Language Acquisition

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Language Acquisition

• 4.

Elena Lieven, MPI-EVA, Leipzig School of
Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester
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Outline for Session 4

• MAIN TOPIC Studying languages other than English
• Exotic languages and issues they raise
• Comparing cues within a language
• Comparisons across languages

POST BREAK Learning language environment in
different cultures
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Typological discoveries (1)

• Children are sensitive from the outset of
  speaking to the semantic distinctions made in
  their language (Bowerman Choi)
• PICTURE Korean English
• Cassette in box Fit tightly In
• Apple in bowl Put loosely In
• Put top on pen Fit tightly On
• Put book in bag Put loosely In

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Typological discoveries (2)

• Chintang a Tibeto-Burman language of East Nepal
• Free ordering of verbal prefixes
• Tense nearer to stem than aspect
• Complex system of location marking
• Location marking also used to express
  interpersonal relations

Do children make errors predicted by putative
linguistic or cognitive universals or do they
learn the language in its specificity?
What is the frequency and pattern of usage of
these constructions in the speech of adults? How
are they used in speech to children?
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Within-language studies
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Productive morphology

• Does productivity develop?
• Are children less productive than adults?

Full competence model with the verbs and affixes
that they know, children are fully productive
Constructivist model children are less
productive, even with the verbs and affixes that
they know, at younger ages and than their
parents, since they are slowly building the
abstract categories
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Spanish verb inflectionsAguado Orea Pine

• Nottingham corpus
• Lucia 22 hours 22.25 27.14
• Juan 31 hours 11-.21 25.28
• Only verbs used by both adult and child
• stem
• agreement properties
• Adult sample of verb tokens randomly reduced to
  number found in childs speech

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Number of inflections per stem

• No significant difference between parents
• Significant difference between children and
  parents at both tested ages
• For Juan, significant difference between first
  and second half of the corpus

High frequency verbs have significantly fewer
errors Some person marking is almost always
correct, but overgeneralised (1sg) Other person
marking is almost always incorrect and another
highly frequent form is used (3pl)
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Marking of German plurals
Köpcke Cue strength salience, type frequency,
cue validity, iconicity Behrens-s generalisation
errors limited to distributional conditions in
the input Szagun growth rates in type
frequencies per marker match the input
Regularity recurrent pattern Generality type
frequency
Default only productive plural marker
English -s - emergency general ending -
German
Schemas independent of rest of noun
declension Inflection classes gender and four
cases in singular
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Morphological productivityLaaha et al, in
submission

• The ability to freely form new morphological
  forms
• Degrees of productivity
• All feminine and animate masculine nouns ending
  in schwa take the en plural
• ? -en plural fully productive for feminine nouns
  ending in schwa
• ? competes with s for feminine nouns ending in
  consonant

Even the youngest children sensitive to
feminine/non-feminine distinction Degree of
productivity played a role at all ages Input
frequency had an effect for some
plurals Morphological transparency for some forms
leave off Umlaut
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Case marking and word order in German using novel
verbs
Dittmar et al MPI-EVA
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Distribution of SO- and OS-order with unambiguous
and ambiguous case marking for German transitive
sentences in the input
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Availability, reliability and validity for the
grammatical cues word order and case marking for
German transitive sentences in the input
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Mean proportion of correct pointing
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Comparisons across languages
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Novel verb studies of Syntax (Tomasello,
Cognition, 2000)
. Japanese
Matsui et al.
children
. Hebrew
.
German
Wittek
. Hebrew
. Japanese
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Weird linkingAbbot-Smith, MPI-EVA
Models always weird Sentence The bunnyNOM is
pushing/domming the dogACC Action Dog
pushing/domming bunny
Elicitation Action Lion domming frog
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Exp And now you tell me what happens, ok? Chi
Yes. Exp Who is doing what? Chi The lion, it
nom is domming the acc frog.
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Grammatical and ungrammatical linking used by
German children (those who used both target
verbs in a transitive or intransitive in both
conditions at least once)
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Mean proportion of grammatical and ungrammatical
linking used by German versus English children
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Weird word order in French Matthews et al,
submitted

• Il pousse Mary (He pushes Mary)
• Il la pousse (He pushes her)

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Mean proportion of Matches, Single Argument
Reversions and Full Reversions as a function of
verb frequency and modelled word order (mean age
210).
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Weird word order in English and French Matthews
et al,submitted
Mean proportion of canonically ordered responses
that expressed no object, a pronominal object
or a lexical object as a function of age and
language.
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Other languagesStoll, Abbot-Smith Lieven, in
prep.

