-existing (innate) structure expectations.
Bootstrapping of syntax from a partial sentential representation
e. syntax, speech encoding and production
Broca's area controls a. syntax, semantics, speech encoding b. the sensation of sound c. semantics, speech comprehension and production d. semantics, speech decoding e. syntax, speech encoding and production
Focus: voice onset time (VOT) VOT: time interval between the release of an articulator and the onset of laryngeal vibration (voicing) - Used by most languages for phonemic distinctions (e.g. /b/ vs. /p/, /d/ vs. /t/, /g/ vs. /k/). - Distinctions in VOT are highly robust articulatorily /ba/: voicing occurs during lip closure prior to articulator release /pa/: voicing occurs after articulator release /pha/: voicing is delayed after articulator release; aspiration occurs
Categorical perception and VOT
False
Children are incapable of producing sentences with postverbal subjects without making agreement errors. T/F
are not likely to seek their parents' approval after performing a new action such as playing a xylophone
Children from Madagascar are not likely to seek their parents' approval after performing a new action such as playing a xylophone never smile are likely to seek their parents' approval after performing a new action such as playing a xylophone are not reared any differently compared to children in North America
Make sentence processing easier when easily located a. Mirabelle knows the boys next door. b. Mirabelle knows the boys are rowdy. c. Mirabelle knows that the boys are rowdy. (b) - more processing cost than (c)
Clause boundaries
a stimulus can sometimes be displaced, and perceived as having occurred either before or after a perceptual unit of processing Experiment: click (marked as *) in the middle of Anna a. [ In her hope of marrying ] * Anna was surely impractical. b. [ Your hope of marrying Anna ] * was surely impractical. Results: clause boundary determines where click is heard
Click displacement studies
a. the clause serves as a processing unit
Click displacement studies suggest that a. the clause serves as a processing unit b. perception of sounds is categorical c. infants are sensitive to syllables but not moras d. infants are sensitive to word shapes and phonotactic constraints
Support: The case of Victor (Wild Boy of Aveyron, 1797), Genie (Secret of the Wild Child), and other feral children (but confound present in that traumas may interfere with this), deaf children to hearing parents (ALL unable to acquire grammar after the critical period) a critical period for bird songs Biologically determined window of opportunity? critical age hypothesis feral children unable to acquire grammar after critical period biologically determined window of opportunity confounds present due to trauma, no control possible, may be due to pre-existing issues as well can't be directly tested bird song has a critical period role of envt -- need stimulation from and interaction with envt input is stimulus that triggers internal development children that couldn't learn language just by watching tv
Critical Age Hypothesis
Experimental procedure: high-amplitude sucking (HAS) Robust finding replicated in many experiments Some exceptions (e.g. 2-month old English babies cannot discriminate between English and Dutch, but 5-month olds can) Experimental evidence Intriguing since both languages: unknown to infant Where does the capacity to distinguish come from? Infants: able to rapidly build some type of representation of what they hear
Discriminating native vs. foreign languages
Infants great at discriminating between brief auditory stimuli (40 ms) Christophe studies in the 90s: even 15 ms (vowel info) and 20 ms (consonant info) sufficient for newborns to discriminate Ability lost by 6 months By 9-10 months - ability regained for making finer distinctions (What's new? Attention + memory → new function for sound - carry MEANING!) At 9 months: sensitivity restricted to the rhythm and prosody of native language Rapidity with which they get there: development of language and speech specialized and channeled Newborns: very sophisticated skills in pursuit of phoneme and syllable discrimination Later: less differentiated discrimination skills but new goal: recognize words (units of meaning)
Discrimination of auditory stimuli
1. Its cognitive function is species-specific 2. The specific properties of its cognitive function are replicated in every member of the species 3. The cognitive processes and capacities associated with this system are differentiated spontaneously with maturation 4. Certain aspects of behavior and cognitive function for this system emerge only during infancy 5. Certain social phenomena come about by spontaneous adaptation of the behavior of the growing individual to the behavior of other individuals around him
Eric Lenneberg (1960s) 5 general criteria to determine if a system is based in the biology of a species
Newborns: Production: crying, facial expressions, arm waving, foot stamping, staring, smiling Perception: responsive to facial expressions of adults - uneasy in the presence of unexpressive faces By 10 weeks: contextually appropriate responses to positive/negative emotion At 5 months: respond to face + voice At 6 months: can respond to voices only By 7 months: express joy, fear, disgust, pleasure, tenderness; react to only the slightest facial expression At 12 months: children rely on adults' expressions to guide their exploration of the world; joking emerges.
