35 years of Cognitive Linguistics Session 10: Language
acquisition Martin Hilpert
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your questions
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Want other one spoon, Daddy. It noises. I becamed to be
Spiderman. She unlocked it open
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buzz, crash, splash, bang, noise It buzzes, crashes, splashes,
bangs,... * It noises. pull, crack, pry, unlock She pulled /
cracked / pried / it open. *She unlocked it open.
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overgeneralization errors The child has acquired more than a
string of word that is repeated. The error shows that the child has
acquired an regularity. It also shows that the child has not yet
mastered all constraints on that regularity.
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If children make overgeneralization errors, this must mean that
they have acquired an abstract rule, right? She unlocked it open.
SUBJ V-ed OBJ ADJ
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The dictionary-and-grammar model
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dictionary-and-grammar model vs. CxG Both models assume that
children learn generalizations. The models have different
hypotheses about how the process of language learning unfolds.
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two hypotheses dictionary-and-grammar: the continuity
hypothesis children acquire the syntactic categories (SUBJ, ADJ,
etc.) and rules of adult grammar at first their language output is
imperfect because not all rules are in place CxG: the item-based
learning hypothesis children acquire knowledge of lexical items and
fixed strings of lexical items (more juice) as they acquire more
and more of these, they begin to form generalizations across
them
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the continuity hypothesis The language of children is mentally
represented by the same syntactic rules and categories as adult
language. Innate knowledge facilitates the learning process. POS
categories are fundamental. S. Pinker not S. Pinker
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the continuity hypothesis Once a child is able to parse an
utterance such as Close the door , he will be able to infer from
the fact that the verb close in English precedes its complement the
door that all verbs in English precedes their complements. >>
This only works if children are born with the idea that there are
verbs, complements, and relative clauses.
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item-based learning Children start out by memorizing and
repeating concrete words and phrases. As a child recognizes
similarities across different phrases, a process of schematization
sets in. POS categories and syntactic constructions emerge as
generalizations over concrete phrases Generalizations get
increasingly abstract, until they resemble adult grammar.
1. joint attention Words become meaningful in situations in
which both the child and a caretaker focus on an object and are
mutually aware of this. Before 9 months of age, children can only
engage in dyadic joint attention (mutual eye gaze). Triadic joint
attention means inspecting an object together. With the ability to
engage in triadic joint attention comes word learning.
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2. intention reading Young children interpret other peoples
actions as purposeful and goal-directed. Theory of mind: other
people too have ideas, feelings, knowledge. Toddlers imitate
actions of others, but only those that they see as successful, not
those that are accidental.
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all done, all wet>> all X wheres daddy?, wheres
cookie?>> wheres X lets go!, lets find it!>> lets X Im
holding it, Im pulling it>> Im X-ing it the ability to form
pivot schemas Pivot: the fixed part of a schema Open slot: the
variable part of a schema 3. schematization
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4. role reversal In linguistic interaction, speakers are also
hearers, and vice versa. the capability of conceptual blending What
would it be like if I were in the position of my interlocutor?
Creating a model of other peoples current knowledge.
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5. pattern recognition the ability to recognize regularities in
speech 8-month old infants listened to nonce words bidaku, padoti,
bidala, tupiro, gobida,... bi always followed by da exposure to new
words bidaka >> in line with previous words dabiko >>
different from previous words infants showed greater interest
towards words that violated established patterns
generalizing across pivot schemas easier with English nouns
than with English verbs noodles in there, my noodles, noodles hot
__ in there my __ __ hot verbal pivot schemas introducing meeking:
2-year olds hesitate to use the form, even though they have pivot
schemas with ing-forms (Im holding it, Im pulling it)
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the verb island hypothesis verbs in early language acquisition
form islands of grammatical organization each verb is limited to a
single syntactic pattern tickle me, tickle it, tickle doggie put it
there, put it up, put it down I swinging, baby swinging adults use
these verbs in several syntactic patterns Stop tickling, John was
tickled by Mary, John tickled me silly, John tickled Mary out of
the room,
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Evidence for item-based learning
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1. Children are conservative about verbal pivot schemas (Brooks
and Tomasello 1999)
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study questions 1.Can very young children be trained to use the
passive? If they can, it is likely that input frequency, not
overall complexity, explains the absence of passives. 2.Can these
children then use the passive productively? If they learn a new
transitive verb, do they immediately conclude that it can be
passivized?
