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Chap 12. Process of Language Acquisition

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Title: Chap 12. Process of Language Acquisition


1
Chap 12. Process of Language Acquisition
  • 2008. 11. 27
  • ? ? ?

2
Main Points
  • How Language is acquired?
  • Linguistic Environment
  • Gross environmental neglect (feral isolated
    children) ?Retard language acquisition
  • Cognitive Processes
  • Cognitive process are correlated with language
    development
  • Innate Mechanisms
  • Children given poor linguistic input ? Create
    communication systems similar to early child
    language

3
The Linguistic Environment
  • Feral and Isolated Children
  • The Critical Period Hypothesis
  • Motherese

4
Feral and Isolated Children (1/3)
  • Feral children
  • Grown up in the wild
  • Ex) Victor case
  • Isolated children
  • Grown up with extremely limited human contact
  • Ex) Genie case

5
Feral Children - Victor (2/3)
  • Found in the woods of France in 1797, was
    captured as a naked 12 (or 13)-year-old boy
  • No speech (normal hearing, utterance of some
    sounds)
  • Itard (physician) tried to train him to be
    socialized and to use language for 5 years
  • In general, Victors language progress was poor
  • Able to comprehend language, but practically
    unable to produce it
  • The only 2 pronounced words milk, oh my god
  • The majority of his communication consisted of
    grunts and howls

6
Isolated Children - Genie (3/3)
  • Rescued in 1970, at the age of 13 in California,
    she could not stand erect and was unable to speak
    except 2 words Stopit, Nomore
  • Very little exposure to language during her
    imprisonment
  • From the age of 20 months, lived in nearly total
    isolation and was attached to a potty by a
    special harness for most of the day
  • Her father did not speak to her but communicated
    through barking
  • By a program of language remediation
  • 1970 one-word utterances, ex) No. No. Cat 13
    y.
  • 1971 her language resembled that of a normal
    18-20 months old child
  • Distinction between plural and singular nouns
  • Tow-word utterances, ex) Want milk, Big teeth
    14 y.
  • No vocabulary explosion after 18-20 months
  • Incapable to produce questions (Ex. I where is
    graham cracker on the top shelf?)
  • Semantic development rapid extensive,
    Syntactic development slow
  • Ex) I like hear music ice cream truck (Curtiss,
    1981) Little grammatical structure
  • Ex) Think about Mama love Genie (Curtiss, 1981)
  • ? Cognitive development in advance of language
    development

7
The Linguistic Environment
  • Feral and Isolated Children
  • The Critical Period Hypothesis
  • Motherese

8
The Critical Period Hypothesis
(1/5)
  • There is a period early in life in which we are
    especially prepared to acquire a language
  • There are neurological changes in the brain that
    leave a learner less able to acquire a language
  • Most commonly, these changes are assumed to occur
    near puberty

9
The Critical Period Hypothesis
(2/5)
  • Johnson and Newport (1989)
  • Examined Korean and Chinese who had immigrated to
    the US at various ages between 3 and 39 years of
    age
  • Grammatical Test (Figure 12.1)
  • Correlated age of arrival and scores on the test
    above
  • Strong negative correlation ( r-.87) arrived (0
    16)
  • No correlation arrived (16 40)
  • ? Concluded that fundamentally different
    processes are involved in younger versus older
    learners

10
The Critical Period Hypothesis
(3/5)
Figure 12.1
11
The Critical Period Hypothesis
(4/5)
  • Criticism
  • Bialystok and Hakuta (1994)
  • Simply moved the boundary between the younger and
    older groups from 16 to 20 years and found
    significant negative correlations for each group
  • Hakuta, Bialystok and Wiley (2003)
  • 1990 US Census from 2.3 million immigrants with
    Spanish and Chinese language backgrounds
  • Self-reported language proficiency
  • not at all, not well, well, very well,
    speak only English
  • No sharp breaks before and after 15 years of age
    (gradual decline)

