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Language Development

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Title: Language Development


1
Language Development
  • Big Goal Provide a sense of the mystery and
    promise in child language research.
  • What are the challenges?
  • Two competing approaches (Chomskyan and
    (Neuro)Constructivist)
  • Poverty of the Stimulus Hypothesis - What are our
    capacities and what information is in the
    environment?

2
Learning to recognize what we dont know
  • The more we learn, the more we are - or ought to
    be - dumbfounded. Our proper business is to
    learn more and more and thereby separate our mere
    ignorance from genuine mystery. Lewis Thomas

3
Yearning and Learning
  • In science, learning means trying as hard to
    prove that something is false as to prove it is
    true, even if that something is a cherished
    belief
  • Yeaning is iosity. Yearning is the driving force
    of science, art, and religionYearning without
    learning is buying tabloid newspapers with
    headlines announcing Newborn baby talks of
    heaven.
  • - Chet Raymo Skeptics and Believer 199860

4
Why is this implausible?
  • Baby Born Talking - Describes Heaven
  • Incredible proof of reincarnation
  • Life in heaven is grand, a baby told an astounded
    obstetrical team seconds after birth. Tiny Naomi
    Montefusco literally came into the world singing
    the praises of Gods firmament. The miracle so
    shocked the delivery room team, one nurse ran
    screaming down the hall. heaven is a beautiful
    place, so warm and so serene, Naomi said. Why
    did you bring me here? Among the witnesses was
    mother Theresa Montefusco, 18, who delivered the
    child under local anestheticI distinctly heard
    her describe heaven as a place where no one has
    to work, eat, worry about clothing, or do
    anything but sing Gods praises. I tried to get
    off the delivery table to kneel down and pray,
    but the nurses wouldnt let. Sun 5/25/1985 cited
    in Steve Pinker 1994262.

5
Some simple facts
  • Though various creatures have communication
    systems, only humans have Language.
  • There are approximately 6,000 languages in the
    world.
  • Any normal child growing up in any language
    environment will eventually master the local
    language(s).

6
More Simple Facts
  • Many exceptional children, i.e. blind, deaf,
    cognitively deficient, neurologically impaired,
    etc. may exhibit essentially normal language
    development. (spoken or signed)
  • Masterful competence in Language is achieved
    without explicit instruction.

7
The Perception of Speech Sounds Coarticulation
  • Coarticulation early movement of articulators
    in anticipation of coming sounds

8
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9
Identifying sameness despite differences
  • The acoustic properties of individual sounds are
    affected by the neighborhood in which they occur.
  • Sometimes there are little differences between
    different sounds and big differences between the
    the same sound in different contexts

10
What we dont know we know(from Pinker, Word and
Rules 1998)
  • Consider when we use irregular, not regular
    forms
  • Prefixing overate/overeated, overshot/overshoot
    ed, preshrank/pre-shrinked.
  • Compounding workmen/workmans,
    superwomen/superwomans, stepchildren/stepchilds,
    strawmen/mans, snowmen/snowmans

11
More regulars to consider
  • The Toronto Maple Leafs/Leaves (a hockey team
    named after Canadas national symbol, The Maple
    Leaf).
  • Renault Elfs/Elves (cars).
  • Michael Keaton starred in both Batmans/Batmen
    (movie titles).
  • Were having Julia Child and her husband over for
    dinner. You know, the Childs/Children are really
    great cooks.

12
But, some words only display regular marking -s
-ed
  • All my daughters friends are low-lifes
    (low-lives).
  • Im sick of dealing with all the Mickey Mouses in
    this administration (Mickey Mice).
  • Boggs has singled, tripled, and flied out (flown
    out) in the game so far.

