constructivist: multi world speech Flashcards
at what age do most infants acquire the majority of their grammar by?
age 5
what does syntax allow?
productivity and understanding between speakers
what are multi word combinations?
mainly content words referring to here and now, observes adult word order
what are lexical rules?
item specific, based on individua words or schemas
what are schemas?
combinations of words
how do lexical rules limit word utterances?
limited variety of utterances until infant able to generalise between schemas
what are syntactic rules?
abstract, based on grammatical categories
what are grammatical categories?
verb + object, subject + verb
how do syntactic rules limit word utterances?
rules are not restricted so all utterances are available
what is the constructivist approach?
infants start out with a limited set of rules, most language acquisition is context-dependent
what is grammar used for?
communication
how is language learned according to the constructivist approach?
language is learned using cognitive mechanisms
what are the 3 cognitive mechanisms used for language learning?
- communicative intention reading
- drawing analogies
- distributional learning
how do routines help infants learn language?
they predict what happens next so can map what language is being used refers to
what representations does the constructivist approach say children start of with?
lexically based linguistic representations
what happens after children learn lexically based linguistic representations?
gradual generalisation to create more syntactic categories and rules
what is tomasello’s (1992) verb island hypothesis?
verbs are acquired in a social context
what did tomasello (1992) discover about verbs and subjects?
infants dont always generalise the verb to the subject
what did akhtar & tomasello (1997) discover about novel verbs?
infants struggle to explain who does what with novel verbs
what are infants’ limited lexical constructions?
early utterances are based around individual words. using slot and frame patterns
what is structure combining?
constructions infants learn reflect the frequenct of patterns in input
what did lieven et al (2003) discover about structure combining?
infants’ complex utterances are based around repetitions or small changes
what ‘operations’ do infants use to change sources into targets?
substitution, addition and dropping
how many exact/reduced self-repetitions did children produce in lieven et al’s (2003) study?
63%
how many single operation novel utterances did infants produce in lieven et al’s (2003) study?
74%
how does structure combining explain how children operate language?
infants operate with an extensive inventory of utterances
what is semantic analogy?
infants need to learn a large number of verbs before they can recognise the similarities between them
what do infants do after they learn a large number of verbs?
they build more general schemas, learn agent-action-patient pattern
what did matthews & bannard (2010) discover in their repeated sequences study?
infants make fewer errors when items at the end of the 3 word frame are more similar
what do matthews & bannard (2010) say about the importance of overlaps in meaning?
they help children build flexible constructions
what is distributed learning?
learning the patterns in language itself
what did childers & tomasello (1998) discover about pronouns?
pronouns help infants understand the subject-verb-object pattern for novel verbs
what does distributed learning say about early language organisation?
early language is organised around the same categories and rules as adult speakers
what does distributed learning say about gradual generalisations?
gradual generalisations are based on similarities in form and meaning