• English has very fixed word order
• The tiger ate the mouse
• The mouse ate the tiger
• German is more variable but has more case
  inflections
• Der Tiger frisst den Hund
• Den Hund hat der Tiger gefressen
• Russian has free word order
• Ja videl svoju mainu (all 24 words orders
  possible)

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Proportions of utterances accounted for by frames
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Proportions of one, two and three-word frames
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Imperatives

• ENGLISH
• Look.... .10 Come/on... .10
• GERMAN
• Guck(e)/mal ... .14 Komm/mal... .06
• Look... Come...
• RUSSIAN
• Skazhi ... .09 Davaj ... .15
• Say ... Give / Lets ...

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Wh-questions
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13
16
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Wh-questions 1,2 and 3-word core frames
4
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• German and English
• wh word aux/modal pronoun/article/particle
• Russian
• wh word /- particle
• Prodrop, no articles, no copula in present
  tense

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Modelling OI errors(Pine, Freudenthal, Gobet,
Aguado-Orea)
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The AGR/TNS Omission Model

• Childs grammar identical to adults except Child
  is subject to a Unique Checking Constraint that
  results in under-specification of Tense and/or
  Agreement
• Child uses non-finite verb forms in contexts
  where finite verbs forms obligatory
  
• That go there v That goes there (3sg present)
• Since AGR assigns NOM, child also produces
  Non-NOM subjects when AGR absent
• Him naughty, Her coming

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Strengths of the ATOM

• Explains statistical patterns of error in English
• He goes and He go, but few I goes
• He goes, He go and Him go but few Him goes
• Explains why children learning other obligatory
  subject languages (e.g. Dutch, French) use
  infinitives in main clauses
• Hij lopen (He to walk) Il faire (He to do)
• Explains why children learning optional subject
  languages (e.g. Spanish) do not use infinitives
  in main clauses
• (El) habla (He speaks) not (El) hablar (He to
  speak)

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MOSAIC

• MOSAIC is a simple distributional learner that
• Learns utterance final words and sequences
• Do you want a biscuit? Biscuit
• A biscuit
• Want a biscuit
• Generates novel utterances by linking together
  words that have been preceded and followed by
  overlapping sets of words and substituting them
  in utterance final sequences
• a linked to the on basis of Want a biscuit
• Want the ball
• allows Want the biscuit
• Eat a biscuit
• Eat the biscuit

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MOSAIC Key Features

• Takes as input (orthographically transcribed)
  samples of Child-Directed Speech
• Produces output in the form of utterances that
  can be compared with those of real children
• Learns to produce progressively longer utterances
  as a function of the amount of input it has seen

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MOSAIC-Speak

• ROTE LEARNED
• DOESNT FALL OUT
• CHEEKY FACE
• WHERE DO YOU WANT THEM TO GO?
• HOLD THE CASE THEN
• TELL GRANDMA THEN
• ITS THE PHONE
• WHICH FRIENDS ARE THEY THEN?
• GONNA WEE IN THE POTTY

• GENERATED
• MIGHT FALL OUT
• CHEEKY FOOT
• WHERE DO YOU WANT HIM TO GO?
• TAKE THE CASE THEN
• SHOW GRANDMA THEN
• ITS A PHONE
• WHICH FRIENDS IS
• HE THEN?
• GONNA WEE IN THE BALLOON

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Method

• MOSAIC trained repeatedly on speech addressed to
  a particular child
• Output generated after each run through input
• Output files selected on basis of MLU
• Compared with samples of child speech matched as
  closely as possible for MLU
• Data from child and model coded for non-finites,
  simple finites and compound finites using same
  (automated) coding procedures

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Simulating differences in patterns of finiteness
marking in Dutch, German and Spanish

• Children modelled
• Peter - Gronigen Dutch corpus (Bols, 1995)
• Leo - MPI German corpus (Behrens, in press)
• Juan - Nottingham Spanish corpus (Aguado-Orea,
  2004)