12
The Critical Period Hypothesis
(5/5)
  • Criticism
  • Snow and Hoefnagel-Hohle (1978)
  • Tested all English-speaking family embers who
    moved to Holland for one year and were learning
    Dutch
  • Adolescents did best gt adults gt children
  • Old learner seemed to do better initially but
    they reach a plateau younger learners eventually
    catch up and pass them
  • The evidence from second-language acquisition
    research has not provided unequivocal evidence
    for the critical period hypothesis
  • Young children generally learn L2 better than
    older children and adults, at least in the long
    run
  • Younger and older learners differ in cognitive
    development and may bring somewhat different
    cognitive strategies on the task of L2
    acquisition

13
The Linguistic Environment
  • Feral and Isolated Children
  • The Critical Period Hypothesis
  • Motherese

14
Motherese (1/4)
  • The ways adults speak to young children
  • (Adult-to-Child Language) see Table 12.1
  • In general, speech to children learning language
    is shorter, more concrete, more directive, and
    more intonationally exaggerated than
    adult-directed speech
  • Such properties would assist children in their
    language development but data on this question
    are relatively scarce, and widely different
    opinions exist on the matter

15
Motherese (2/4)
  • Motherese Hypothesis
  • There is a relationship between the speech
    adjustments adult make and childrens language
    development
  • Strong form of the motherese hypothesis
  • Motherese features are necessary for language to
    develop properly absence of features ? childs
    language difficulty
  • Weak form of the motherese hypothesis
  • Motherese features assist a childs development
  • (1) Correlational Approach (2) Experimental
    Approach

16
Motherese (3/4)
  • (1) Correlational studies
  • Newport Gleitman, 1977
  • Limited relationships between parental speech and
    child language. Mothers who used more yes/no
    questions had children who used more auxiliaries
    but most aspects of child language were unrelated

17
Motherese (4/4)
  • (2) Experimental studies
  • Nelson, Carskaddon, Bonvillian,1973
  • Language development can be facilitated if
    children are presented with new syntactic
    information related to the childs previous
    sentence.
  • (1) Recast-sentence group
  • Received new sentences related to the childs
    sentence
  • Child Allgone truck
  • Experimenter Yes, the truck is all gone
  • (2) New-sentence group
  • Received relatively short, grammatical sentences
    that excluded the content words of the childs
    previous utterance
  • (3) Control group (received no special treatment)
  • Recast-sentence group (gtgt Control, gt New-sentence)

18
Cognitive Processes
  • Operating Principles
  • Sensorimotor Schemata
  • Cognitive Constraints
  • Impairments of Language Cognition

19
Operating Principles
  • Childrens preferred ways of taking in
    information (See Table 12.2, p335)
  • Useful in explaining certain patterns in early
    child grammar
  • Children use fixed word order to create meanings.
    (C)
  • Children often overregularize grammatical
    morpheme. (F)
  • Useful in understanding childrens acquisition of
    complex sentences
  • First attempting to form negatives and questions,
    children often simply place the negative or
    question marker at the front of a simple
    declarative sentence (D)

20
Cognitive Processes
  • Operating Principles
  • Sensorimotor Schemata
  • Cognitive Constraints
  • Impairments of Language Cognition

21
Sensorimotor Schemata (1/2)
  • Cognitive development Piaget
  • Believed that intelligence was not random, but
    was a set of organized cognitive structures that
    the infant actively constructed through the
    adaptation to the environment
  • Stages of Cognitive Development
  • Sensorimotor period of development (02 y.)
  • Child use body and senses banging, sucking,
    throwing
  • Acquisition of object permanence (near end of
    S.P.)
  • Notion that objects continue to exist even when
    they cannot be perceived

