Theories of Language Acquisition

Two theoretical approaches

• Learning theories

• Nativist theories

Jean Piaget 1896-1980 Noam Chomsky 1928

What is innate?

core

periphery

Innate universal grammar

How does the innate core look like?

• Grammatical categories with clear-cut

boundaries.

• Grammatical rules that are comparable to

the rules of arithmetic.

• The mind (i.e. the language faculty) as a

computer.

Steven Pinker (1984)

Grammatical categories are innate:

• nouns, verbs, adjectives

• subject, predicate, object

• NP, VP, S

How do children recognize nouns and verbs in the ambient language?

• Morphosyntactic features: number, case, gender,

• Distribution: after articles and adjectives • Meaning: denote objects, persons, animals

Semantic bootstrapping

Category Meaning

Noun Person, thing, animal

Verb Processes, states

Adjective Attribute

Preposition Spatial relation, path, direction

Semantic bootstrapping

• Step 1: Children construct semantic word classes

based on words they encounter in the ambient

language.

• Step 2: Children ‘link’ the semantically specified word

classes to innate grammatical categories.

• Step 3. Once the semantic word classes are ‘hooked

up’ to the categories of innate universal grammar,

language-specific linguistic features (e.g. morphology,

distribution) can help to subsume semantically a-typical

members under a specific class.

Why does Pinker posit innate linguistic categories?

• Infinite search domain

• Nature of linguistic categories:

(1) discrete

(2) highly abstract

Parameter setting

Parameters

• Pro-drop parameter

• Head-direction parameter

Greenberg’s word order correlations

VO-language OV-language

V O O V

P NP NP P

AUX V V AUX

SUB S S SUB

ART N N ART

N REL REL N

V COMP COMP V

The head-direction parameter

Greenberg’s word order correlations reflect the

ordering of head and dependent categories.

• The semantically most salient element

• The category determinant

• The morphosyntactic locus

What’s a head?

The head-direction parameter

Languages are either consistently head-initial

or consistently head-final, because these are

the two options provided by innate universal

grammar.

Processing explanations (Hawkins 1994)

[walked [across the street]]

[[street the across] walked]

[[walked [the street across]]

The innateness hypothesis

• Language is a unique ability of humans.

• Specific brain damages cause specific language

impairments (e.g. Broca’s area, Wernicke’s area) • SLI children• The Gopnik family: genetically transmitted language

deficit• The critical period / wild children• The universality of linguistic categories• The speed of language acquisition• The poverty of the stimulus

The argument from the poverty of the stimulus

Chomsky: The linguistic input that children

receive is not sufficient to learn grammar from

experience alone.

Types of evidence

• Positive evidence

• Negative evidence

The argument from the poverty of the stimulus

Chomsky: There is an enormous gap between

the complicated system of adult grammar and

‘the meager and degenerated input’ that

children receive.

Arguments against the argument from the poverty of the stimulus

• The ambient language provides a very rich source of distributional information (Redington et al. 1998; see also Pullum and Scholz 2002).

• Relatively simple associative learning mechanisms are sufficient to extract complicated grammatical patterns from the ambient language (connectionism; Rumelhart and McClelland 1986; Elman et al. 1996).

• Young children are extremely good ‘pattern finders’ (Saffran et al. 1996).

• Language acquisition is incremental: Preschool children learn spoken language (Elman 1993).

• The nature of grammatical knowledge.

The no negative evidence problem

How do children eliminate their overgeneralization

mistakes?

CHILD: Mommy goed to bed.

CHILD: Is Mommy is coming?

CHILD: Mommy fell the bottle.

The no negative evidence problem

Parents are much more likely to correct the content of

their children‘s speech than their grammatical errors.

Grammatical errors are only rarely corrected.

Hypothesis: Parents correct their children.

The no negative evidence problem CHILD: Want other one spoon, Daddy.

Father: You mean, you want the other spoon.

CHILD: Yes, I want the other one spoon.

Father: Can you say ‚the other spoon‘?

CHILD: Other … one … spoon.

Father: Say ‚other‘.

CHILD: ‚Other‘.

Father: ‚Spoon‘.

CHILD: ‚Spoon‘

Father: ‚Other spoon‘.

CHILD: ‚Other spoon‘. …

CHILD: Now give me the other one spoon.

Indirect negative evidence

Parents do not explicitly correct their children‘s

grammatical errors, but it has been shown that

they are likely to repeat their child‘s incorrect

utterance (correctly).

CHILD: Daddy putted on my hat on.

MOTHER: Yes, daddy put your hat on.

Generative Grammar

Construction Grammar

Grammar consists of form-function pairings, i.e. constructions.

A construction is a complex linguistic sign that combines a specific form with a particular meaning.

Linguistic sign

r{bIt

Construction Grammar

• Constructions are linguistic signs.

• Constructions are more complex than words.

• Constructions are formally more abstract than words.

Passive Construction

(1) The meal was cooked by John.

(2) Mary was hit by the car.

(3) The ball was kicked by Peter.

(4) The book was written by John.

NP be V-ed by NP

PA verb AG

Caused-motion Construction

(1) She dragged the child into the car.

(2) He wiped the mud off his shoes.

(3) She forced the ball into the jar.

(4) He pushed the book down the chute.

NP V NP PP

<X causes Y to move somewhere>

(5) She sneezed the napkin of the table.

Resultative Construction

(1) Peter meeked the bleek dizzy.

NP V NP ADJ

<X changes Y such Y becomes Z>

Transitive Grammar

(1) Peter hit mary.

(2) Peter kicked the horse.

(3) Peter pressed the button.

(4) Peter pushed the elephant.

NP V NP

<X affected Y>

Category structure (1) a. Peter kicked the ball. [activity]

b. Peter likes bananas

(2) a. Peter eat it up. [telic]b. Peter is eating it.

(3) a. I write your name. [volitional]b. I forgot your name.

(4) a. I kicked the ball. [punctual]

b. I carried the ball.

(5) a. I drank the beer. [individual]b. I drank some beer.

(6) a. I kicked the ball. [affirmative]b. I didn’t kick the ball.

Form

Meaning

Form

Meaning

Form

MeaningForm

Meaning

Form

Meaning

Construction grammar network