13
What else dont we know we know? Causatives
  • Black Black-en
  • Red Redd-en
  • White Whit-en
  • Green ?
  • Dark ?
  • Light ?
  • Highlight ?
  • Grue ?
  • Drick ?
  • Quiet Quieten (Guardian Unlimited 9/26/05

14
A Paradox
  • Normal adults have great difficulty achieving
    moderate competence, let alone fluency, in a
    second Language, despite
  • Greater cognitive sophistication than infants or
    older children
  • Explicit instruction in classrooms

15
Language in normal humans irrepressible
  • Language creation situations
  • Nicaragua sign language of deaf
  • Bedouin sign language

16
Enculturated creatures not irrepressible, but
  • Kanzi (pygmy/bonobo chimp)

17
Lexigrams
18
English Comprehension Child vs. Chimp(Savage-
Rumbaugh et. al. 1993)
  • Task Compare language development in a normal
    child (Alia 20) and normal bonobo (Kanzi 80),
    based on responses to 660 spoken instructions.
  • Kanzi Exposed to spoken English and lexigrams
    from 60 mo. exhibited speech comprehension at
    20 and spontaneous use of lexigrams at 25.
  • Alia Exposed to spoken English from birth and
    lexigrams from 3 mo. comprehension of 32 spoken
    words at 13 mo. and spontaneous use of lexigrams
    at 11 mo.

19
Some Results(Savage- Rumbaugh 199871)
  • Rarely did either Kanzi or Alia make mistakes
    that indicated a lack of understanding of the
    basic grammatical structure of the sentences.Both
    them readily differentiated between requests to
    retrieve objects from locations (Go to location X
    and get object Y) and requests to take objects to
    locations (Take object X to location Y). They
    also understood the difference between sentences
    that required them to move through space in
    addition to acting on objects and sentences that
    required them to act on objects without moving
    about.

20
Interpretation(Savage- Rumbaugh et. al. 1993)
  • under relatively similar rearing conditions
    and virtually identical testing conditions, they
    could comprehend both the semantics and the
    syntax of quite unusual English sentences.
  • So, bonobos appear to perform some extraordinary
  • language feats - well enough to even be
    mistaken for a young human child, for a short
    time.
  • But, bonbobos reach a threshold early on, while
    the child keeps developing.

21
A View From a Primate Researcher(Sue
Savage-Rumbaugh 1996 Discover Magazine)
  • Now I understand in ways that I cannot fully
    describe that language isnt a matter of learning
    little building blocks like words and stringing
    them together in some kind of hierarchical
    structure and then going out and kind of throwing
    these out to the rest of the world so that ideas
    jump from my mind to yours. Language is a matter
    of me learning to coordinate my behavior with all
    of the other individuals in the world around me
    and that much of this initial coordination is
    through glances, through patternings of behavior
    together, through joint understandings of how the
    world works, and joint constructions of how were
    going to operate in this world together.

22
A View From a Developmental Psychologist(Annette
Karmiloff-Smith 199263)
  • Child Whats that?
  • Mother A typewriter.
  • Child No, youre a typewriter, thats a
    typewrite. (Yara, 4.0)
  • Thus, even if the chimpanzee were to have an
    innately specified linguistic base, I speculate
    that it would still never go as far as the human
    child. It would never wonder why typewriter
    isnt used to refer to people. It would simply
    repeat the linguistic labels that it was given.
    But children doi not simply reach efficient
    usage they subsequently develop explicit
    representations which allow them to reflect on
    the component parts of words to progressively
    build linguistic theories.
  • a crucial difference shows up when we look at
    what happens beyond successful mastery.
    Chimpanzees do not go beyond behavioral mastery.
    Karmiloff-Smith 1995.

23
Ignorance v. Mystery Complexity of Language
  • for a few domains, like puddings, one can
    assume a sample anywhere is as good as a sample
    elsewhere. But, in complex systems, this is not
    true. For example, it is a general fact that the
    human body is 86 water. But from this it would
    turn out to be foolish to make inferences such as
    the body is 86 water water is chemically
    simple so, the body is basically chemically
    simple. Such inferences and strategies are, of
    course, obviously wrong when one knows the
    falsifying counter-information in advance. But
    when one has very little knowledge of the domain,
    they are commonly recruited. - M. Maratsos
    1999192
  • If language is a complex system, then it is an
    incoherent question to ask How do children
    learn language?

