LIN 201

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LIN 201

• Fall 2006
• Lecture VII (7)
• Language Acquisition II

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Reminders (1)

• Exam I next Monday, Sept. 26, in class. Read
  Course Information, Specifics, Sec. A (p. 4)
  CR, p. 6. Covers through last week.
• Bring your own pen/pencil.
• No erasures.
• Fill in the Test Form bubble.
• Review Session Fri., 330-500, in Kittredge
  Auditorium (HBC). Be ready with questions.
• Review Sheet in the Course Reader, pp. 43-48.

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Reminders (2)

• Remember that attendance in Recitation counts
  toward your course grade (Course Information,
  Section D under Course Requirements).
• The material covered this week will not be on
  Exam I.
• Make-ups of last weeks quiz must be taken by
  noon tomorrow.

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Agenda

• 1. Playing the Language Game. (concl.)
• 2. The Innateness Hypothesis.
• 3. Early stages of acquisition.
• a. Perception and production.
• b. First words.

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Agenda

• 1. Videotape Playing the Language Game
  (concl.) Questions on pp. 55-56, Course Reader.

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More on innateness (review tape)

• Ev (1) Complexity of the system, speed of
  acquisition (including early complexity.
  Examples -- (a) 16-mo.-olds with word order, (b)
  Sammy (42 mos.) What do you think Cookie Monster
  eats?)
• Ev (2) The Whole Object Assumption.
• Ev (3) The Mutual Exclusivity Principle.

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Agenda

• 2. The Innateness Hypothesis.
• a. The logical problem of language acquisition.

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The logical problem of language acquisition (1)

• What accounts for the ease, rapidity, and
  uniformity of language acquisition in the face of
  impoverished data? (FR, p. 321)

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The logical problem of language acquisition

• Acquisition is easy, fast, and gives uniform
  results.
• The knowledge that is acquired is vastly
  underdetermined by linguistic experience the
  data to which the child is exposed is
  impoverished relative to the resulting system of
  knowledge ( impoverished experience poverty
  of the stimulus).

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Agenda

• 2. The Innateness Hypothesis.
• b. The innateness of specific principles of UG.

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Evidence for the innateness of specific
principles of UG

• 1. Structure dependency of rules.
• 2. The Coordinate Structure Constraint.
• 3. The Wh-Constraint.

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Evidence for the innateness of specific principles

• Assumption A given feature of linguistic
  knowledge is either (1) innate or (2) acquired on
  the basis of experience.
• Therefore, if an aspect of knowledge can be shown
  not to have been acquired on the basis of
  experience, then it must be innate.

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What clearly isnt innate

• The Lexicon of a language is clearly not innate.
  It must be acquired on the basis of experience.

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Acquisition by experience

• Example Overgeneralization.
• Stage 1. bring bringed
• play played
• Stage 2. bring brought
• play played

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• How does a child acquire the knowledge on the
  basis of experience that a particular form that
  should be grammatical (e.g., bringed) is
  ungrammatical in the adult language?

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One form of acquisition by experience

• 1. The child produces an utterance that is
  ungrammatical with respect to the mental grammars
  of the adults around him/her. E.g., Johnny
  bringed me a present.
• 2. The child is corrected by the adult Dont
  say bringed say brought.
• 3. The child replaces bringed with brought in
  his/her mental grammar.

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• Evidence that a specific principle of grammar is
  innate The Structure Dependency Principle.

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Structure dependency of rules (1)

• Aux-Movement Move the first Aux in the sentence
  to the beginning of the sentence.

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Structure dependency of rules (2)

• Statement
• Jill is going up the hill that Jack is climbing.
• Question
• Is Jill __ going up the hill that Jack is
  climbing?

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Structure dependency (3)

• Structure
• Jill is going up the hill that Jack is climbing.
• Two possible rules
• Not structure-dependent Move the first is.
• Structure-dependent Move the is in the main
  clause.

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Structure dependency (4)

• Statement
• Jill, who is my sister, is going up the hill.
• Non-structure-dependent rule
• Move the first is in the sentence.
• Is Jill, who __ my sister, is going up the
  hill?

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Structure dependency (5)

• Statement
• Jill, who is my sister, is going up the hill.
• Structure-dependent rule
• Move the is in the main clause.
• Is Jill, who is my sister, __ going up the hill?

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Structure dependency (6)

• The Principle of Structure Dependency All rules
  in languages refer to the structures of the
  sentences to which they apply, not just to the
  order of words.

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Structure dependency (7)

• Claim The Principle of Structure Dependency
  (PSD) is innate.
• Evidence Children never produce sentences that
  violate the PSD. So there is no opportunity to
  correct them for producing such sentences. Hence
  the PSD must be in childs the mind to begin with
  (included as part of Universal Grammar), and is
  therefore innate.

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Structure dependency (8)

• IMPORTANT The claim is not that the rule of
  Aux-Movement is innate (it isnt) only that its
  structure dependency is innate.