Expression of Emotion
F
Finnish children become aware of the concept of gender earlier than English children. T/F
Infants' surprising sensitivity to acoustic cues characteristic of natural language (e.g. syllables, phonemes, prosodic structure): bias to pay attention to speech stimuli? Learning the phonological system of one's language: narrowing down from paying attention to everything (linguistic) in the acoustic signal to only paying attention to what matters in your language Learning language: selective process (experience narrows perceptual sensitivity)
First steps into language
11-13 years
For which age of second language acquisition do we find most right hemisphere activity in bilinguals? 1-3 years 4-6 years 11-13 years 0-1 years
Some suggestions: Maturation: biological mechanism underlying development of certain features of biological systems, including aspects of language development Other examples of maturation: coincident emergence of oral and manual babbling How does this work for RIs? Principles of UG also need to mature. Uniqueness Constraint disappears around 3 years of age OR: "CP = root of the clause" axiom becomes fully operative around 3 yrs
How do RIs disappear?
in english, null subjects are variable in input and production, but kids learn that english requires a subject and isn't like italian (subject can be inferred from verb conjugation) bc english has poor verb agreement or mandarin (subject inferred from context and not required) because english requires an expletive subject when there's no logical one ex "it rains"
How do children learn the parameters? (null subjects example)
True
Joking emerges around 12 months of age.
6-8 months: all children babble (even deaf children) 10-12 months: first words occur 20-24 months: words start being combined 2-3 years: same errors (infinitive verbs in main clauses, subject dropping, over-regularization) The similarities among stages are striking considering the variations in input and conditions of acquisition
Linguistic milestones achieved similarly (regardless of the language, or whether it is spoken or signed)
- Brain weight: increase from 25% of adult weight at birth to 80% of adult weight during first years of life; aids in grasp of complex patterns (e.g. those underlying speech) - Selective elimination: brain begins with "extra" cell connections in areas responsible for speech learning: if used → strengthened and retained, while if unused → eliminated - Growth and elaboration: of cell connections, including those for speech learning; enriched environment → increased numbers of synapses per neuron in both children and adults; environmental deprivation decreases # of cell connections - Myelin sheaths: insulator speeding electrical transmission of signals between cells (gross and fine motor movements). Myelination begins 3 months before birth; peak growth between birth and end of year 1; growth continues until adulthood. - Wernicke's area: functional region in left temporal lobe; language comprehension; peak in # of cell connections during first half of year 1; mature # reached during second half of year 1. Girls at 9: more dendritic connections in Wernicke's area than boys. University education: more dendritic connections than high school diploma - Broca's area: functional region in left frontal hemisphere; controls speech; density of cell connections peaks around 15 months, and reaches mature # around 6-8 y.o. - Hippocampus: working memory and speech activities (memory retention, word retrieval); develops after birth, especially year 2. - Prefrontal cortex: cognitive activities underlying speech (reasoning, planning, judgment, attention); cell connections in prefrontal lobes develop slowly during childhood, mature after adolescence.
Major Aspects of Brain Development
Boysson-Bardies: early production of children from different cultures reveals North America: pragmatism (money, value, jobs, rewards) Japan: aesthetic sense (more adjectives, states and impressions, descriptive terms) Sweden: taste for action (sports, action verbs) French: hedonism (food, clothes)
NA vs Japanese vs Swedish vs French culture
Pinker 1984, 1994: semantic entities: structurally realized in canonical ways, e.g. objects = nouns, actions = verbs, etc. children: innate access to notions such as person, thing, action, agent, patient. sentence + co-occurring event → semantic representation of S semantic representation encodes verb-object relations grammatical function inferred from semantic roles (e.g. doer=subject) grammatical function + lexical category of words arrived at through a structure-dependent distributional analysis (e.g. doer most often Noun - takes plural s, can be counted, may be pointed to, etc.) Crucially, grammatical functions are arrived at on the basis of an asyntactic procedure (meaning + distributional patterns).
