PSY 369: Psycholinguistics

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PSY 369 Psycholinguistics

• Language Acquisition II

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Language Sponges
How do they do it (and what are they doing)?

• Learning words

• About 3,000 new words per year, especially in the
  primary grades
• As many as 8 new words per day

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Language Sponges

• Learning words
• General patterns and observations
• Proposed Strategies
• Fast mapping
• Whole object
• Mutual exclusivity
• Learning Syntax
• Learning Morphology

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Early word learning

• First words (Around 10-15 months)

• Emergence of systematic, repeated productions of
  phonologically consistent forms
• Idiomorphs - personalized words

• Developed in systematic ways
• Not simply imitation, rather are creative
• Learned importance of consistency of names

• Typically context bound (relevant to the
  immediate environment)
• Important people, Objects that move, Objects that
  can be acted upon, Familiar actions
• Nouns typically appear before verbs

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Semantic Development

• Naming Explosion

• 1-general names
• dog
• 2- specific names
• mommy
• 3-action words
• 4-modifiers
• red
• 5-personal/social
• yes, no, please
• 6-functional
• what

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Semantic Development

• Word Invention
• to broom (to sweep)
• to fire (to burn)
• to scale (to weigh)
• a fix-man (a mechanic)
• a tooth-guy (a dentist)
• a locker (a lock)
• bum wiper (bathroom tissue)
• yester-minute (a minute ago)

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Semantic Development

• Applying the words to referents

• Extension
• Finding the appropriate limits of the meaning of
  words
• Underextension
• Applying a word too narrowly
• Overextension
• Applying a word too broadly

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Semantic Development

• Later words
• Children come to use words in more adult-like
  ways
• Words start to be used in wider range of contexts
• Children use wider range of word types
• referential words (ball, doggie, chair)
• proper names (Mummy, Spot)
• actions (open, wash, tickle)
• properties, states, qualities (more, gone, up,
  on, dirty)
• social-pragmatic words (no, please)
• few frozen phrases (all gone, whats that)

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Extensions of meaning
tee
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Extensions of meaning
tee
19,11
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Extensions of meaning
tee
19,11
110,18
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Extensions of meaning
tee
19,11
110,18
googie
111,1
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Extensions of meaning
tee
19,11
110,18
googie
111,1
111,2
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Extensions of meaning
tee
19,11
110,18
googie
111,1
111,2
111,24
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Extensions of meaning
tee
19,11
110,18
googie
111,1
111,2
111,24
tee/hosh
111,25
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Extensions of meaning
tee
19,11
110,18
googie
111,1
111,2
111,24
tee/hosh
111,25
hosh
111,26
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Extensions of meaning
tee
19,11
110,18
googie
111,1
111,2
111,24
tee/hosh
111,25
hosh
111,26
111,27
pushi
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Extensions of meaning
tee
19,11
110,18
googie
111,1
111,2
111,24
tee/hosh
111,25
hosh
111,26
111,27
pushi
moo-ka
hosh
20,10
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Extensions of meaning
tee
19,11
110,18
googie
111,1
111,2
111,24
tee/hosh
111,25
hosh
111,26
111,27
pushi
moo-ka
hosh
20,10
20,20
biggie googie
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Extensions of meaning

• One-word-per-referent heuristic
• If a new word comes in for a referent that is
  already named, replace it
• Exception to that was horse, but it only
  lasted a day here

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Strategies for learning

• Expansion and contraction can occur at the same
  time

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Strategies for learning

• Child tries different things, if a word doesnt
  work then try something else
• e.g., hosh didnt for for the large dog,
  switched to biggie doggie

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Indeterminacy Frog
Frog
Frog? Green? Ugly? Jumping?
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Quines gavagai problem

• The problem of reference
• a word may refer to a number of referents (real
  world objects)
• a single object or event has many objects, parts
  and features that can be referred to

Frog
Frog? Green? Ugly? Jumping?
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Learning word meanings