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Pattern of finiteness marking as a function of
MLU for Peter and MOSAIC-Peter (Dutch)
MOSAIC simulates high proportion of OI errors in
Dutch (and low proportion of compound finites)
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Pattern of finiteness marking as a function of
MLU for Leo and MOSAIC-Leo (German)
MOSAIC simulates the moderately high proportion
of OI errors in German (and low proportion of
compound finites)
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Pattern of finiteness marking as a function of
MLU for Juan and MOSAIC-Juan (Spanish)
MOSAIC simulates the low proportion of OI errors
in Spanish (and high proportion of simple finites)
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OI errors as a function of compound finites in
the input and percentage of utterance final verbs
in the input that were finite vs. non-finite
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Learning language in different cultures
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Some claims made about language learning

• There are cultures in which children are not
  spoken to before they speak
• Children only require minimal input to learn
  language
• OR
• Children can learn language through overhearing
• There are cultures which believe children have to
  be taught language and corrected from babytalk
• Children can learn language from a highly
  didactic interactive style

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Learning to talk
Intention reading and preverbal communication
Distributional analysis prosody ? phonemes ?
words
Infant cognition
Form-meaning mappings
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(No Transcript)
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Comparing recording situations

• Our study
• Mostly outside
• Many different situations
• Mother often absent
• Many other children

• Most previous studies
• Inside the house
• Mother and child playing
• Only mother present
• No other children

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Characterising childrens communicative
environment

• How much do people talk to children?
• How many people do children interact with?
• What types of interaction take place?
• How much do children react to what they overhear?

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Data collection
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Categories for characterising the communicative
environment
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Transcription and data analysis

• Transcribed into Chintang/Puma
• Translated into Nepali
• Transcription, Nepali, literal and idiomatic
  translations into English entered on computer
• Interlinearised linguistic gloss added on
  computer
• Video and all transcriptions aligned and added to
  data base archives in Nijmegen and at Tribuvhan
  University
• Videos analysed for amount and type of talk to
  children and for childrens communicative
  behaviour
• Childrens language analysed for productivity in
  the development of linguistic features of
  interest

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Summary and conclusions

• Studying a wide variety gives us access to
  typological differences that have a bearing on
  fundamental theoretical issues
• Detailed studies within a language can allow a
  comparison between the role of different cues and
  markers
• Comparison across languages for the same
  functions can give us insight into what makes
  learning easy or difficult
• Virtually all children learn to talk what are
  the characteristics of their communicative
  environments that make this possible?

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The end!
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Wittek Tomasello (2002) Journal of Child
Language
3. Role of Distributed Morphemes
German Perfekt (w/ novel verb) children at 26
and 36
Past participle (w/ novel verb) 26 E Das
Kind hat den Mann .......... C Gemiekt! Full
utterance in Perfekt (w/ novel verb) 36 E
Das Kind miekt den Mann C Das Kind hat den Mann
gemiekt
Slobin on local cues
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Wittek Tomasello (2002) Journal of Child
Language
2. Role of Type Frequency
German Perfekt (w/ novel verb) children at 26
and 36 E Das Kind miekt den Mann C Das Kind
hat den Mann gemiekt E Das Kind tammt C Das
Kind ist getammen Sein (ist) form productive
later because lower type frequency (fewer verbs)
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The people and the languages

• Highly endangered languages, but nearly
  completely undocumented.
• Spoken in the lower foothills of the Himalayas.
• Rai ethnic group.
• Rai culture
• Sedentary subsistence farmers.
• Extremely high degree of social
  compartmentalisation, where each household is a
  political unit.
• The social system is largely identical with
  kinship system.
• Shamanist ancestral worship with various degrees
  of Hindu and Buddhist influence.
• Mixed with Nepali speakers and other ethnic
  groups, but marriage only within the culture.

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The languages
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Language acquisition projects

• The balance between Chintang and Nepali in
  childrens language development
• Learning the special features of a Rai language
• Documenting the communicative environment in
  which children learn to talk

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Chintang VDC

• Chintang VDC has 9 10,000 people
• Mulgau one of three hamlets in which Chintang
  is spoken as a native language
• 85 households
• 510 people
• With the help of the local assistants (studying
  B.Ed. on the Dhankuta campus), we identified 6
  families who were prepared to let us film their
  children every month.