22
Sensorimotor Schemata (2/2)
  • Cognitive development Childs language
    development (two predictions)
  • Very young infant (not acquired object
    permanence)
  • Should use words referring to concrete objects
  • Large number of here and now words
  • Infants (mastered object permanence)
  • Should begin to use words referring to objects or
    events that are not immediately present
  • Ex) allgone truck, more milk
  • Specific language and cognitive achievements
    occur with very short time lags or nearly
    simultaneously
  • Little support for the notion that cognition
    predates language by a significant period of time

23
Cognitive Processes
  • Operating Principles
  • Sensorimotor Schemata
  • Cognitive Constraints
  • Impairments of Language Cognition

24
Cognitive Constraints (1/2)
  • Adult-to-Child language (a simplified and orderly
    pattern of data) is sufficient for normal
    language acquisition?
  • It seems unlikely that children explore every
    possible meaning of a given word from adults
  • Child may have certain expectations about word
    learning (Cognitive Constraint)
  • Three Possible Constraints
  • Whole object bias
  • A taxonomic bias
  • Mutual exclusivity bias

25
Cognitive Constraints (2/2)
  • Whole object bias
  • When children encounter a new label, they prefer
    to attach the label to the entire object rather
    than to part of the object
  • Ex) dog (a label for the entire object rather
    than dogs tail)
  • A taxonomic bias
  • Children will assume that the object label is a
    taxonomic category rather than a name for a
    individual dog
  • Ex) dog is a label for a group of animals not
    just Fido
  • Mutual exclusivity bias
  • It refers to the fact that a child who knows the
    name of a particular object will then generally
    reject applying a second name to that object
  • Ex) Show me the X (X was a nonsense syllable) ?
    much more likely to select the novel object
  • ? Children have some clear biases or preferences
    in learning new words

26
Cognitive Processes
  • Operating Principles
  • Sensorimotor Schemata
  • Cognitive Constraints
  • Impairments of Language Cognition

27
Impairments of Language and Cognition (1/3)
  • The notion that a close relationship exists
    between language and cognition has generally been
    supported by studies of individuals with Down
    syndrome
  • These individuals tend to have language delays
    that are proportionate to the severity of their
    cognitive disability
  • However, in certain individuals, there can be
    significant discrepancies between the level of
    cognitive functioning and the level of linguistic
    functioning
  • Genie
  • Williams Syndrome
  • Chatterbox syndrome

28
Impairments of Language and Cognition (2/3)
  • Genie
  • Advanced cognitive skills relative to linguistic
    skills
  • Grammatically rudimentary but semantically more
    advanced
  • Adult Why arent you singing?
  • Genie Very sad
  • Adult Why are you feeling sad?
  • Gene Lisa sick
  • ? This would provide evidence against the thesis
    that cognition is sufficient for language

29
Impairments of Language and Cognition (3/3)
  • William Syndrome
  • Elfinlike facial appearance, mental retardation,
    cardiac defects
  • Despite their cognitive impairment, syntactic
    skills were found to be largely intact
  • Chatterbox Syndrome
  • Significant cognitive impairments unexpected
    language abilities
  • ? If normal cognitive development is necessary
    for normal language development, it should not
    happen at all

30
Innate Mechanisms
  • The Language Bioprogram Hypothesis
  • Parameter Setting
  • The Issue of Negative Evidence

31
The Language Bioprogram Hypothesis (1/3)
  • Language Bioprogram - Bickerton (1983, 1984)
  • Children have an innate grammar that, in the
    absence of proper environmental input, serves as
    the childs language system ? a linguistic backup
    system
  • Related studies
  • Case 1 Pidgins and Creoles (Bickerton)
  • Case 2 Studies of language development in
    congenitally deaf children (Golden-Meadow)
  • Case 3 Sign language in Nicaragua