Semantic bootstrapping
d. all of the above
Some features that can vary from language to language include: a. the phonemic inventory b. the word order in phrases c. whether a subject is required on the surface in all sentences d. all of the above e. none of the above
Discrimination implies being able to compare between two different representations. What is the nature of the representation that infants rely on? A rhythmic-based representation: - Stress-timed languages (Morse code): Dutch, English, Russian, Swedish - Syllable-timed languages (machine gun): Italian, French, Greek, Spanish - Mora-timed languages: Japanese, Tamil Predictions of this hypothesis confirmed: - Infants discriminate stress-timed from syllable-timed languages. YES - Infants discriminate stress-timed from mora-timed languages. YES - Infants discriminate syllable-timed from mora-timed languages. NOT TESTED - Infants do not (initially) discriminate between two stress-/syllable-/mora-timed languages. YES CONCLUSION: rhythmic information that infants rely upon is not language-specific, but class-specific (Nazzi et al. 1998).
The rhythm-based language discrimination hypothesis (Mehler et al. 1996)
What do you think? English: mainly trochaic (strong-weak pattern - only 4% of 200,000 word corpus begin with weak syllable) Hebrew: weak-strong pattern favored 6-month American babies: no preference 9-month American babies: trochaic rhythm preferred 9-month Hebrew babies: iambic rhythm preferred
Trochaic versus Iambic
Michael Tomasello: in Innateness Theory, the role the social experience in language acquisition is underrated. Language emerges out of multiple experiences of meaning-making; language CAN be learned from language use itself, by means of social skills like joint attention, and by means of powerful generalization mechanisms: Data-driven learning (no innate linguistic representations) Each usage experience affects construction knowledge following general principles of learning relating to: Frequency Contingency Semantic prototypicality Verb-Argument Constructions (verb islands): see daddy + wave bye-bye = See daddy wave bye-bye. role of social experience in lang acquisition underrated language is a social phenomenon can be learned w social skills and generalization innate structures of *learning* based on frequency etc have tools to construct based on input given to us verb islands -- verb is crucial component of lang start small w verb island and build all necessary information nature vs nurture utterance composed of compounds of common phrases full syntax w embedded sentence not there when you hear child say see daddy wave bye bye children can extract/interpolate underlying meaning later, start with data innateness -- start w underlying structure, data informs later
Usage-Based/Emergentist Theories
children's early language is organized and structured totally around individual verbs and other predictive terms When younger children were introduced to verbs in novel sentence word orders and when they were asked to repeat that sentence, they would mimic the ungrammatical word order, only older children would correct the sentence into its canonical SVO word order. Young children's inability to generate sentence paradigms beyond those they have been explicitly exposed to in a given context indicates that children do not have an innate awareness of syntax, but gradually develop an understanding over the first three years of life, and from there on have a syntactic faculty basically comparable to adults. more frequently children hear a verb used in a particular construction the less likely they will extend it to something new generalization happens slowly from 2-4 Child's syntactic competence comprised of verb-specific constructions with open nominal slots grammatical structures combined together once mastered individually (daddy's car)
Verb Island Hypothesis
False
Vowel contrasts are perceived just as categorically as consonantal contrasts across languages
c. the auxiliary following the subject NP in a sentence
Yes-No questions involving auxiliary movement are formed by fronting a. the first auxiliary in a sentence b. the auxiliary following the first noun in a sentence c. the auxiliary following the subject NP in a sentence d. the last auxiliary in a sentence e. none of the above
Shared assumption with other 2 generative approaches: all UG principles available at start of acquisition Difference from other 2: grammar assumed to develop gradually, through interaction of abstract knowledge - children unlock UG features through linguistic experiences Problem 1: In order to use the UG associated with transitive sentences, this claim would assume that a child would need to hear every single verb in specific transitive sentences. If we want to take this argument even further, we could assume that a child would need to hear every single lexical item in every appropriate syntactic environment (ex: in different tenses or sentence structures) before he or she could begin to use them appropriately. - Children must hear every verb used in specific way - thus, combinatorially explosive; too much data to go through and link to UG Critique of Tomasello's interpretation of this form of generative theory: it is not impossible to assume that people are using lexical items appropriately because they have heard how they are supposed to be used. We (possibly) hear millions of utterances a day and learn from them. Problem 2: The original claim also does not explain how children would use the aspects of UG triggered by their linguistic experiences to link item-specific knowledge (this should be further explained in the linking section).
