Dev wk 4 Flashcards
when do children start to put words together to create multi word utterances/multi word speech
18 mnths - 2 years
what is syntax
The ways in which a language allows words to be
combined: Enables understanding between speakers, e.g. ‘who did
what to whom’ Allows productivity – with a finite set of words we can
produce an infinite number of possible sentences. (and allows understanding of these new sentences)
Language is speiceis _____
and species ______
meaning
Species-specific: other primates can’t acquire syntax level language
Species-universal: virtually all children have acquired the majority of the grammar of their language by 5 years
what are early word combinations like
mainly content words e.g. got daddy shirt
- refer to here and now, easily understood in context
- Creative e.g. more sing
- Observes adult word order e.g. truck gone vs gone truck.
what are Lexical (word based) Rules of multi words
Rules are item specific. based on indiv words or schemas.
Get + X
where’s the + X
allows Limited variety of utterances until children are able to generalise between schemas
syntactic (grammatical) rules
Rules abstract - based on grammatical categories.
verb THEN object
subject + verb
(should be able to produce large range of utterances)
some beleive children start off with these
What is the constructivist approach?
grammer
cognitive mechanisms
- grammar is used for communication
- Infants are motivated to learn to communicate
- Grammar can be learned using general cognitive learning mechanisms
The role of routines (in constructivist approach)
allow children to predict what happens next :. what the lang they’re hearing might refer to (and so can map words to meaning)
Repetitive chunks of language can then be learned in context where the relation between linguistic form and meaning is more transparent
what kind of evidence would support a constructivist/ usage based approach?
- Children begin with lexically-based linguistic representations
- High frequency items learned early
- Only gradual generalisation across exemplars to create more abstract syntactic categories and rules. Will take time to sort into categories if child is learning each word seperately.
evidence for lexically based rules: The verb island hypothesis
knowlege of grammar is initially tied to individual verbs until 2.5 - 3 years.
Child initially unable to generalise between verbs with similar meanings or used in similar sentence types.
e.g.
Form: X Kick Y
Meaning: Kicker (verb) Kickee
evidence for verb island hypothesis
- With familiar verbs, 2 yr olds able to describe actions correctly, explaining who is chasing and whom is being chased.
BUT with unfamiliar (novel) verbs (e.g. weefing), before 3 years children struggle to explain who is doing what to whom.
Said to be because they don’t have a verb island for verb weefing .
and if they knew gramatical structure, they woul be able to
Structure combining
(Lieven, et al, 2003)
Basically putting utterances together to make a more “complex” utterance
Semantic analogy in language learning
looking at meaning.
begin with lexical based rules. learn a number of verbs before can recognise similarities between them and begin to build more general schemas.
C
X verb Y.
X is always the doer as opposed to x is the kicker and roller.
verb is action
Y is done-to
x verb y as a schema
distributional learning
Basically, children learn categories of words through learning the similarities between the words sounds.
like verbs often have - ing/ -ed. endings
nouns often have s endings.
this = distributional learning
Thus, distributional learning is about detecting and using these patterns in the “distribution” of words and grammatical markers within sentences to make sense of language structure.
children learn to group nouns and verbs based on the co-occurrence characteristics of the input - (the sound of their endings. walking/walked/walks vs nouns dogs dog’s cat/cat’s. can be identifiers) i.e. words which occur together or in similar contects
e.g. why are the tiger s eating?
vs
why is the dog running?
are and S sound
IS and no S sound
based on probability
Children begin to combine words together at ________ months
18-24
Constructivist theorists argue that children access meaning and learn to combine words by interpreting…
interpreting the intentions of their interlocutors
– from hearing language used in predictable contexts
Children build up grammar by
starting with more limited
scope rules (e.g. lexical rules) than those used by adults
and using general cognitive mechanisms to generalise
general cognitive learning mechanisms of the constructivist approach to language learning
- communicative intention-reading
- Drawing analogies. similarities between (like category learning)
- Distributional learning (pattern finding in language and sounds)
How do children link up their lexically-based
constructions to form a more adult-like
grammar?
(how do they take these primitive lexical frames and turn them into adult speech? )
- Structure combining
- Semantic analogy
- Distributional learning
evidence for limited (lexical) constructions
(verb island)
Doesn’t only occour for verbs.
any high frequency word group/group of words can form the basis for organisation of the childs linguistic system.
- constructions they learn reflect the frequency of particular patterns in the input.
how was structure combining studied
what types of changes did they find
what was the most common operation (change)
create a diary of a single child’s utterances for 6 weeks (age 2).
Recorded for 5 hours a week and written a diary of all new utterances
- all utterances on last hour -long recording = target
- All previous recordings were searched through to find the closest match = source.
what changes did they make?
- substitution (i got butter vs I got door)
- addition
- drop
mostly substitutions
conclusion of study into structure combining
Many of the child’s apparently complex utterances are
based around repetitions or small changes to what she has said before
mostly simple substitutions.
Suggests: child is operating with an extensive inventory of specific utterances, and fairly limited mechanisms of altering utterences to match demands.
Evidence for the use of semantic analogy in building adult language
2 & 3 yr olds asked to repeat 4 word sentance.
same first 3 words with diff 4th word.
one condition 4th word was similar across consecutive trials.
other the 4th word was not similar.
found children made fewer errors in the similar condition.
suggests they have an abstract slot (/schema) that holds groups of words from meaning.
evidence for distributional learning
Noun phrase only condition
e.g. cat is chasing mouse
mixed condition (combo of lexical nouns and pronouns)
e.g. cat is chasing mouse/ he is hugging him.
after hearing verbs they already know, give a new verb e.g. dacking.
are children able to explain it by saying dog is dacking the lion
found that children that heard the pronouns were able to genralise far more easily.
reason. if you’ve heard pronouns. he is chasing him. he is eating him.
Far easier to say he is dacking him.
Created high frequency frame
critical evaluation of contructivist expls
- production studies are difficult for children
- do prod studies underestimate how abstract childrens knowlege of sentence strucure really is
- exactly how sentence structures become gradually more abstract over development is not clearly specified
