Lecture 4

Question 1

multiword speech/utterances

Answer 1

how children put words together

Question 2

when does multiword speech/utterances occur

Answer 2

typically between 18mo-2yrs

Question 3

what are the two broad theoretical approaches to multi-word speech/utterances

Answer 3

natavist (or generativist) or constructivist (or usage-based) accounts

Question 4

what is syntax

Answer 4

grammar
the way in which a language allows words to be combined

Question 5

what does syntax allow

Answer 5

• enables understanding between speakers e.g. ‘who did what to whom’ (due to rules for a language)
• allows productivity - with finite set of words we can produce infinite number of possible sentences

Question 6

language of syntax

Answer 6

• grammatical categories: (e.g.) noun, verb
• grammatical role of participants: subject, object
• meaning: agent, action. patient

(- when children create utterances do they pay attention to these roles/meanings/organisation?)

Question 7

what is language and why we need to explain it

Answer 7

• species-specific
• species-universal

Question 8

species-specific

Answer 8

little evidence other primates can acquire syntax even with intensive training
(only simple sentences/we have a greater capacity for complex language as humans)

Question 9

species-universal

Answer 9

virtually all children have acquired the majority of the grammar of their language by 5yrs

Question 10

what are early word combinations like

Answer 10

• mainly content word e.g. want drink, daddy shirt
• refers to here-and-now, easily understood in context
• creative utterances e.g. more sing (not grammatically correct like adult but make sense)(not pure imitation)
• observes adult word order e.g. truck gone vs gone truck (two different meanings suggests some kind of organisation underpinning childrens early utterances)

Question 11

Lexical (word-based) rules that might underpin children’s grammar

Answer 11

• rules item-specific or lexically based: based on individual words or schemas (set of words)
• e.g. rules on the word get i.e. get + X (item follows)
• limited variety of utterances until children able to generalize between schemas
• children productive if within limits of lexical rules

Question 12

Syntactic (grammatical rules)

Answer 12

• more natavist, saying children start out with rules
• rules abstract: based on grammatical categories e.g. verb + object (get truck)(causes problems)
• if children start out with abstract grammar, rules not restricted, therefore allow all utterances possible in adult language
• whereas lexical rules are more limited in the number of different utterances that can be produced

Question 13

iterim summary - multi-word utterances

Answer 13

• children’s early multi-word utterances are not random, nor simply imitations of what they have hears
• children learn language but other species do not demonstrate the same impressive abilities
• where does this knowledge to put words together come from ? is it lexical or an innate grammar and why can’t they do it earlier?

Question 14

what is the constructivist approach

Answer 14

(or usage-based)
- idea is grammar (language) is used for communication
- infants are motivated to learn to communicate (want to exchange with other people in the social world)
- grammar can be learned using general cognitive learning mechanisms: communication intention-reading, drawing analogies, distributional learning

Question 15

communicative intention-reading

Answer 15

children being able to understand what adults want to communicate

Question 16

drawing analogies

Answer 16

seeing similarities between things and drawing them together (basis of forming categories, groups of words that function in the same way)

Question 17

distributional learning

Answer 17

pattern finding in language and sounds
- what bits of language go together and extracting it that way

Question 18

the role of routines in constructivist approach to learning multi-word speech

Answer 18

• routines allow children to predict what happens next and therefore what the language they are hearing might refer to
• repetitive chunks of language can be learned in context where the relation between linguistic form and meaning is more transparent

Question 19

evidence we need for a constructivist approach :

Answer 19

• children begin with lexically-based linguistic representations (around words they hear often)
• high frequency items are learned early (focus in the language on these words)
• only gradual generalisation across exemplars to create more abstract syntactic categories and rules (takes time to link generalisation together to create more abstract rules)

Question 20

evidence for a constructivist approach

Answer 20

• verb island hypothesis
• limited (lexical) constructions

Question 21

verb island hypothesis

Answer 21

• knowledge of grammar tied to individual verbs until 2.5-3yrs (each word has own grammar)
• child initially unable to to generalise between verbs with similar meanings or used in similar sentances

Question 22

experimental evidence for verb island hypothesis

Answer 22

• with familiar verbs e.g. chasing, 2yr olds able to describe actions correctly to explain who is chasing, and whom is being chased
• but unfamiliar verbs before 3yrs children struggle to explain who is doing what to whom as they have no verb island for the verb… haven’t learned to generalise across verbs

Question 23

limited (lexcial) constructions

Answer 23

• children’s utterances not based on exclusively verbs but on any high frequency words can form a basis of organisation for words

e.g. where’s X gone, more X

where’s or more = point of organisation

.. constructions children learn reflect frequency of patterns in input

Question 24

iterim summary - child’s limitations

Answer 24

• good evidence that children’s early utterance are more restricted than those of adults… only use parts of grammar
• this can be described with lexical frame around individual words (or verb islands)
• but how do they ‘join up’ different parts (islands) of their developing linguistic knowledge

Question 25

3 possibilities through constructivist view on how children build adult-like grammar

Answer 25

1. structure combining
2. semantic analogy
3. distributional learning

Question 26

structure combining

Answer 26

• children build on utterances they have used before
• what changes are required to change closest matching utterance to new word: 3 types of operations:
  1. substitution of words
  2. addition of words
  3. drop (remove a word)

Question 27

conclusions from structure combining - constructivist

Answer 27

• many complex utterances are based around repetitions or small changes to what has been said before(..gradually builds up - constructivist view)
• most changes involved simple substitutions within a lexically-based frame, or addition or subtraction of a single word
• suggests child is operating with an extensive inventory of specific utterances, fairly limited mechanisms for altering utterances to match the demands of discourse context

Question 28

semantic analogy

Answer 28

children need to learn a number of verbs before they can recognise similarities between them and begin to build more general schemas
- commonalities reinforced, differences forgotten

Question 29

evidence for semantic analogy

Answer 29

• repeating sequences
• Matthews & Bannard 2010
• 2&3yr olds asked to repeat 4 word sequence
• 2 conditions for words: one high slot similarity, one low slot similarities
• children slower and fewer errors with high similarity sequences - suggests overlap in meaning helps build flexible constructs

Question 30

distributional learning - building adult grammar

Answer 30

the ability to learn the co-occurrence of characteristics of the input i.e. which words occur together or in similar contexts / patterns
e.g. verb - ing/-ed/-s or noun-s/’s

Question 31

experimental evidence for distributional learning

Answer 31

Childers & Tomasello 1998 on 2 yr olds
- noun phrase only condition
- mixed condition: nouns and pronouns
- used novel verb

children who heard pronouns were able to generalise more easily than those who only hear the noun, helped children extract a more abstract representation of the subject-verb-object sentance structure for novel verb

Question 32

interim summary - childvs. adult

Answer 32

• studies suggest that children’s language production is not organised around the same categories and rules as used by adult speakers
• evidence for gradual generalizations based on similarities in form and meaning of sentences.. constructivist view

Question 33

constructivist view summary

Answer 33

• children begin to combine words around 18-24 months
• theory argues children access meaning and learn to combine words by interpreting the intentions of the adult from hearing language used in predictable cotexts
• 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 gradually generalise

Question 34

critical evaluation of constructivist view

Answer 34

• production studies difficult for children: memory load and recall, not focusing on what they already know
• production studies may underestimate how abstract children’s knowledge of sentence structure is