PSY 369: Psycholinguistics

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PSY 369 Psycholinguistics

• Language Acquisition III

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Brief outline

• Continue describing the acquisition of language
  syntax and morphology
• Some topics in the innateness (nativism vs.
  empiricist) debate
• What kind of feedback (teaching) do kids get?
• Is there a critical period for language?

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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 processes.

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Language explosion continues

• Syntax
• 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

• Syntax
• Mean length of utterance (MLU) in morphemes

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Language explosion continues

• Proto-syntax (??)
• Holophrases (around 1-1.5 years)
• Single-word utterances may be used to express
  more than the meaning usually attributed to that
  single word by adults

dog might refer to the dog is drinking water

• Typically idiosyncratic, but some
  conventional/common (e.g., indicate the existence
  of an object, request recurrence of object or
  event)
• Often combined with intonation or gesture
• Controversial claim May reflect a developing
  sense of syntax, but not yet knowing how to use
  it (e.g., see Bloom, 1973)

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Language explosion continues

• Syntax
• Roger Brown (1973) proposed 5 stages
• Stage 1 Telegraphic speech (MLU 1.75 around
  24 months)
• Children begin to combine words into utterances
• Limited to a small set of semantic relations
  (e.g., nomination, recurrence, attribution,
  possession see table 10.3 for examples)
• Debate learning semantic relations or syntactic
  (position rules)
• baby sleep agentaction or Noun Verb

• 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 (1973) proposed 5 stages

• More than two words
• Stages 2 through 5
• Stage 2 (MLU 2.25)
• begin to modulate meaning using word order
  (syntax)
• Modulations for number, time, aspect
• Gradual acquisition of grammatical morphemes
  (-ing, -s
• Later stages reflect generally more complex use
  of syntax (e.g., questions, negatives)

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How do kids learn the syntax?

• Innateness accounts
• Semantic bootstrapping
• Learned accounts
• Acquired from the linguistic input from the
  environment
• It is in the stimulus

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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 (e.g. Bates,
  1979)
• Speech to children is not impoverished (Snow,
  1977)
• Children learn grammar by mapping semantic roles
  (agent, action, patient) onto grammatical
  categories (subject, verb, object)
• In all languages there are multiple potential
  cues indicating semantic/syntactic relations
  (e.g., word order, case marking)
• Similar words occur in similar linguistic
  contexts
• Acoustic information (e.g., prosody) may provide
  syntactic cues
• Children do not need innate knowledge to learn
  grammar

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Acquiring Morphology

• Morphology
• Typically things like inflections and
  prepositions start around MLU of 2.5 (usually in
  2 yr olds)
• Remember the Wug experiment (Berko-Gleason, 1958)

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Acquiring Morphology

• Morphology

This person knows how to rick. She did the same
thing yesterday.
Yesterday she ________.
Typically children say that she ricked.
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Acquiring Morphology

• Morphology order of acquisition

Age (yrs) Morpheme Example(s)
2 Present progressive I driving
2 Articles A dog, the doctor
2 Plural Balls
2 Uncontractible Copula He is asleep, am, are
3 Third person singular He wants an apple
3 Full progressive Be ing, I am singing
3 Regular past tense She walked
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Acquiring Morphology

• Children sometimes make mistakes.

My teacher holded the baby rabbits.
Yes
She holded the baby rabbits.
No, she holded them loosely.
Did you say your teacher held the baby rabbit?
What did you say she did?
Did you say held them tightly?
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Acquiring Morphology

• Children sometimes make mistakes.

My teacher holded the baby rabbits.

• This is ungrammatical in the adult language
• Shows that children are not simply imitating
• In this case, what they produce something that is
  not in their input.

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Acquiring Morphology

• Children sometimes make mistakes.

My teacher holded the baby rabbits.

