Language%20Acquisition

1
Language Acquisition
Lecture 10
30 Nov.,
2005

• Helena Gao

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(No Transcript)
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• Required readings
• Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing A Language. A
  Uage-Based Thoery of Language Acquisition.
  Harvard University Press. Chapter two Origins of
  Language. pp. 8-42
• Lee, T. H. (2002). Two types of logical structure
  in child language. Journal of Cognitive Science
  3 155-182.
• Pinker, S. (1994). The Language Instinct. New
  York Morrow. Chapter 1 An instinct to acquire
  an art. pp. 15-24.
• Recommended readings
• Pinker, S. (1995). Language acquisition. In L. R.
  Gleitman, M. Liberman, and D. N. Osherson (eds.),
  An invitation to cognitive science. 2nd Ed.
  Volume 1 Language. Cambridge, MA MIT Press.
  Chapter 5 Why the child holded the baby rabbits
  A case study in language acquisition. pp.
  107-133.
• Gould, J. L., Marler, P. (1987). Learning by
  Instinct. Reprinted as Chapter 7 in Wang, W.
  S.-Y. (ed.), (1991), The Emergence of Language
  Development and Evolution Readings from
  Scientific American Magazine, pp. 88-103. New
  York, NY W.H. Freeman.
• Moskowitz, B. A. (1978). The Acquisition of
  Language. Reprinted as Chapter 10 in Wang, W.
  S.-Y. (ed.), (1991), The Emergence of Language
  Development and Evolution Readings from
  Scientific American Magazine, pp. 131-149. New
  York, NY W.H. Freeman.

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Language acquisition theories

• Two types of perspectives
• centered around nurture and nature
  distinction or on empiricism and nativism.
• Empiricism all knowledge comes from experience,
  ultimately from our interaction with the
  environment through our reasoning or senses.
• Nativism at least some knowledge is not acquired
  through interaction with the environment, but is
  genetically transmitted and innate.
• neither nurturists (environmentalists) disagree
  thoroughly with the nativist ideas nor do
  nativists with the nurturist ideas.

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Usage Based Accounts Theory of Language
Acquisition

• Supported by recent research
• characterize childrens language in terms of
  cognitive and communicative processes involved
• childrens early language based on specific
  linguistic items and expressions they comprehend
  and produce
• Three processes involved
• Imitative learning
• Finding patterns in language
• Combining linguistic constructions creatively

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Tomasellos View (2003)

• The human uses of symbols is primary, with the
  most likely evolutionary scenario being that the
  human species evolved skills enabling the use of
  linguistic symbols phylogenetically (p. 9)
• The human adaptation for symbolic communication
  emerges in human ontogeny quite predictably
  across cultures at around 1 year of age. It
  emerges in the context of a whole suite of new
  social-cognitive skills, the most important for
  language acquisition being the establishment of
  joint attentional frames, the understanding
  communicative intentions, and a particular type
  of cultural learning known as role reversal
  imitation. (p. 19)

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Early skills of Intention-reading

• (1) The joint attentional frame
• Joint attentional frames are defined
  intentionally, that is, they gain their identity
  and coherence from the childs and the adults
  understandings of what we are doing in terms of
  the goal-directed activities in which we are
  engaged. (p. 22)
• (2) Understanding communicative intentions
• Children understand adult communicative
  intentions, including those expressed in
  linguistic utterances, most readily inside the
  common ground established by joint attentional
  frames. (p. 24)
• (3) Cultural learning in the form of role
  reversal imitation
• Children who understand that other persons have
  intentional relations to the world, similar to
  their own, may attend especially carefully to the
  behavioral means that these persons have devised
  for meeting their goals, and so may imitate their
  intentional actions. (p. 26)

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The development of grammar

• Behavioural theory ? Language acquired through
  learning (e.g., operant conditioning, imitation)
• Parents and teachers model grammatically correct
  language and provide feedback
• Evidence?