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28 younger children (~2.5 years), 28 older children (~3.5
years) both groups saw transitive actions described as meeking and
tamming
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meeking
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tamming
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training phase: two conditions active training group Look, the
fraggle is meeking the banana! Oh wow, the robot just tammed the
banana! Whos meeking the banana? Did you see who tammed the banana?
passive training group Hey, the banana got meeked by the fraggle!
See how the banana got tammed by the robot? Whats going to get
meeked? I think something is getting meeked again
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test phase: elicitation neutral question What happened?
patient-focused question What happened to the banana? agent-focused
question What did the fraggle do? purpose Can children adjust their
use of novel verbs to the discourse needs (patient-focused,
agent-focused)?
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results: passive formations Main effect of training group:
active-trained kids very few passives ***
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results: passive formations Main effect of question type:
agent-focused question - fewer passives ***
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results: passive formations Interaction between training group
and question type: question type makes a much larger difference in
the passive-trained group
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results: passive formations No effect of age n.s.
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2. Childrens linguistic creativity has been overestimated
(Lieven et al. 2003)
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How creative are children in their language use? Low creativity
with gradient increase evidence for a usage-based model that starts
with items Initially low and then suddenly high creativity evidence
for a rule that is acquired and can be freely applied after
that
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How do children acquire constructions? continuity hypothesis
start with lexically fixed phrases acquire an adult syntactic rule
productively apply that syntactic rule item-based learning
hypothesis start with lexically fixed phrases vary individual items
in slots arrive at a broader generalization
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How can these hypotheses be assessed? Evidence A high
percentage of all recorded constructions in a dense child language
corpus have been produced before or are found in the input.
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assessing creativity changeTargetPredecessor substitutionI got
the butter I got the door add-onLets move itaroundLets move it
dropAnd horseAnd a horse insertionfinished with your book?finished
your book? rearrangementAway it goesIt goes away Each new utterance
can be related to earlier utterances in terms of how many steps of
change are necessary.
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data two children each recorded for 6 weeks at age 2, then
again for 6 weeks at age 3 four high-density corpora, divided into
main and test
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How creative are young children?
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types of failed derivations inappropriate filler Do you want to
football? inappropriate filler in the PROCESS slot inappropriate
add-on Which ones go by here? inappropriate prep added to Which
THING go here? constituent omission And what that done? Omission of
has in And what has that done.
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failed derivations A high proportion of the problematic
utterances are ill-formed by adult standards When children use
language creatively, they go beyond what they know, rather than
applying abstract rules to create novel utterances.
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conclusions The creativity of later child speech has been
overestimated: Small variations account for the lions share of all
utterances. The variation that does exist does not point to the
application of rules. Rather, item-based learning continues as the
main process of language acquisition, is not abandoned in favor of
learning abstract principles.
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3. The collocational properties of constructions facilitate
acquisition
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How are constructions learned? Children must learn that there
are correspondences of syntactic form and meaning: John emailed me
the report. Learners must be able to interpret novel utterances:
fast mapping children learn lexical items at a stunning rate is
this also possible with syntactic constructions?
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How are constructions learned? Idea: Learning might be easy if
a syntactic structure often occurs with one particular lexical
element.
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Many constructions have a most frequent verb:
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experiment a new English phrasal pattern with a new meaning NP1
NP2 VERB-o appearance The frog the sock moopoed Training:
Participants heard sentences and watched video sequences in which
an animal/toy spontaneously appeared Task: Participants were given
one sentence and had to choose between two possible video
clips
experiment Three groups: The skewed frequency group (4-1-1-1-1)
The balanced frequency group (2-2-2-1-1) The control group (no
sound)
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results The control group did not perform better than chance
Both the skewed input group and the balanced input group performed
well, the skewed input group outperformed the balanced group.
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summing up
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a usage-based view of language acquisition Cognitive
Linguistics tries to explain language acquisition without positing
an innate language faculty Instead, language learning is explained
in terms of domain-general cognitive abilities: joint attention
intention reading schematization role reversal pattern
recognition
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evidence for item-based learning 1.Children extend verbal pivot
schemas conservatively. 2.Childrens linguistic creativity has been
overestimated. 3.Skewed frequencies of collocates facilitates the
learning of constructions.