• Why do they make errors like these?
• In the case at hand, we have what is called
  overregularization
• The verb hold has an irregular past tense form,
  held
• Because this form is used, the regular past
  tense-- that with -ed-- is not found (hold-ed)

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Acquiring Morphology

• The case of verb past tense
• Regular verb forms require no stored knowledge of
  the past tense form (wug test)
• Past tense is accomplished by applying a past
  tense rule (e.g., add -ed) to the verb stem
• With irregular verbs something must be memorized

• Examples
• Horton heared a Who
• I finded Renée
• The alligator goed kerplunk

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Acquiring Morphology

• The case of verb past tense

• Stages in the acquisition of irregular inflections

• With regular verbs, the default form -ed is used
• With irregulars, lists associating the verb with
  a particular form of the past tense have to be
  memorized
• Past tense is -t when attached to leave, keep,
  etc.
• Is -gt was
• Dig -gt dug
• Has -gt had

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Acquiring Morphology

• Stages in the acquisition of irregular inflections

time

• On the face of it, learning these morphological
  quirks follows a peculiar pattern
• Early correct irregular forms are used
• Middle incorrect regular forms are used
• Late correct forms are used again

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Memory Rules

• Why do we find this type of pattern?
• Memory and rules
• The use of overregularized forms starts at around
  the same that that the child is beginning to
  apply the default -ed rule successfully
• Early All forms-- whether regular or
  irregular-- are memorized
• Middle The regular rule is learned, and in some
  cases overapplied
• Late Irregulars are used based on memory,
  regulars use the rule (the idea is that if the
  word can provide its own past tense from memory,
  then the past tense rule is blocked)

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Memory Rules

• Why do we find this type of pattern?
• Memory and rules
• Other accounts
• Maratsos (2000) frequency explanation

• It is possible to predict which verbs will be
  subject to overregularization
• The more often an irregular form occurs in the
  input, the less likely the child is to use it as
  an overregularization
• This is evidence that some part of
  overregularization occurs because of memory
  failures
• Something about irregulars is unpredictable,
  hence has to be memorized

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What kind of teaching do kids get?

• If language is learned (and not innate), how do
  kids do it?
• What kind of feedback do they get?
• Claim Positive evidence is not sufficient for
  learning a language.

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What kind of teaching do kids get?

• Are the kids even aware of mistakes?
• The children are apparently aware of the fact
  that their forms are strange
• Parent Wheres Mommy?
• Child Mommy goed to the store
• Parent Mommy goed to the store?
• Child NO! Daddy, I say it that way, not you

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Positive and negative evidence

• What kind of feedback is available for learning?

• Positive evidence Kids hear grammatical
  sentences
• Negative evidence information that a given
  sentence is ungrammatical
• Kids are not told which sentences are
  ungrammatical(no negative evidence)
• Lets consider no negative evidence further

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What kind of teaching do kids get?

• How much Positive Evidence is there?
• Estimated 5000 7000 utterances a day
• Between ¼ and 1/3 are questions
• Over 20 are not full adult sentences
  (typically Noun or prepositional phrases)
• Only about 15 have typical English SVO form
• Roughly 45 of all maternal utterances began with
  one of 17 words (e.g., what, that, it,
  you)
• Cameron-Faulkner, et al (2003)

• So what kids do hear may be somewhat limited.

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Negative evidence

• Negative evidence could come in various
  conceivable forms.
• The sentence Bill a cookie ate is not a sentence
  in English, Timmy. No sentence with SOV word
  order is.
• Upon hearing Bill a cookie ate, an adult might
• Not understand
• Look pained
• Rephrase the ungrammatical sentence grammatically

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Kids resist instruction

• McNeill (1966)
• Child Nobody dont like me.
• Adult No, say nobody likes me.
• Child Nobody dont like me.
• repeats eight times
• Adult No, now listen carefully say nobody
  likes me.
• Child Oh! Nobody dont likes me.

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Kids resist instruction

• Cazden (1972) (observation attributed to Jean
  Berko Gleason)
• Child My teacher holded the baby rabbits and we
  patted them.
• Adult Did you say your teacher held the baby
  rabbits?
• Child Yes.
• Adult What did you say she did?
• Child She holded the baby rabbits and we patted
  them.
• Adult Did you say she held them tightly?
• Child No, she holded them loosely.
• So there doesnt seem to be a lot of explicit
  negative evidence, and what there is the kids
  often resist

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Negative evidence via feedback?

• Do kids get implicit negative evidence?
• Do adults understand grammatical sentences and
  not understand ungrammatical ones?
• Do adults respond positively to grammatical
  sentences and negatively to ungrammatical ones?

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Negative evidence via feedback?