32
The Language Bioprogram Hypothesis (2/3)
  • Case 1 Pidgins Creoles (refer to Table 12.3)
  • Pidgin an auxiliary language that arises when
    speakers of several mutually unintelligible
    languages are in close contact (Bickrton, 1984)
  • Ex) Immigrant workers come to speak a simpler
    form of the dominant language of the area-just
    enough to get by
  • No recognizable syntax, often one word order, no
    complex sentence
  • Creole when the children of these immigrants
    acquire a pidgin as their native language
  • Relatively sophisticated, complex sentences
  • Unlike pidgins, the creoles resembled the
    structural rules of other languages
  • Case 2 Congenitally deaf children
  • Children (13 months 4 years), every 2-4 months,
    for 1.5 years
  • None of these children were exposed to
    conventional sign language
  • Nevertheless, the children invented a form of
    gestural language (Homesign) similar to the
    language of children with normal hearing
  • One-sign utterances appeared (18 months),
    followed by 2-3 sign utterances
  • ? When linguistic input is minimal, deaf
    children may create a gestural language similar
    to normal childrens language

33
The Language Bioprogram Hypothesis (3/3)
  • Bioprogram might operate in the absence of
    ordinary linguistic stimulation
  • What happen given appropriate linguistic input?
  • Bioprogram is suppressed and children learn the
    native language
  • Children use Preemption Principle If you hear
    people using a form different from the one you
    are using, and do not hear anyone using your
    form, abandon yours and use theirs
  • Cognitive processes associated with language use
    are not general purpose problem-solving processes
    but are instead restricted to language

34
Innate Mechanisms
  • The Language Bioprogram Hypothesis
  • Parameter Setting
  • The Issue of Negative Evidence

35
Parameter Setting (1/4)
  • Universal Grammar (Chomsky, 1981)
  • Grammar ? a set of parameters corresponding to
    each of the subsystems of the language
  • (Each parameter has a finite number of possible
    settings)
  • Various combinations of parameter settings ? all
    of the languages of the world
  • Children are born with the knowledge of the
    parameters and their possible settings
  • Language Acquisition ? identifying which
    parameter settings apply to ones native language

36
Parameter Setting (2/4)
  • Head Parameter (Cook, 1988)
  • Each phrase in the language has one essential
    element called head
  • Noun in noun phrases, verb in verb phrases
  • The head parameter specifies the position of the
    head within the phrase
  • English a head first language
  • The man with the bow tie
  • Liked him
  • Nice to see
  • To the bank
  • Japanese a head last language
  • Watashi wa nihongin desu (I Japanese am)

37
Parameter Setting (3/4)
  • Null-Subject Parameter (Hyams, 1986)
  • Italian, Spanish grammatically acceptable
  • English not permitted
  • Children are born with this parameter set to the
    null-subject value (default value)
  • Ex) Play it
  • Ex) Eating cereal
  • Ex) Shake hands
  • Ex) See window

38
Parameter Setting (4/4)
  • Subset Principle (Berwick and Weinberg, 1984)
  • Children begin to search through possible
    languages by beginning with the smallest subset
    available (that is, the most restrictive
    language). If there is no evidence from their
    linguistic input that this is their native
    language, they proceed to the next largest subset
    until they find a match

39
Innate Mechanisms
  • The Language Bioprogram Hypothesis
  • Parameter Setting
  • The Issue of Negative Evidence

40
The Issue of Negative Evidence
  • Positive Evidence
  • Evidence that a particular utterance is
    grammatical in the language that the child is
    learning
  • Negative Evidence
  • Evidence that a particular utterance is
    ungrammatical
  • Pinker (1990)
  • It would be very difficult to acquire a language
    from positive evidence alone
  • Negative evidence, which could constrain the
    problem space, is not generally available
  • Therefore, some constraints must be innate
  • ? Although negative evidence is present and may
    assist language development, research has not
    shown that it is necessary
  • ? Justification for innate mechanisms

41
Summary
  • Three classes of variables are needed for a
    complete account of language acquisition
  • Linguistic Environment
  • Gross environmental neglect (feral isolated
    children) ?Retard language acquisition
  • Cognitive Processes
  • Cognitive process are correlated with language
    development
  • Innate Mechanisms
  • Children given poor linguistic input ? Create
    communication systems similar to early child
    language
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