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Theories of grammar development

• 1. Behavioural theory
• Evidence more contrary than supportive.
• Brown and Hanlon (1970) ? 3 findings
• Ungrammatical sentences rarely corrected
• ChildDoggie bited daddy
• Mother Yes, thats right
• Sentence corrected only if they are untrue
• Child (sees a car)Deres a truck
• Mother No, thats a car
• Ungrammatical requests as likely to be fulfilled
  as ungrammatical requests

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Theories of grammar development

• 1. Behavioural theory
• Evidence more contrary than supportive.
• Imitation?
• Adults dont use telegraphic speech
• Adults dont over-regularize verbs

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Theories of grammar development

• Nativist/linguistic perspective
• Acquisition of grammar too complex, too rapid to
  be the result of learning
• Poverty of the stimulus
• Chomsky Language Acquisition Device
• Genetically-specified grammatical processor
• Recent evolutionary adaptation
• Evidence?

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Theories of grammar development

• Cross-linguistic ? Languages of the world conform
  to a Universal Grammar (Chomsky)
• Genetic ? Grammatical impairments run in families
  (Pinker)
• Comparative ? Our closest evolutionary ancestors
  (Chimps) cannot learn grammar
• Dissociations ? Language and general intelligence
  dissociate in Williams Syndrome
• Developmental ? Grammar acquired effortlessly and
  systematically

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Imitation - Research findings

• In early infancy there is some face-to-face
  dyadic mimicking of behaviors (Meltzoff Moor,
  1977)
• Meltzoff (1995) found 18-month-olds appeared to
  understand what the adult intended to do and
  performed the action instead of just mimicking
  the adults actual behavior.
• Aktar Tomasello (1998a) investigated infants
  imitation of accidental actions vs. intentional
  actions. They found that 16-month-olds mainly
  produced the adults intentional actions (there)
  but not the accidental ones (Woops!)

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Meltzoff, A. N. Moore, M.K (1977). Imitation of
facial and manual gestures by human neonates.
Science, 198. 75-78
2- to 3-day-old infants imitating (a) tongue
protrusion, (b) mouth opening, and lip protrusion
demonstrated by adult experimenters. gestures by
human neonates.
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Early Skills of Pattern-Finding

• Human infants are experts from early in
  development in finding visual patterns (Haith
  Benson, 1997)
• Synthesized speech exposed to 8-month-olds
  (Saffran, Aslin, Newport, 1996). Infants
  prefered to listen to the origial ones heard.
• Marcus et al. (1999) found that 7-month-olds
  preferred the speech stream containing the same
  tri-syllabic nonsense words that have the same
  pattern (e.g., bapopo) as they originally heard
  (e.g., wididi, delili)
• Gomez Gerken (1999) found very similar results
  with 12-month-olds.
• These results indicate that prelinguistic infants
  are able to find patterns in auditory stimuli of
  an abstract nature. (Tomasello, 2003 30)

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Universal pattern of language development
The same pattern is observed in every
culture This suggests that language is acquired
as a result of highly specialized biologically
programmed mechanisms operating on the linguistic
input.
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Language Development Stages and Rule Systems

• Browns (1973) Stages Mean Length of Utterance is
  a good index of childs language maturity. Stages
  indicate growth of language complexity.
• Stage 1 - 12 to 26 months of age MLU 1.00 to
  2.00
• Stage 2 - 27 to 30 months of age MLU 2.00 to
  2.50
• Stage 3 - 31 to 34 months of age MLU 2.50 to
  3.00
• Stage 4 - 35 to 40 months of age MLU 3.00 to
  3.75
• Stage 5 - 41 to 46 months of age MLU 3.75 to
  4.50

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Sensitive periods Isolated children

• Genie was an isolated child as an infant she was
  locked away and not spoken to. She was discovered
  by the authorities when aged 13. Though she
  acquired words, she never acquired correct
  grammar

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Isolated children (cont.)

• By contrast, Isabelle and her mute, brain-damaged
  mother escaped from the imprisonment of her
  grandfather when she was aged 6½. Within eighteen
  months, her language was not significantly behind
  the level expected at her age

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Language Exposure and Language Use

• Cameron-Faulkner, Lieven, and Tomasello (2003)
• examined 12 English-speaking mothers speech
  during samples of their linguistic interactions
  with their 2- to 3-year-old children

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The overall findings

• Children heard an estimated 5000 to 7000
  utterances per day
• Between one-quarter and one-third of these were
  questions.
• More than 20 of these were not full adult
  sentences, but rather some kind of fragment (most
  often a noun phrase or prepositional phrase)
• About one-quarter of these were imperatives and
  utterances structured by the copula
• Only about 15 of these had the canonical English
  SVO form (i.e., transitive utterances of various
  kinds) supposedly characteristic of the English
  language and over 80 of the SVOs had a pronoun
  subject.