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The poverty of the stimulus

• Since evidence for the innateness of the
  Principle of Structure Dependency consists in the
  absence of an experience that might lead the
  child to knowledge of those principles, this
  evidence is said to be based on the poverty of
  the stimulus.

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• Poverty of the stimulus evidence that another
  specific principle of grammar is innate The
  Coordinate Structure Constraint.

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The Coordinate Structure Constraint (1)

• What will he compare apples with?
• Deep he will compare apples with what
• Aux-mvt will he __ compare apples with what
• Wh-mvt what will he __ compare apples with __
• Surface what will he __ compare apples with __

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The Coordinate Structure Constraint (2)

• What will he compare apples and?
• Deep he will compare apples and what
• Aux-mvt will he __ compare apples and what
• Wh-mvt what will he __ compare apples and __
• Surface what will he __ compare apples and __

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The Coordinate Structure Constraint (3)

• The Coordinate Structure Constraint Nothing can
  be moved out of a structure containing and.

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The Coordinate Structure Constraint (4)

• Claim The Coordinate Structure Constraint (CSC)
  is innate.
• Evidence Children never produce utterances that
  violate the CSC ,,, . Hence the CSC must be in
  the mind to begin with.

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The Wh-Constraint (1)

• Example
• What did Mary say who saw __?
• Statement A wh-phrase cannot be moved past
  another wh-phrase.

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The Wh-Constraint (2)

• Claim The Wh-Constraint is innate.
• Evidence Children never produce utterances that
  violate the Wh-Constraint .

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Innateness of specific principles Summary

• Neither the Principle of Structure Dependency
  (PSD), nor the Coordinate Structure Constraint
  (CSC), nor the Wh-Constraint could have been
  acquired on the basis of experience and therefore
  must be innate.

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Innateness review more evidence

• Ev (1) Complexity, speed.
• Ev (2) The Whole Object Assumption.
• Ev (3) The Mutual Exclusivity Principle.
• Ev (4) Innateness of specific principles (PSD
  and CSC).

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Agenda

• 2. The innateness hypothesis
• c. Other aspects of UG

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Innateness hypothesis Other aspects of UG (1)

• General
• Even when languages differ, they differ
  systematically and in a limited number of ways.

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Innateness hypothesis Other aspects of UG (2)

• Japanese --
• Statement
• Anata wa ie ni modorimasu.
• you home come-back
• You will come home.

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Innateness hypothesis Other aspects of UG (3)

• Japanese
• Anata wa VP ie ni modorimasu.
• home come-back
• English
• You will VP come home.

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Innateness hypothesis Other aspects of UG (4)

• UG (innate) There are two types of languages --
• In a given language, the main word in every
  phrase is either at the end of the phrase (SOV --
  e.g., Japanese) or at the beginning of the phrase
  (SVO -- e.g., English).

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Innateness hypothesis Other aspects of UG (5)

• Japanese --
• Corresponding question
• Anata wa ie ni modorimasu ka.
• you home come-back Q
• Will you come home?

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Innateness hypothesis Other aspects of UG (6)

• Japanese
• S Anata wa ie ni modorimasu ka?
• you home come-back Q
• English
• S Will you come home?
• Q

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Innateness hypothesis Other aspects of UG (7)

• The question marker comes at the end of the
  sentence in Japanese-type languages and at the
  beginning of the sentence in English-type
  languages.

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Innateness hypothesis Other aspects of UG (8)

• Japanese --
• Statement form
• Anata wa John ga sukidesu.
• You John like
• You like John.

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Innateness hypothesis Other aspects of UG (9)

• Japanese --
• Wh Question
• Anata wa dare ga sukidesu ka.
• You who like Q
• Who do you like?

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Innateness hypothesis Other aspects of UG (10)

• A question wh-phrase either stays in its Deep
  Structure place (Japanese -- no Wh Mvt) or moves
  to the beginning of the sentence (English -- Wh
  Mvt).

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Agenda

• 3. Very early stages of acquisition.

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Early stages Sound perception

• In the perception of speech sounds
• 1. Newborns distinguish between sounds that
  differ within languages but not between those
  that dont.
• 2. Newborns ignore differences between speech
  sounds that are not linguistic (e.g., sex or age
  of speaker).

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Early stages Sound production

• In the early production of speech sounds
  (babbling)
• 1. When they babble, children produce tend to
  produce the sounds that appear most frequently in
  the languages of the world.
• 2. As they mature, their babbling becomes more
  and more like the sounds of the surrounding
  language.

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Agenda

• 4. Evidence for innateness Summary to this point.

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Evidence for Innateness review more

• Ev (1) Complexity, speed.
• Ev (2) The Whole Object Assumption.
• Ev (3) The Mutual Exclusivity Principle.
• Ev (4) Specific principles.
• Ev (5) Early discrimination in sound perception
  and production.