against continuity assumption 3: unlocking
Young children use some of their language in item-specific ways, without systematicity Although children do have some general patterns, some systematicity Most verbs were only used in one or two constructions Children had uneven use of similar verb-types, arguments, morphology, and determiners Most verbs were high frequency verbs from adult language generative theory
are children's syntactic productions imitation of adults or underlying syntactic competence?
We have seen that children's earliest multiword productions exhibit asymmetries in the behavior of finite versus nonfinite verbs (against the SC hypothesis). Does this also mean that children's finite clauses are adultlike in terms of structure (continuity view / full competence view)? Children have knowledge about syntactic properties of verbs (movement) There is evidence of functional categories being present in their earliest grammars They distinguish between finite and nonfinite verbs agreement features included in children's grammar from the earliest multiword productions. Children produce sentences with postverbal subjects without making agreement errors → core assumption of generative approaches to language acquisition → only it permits the use of adult-like grammars to describe children's early language Problem of Continuity assumption: children's early language looks very little like adult language challenged by root infinitives
continuity view
1 Languages are very complex. 2 Languages differ (something has to be learned). 3 Children get insufficient and variable evidence to deduce the uniform rules of grammar they end up with (poverty of the stimulus) 4 Children end up having adult-like grammars relatively quickly. The proposed solution to the apparent paradox is to suppose that to a large extent all human languages are the same. The grammatical systems obey the same principles in all human languages. different levers turned on and off Languages differ, but only in highly limited ways. This reduces the task for the child immensely—all that the kid needs to do is to determine from the input which setting each of the parameters needs to have for the language in his/her environment.
learnability paradox and the principles and parameters model
6-month and 9-month old American babies presented with lists of English and Dutch words (similar prosody but different phontactics, e.g. #zw and #vl in Dutch) 6-month olds: no preference 9-month olds: listened longer to English (8.93 seconds vs. 5.03 s for Dutch) If languages differ in both prosody and phonotactics (e.g. English vs. Norwegian), preference established by 6 months Conclusion: prosodic sensitivity comes before phonetic sensitivity
phonotactic differentiation
Summary At birth: sensitive to properties and structures of natural language phonology, discriminate languages by rhythm At birth: discriminate all possible phonemic contrasts - ability gradually lost (process complete by age 1), which correlates with the beginning of building a lexicon During the first year of life: extract patterns out of a 'labyrinth' of sounds; at first skillful in dealing with global variation, later refined capacities (which implies losing some of the initial skills) Major achievement during year 1: become attuned to global properties (prosody) and sound system of one's native language Attending only to native contrasts: a step forward (less to more; forgetting as a way of developing a phonological system and start acquiring words). Functional reorganization of the sound space (change in perception, not auditory system) needed to restrict the search space so that children can focus on mapping sounds into meanings (i.e. start learning words).
process of perception
children learn gradually children's production is variable children use rules/grammars/etc. they've never heard children learn rules at different speeds more evidence = faster less evidence = slower
properties of language learning by unlearning
How do adults use it? = Intonation and phrasing of a sentence Prosody can help resolve gardenpaths. The horse raced past the barn fell. Intonational boundaries signaled by: pitch excursions (rises or falls) fluctuations in duration (longer word duration at the end of an intonational phrase than in the middle) pauses
prosody
Syllabic/Vocalic nucleus: universal unit of representation of speech The vowel: universal unit used by infants to organize speech. Experimental evidence: - 4-day old French babies detect change from bisyllabic to trisyllabic (but not change in number of phonemes) - 4-day old French babies detect change from bisyllabic to trisyllabic items in Japanese, but not change from bimoraic to trimoraic - Newborns did not detect new consonants, but they did detect new vowels after habituation with a given set of stimuli (Bertoncini et al. 1988)
what is the universal unit used by infants to organize speech and how do we know