The Emergence of Language (from Brain, Body, and Discourse)

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The Emergence of Language (from Brain, Body, and
Discourse)

• Brian MacWhinney- CMU

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The Special Gift Paradigm

• Grammar Gene
• Speech is Special
• Modularity
• Critical Period
• Poverty of the Stimulus
• Sudden Evolution of Language
• Centrality of Recursion

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Genetic Locus?
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Cortical Module?
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Hard-wired modules?
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Speech is Special?
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Sudden evolution?

• 7 MYA bipedalism
• 4 MYA tools, opposing thumb
• 3 MYA parietal expansion, TOM
• 1.5 MYA general cortical expansion
• .3 MYA expanding pulmonic support
• .1 MYA glottal control
• 30,000 creativity explosion

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Expiration of the Special Gift

• Wild children are neurologically impaired
• Newport and Johnson show no point of sudden loss
• Recovery of language at 13 after hemispherectomy
  -- Vargha-Khadem
• L2 age effects not unique to language learning--
  ballet, golf, even math
• Entrenchment account of L2

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Logical Problem?

• Mothers speak grammatically - Newport
• Degree-0 learnability - Lightfoot
• Competition provides the negative evidence -
  MacWhinney
• Error-free learning doesnt occur - Pullum
• The Stimulus isnt impoverished after all

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Stipulation and the Gift

• Rules have been the backbone of descriptive
  linguistics
• Rules can be stipulated
• Children learn rules - Brown, Marcus, Pinker

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Big Mean Rules
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Big Mean Flowcharts
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Changing theories

• Rules are softening
• Evolution is stretching out
• Modularity is getting plastic
• Genome is becoming exaptive

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Kinder, gentler rules
ga-ti-ga ga-na-ga ga-gi-ga ga-la-ga li-na-li li-ti
-li li-gi-li li-la-li ni-gi-ni ni-ti-ni ni-na-ni n
i-la-ni ta-la-ta ta-ti-ta ta-na-ta ta-gi-ta

• Pinker (1984)
• add -ed
• Aslin, Newport, Saffran (1999)
• golabu, pitaku
• Marcuss (2000) baby rules
• S -gt A B A

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But

• Lexicon, dialect, collocation, pragmatics,
  function, .

Periphery
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Emergentism

• Not
• empiricism vs. nativism
• Instead
• emergentism vs. stipulationism

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Emergence vs stipulation
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Emergent structure in Honeycombs
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Emergent Columns
Emergence of Oriented On-Off Neurons
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Emergent Computation
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Physical emergenceClosures inhibit voicing

• Many languages lack /b/, few lack /p/

time 2
time 1
time 0
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Entrainment - Huygens
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Jaw entrains the glottis
Lip-smacking rhythms (Macneilage Davis,
2001) Thelen Iverson, 1998 - jaw entrains
glottis Hippocampal timers (Buzsáki
2004) Conversational synchrony (Wilson Wilson
2005)
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Babbling entrains gesture

• Iverson, Thelen
• Central role of rhythm
• Babbling and gesture both arise from Brocas area
• McNeills theory of growing points with gesture
  at the root of thought

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Dissipative Systems
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Catalysis
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Deformation
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Emergentist theory asks

• How did a structure emerge?
• Under what time-frame did it emerge?
• What dynamic processes are involved?
• How stable is the structure?
• How does removal of supports alter the emergence?

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Mechanisms of Emergence

• Entrainment, physical and social
• Adaptation, selection
• Competition, strength
• Hebbian learning, reinforcement
• Topology, short connections
• Self-organized criticality, catalysis
• Resonance
• Deformation, induction, regulation

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Why now?

• Without advanced methods, emergentist cognitive
  science was not possible
• We didnt have CHILDES, TalkBank
• Audio, video analysis was primitive - TalkBank
• We couldnt simulate - PDP, SOM, ART
• We couldnt image the brain - ERP, fMRI
• We couldnt study learning in vivo - PSLC.
• With these advances, emergentism is becoming the
  default stance.

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Sources of emergence

• Brain Neural networks, short connections, area
  histology, spike propagation
• Body Embodied cognition, the vocal apparatus
• Society Discourse, roles, theory of mind

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Time-frames of Emergence

1. Archaeogenetic
2. Phylogenetic
3. Embryological
4. Developmental
5. Online
6. Diachronic

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Books
The Emergence of Language Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, 1999
Elman, J. et al (1996) Rethinking Innateness MIT
Press
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Examples

• 1. Morphological paradigms
• 2. From lexicon to syntax
• 3. Mutual exclusivity
• 4. Perspective flow

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1. Neural Networks for Morphology
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Summing activation
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Neurons dont send Morse code
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Memory molecules?
Worm Runners Digest Training, grinding, feeding
planaria
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The architecture
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Networks work

• It worked -- it learned the input
• It generalized as in German and English
• It matched the developmental data