• Learning words

• Fast mapping
• Using the context to guess the meaning of a word

• All got the olive tray
• Several weeks later still had some of the meaning

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Constraints on Word Learning

• Perhaps children are biased to entertain certain
  hypotheses about word meanings over others
• These first guesses save them from logical
  ambiguity
• Get them started out on the right track

• Markman (1989)

• Object-scope (whole object) constraint
• Taxonomic constraint
• Mutual exclusivity constraint

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Strategies for learning

• Object-scope (whole object) constraint
• Words refer to whole objects rather than to parts
  of objects

Dog
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Strategies for learning

• Taxonomic constraint
• Words refer to categories of similar objects
• Taxonomies rather than thematically related
  obejcts

Here is a lux
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Strategies for learning

• But in no-word conditions, they would be shown
  the first picture

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Strategies for learning
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Strategies for learning

• Mutual exclusivity constraint (Markam and Watchel
  1988)
• Each object has one label different words refer
  to separate, non-overlapping categories of
  objects
• An object can have only one label

• they choose the corkscrew
• because it is a less well known object for which
  they dont have a label yet.

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Problem with constraints

• Most of the constraints proposed apply only to
  object names.
• What about verbs? (Nelson 1988)
• There have been cases where children have been
  observed violating these constraints
• Using for example the word car only to refer to
  cars moving on the street from a certain
  location (Bloom 1973)
• The mutual exclusivity constraint would prevent
  children from learning subordinate and
  superordinate information (animal lt dog lt poodle)

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Language explosion continues

• The language explosion is not just the result of
  simple semantic development the child is not
  just adding more words to his/her vocabulary.
• Child is mastering basic syntactic and
  morphological rules.

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Language explosion continues

• Proto-syntax (?)
• Holophrases
• Single-word utterances used to express more than
  the meaning usually attributed to that single
  word by adults

dog might refer to the dog is drinking water

• May reflect a developing sense of syntax, but not
  yet knowing how to use it
• Controversial claim (e.g., see Bloom, 1973)

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Language explosion continues

• Syntax
• Basic child grammar (Slobin, 1985)
• Similarities across all languages
• Mean length of utterance (MLU) in morphemes
• Take 100 utterances and count the number of
  morphemes per utterance

Daddy coming. Hi, car. Daddy car comed. Two car
outside. It getting dark. Allgone outside.
Bye-bye outside.
morphemes 3, 2, 4, 3, 4, 2, 2 -ing and -ed
separate morphemes allgone treated as a single
word
MLU morphemes/utterances 20/7 2.86
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Language explosion continues
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Language explosion continues

• Syntax
• Roger Brown proposed 5 stages
• Stage 1 Telegraphic speech (MLU 1.75 around
  24 months)
• One and two word utterances
• Debate learning semantic relations or syntactic
  (position rules)

• Children in telegraphic speech stage are said to
  leave out the little words and inflections
• e.g. Mummy shoe NOT Mummys shoe
• Two cat NOT two cats

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Language explosion continues

• Syntax
• Roger Brown proposed 5 stages

• More than two words
• Stages 2 through 5
• Stage 2 (MLU 2.25) begin to modulate meaning
  using word order (syntax)
• Later stages reflect generally more complex use
  of syntax (e.g., questions, negatives)

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How do kids learn the syntax?

• Innateness account
• Pinker (1984, 1989)
• Semantic bootstrapping

Child has innate knowledge of syntactic
categories and linking rules
Child learns the meanings of some content words
Child constructs some semantic representations
of simple sentences
Child makes guesses about syntactic structure
based on surface form and semantic meaning
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How do kids learn the syntax?

• It is in the stimulus accounts
• Children do not need innate knowledge to learn
  grammar
• Speech to children is not impoverished (Snow,
  1977)
• Children learn grammar by mapping semantic roles
  (agent, action, patient) onto grammatical
  categories (subject, verb, object) (e.g. Bates,
  1979)