24
The Main Subsystems
  • Sound
  • Phonological system (what is contained in
    language particular sound systems, I.e., sounds,
    how they combine)
  • Lexicon Grammar
  • Morphological system (how words are formed)
  • Syntactic system (how words combine into phrases
    and sentences )
  • Semantic system (meanings of words and larger
    expressions)
  • Communication
  • Pragmatic system (how language is used in
    different contexts)
  • Discourse system (connecting utterances/sentences
    into a coherent narratives)

25
What linguists tell us about Language
  • Language def A complex system made up of
    independent, but interacting, subsystems (or
    modules or components) coordinated with one
    another, creating the appearance of a single,
    unified entity.
  • These structures in these independent subsystems
    need not neatly and straightforwardly correspond
    with one another, I.e., the subsystems can
    display mismatches.

26
Mismatch 1 Phonology vs. Morphology
Phonological (Sound) Structure
Morphological (Word) Structure
27
Mismatches between Morphology and Phonology
  • The most well-motivated representation of the
    internal structure of words from the perspective
    of the meaningful pieces from which they are
    composed differs from the best representation of
    the same word from the perspective of the
    organization of the sounds it consists of.

28
Mismatch 2Syntax vs. Phonology
Syntactic (Word combination) Structure
Prosodic (Sentence melody) Structure
29
Mismatches between Syntax vs. Phonology
  • The best motivated representation of sentences as
    composed of phrases differs from the best
    representation of these phrases from the
    perspective of the organization of how they are
    grouped into units of sound.

30
The Main Subsystems Developmental Milestones
31
The Central Mystery
  • How do children acquire the subsystems that make
    up Language?
  • How do children acquire the sound system, word
    shape system, word combination system, word
    meaning (and sentence meaning) system -- and come
    to coordinate all of these systems together?

32
Necessary Questions
  • What is Language? In what ways are all natural
    languages alike? What ways are they different?
    What distinguishes natural languages from animal
    communication systems and artificial languages
    and even programming languages? How can we
    characterize the adults knowledge of his/her
    native language(s)?
  • This is the domain of LINGUISTS.

33
More Necessary Questions
  • What is learning? How do children develop
    mastery in non-linguistic domains such as facial
    recognition or object recognition or concept
    formation? What is the time course of learning
    and are there correlations between learning in
    different domains? What are the mechanisms or
    processes that facilitate or impede learning?
  • This is the domain of DEVELOPMENTAL or COGNITIVE
    PSYCHOLOGISTS.

34
Resulting Interdisciplinary Questions
  • What is language learning? How do children
    develop mastery of their native language(s)? Do
    they rely on the same operations as in
    non-linguistic skills? What are the biological
    bases and the actual learning patterns of the
    language development process? How does learning
    in normal and special populations differ and how
    is it similar to language learning and learning
    in other cognitive and social domains? What is
    the relation between the adults knowledge and
    the childs knowledge, I.e., what is the relation
    between the infant startstate and the adult
    endstate?
  • This is the domain of Developmental
    PSYCHOLINGUISTS.

35
Alternatively put
  • The most fundamental question in the study of
    the human language faculty is its place in the
    natural world what kind of biological system it
    is, and how it relates to other systems in our
    species and others.
  • A second question is what parts of a persons
    language ability (learned or built-in) are
    specific to language and what parts belong to
    more general abilities.
  • - Jackendoff Pinker 2005

36
  • The third question is which aspects of the
    language capacity are uniquely human and which
    are shared with other groups of animals, either
    homologously, by inheritance from a common
    ancestor, or analogously, by adaptation to a
    common functionAs with the first two questions,
    answers will seldom be dichotomous. They will
    often specify mixtures of shared and unique
    attributes, reflecting the evolutionary process
    in which an ancestral primate design was
    retained, modified, augmented or lost in the
    human lineage. 20053

37
The answer
  • Nobody knows...but we have gotten increasingly
    interested in
  • The types of methods used to explore key areas of
    language,
  • The types of models proposed by researchers,
  • The types of questions that need to be asked to
    ultimately arrive at satisfying and compelling
    answers.

