1、PSY 369: Psycholinguistics,Language Acquisition,Announcements,On-line Blackboard quiz for chapter 4 is now up. You may take it 5 times, top score counts I am pushing Exam 2 back a day. We will have the exam on Feb. 28. Language development section includes information from Chapter 3, pages 72-87 Hom
2、ework #2 due today,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.,Language explosion continues,Take 100 utterances and count the number of morp
3、hemes per utterance,Syntax,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,Mean length of utterance (M
4、LU) in morphemes,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,Language explosion continues,“dog” might refer to the dog is drinking water,Typically idiosyncratic, but some conven
5、tional/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),Syntax Roger Brown (1973) proposed 5 sta
6、ges (determined by MLU not age) Stage 1: Telegraphic speech (MLU 1.75; around 24 months) Children begin to combine words into utterances Limited to a small set (11) of semantic relations (75% of their utterances),Language explosion continues,Children in telegraphic speech stage are said to leave out
7、 the little words and inflections: e.g. “Mummy shoe” NOT Mummys shoe “Two cat” NOT two cats,Debate: learning semantic relations or syntactic (position rules) “baby sleep” agent & action or Noun Verb,Nomination “That ball” Recurrence “More ball” Nonexistence “Allgone ball” Agent & action “Daddy hit”
8、Action & object “hit ball” Agent & object “Daddy ball” Action & locative “go store” Entity & locative “book table” Entity & attribute “big house”,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
9、 acquisition of grammatical morphemes (“-ing”, “-s” Later stages reflect generally more complex use of syntax (e.g., questions, negatives),Language explosion continues,Syntax Roger Brown (1973) proposed 5 stages,Innateness accounts Semantic bootstrapping (e.g., Pinker 1984, 1989),Acquiring Syntax,Le
10、arned accounts Acquired from the linguistic input from the environment (e.g. Bates, 1979),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
11、syntactic structure based on surface form and semantic meaning,Speech to children is not impoverished (Snow, 1977): Child-directed speech Similar words occur in similar linguistic contexts Acoustic information (e.g., prosody) may provide syntactic cues Children learn grammar by mapping semantic role
12、s (agent, action, patient) onto grammatical categories (subject, verb, object),Morphology Typically things like inflections and prepositions start around MLU of 2.5 (usually in 2 yr olds) Kids acquire the “rules” for applying morphology Wug experiment (Berko-Gleason, 1958),Acquiring Morphology,This
13、person knows how to rick. She did the same thing yesterday.,Yesterday she _.,Typically children say that she “ricked.”,Acquiring Morphology,Morphology: order of acquisition is relatively consistent (James & Kahn, 1982),Acquiring Morphology,Children sometimes make mistakes.,My teacher holded the baby
14、 rabbits.,Yes,She holded the baby rabbits.,Did you say your teacher held the baby rabbit?,What did you say she did?,No, she holded them loosely.,Did you say held them tightly?,Acquiring Morphology,This is ungrammatical in the adult language Shows that children are not simply imitating In this case,
15、what they produce something that is not in their input.,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 u
16、sed, the regular past tense- that with -ed- is not found (*hold-ed),Acquiring Morphology,Children sometimes make mistakes.,My teacher holded the baby rabbits.,Acquiring Morphology,Examples: Horton heared a Who I finded Rene The alligator goed kerplunk,The case of verb past tense: Regular verb forms
17、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,Stages in the acquisition of irregular inflections,Acquiring Morphology,With regular verbs, the def
18、ault 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 - was Dig - dug Has - had,The case of verb past tense:,Acquiring Morphology,Stages in the acquisition of irregular i
19、nflections,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,Memory & Rules,Why do we find this type of pattern? Memory and rules The use of overr
20、egularized 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
21、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),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
22、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 they have to be memor
23、ized,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? Positive evidence: Kids hear grammatical sentences Negative evidence: information that a given sentence is ungrammatical Poverty of the stimulus Claim: Positive ev
24、idence is not sufficient for learning a language.,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! Dad
25、dy, I say it that way, not you,What kind of “teaching” do kids get?,How much Positive Evidence is there (in Child-Directed speech)? Estimated 5000 7000 utterances a day Between and are questions Over 20% are not “full” adult sentences (typically Noun or Prepositional phrases) Only about 15% have typ