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• The specific words and phrases with which
  mothers initiated utterances
• Are you ..., I'll ..., It's ..., Can you ....,
  Heres ...., Let's ..., Look at ..., What did
  ..., etc.

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• More than half of all maternal utterances began
  with one of 52 highly frequent item-based frames
• i.e., frames used more than an estimated 40 times
  per day for more than half the children.
• Mostly consisting of 2 words or morphemes.

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• More than 65 of all of the mothers utterances
  began with one of just 156 item-based frames.
• Approximately 45 of all maternal utterances
  began with one of just 17 lexemes
• What (8.6), That (5.3), It (4.2), You (3.1),
  Are/Aren't (3.0), Do/Does/Did/Don't (2.9), I
  (2.9), Is (2.3), Shall (2.1), A (1.7),
  Can/Can't (1.7), Where (1.6), There (1.5), Who
  (1.4), Come (1.0), Look (1.0), and Let's
  (1.0).
• Children used many of these same item-based
  frames in their speech, in some cases at a rate
  that correlated highly with their own mother's
  frequency of use.

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Cameron-Faulkner, Lieven, Tomasello (2003)
Whats .18 Wheres .05 Whatre .09 Wherere .02
What do .05 Where shall .01 What did .04 What
has .03 Whos .08 What about .03 Who
did .01 What shall .02 What can .02 Which
one .02 What does .02 What hppnd .01 Why
dont .01 What were .01 What kind of .01 How
many .01
31 frames gt 80 of Wh Qs
13 frames gt 65 of Wh Qs
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Early Gestures

• Human infants produce three main types of
  gestures
• Reutilizations
• Deictic gestures
• Symbolic gestures
• Gestures run the gamut from non-symbolic to
  symbolic and emerge along with the first
  linguistic skills is strong evidence that
  childrens ability to communicate symbolically is
  not tied specially to language but rather
  emanates from a more fundamental set of
  social-cognitive skills (Tomasello Camaiono,
  1997)

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Early Holophrases

• An important issue for later language development
  is what parts of adult expressions children
  choose for their initial holophrases.
• The answer presumably lies in the specific
  language they are learning and the kinds of
  discourse in which they participate with adults,
  including the perceptual salience of particular
  words and phrases in adults speech (Slobin, 1985)

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Early Holophrases language specific

• In English, most beginning language learners
  acquire a number of so-called relational words
  such as more, gone, up, down, on and off,
  presumably because adults use these words in
  salient ways to talk about salient event s (Blom,
  Tinker, and Margulis, 1993 McCune, 1992)
• Many of these words are verb particles in adult
  English and so the child at some point must learn
  to talk about the same events with phrasal verbs
  such as pick up, get down, put on, and take off.
• In Korean and Mandarin Chinese, in contrast,
  children learn fully adult verbs from the onset f
  language development because these verbs are most
  salient in adult speech to them (parallel to an
  English verb like remove for clothing Choi
  Gonpnik, 1996 Gopnik Choi, 1995 Tardif, 1996)

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Thomas Lees data (2002)

• Mandarin-speaking childrens Sensitivity to
  quantifier type and thematic roles in their
  understanding of inverse scope for sentences.
• Suggestion
• Young children (about 4yeasrs of age) are
  sensitive to constraints of the
  conceptual-intentional system on quantifier scope
  interpretation

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Phonological development

• Systematic age-related changes in the ability to
  perceive and produce the elementary sounds of
  language.

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Phonological development

• Categorical phoneme perception at 1 month
• Vowel discrimination at 2 months
• Loss of the ability to discriminate non-native
  phonemes by the end of the 1st year

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Phonological development

• 6-8 weeks ? cooing (vowel-like sounds with
  consonant produced by closure of the back of the
  mouth (e.g., g or k)
• Later, comes to include consonants produced by
  closure of the front of the mouth (e.g., m or
  b)

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Phonological development

• 3 to 6 months ? Emergence of babbling, the
  production of consonant-vowel combinations like
  da and ba
• Reduplicated babbling ? Repetition of C-V
  combinations
• 9 to 10 months ? More complex combinations

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Phonological development

• Interesting babbling facts
• Cross-linguistic consistency in the timing of the
  onset of cooing and babbling, although some
  cross-linguistic differences in the sounds
  produced
• Deaf infants babble in the first months of life

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Learning words

• Evidence of word-comprehension _at_ 6 months
  (Tincoff Juszyck, 1999) .
• By 6, children understand over 5,000 different
  words.
• 20 new words a week for 5 years!!!

