nativist: early word speech

Question 1

what is the nativist approach to language learning?

Answer 1

children learn language through innate machinery (universal grammar)

Question 2

why do nativists say language is creative?

Answer 2

children have access to innate grammatical rules

Question 3

why do nativists say children observe adult word order?

Answer 3

they have an abstract rule of subject-verb-object

Question 4

what do nativists say generalisations are evidence of?

Answer 4

innate rules

Question 5

what did chomsky say grammar is?

Answer 5

a symbolic computational system that processes relationships between abstract variables

Question 6

why do nativists assume acquiring aspects of grammar has an all-or-nothing effect?

Answer 6

once a child learns an aspect of grammar, they inherit the privileges of that entire category

Question 7

what parameter do children have in english?

Answer 7

verb-object

Question 8

how does universal grammar explain rule differences across languages?

Answer 8

differences are constrained in ways encoded by parameters

Question 9

what 3 pieces of evidence are there for UG parameters?

Answer 9

• children observe adult word order
• children are productive early on
• 2 1/2 year olds use inflections

Question 10

what did gertner, fisher & eisengart (2006) discover about UG parameters?

Answer 10

1 yr olds could identify the picture matching SVO sentences from 2 causal actions

Question 11

what are 3 issues with parameters?

Answer 11

• parameters are not clearly specified
• unclear how children avoid setting parameters incorrectly
• how do bilingual children set 2+ versions of parameters?

Question 12

what did akhtar et al (1997) discover about the SVO parameter?

Answer 12

limited knowledge of SVO in production and act out studies

Question 13

what did pine et al (1998) discover about lexically specific knowledge?

Answer 13

there is evidence of partial lexically specific knowledge within grammatical categories

Question 14

that did ambridge et al (2015) discover about what language children hear?

Answer 14

there is a close relation between what children here and how often & what and when they learn language

Question 15

what are maturational models?

Answer 15

propose that language changes over time through parts of UG maturing or being switched on later in development

Question 16

what happens during the lexical stage in rashford’s (1990) maturational model?

Answer 16

utterances consist of content words, other parts of the corresponding adult utterance are left out

Question 17

what happens during the functional stage in rashford’s (1990) maturational model?

Answer 17

parts of UG for more complex grammar switch on, innate grammar matures

Question 18

what is the linking problem?

Answer 18

how do children link innate knowledge of grammatical categories to the words they hear?

Question 19

what is pinker’s (1984) semantic bootstrapping?

Answer 19

children use semantics to map words onto grammatical categories using innate linking rules

Question 20

what can children map semantic roles onto?

Answer 20

semantic syntax (agent = subject)

Question 21

why do children use a form of distributional analysis in semantic bootstrapping?

Answer 21

not all verbs are actions etc, apply word order from prototypical sentences to work out grammatical category of abstract terms

Question 22

what is the issue with passive sentences?

Answer 22

objects becomes subjects in passive sentences so children may conclude langugae is subject-verb-object