Language Learning Flashcards
What does language learning require?
Phonetics (producing + perceiving speech)
Phonology (sounds/signs)
Morphology (constructing words)
Syntax (constructing phrases/sentences)
Semantics (mapping meaning to words/sentences)
Pragmatics (How language is used)
What are the views on how language is learned?
We have an innate language-specific module, which just needs to be tuned to the specific language we hear
We actually learn language “from scratch”
What is Universal Grammar?
Children will eventually develop certain language with certain properties eventually.
There is recently-evolved module to that is
innate and specific to humans
Provides computation mechanism useful for grammatical processing such as recursion
What are the arguments in favor of UG?
Poverty of the stimulus argument. The speech that children are exposed to is consistent with many possible grammars.
The fact that they learn the correct grammar implies that they have an innate bias towards that grammar.
What are some other arguments in favor of UG?
Linguistic Universal argument. All languages share some key features. this implies that there are some innate UG that constrains what kidns of languages humans create.
Emergence of structured languages in enviros w/out structured languages. If people spontaneously use grammatical structure without being taught it must be innate.
Examples Home sign. Deaf children produced signs without and adult model.
Creole languages. exposed only to impoverished pidgin languages. kids developed highly structured combo languages.
What is the anti-Universal Grammar view?
Language learning can be accomplished purely via domain-general cognition.
There is no language-specific module, and language can be learned from scratch w/out innate hints about how it works.
Against Poverty of the Stimulus.
Children can pick the correct grammatical rules with hierarchal structure) solely with a general “Occams razor” preference for simple explanations. The adam kid speech or corpus (flat vs hiearchal)
What are some other arguments against UG?
Some languages (native) have multiple words with different meanings. (linguists universal counter-example)