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Learning words

• Words learning begins during mother-infant
  interaction.
• Best when child focussed on object, and mother
  labels it.
• Association formed.
• How does child know what the word refers to?

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Learning words

• What are the words that infants first learn?
• Nelson (1973) ? First words name objects (65),
  or actions (14).
• Do infants first words have the same meaning
  they do for adults?

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Learning words

• No Often different from adult meanings.
• Overextensions.
• Meaning of a word overgeneralized.
• "Dog" for any animal with 4 legs.
• Underextensions.
• Meaning of a word too constrained.
• Car refers only to childs fathers car.

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Learning words

• Most frequently used words? Goplink (1982)
• Longitudinal, home-observation study.
• Before 24 months, children most frequently use
  words that provide commentary on their ongoing
  activity.
• "Gone", "there", "oh dear", "down".

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Early word comprehension

• 7-8 months olds. Typical early understood words
  mummy, daddy, clock, drink, teddy (Harris, et
  al., 1995)
• Acquire 5 to 10 words a day from about 15th month
  through the 6th year of life (Gleitman and
  Cleitman, 1992)
• Vocabulary spurt total number of words grow
  fairly steadily until 12 months of age, when
  there will typically be a sharp increase in
  vocabulary

Average number of words understood by boys and
firls bet. 8 and 16 months of age (Fenson et al.
1994. p. 74)
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The development of grammar

• Telegraphic Speech
• Examples (Brown, 1973)
• (1) Agent-action "Tommy hit"
• (2) Action-object "Give cookie"
• (3) Possessor-possession "My car"
• (4) Questions Where daddy?

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The development of grammar

• 1. Telegraphic Speech
• Is telegraphic speech grammatical?
• Braine, 1976 ? Pivot grammar
• Pivot word open word
• e.g., More ________
• Bloom, 1990
• No wild grammars (e.g., Big he)
• Gross violations rare (e.g., Daddy eat vs Eat
  daddy)

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The development of grammar

• 2. Inflectional morphology
• Rules governing the use of morphemes like
  inflections (e.g., -s, -ed that alter the, -ing)
  syntactical function of specific words
• E.g.,
• Past tense Acquired in a regular sequence
• Not all past tenses formed through use of the
  stem -ed rule (E.g., Run/Ran)
• How do children learn the exceptions?

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The development of grammar

• 3. Irregular past-tense
• Rules governing the use of morphemes like
  inflections (e.g., -s, -ed that alter the, -ing)
  syntactical function of specific words
  Developmental U-shaped curve

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The development of grammar
3. Irregular past-tense

• Developmental U-shaped curve

Developmental U-shaped curve
Proportion correct
Time
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The development of grammar

• 3. Irregular past-tense
• Developmental U-shaped curve
• Irregular form learned first. Ran
• Then over-regularization occurs. Runned
• Finally, irregular forms reappear. Ran
• Why does this occur?

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The development of grammar

• 3. Irregular past-tense
• Competing mechanisms
• Irregulars first learned through association.
• Then, children learn the past-tense rule.
• Over-applied.
• Must re-learn the exceptions.

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Theories of Cognitive and Language Development
Piaget, Vygotsky and Bruner - Comparisons and
Contrasts
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Outline

• Brief review of Piagets theory
• The role of culture - implications for Piagets
  theory
• The theory of Vygotsky
• The theory of Bruner

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Summary of Piaget

• Stage theory of development - older children
  think qualitatively differently to younger
  children
• 4 stages
• Stage 1 Sensorimoter Period (0-2 years)
• Stage 2 Pre-operational stage (2-7 years)
• Stage 3 Concrete Operational Stage (7-11 years)
• Stage 4 Formal Operational Stage (11 years)
• Development is the combined result of
• maturation of the brain and nervous system
• experiences that help children adapt to new
  environments - adaption an organisms ability to
  fit in with its environment.

