Lecture 4, Constructivist Approaches Flashcards
What is the definition of syntax?
The ways in which a language allows words to be combined.
What are the grammatical categories of words?
Noun-Phrase
Verb, Noun-Phrase
What is language specific to?
Species - there is little evidence that other primates can acquire syntax even with intensive training.
Universal - virtually all children have acquired the majority of the grammar of their language by 5 years.
What are early word combinations like?
Consist of:
- mainly content words
- refers to here and now, easily understood in context
- creative
- observes adult world order
SUGGESTS SOME KIND OF ORGANISING PRINCIPLES
What are lexical [word-based] rules?
The rules are item-specific, and are based on individual words or schemas [sets of words]. There is a limited variety of utterances until children are able to generalise between schemas.
What are syntactic [grammatical] rules?
Rules are abstract and based on grammatical categories. [Verb + Object]; [Subject + Verb]. Rules are not restricted, therefore allow all utterances possible in the adult.
What is the constructivist approach?
- Grammar is used for communication
- Infants are motivated to learn to communicate
- Grammar can be learned using general cognitive learning mechanisms [Communicative intention-reading; Drawing analogies; Distributional learning]
Is there any evidence to support the constructivist approach, if so, what is there?
- Children begin with lexically-based linguistic representations.
- High frequency are learned early.
- Only gradual generalisation across exemplars to create more abstract syntactic categories and rules.
What is the Verb-Island Hypothesis?
Data collected from a diary of one child aged 16-24 months. The data suggested that first verbs acquired in small number of social/pragmatic contexts.
- Parents describe activity of child or others.
- Parents comment on child’s intentions/wishes.
- Parents request something of child.
Is there evidence for the Verb-Island Hypothesis?
- 2 year olds able to describe actions with familiar verbs
- Unfamiliar verbs, children before 3yrs struggle.
What evidence is there to suggest that there is limited lexical constructions?
- Children’s early utterances based on individual words but not verbs
- Any high frequency word/group of words can for basis for organisation of child’s linguistic system
- The constructions children learn reflect the frequency of particular patterns in the input
Which ways do children link up their lexically-based constructions to form more adult-like grammar?
Structure-combining
Semantic analogy
Distributional learning
What is structure combining and is there any evidence supporting this?
Lieven et al., 2003 researched how children’s utterances build on what they have previously said?
Diary study of since child for 6 weeks, recorded for 5 hours/w. Diary kept of utterances. Utterances from prior recordings are compared to new utterances. There were 72 exact repetitions, 28 repititions of mother, and 86 exact or reduced self-repetitions.
What is semantic analogy?
Children need to learn large numbers of verbs before they recognise similarities between them and begin to build more general schemas. Commonalities reinforced, and differences are forgotten.
Evidence: repeating sentences. 2/3 y/o asked to repeat 4 word sentences. Manipulated 3-word frame by similarity of meaning of items in 4th ‘slot’. Children fewer errors when items that normally occur in the slot are more similar, which suggests overlap in meaning helps to build flexible conversations.
What is distributional learning?
The ability to learn the co-occurrence characteristics of the input, i.e., which words occur together or in similar contexts.
Experimental evidence shows that pronouns helped children extract a more abstract representation of the subject-verb-object sentence structure for use with novel verbs.
