Language Flashcards
Pinker & Chomsky
He deals sympathetically with Noam Chomsky’s claim that all human language shows evidence of a universal grammar, but dissents from Chomsky’s skepticism that evolutionary theory can explain the human language instinct.
The Language Instinct General Themes
• Pinker sees language as an ability unique to humans, • “preeminent trait
• develops without conscious effort or formal instruction
• embedded in our brian
produced by evolution to solve the specific problem of communication among social hunter-gatherers. He compares language to other species’ specialized adaptations such as spiders’ web-weaving or beavers’ dam-building behavior, calling all three “instincts”.
ba and pa
1 mo old infants can discriminate (evidenced by sucking faster on pacifier) new sounds
We come equipped with perceptual abilities
babbling
appears at around 6 months
by listening to own babbling, learn how to move mouth to change sounds
• As another example of innate language related functioning (MacWhinney), babies will begin cooing and eventually babbling without any clear behavioral learning antecedents
• babbling drift–babies move toward native language of parents
o or some believe it is a an attempt to mimic parental verbalizations
• babbling ends around 12 months, when first words of native language appear
MacWhinney
MacWhinney seems to indicate that babies acquire language not just to solve problems or express selves, but that they are applying abilities in order to participate fully in conversational interactions with others. To the degree that there is an innate yearning to produce language, it’s a motivation to converse or have a social exchange.
MacWhinney vs Pinker
• As opposed to Pinker, MacWhinney places greater emphasis on the nurture part of the equation. When it comes to language and speaking first words, the mother’s cues, gestures, and situational context are critical.
o Seeing the toy being waved and hearing the name in one motion is especially important. Using single words simplifies learning.
o Tying words into social context is important. Showing some food and describing it as “yummy”, or making a bath and calling it “bath” teaches children context.
o Infants will vocalize much more when looking into their mother’s eyes. They respond to a parent’s vocalization, and continue to do so as they grow. When an adult is teaching an infant a new word while they are hiding behind a screen, the child fails to learn the word.
• Gaze, intonation and pointing provide valuable contextual cues to the reference of nouns.
• Language requires a massive amount of instruction but the instruction is always already implicitly occurring
• Vocalizations, eye gazes, and turn taking between infant and parent constitutes a rudimentary form of communication that gradually evolves into language. As children receive more social input and scaffolding and develop cognitively, this ability develops.
• Experiment involving the demitasse. The experimenter would have a cup, glass, and demitasse. A child already is familiar with the word cup and glass, and when asked to pass the demitasse they are able to infer correctly. Children are able to acquire language so quickly using syntactic contexts. For example, children would be able to pick out correct referents when told “ this is not green, it is pum.” They may not know what pum is, but they are able to place this new word into the category of a color.
“pum”
foreign word used to illustrate item based pattern based on cues, not constraints
e.g. “this isn’t green, it’s pum”—child understands that pum is a color, that it fits into a particular category
‘fast mapping’
big bird & cookie monster
Even before they put words together, babies can comprehend a sentence using its syntax. For example, in one experiment, babies who spoke only in single words were seated in front of two television screens, each of which featured a pair of adults dressed up as Cookie Monster and Big Bird from Sesame Street. One screen showed Cookie Monster tickling Big Bird; the other showed Big Bird tickling Cookie Monster. A voice-over said, “OH LOOK!!! BIG BIRD IS TICKLING COOKIE MONSTER!! FIND BIG BIRD TICKLING COOKIE MONSTER!!” (Or vice-versa.) The children must have understood the meaning of the ordering of subject, verb, and object, because they looked more at the screen that depicted the sentence in the voice-over (Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, 1991).
Quine’s Gavagai
constraint based learning
Indeterminacy of reference refers to the interpretation of words or phrases in isolation, and Quine’s thesis is that no unique interpretation is possible, because the meaning of a word varies with context
Markman’s ‘mutual exclusivity’
only 1 word can refer to 1 object
disproven by bilingual 1 year olds using ague and water to refer to same concept
nominal bias
o tendency to identify new words as nouns instead of verbs
however, cultural differences do not support this
Whorf vs. Humpty Dumpty
• Whorf vs. Humpty Dumpty
o Humpty-Dumpty approach – one has a specific, personal agenda to word meaning
o Whorf – as one matures, the exact meaning is more influenced by surroundings–one’s language determines one’s conception of the world, possibly limiting emotional expression
4 types of crying
Birth, Pain, Hunger, Pleasure
Can be considered fixed action patterns, evidence of evolutionary influence
sensitive period of language development
normal language developed through age 6
then it becomes harder
theory–no longer taking in a new language we are dismantling our LAD for cognitive efficiency
Milestones in vocabulary growth
o 9 months – comprehension of a few words
o 9-12 months – produce first words (~5 words in their vocabulary)
o 15 months – comprehend 50 words
o 20 months – produce 50 words
o 24 months – vocabulary ranges 10-450, mean of 150
o 6 years – vocabulary of 14,000
o adults (by age 40) - ~40,000 words in vocabulary
