III. Digging Beneath the Surface

Question 1

speech acts and types

Answer 1

actions performed through speech
1. declarative
2. interrogative
3. imperative

Question 2

declarative speech acts

Answer 2

stating something; making an observation

Question 3

interrogative speech acts

Answer 3

asking a question

Question 4

imperative speech acts

Answer 4

issuing commands

Question 5

force of an utterance

Answer 5

the communicative effect of an utterance
- The speaker’s intention
- declarative, interrogative, imperative
- The force of an utterance can be pragmatic; that is, the semantic meaning of an utterance is not always equivalent to its force

Question 6

content of an utterance

Answer 6

what the utterance is about
- the semantic topic of an utterance
- not to be mistaken with the force (communicative intent) of an utterance

Question 7

How are certain kinds of force associated with certain kinds of clauses? (force conventionalism)

Answer 7

Force conventionalism is the idea that types of speech acts ideally go with their correspondent types of force.
- declarative force w/ declarative speech acts
- imperative force w/ imperative speech acts
- interrogative force w/ interrogative speech acts

Question 8

What research supports the idea that infants can understand speech acts?

Answer 8

1. Rakoczy & Tomasello (2009) found that 3 year old children understand the actors responsible in speech acts; 3-year olds were able to identify when a speaker makes a false statement about a scene (declarative speech act), and also when an actor in a scene does not follow the order of a speaker (imperative speech act)
2. Goodhue et al. (2023) conducted a preferential looking study with 18-mo. olds and found that infants understood that speakers who lack information are more likely to produce interrogative sentences than declarative sentences

Question 9

Kovacs et al. (2014): goal, methods, findings, conclusion
(pointing and speech acts)

Answer 9

goal: do 12 mo. old infants point to achieve goals? do infants use imperative pointing?
methods:
exp1 infants would play with a toy with a researcher, and then a puppet would appear behind the researcher. if the child pointed then the researcher would react depending on the condition:
condition 1, sharing: researcher acknowledged the child’s pointing with an affirmative expression
condition 2, informing: researcher acknowledged the child’s pointing and made an expression to convey a certain attitude about the puppet
exp2
condition 1, sharing: researcher labelled a toy with a familiar label (e.g. kitty)
condition 2, informing: researcher labelled a toy with a novel label (e.g. dax)
findings: infant’s pointing generally increased for informing trials and decreased in sharing trials; researcher’s feedback which gave the infant new info led to more pointing from the infant
conclusion: findings support the notion that children may point to gain new information, as opposed to previous beliefs that children only use declarative pointing

Question 10

What are some limits to using observation for infant behaviours? How does this interfere with our ability to study speech acts?

Answer 10

• limitations: not all behaviours that researchers want to observe will be produced naturally
• Without experimental manipulation, it is difficult for researchers to understand children’s underlying motivation for certain behaviours

Question 11

rationalism (cognitive revolution)

Answer 11

the belief that humans have a cognitive ability for language as the result of an innate gift
- unique human knowledge and behaviours are a result of an innate gift
- modern day researchers fall under the branch of rationalism

Question 12

empiricism (cognitive revolution)

Answer 12

the belief that all learning comes through sensory experience; that humans are born as “blank slates” and that all behaviours and knowledge is the result of experience
- John Locke
- modern day researchers don’t really support this branch of thinking anymore

Question 13

Nativist perspective of language acquisition

Answer 13

that human ability for language is the result of an innate gift that is specific to the domain of language
- Noam Chomsky, Lila Gleitman
- humans have special knowledge for language itself
- there are some aspects of language that cannot be learned through input itself: e.g. Poverty of the Stimulus
- universal grammar: infants have innate knowledge for possible grammars of language
- learning is a process of inference:

Question 14

Constructivist perspective of language acquisition

Answer 14

that human ability for language is the result of an innate gift that is domain general
- Steven Pinker, Elizabeth Bates
- statistical learning: infants notice patterns in language and make generalisations about grammar
- humans have a general gifted intelligence that enables them to learn and use language

Question 15

Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

Answer 15

a hypothesized set of mental structures and processes that allows the language learning child to learn language based on what input they received
- aligned with universal grammar
- 3 steps between input and output:
1) perceptual encoding: audition, theory of mind, memory, pattern recognition
2) intake & inference: using UG and induction
3) developing grammar

Question 16

types of evidence for language learning

Answer 16

1. positive evidence
2. direct negative evidence
3. indirect negative evidence
4. poverty of the stimulus (lack of evidence)

Question 17

positive evidence

Answer 17

grammatical features of a language that a child can learn through observation of them being produced; evidence of acceptable sentences merely by what is produced
- available to the child
- used by the child

Question 18

direct negative evidence

Answer 18

corrections that speakers may issue to the child that can help a child learn what is unacceptable in their language; children must compare their unacceptable sentence with the corrections/corrected sentences to understand what is ungrammatical
- available to the child
- controversial as to whether children actually use direct negative evidence

Question 19

indirect negative evidence

Answer 19

hypothetically, inferences about what is ungrammatical in their language that a child makes through observing what is not produced in their language; children must reason about which features of a language must be ungrammatical if they are never observing those features
- controversial as to whether children actually use indirect negative evidence

Question 20

Poverty of the Stimulus

Answer 20

in which a stimulus (linguistic input) is not informative enough to help a child learn, hence why the stimulus is “poor”; when an environment/stimulus does not carry information which a child can learn from
- we know things about our language, even if we’ve never received input for those specific things; how can a child know certain information about how their language works despite never receiving input for that aspect of their language?
- PoS arguments provide strong support for Nativism, that we have an innate gift for language itself
- challenges Constructivism

Question 21

development of pointing abilities

Answer 21

infants begin pointing to objects around 12 months old
- researchers once thought that infants only point to signal their interest in something/signal an observation (declarative pointing) or to say that they want something (imperative pointing)
—recent research has suggested that it is possible for children to use pointing for imperative speech acts