38
Some Consequences of Answers
  • Help us to understand the nature of the human
    mind.
  • Help us to understand the relation between human
    behavior in relation to the behaviors of
    non-human primates and other creatures Whats
    our place in the biological world?
  • Help to understand the role of language in human
    culture
  • Help to address issues in special populations,
    I.e., deaf, neurogenetic disorders, etc.

39
Major Issues
  • Its mostly Nature
  • Nativism (Plato 4th BC Kant 18th c.)
  • Chomsky (1957, and more recent formulations)
  • Rapid and effortless acquisition
  • No explicit instruction
  • Poverty of stimulus
  • Its mostly Nurture
  • Empiricism (Locke 17th c.)
  • Behaviorism (Skinner 20th c.)
  • Gradual (and effortful?) acquisition
  • External stimulus leading to appropriate
    responses.
  • Sufficiently reach stimulus

40
Major Issues
  • Its a balance between Nature Nurture contra
    Chomsky, its the Nature of Nature that is the
    question
  • Interactionism (Braine 1994)/Social
    Interactionism (Snow 1989), Constructivism
    (Piaget 1926) Emergentism, Neuroconstructivism
    (MacWhinney 1999, Elman et. al. 1996,
    Karmiloff-Smith1995 )
  • There are no innately given language specific (
    domain specific) capacities, but rather there are
    innately given language relevant ( domain
    general) capacities which conspire over time to
    produce language.

41
(Dis)Continuous Knowledge (Aitchison1976127)
Constructivist language specific structures and
categories of adult endstate are possibly
radically different from those infant startstate.
Chomskyan language specific structures and
categories of adult endstate are refined versions
whats at the infant startstate.
42
Noun Coordination and Questions (Doctor
Doolittles Dilemma Stephen Anderson 2004224)(
  • 3) Pat is majoring in Linguistics and
    Philosophy.
  • 3) What is Pat majoring in Ø and Philosophy?
  • 3) What is Pat majoring in Ø
  • 4) Pat is majoring in Linguistics along with
    Philosophy.
  • 4) What is Pat majoring in Ø along with
    Philosophy?

43
Sentence Coordination and Questions SA 2004224)
  • Fred bought too many expensive presents and the
    bank cut off his charge card.
  • 1) What did Fred buy Ø and the bank cut off his
    charge card?
  • 2) Fred bought too many expensive presents, so
    the bank cut off his charge card.
  • 2) What did Fred buy Ø,so that the bank cut
    off his charge card?

44
Observation
  • Declarative sentences with very similar meanings,
    I.e., 1 versus 2 and 3 versus 4, behave very
    differently when you try to form questions.
  • Since you cannot form a question about only one
    conjunct in a coordinated phrase, but you can
    form a question from a single element when its
    not in a coordinate phrase, the difference in
    behavior isnt likely to be sensitive to meaning.
    Instead, its possible that there are some
    structure based restrictions.

45
Empirical research and an interpretation
  • Several decades of investigation support the
    claim that
  • they restrictions like the coordinate structure
    constraint) are true of all languagesThis kind
    of knowledge could not plausibly have been
    acquired on the basis of experience. Therefore
    it seems likely that these aspects of syntactic
    organization are as much a part of the
    biologically determined human language faculty as
    the structure of the vervet monkey calls is
    specific to animals of that species. SA 2004229

46
A (proposed) universal property of grammar
  • Coordinate Structure Constraint
  • A single conjunct in a coordinate structure
    cannot be questioned alone.
  • XP
  • XP1 and XP2

47
Bevers Syllogism Representational Innateness
  • To be proven Language is innate.
  • 1. The essence of Language has property Pi
    (Coordinate Structure Constraint).
  • 2. Pi cannot be learned by any (known)
    (conceivable) theory of learning.
  • 3. Therefore, Pi is innate.
  • 4. Therefore, the essence of Language is innate
    (and caused thereby).

48
Bevers Syllogism Developmental
  • To be proven Language is learned.
  • 1. The essence of Language has property Pi
    (Coordinate Structure Constraint).
  • 2. Pi cannot be transmitted by any (known)
    (conceivable) genetic mechanism.
  • 3. Therefore, Pi is learned.
  • 4. Therefore, the essence of Language is learned
    (and caused by how it is learned).
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