26、ical 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.,What kind of “teaching” do kids get?,Negative evidence could come in various conceivable forms. Upo
27、n hearing “Bill a cookie ate”, an adult might Grammar teacher parent feedback? “The sentence Bill a cookie ate is not a sentence in English, Timmy. No sentence with SOV word order is.” More realistic Not understand Look pained Rephrase the ungrammatical sentence grammatically “Bill at a cookie.”,Kid
28、s 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.,Kids resist instruction,Cazden (1972) (observation attributed to Jean
29、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
30、 loosely.So there doesnt seem to be a lot of explicit negative evidence, and what there is the kids often resist,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
31、 grammatical sentences and negatively to ungrammatical ones?,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 ap
32、proval after 45% of the grammatical sentences. Adults expressed approval after 45% of the ungrammatical sentences.Suggests that there isnt a lot of good negative evidence.,Negative evidence via feedback?,In a way, its moot anyway,One of the striking things about child language is how few errors they
33、 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 t
34、he 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,Critical (sensitive) periods,Critical (sensitive) periods,Certain behavior is developed more quickly within a crit
35、ical 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 Binocula
36、r 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,Critical (sensitive) periods,Some environmental input is necessary for normal development, but biology determines when the org
37、anism is responsive to that input. That “when” is the critical period,Certain behavior is developed more quickly within a critical period than outside of it. This period is biologically determined.,Critical period for language,It assumes that language acquisition must occur before the end of the cri
38、tical period Estimates range from 5 years up to onset of puberty,Lenneberg (1967) proposed that there is a critical period for human language,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 lac
39、k of exposure on language acquisition? Two classic cases Victor, the Wild Boy of Aveyron Genie,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
40、 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”,Genie,Found in Arcadia, Cal
41、ifornia 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.
42、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,Genie,By age of 17 (after 4 years of extensive training) Vocabulary of a 5 year old Poor syntax (telegraphic speech m
43、ostly) 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.,What Do These Cases Tell Us?,Suggestive of the position that there is a critical period for first language learning (in particular for syntax and p
44、honological development) 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
45、 other than not being exposed to language Genie stopped talking after age 30 and was institutionalized shortly afterward (Rymer, 1993),What Do These Cases Tell Us?,Suggestive of the position that there is a critical period for first language learning (in particular for syntax and phonological develo
46、pment) Why? Nativist explanation (see pg 79 of text) Maturational explanation: “less is more”,Second language learning,Learning a new language What if we already know one language, but want to learn another? Adults learning another language typically have a persistent foreign accent perhaps a critic
47、al period for phonology (Flege & Hillenbrand, 1984) Adults typically do better initially at learning a new language compared to kids, but kids typically do better over the long term (Krashen, Long, & Scarcella, 1982),Second language learning,Johnson and Newport (1989) Native Chinese/Korean speakers
48、moving to US Task: Listen to sentences and judge whether grammatically correct,Second language learning,Johnson and Newport (1989) Native Chinese/Korean speakers moving to US Task: Listen to sentences and judge whether grammatically correct,Concluded that around the age of 16 something happens Diffe
49、rent factors operate on language acquisition before and after the age of 16,Birdsong and Molis (2001) Replicated the Johnson and Newport study in Spanish/English speakers. Did not find a discontinuity around the age of 16,Effects of the Critical Period,Learning a language: Under 7 years: perfect com
50、mand of the language possible Ages 8- c.15: Perfect command less possible progressively Age 15-: Imperfect command possible But these claims are far from universally accepted,Bilinguals & Polyglots,Many people speak more than one language Tucker (1999) - multilinguals outnumber monolinguals What is the impact of knowing/using more than one language? Factors affecting second language acquisition? What does the lexicon look like? Interesting effects in bilinguals Interference Code switching Cognitive advantages,