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Alternative to Piaget 1 Lev Vygotsky

• 1896 - 1934
• Work remained little known because it was banned
  by Stalin after Vygotskys death
• Collapse of the Soviet Union meant
• greater dialogue between the West and Russia
• Vygotskys work translated into English

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Vygotskys Theory The role of culture/social
interaction

• Sociocultural environment ALL IMPORTANT for
  cognitive development
• Different contexts create different forms of
  development
• Cognitive processes (language, thought,
  reasoning) develop THROUGH social interaction
• Development is a product of CULTURE
• Vygotsky emphasised the role of
• social interaction
• instruction

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Central idea

• Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
• the difference between the level of actual
  development and potential development

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Example from Seifert, Hoffnung Hoffnung

• Parent Here are four books for you and the same
  for your brother
• Child The same? (He investigates his brothers
  pile of books.) No, he has more (spoken with
  annoyance).
• Parent No, really, theyre the same. Take
  another look.
• Child He does have more.
• ParentTry laying his out in a row. Then lay
  yours out too. Then compare
• Child(Does as suggested) One two three four .
  One two three four. The same! (He looks
  satisfied)

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Summary of the role of social interaction

• 1. Confirm existing knowledge
• 2. Add new information
• Instruction most effective when
• it builds on previous knowledge and skills (e.g.
  counting)
• it provides a sensible challenge - theres no
  point pushing children beyond their potential

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Vygotskys theory The role of language

• Piagets view language is just another
  representational system. Underdeveloped until 6
  to 7 years of age
• Vygotskys view language is social and
  communicative. Essential for cognitive
  development.
• Why did Vygotsky think this?
• Private speech - children talk to themselves

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Vygotsky suggested

• adults give instructions to children (social
  speech)
• children start to use parents instructions to
  direct their own behaviour (private speech)
• private speech becomes internalised as thought
  processes (silent statements)
• Children use this internalised speech to plan
  and organise behaviour gt cognitive development

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Summary of Vygotsky

• Culture and social interaction very important in
  cognitive development
• Social interaction with knowledgeable others
  moves development forward - ZPD
• Language is central to cognitive development
• social speech gt private speech gt thought

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Alternative to Piaget 2 Jerome Bruner

• Very influenced by Piagets and Vygotskys work
• Responsible for introducing Vygotskys work to
  the non-Soviet world

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Bruners Theory Similarities with Piaget

• Socio-Cognitive Stage Theory
• Enactive Mode
• Iconic Mode
• Symbolic Mode
• Abstract thinking develops out of concrete
  thinking

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Bruners Theory Similarities with Vygotsky

• Interpersonal communication necessary for
  development - socio -cognitive theory
• Development relies on active intervention of
  expert others
• SCAFFOLDING
• Contingency Rule (Wood, 1980)

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Bruners Theory The role of language

• Language is important
• without language, thought is limited
• language forms the basis of understanding
• prelinguistic thought - games and rituals
• rituals gradually replaced as adult adds
  information
• rituals replaced by linguistic modes of
  communication

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Summary of Bruner

• Socio-cognitive stage theory
• Based on interaction with adults
• Relies on adults developing reciprocal behaviour
  with the child

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Overall Conclusion

• Piaget underestimated the importance of culture
  and social interaction
• Vygotsky
• social interaction and language necessary for
  cognitive development
• Bruner
• Stage theory but emphasised role of social
  interaction and language

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Akhtar (1999) Abbot-Smith et al. (2001)Weird
Word Order

• English-speaking children hear utterances with
  weird word order (familiar and unfamiliar
  verbs)
• The cow the horse is meeking/pushing (SOV)
• They are encouraged to use these same verbs with
  new characters engaging in these same actions

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AKHTAR (1999) ABBOT-SMITH et al. (2001)
Percentage of mean number of utterances which
were mismatches, as a function of condition and
age group
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Golinkoff et al. 1987
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Childers Tomasello (2001) Developmental
Psychology

• Children at 26 hear several hundred transitive
  utterances over
• 4 days/sessions
• Either familiar or unfamiliar English verbs
• With either nouns only in slots or nouns
  pronouns (consistent)

• Test is traditional nonce verb learning
• child hears nonce verb as intransitive or
  passive
• and must produce in transitive

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Number of children in each condition (out of 10)
who produced at least one productive utterance
with at least one nonce verb during testing
20 same as in previous studies
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Development of Matrix Clauses
Diessel Tomasello, Cognitive Linguistics (2001)