Language Acquisition

Question 1

Nature Vs Nurture Debate

Answer 1

• language learning should be really difficult
• 3yo are really good at figuring out the rules of language
• children receive a lack of negative evidence

Question 2

Nature Hypothesis (The Genetic Hypothesis)

Answer 2

• Chomsky
• children are equipped with and innate system that is geared towards learning language
• humans are biologically prewired to learn a language

Question 3

evidence for nature

Answer 3

• poverty of the stimulus argument
  
  • although most of the input is grammatical it is still imperfect
  • no negative evidence
• creole languages (kids turning pidgins into grammatical languages)

Question 4

Nicaraguan sign language

Answer 4

• children turned ungrammatical home sign communication into a grammatical language with each other
  -one might argue that the kids are generating their own grammar without any input

Question 5

Cross linguistic predictions

Answer 5

• if a language differs from other langauges in a particular respect then that aspect must be learned
• if a property exists in all languages that property might be a part of the universal grammar

Question 6

Language Universals

Answer 6

• grammar structures needed to give orders, negate, and ask
• use verbs that can be interpreted as occurring in the past, present, or future
• possess a finite set of phonemes that are strung together to form syllables, and words
• share the basic categories of words
• use pronouns
• include any blend of subcategory of the basic five colors: red, blue, yellow, black, white
• all have the colors red white and black
• contain long distance dependencies

Question 7

Evidence for nature (the brain)

Answer 7

• localized brain regions (universal)
  
  • left hemisphere (in 95% of people
  • wernicke’s area: semantics
  • broca’s area: syntax
  • plasticity in childhood: children recover from brain injury to left hemisphere much better than adults
• SLI - a modular deficits in language, not correlated with other cognitive functions

Question 8

Evidence for nurture

Answer 8

• children deprived of language
  
  • genie: discovered at 13
  • chelsea: misdiagnosed as mentally disabled until 31 but was actually deaf; learned words but never got past 2.5 year old syntax; dropped subjects; mixed up word order
• second language learners: age at which learning SL reflects affects scores
• the sensitive period of language learning

Question 9

Phonology

Answer 9

• 1st 12 months: native sounds contrasts and word boundaries

Question 10

perceptual narrowing

Answer 10

by 10-11 months lose the ability to hear meaningful sound differences in non-native languages

Question 11

Word leaning biases

Answer 11

• whole object assumptions: kids map nouns to whole objects rather than salient parts or object properties
• mutual exclusivity: map new words to unfamiliar objects
• taxonomic constraints: nouns refer to categories of things (from 9 mo); extend words to other tokens on the basis of: shape for solid objects and material for substances