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With Limitations

• The homophony problem
• ringed -- rang -- wrung
• The masquerading morpheme problem
• -chen
• -en in Nacken, Hafen vs -en in Wissen
• The underwent problem
• Mutter should guarantee die Grossmutter
• The zero derivation problem
• schlagen should predict der Schlag
• The early went problem

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2. The answer

• Morphological learning must emerge from a lexical
  base
• Therefore, we first have to simulate the learning
  of the lexicon

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Self-organizing lexical maps
Li, Farkas, MacWhinney - Neural network -
computer simulation - L1 lexical learning -
CHILDES input - no initial organization -
short connections
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Gradual Emergence
50, 150, 250, 500 words
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DevLex Model
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Bilingual self-organization
Chinese Phonology
Chinese Semantics
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Refining competition
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Maps implement entrenchment

• Strong items dominate over weak.
• Late L2 items are parasitic on pre-existing L1
  forms and maps

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Module Entrenchment
Simultaneous Bilingualism
LX
LY
balanced
Successive Bilingualism
L1
L2
dominates
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Parasitism and Transfer
turtle
tortuga
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Entrenchment vs. Critical Periods

• Critical Periods are linked to infancy.
• Observed drop is not precipitous.
• Lateralization is not linked to CP.
• Language is not a unitary ability.
• Golf, ballet are also age-related.
• No mechanism has been discovered.
• UG-related syntactic patterns are not strongly
  fossilized - Birdsong

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Entrenchment vs. Critical Periods

• Critical Periods are linked to infancy.
• Observed drop is not precipitous.
• Lateralization is not linked to CP.
• Language is not a unitary ability.
• Golf, ballet are also age-related.
• No mechanism has been discovered.
• UG-related syntactic patterns are not strongly
  fossilized - Birdsong

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5. Emergence from Resonance

• Graduated interval recall
• Multimodal consolidation
• Self-organized criticality

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Graduated interval recall

• Pimsleur 67

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Neural Basis
Wittenburg et al. 2002
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Optimization really helps
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Chinese Resonance
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Consolidation Circuits
Dynamic
Consolidation
Scaffold
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Consolidation and Time

• Bones, muscles, cell walls, mitochondria, and
  immune system becomes stronger after periods of
  use and breakage.
• These systems respond to pressures across time
  frames. (slow muscles, fast muscles)
• Neurons work the same way.
• They are sensitive to
• one-trial learning (amygdalal input)
• local episodic learning (hippocampal input)
• embodied learning (self-motion)
• statistical learning (basal ganglia, circuits)
• strategic resonant learning (frontal input)

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Example 4 Perspective and grammar

• Animal cognition is modular (bees)
• Perspective integrates across modules
• Language expresses perspective and changes in
  perspective

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Perspective
unified image
language as a functional neural circuit
perspective
perspective
perspective
perspective
direct experience
deixis
roles
plans
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The dorsal and the ventral paths
enactive
depictive
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Mirror neurons -- Rizzolatti
E grabs M grabs
E with pliers M grabs
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Monkey grabbing in the dark
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Perspective shift(MacWhinney y Pléh (1987)

• cambio
• SS The dog that chased the cat bit the
  horse. 0
• OS The dog chased the cat that bit the
  horse. 1-
• OO The dog chased the cat the horse bit. 1
• SO The dog the cat chased bit the horse. 2
• SS gt OS OO gt SO
• The dog the cat the boy liked chased
  snarled. 4
• (dog -gt cat -gt boy -gt cat -gt dog)

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Ambiguity and perspective flow

• John saw the Grand Canyon flying to New York.
• The women discussed the dogs on the beach.
• Although John always runs, a mile seems like a
  long distance to him.
• I ordered her pancakes.
• Visiting relatives can be a nuisance.
• The horse raced past the barn fell.

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Constructions that mark perspective shift

• Passive Adverbalization
• Double Object Binding
• Inverse Dislocation
• Obviative Clefting
• Fictive agent Topicalización
• Conflation Possessive
• Comparative Ellipsis
• Complementation Coordination .

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Other sample topics the emergence of X from Y

• CV syllable from lip-smacking
• Final devoicing from syllable structure
• Ergativity from subject omission
• Locatives from body parts
• Superordinates from most frequent subordinates
• Use of Brocas for ASL

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Getting it wrong
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Falsifiability of Emergentism?

• Core claim all processes arise from dynamic
  interactions
• Core claim Language arises from external
  pressures
• Conceptualization cannot be falsified, but
  specific implementations can.
• Specific implementations must be described
  mechanistically. This is really difficult.

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Summary

• Emergentism vs. Stipulationism
• Emergence on five time-frames
• Emergence from Brain, Body, and Society
• Four examples morphology, syntax, ME,
  perspective
• Emergentist accounts can be wrong.
• But emergentism cannot be falsified, it can only
  be implemented. This is really difficult.

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