• Brown Hanlon (1970)
• Case study of Adam - looked at things that were
  said to him by adults, and what he said to them
• Adults understood 42 of the grammatical
  sentences.
• Adults understood 47 of the ungrammatical ones.
• Adults expressed approval after 45 of
  thegrammatical sentences.
• Adults expressed approval after 45 of the
  ungrammatical sentences.
• Suggests that there isnt a lot of good negative
  evidence.

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In a way, its moot anyway

• One of the striking things about child language
  is how few errors they actually make.
• For negative feedback to work, the kids have to
  make the errors (so that it can get the negative
  response).
• But they dont make enough relevant kinds of
  errors to determine the complex grammar.
• Pinker, Marcus and others, conclude that much of
  this stuff must be innate.
• But this isnt the only view. There is an
  ongoing debate about whether there are rules, or
  whether these patterns of behavior can be learned
  based on the language evidence that is available
  to the kids

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Critical (sensitive) periods
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Critical (sensitive) periods

• Certain behavior is developed more quickly within
  a critical period than outside of it. This
  period is biologically determined.
• Examples
• Imprinting in ducks (Lorenz, Hess, 1973)
• Ducklings will follow the first moving thing they
  see
• Only happens if they see something moving within
  the first few hours (after 32 hours it wont
  happen) of hatching
• Binocular cells in humans
• Cells in visual system that respond only to input
  from both eyes.
• If these cells dont get input from both eyes
  within first year of life, they dont develop

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Critical (sensitive) periods

• Certain behavior is developed more quickly within
  a critical period than outside of it. This
  period is biologically determined.

• Some environmental input is necessary for normal
  development, but biology determines when the
  organism is responsive to that input.
• That when is the critical period

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Critical period for language

• Lenneberg (1967) proposed that there is a
  critical period for human language

• It assumes that language acquisition must occur
  before the end of the critical period
• Estimates range from 5 years up to onset of
  puberty

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Evidence for critical period for language

• Feral Children
• Children raised in the wild or with reduced
  exposure to human language
• What is the effect of this lack of exposure on
  language acquisition?
• Two classic cases
• Victor, the Wild Boy of Aveyron
• Genie

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Victor, The Wild Boy of Aveyron

• Found in 1800 near the outskirts of Aveyron,
  France
• Estimated to be about 7-years-old
• Considered by some to be the first documented
  case of autism
• Neither spoke or responded to speech
• Taken to and studied by Dr. Jean-Marc-Gaspard
  Itard, and educator of deaf-mute and retarded
  children
• Never learned to speak and his receptive language
  ability was limited to a few simple commands.
• Described by Itard as an almost normal boy who
  could not speak

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Genie

• Found in Arcadia, California in 1970, was not
  exposed to human language until age 13.5.
• Raised in isolation a situation of extreme abuse
• Genie could barely walk and could not talk when
  found
• Dr. Susan Curtiss made great efforts to teach her
  language, and she did learn how to talk, but her
  grammar never fully developed.
• Only capable of producing telegraphic utterances
  (e.g. Mike paint or Applesauce buy store)
• Used few closed-class morphemes and function
  words
• Speech sounded like that of a 2-year-old

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Genie

• By age of 17 (after 4 years of extensive
  training)
• Vocabulary of a 5 year old
• Poor syntax (telegraphic speech mostly)
• Examples
• Mama wash hair in sink
• At school scratch face
• I want Curtiss play piano
• Like go ride yellow school bus
• Father take piece wood. Hit. Cry.

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What Do These Cases Tell Us?

• Suggestive of the position that there is a
  critical period for first language learning
• If child is not exposed to language during early
  childhood (prior to the age of 6 or 7), then the
  ability to learn syntax will be impaired while
  other abilities are less strongly affected
• Not uncontroversial Victor and Genie and
  children like them were deprived in many ways
  other than not being exposed to language
• Genie stopped talking after age 30 and was
  institutionalized shortly afterward (Rymer, 1993)

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Effects of the Critical Period

• Learning a language
• Under c. 7 years perfect command of the language
  possible
• Ages c. 8- c.15 Perfect command less possible
  progressively
• Age 15- Imperfect command possible
• In some special cases, we are given a window on
  the nature of the critical period

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Effects of the Critical Period

• Learning a new language
• What if we already know one language, but want to
  learn another?

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Effects of the Critical Period

• Johnson and Newport (1989)
• Native Chinese/Korean speakers moving to US
• Task Listen to sentences and judge whether
  grammatically correct