Week 10 Flashcards
“Object concepts are given to us by the world, and can be learned one at a time; predicate concepts form a system that must be invented or, from the child’s point of view, discovered.”
Gentner (1981)
Domain-general or language specific?
Domain-general
“An observer who notices everything can learn nothing, for there is no end of categories known and constructable to describe a situation.”
Gleitman (1990)
Domain-general or language specific?
language specific
Why is observing verb meanings a challenge? (Gleitman, 1990)
- infinite possible referents (cf. Quine, 1970); unobservable referents
- multiple interpretations of scenario
- communication failures
What is syntactic bootstrapping?
-narrow in on the possible meanings of verbs using a sentence
What would the bootstrapping theory predict about adult learning if Gentner was right?
A. Adults learn verbs more easily than children because adults have more sophisticated conceptual systems.
B. Adults should learn verbs less easily than children because they have less neural plasticity.
C. Adults, like children, will learn verbs more easily within a syntactic frame than in isolation.
A
What would the bootstrapping theory predict about adult learning if Gleitman was right?
A. Adults learn verbs more easily than children because adults have more sophisticated conceptual systems.
B. Adults should learn verbs less easily than children because they have less neural plasticity.
C. Adults, like children, will learn verbs more easily within a syntactic frame than in isolation.
C
Explain the study about simulating kids’ learning and its results. What theory does it support?
(Gillette et al., 1999)
- videos of parents interacting with their kids
- 6 different conditions for these videos
1) silent video + beeps: had a beep for every time that the word had been uttered (so beep instead of word) and then at the at the end they ask what the word was
2) no video + noun list: had no video but they had a list of all the nouns that had co-occurred with that verb in the interaction
3) silent video + noun list: got video and noun list
4) no video + syntactic frame (nonsense words): had no video but they got “the zib is blicking the dax” syntactic frame
5) no video + syntactic frame (nouns): had no video but syntactic frame with actual nouns (mom is gonna beep you a book)
6) full video + verbs bleeped out: had full video but verbs were bleeped out
results: 4 and 5 did better than 3
- supports the Gleitman theory of syntactic bootstrapping
Can kids use syntactic frames?
• yes, at age 4;0 for guessing word meanings
(Fisher et al., 1994)
-4 year olds
“Look! Ziking!” (more likely to think it means feeding)
“Look! The baby is ziking!” (more likely to think it means eating)
“Look! The mother is ziking the baby!” (more likely to think it means feeding)
-syntactic bootstrapping, multiple different points of view on the scenario
Can kids use syntactic frames?
• yes, at age 1;5 for preferential looking (Hirsh-Pasek et al., 1985)
- preferential looking study with 1.5 year olds
- two TVs, baby sits far enough back, mother has earphones and visor on
- speaker plays some audio, kid will look at the scene that matches what they understand from what they hear
“Look! Big bird is tickling Cookie Monster!”
““Look! Cookie Monster is tickling big bird!”
-subject and object (some awareness of which is which)
Can kids use syntactic frames?
• probably, beginning around age 2;0 for production
- age 2
- when kids start to produce vocabulary explosion, multiword utterances
- once they’ve got enough nouns in their tool kit, they can do the bootstrapping to learn more words
- rapid explosion, learning dozens of new words a day, combining word utterances
Explain the study about Bootstrapping Complex Verb Meanings.
(Naigles, 1990)
“Look! The rabbit is gorping the duck!” “Look! The rabbit and the duck are gorping!”
- study with videos
- kids can use bootstrapping to understand complex verb meanings as well
- 2 year olds
- preferential looking paradigm
- people are dressed up as rabbit and duck
- both of them are making circles with their arms and one is pushing the other downwards
- see the video
- one group hears the first sentence and the other group hears the second sentence
- at test, they split the screen, the kids look either this way or that way
1) look at other picture not shown here
2) look at this picture
-a single verb can have a different perspective to describe it
What is a causative verb?
- two sub events encoded in these verbs
- can participate in a causative alternation: “the girl is bouncing the ball” or “the ball is bouncing” (means, result)
Discuss the study about Bootstrapping Causative Verbs . (Bunger & Lidz, 2004)
1) no word
2) unaccusative
3) transitive
4) multiple frame
- interested in how kids learn causative verbs
- show video, split screen
- preference paradigm
- 2 year olds
- 4 videos within a given condition
If kids use mapping rules, what should we observe in the study about boostrapping causative verbs?(Bunger & Lidz, 2004)
1) no word
2) unaccusative
3) transitive
4) multiple frame
Kids will look longer at the result subevent in the unaccusative frame
What were the results of the study about boostrapping causative verbs?(Bunger & Lidz, 2004)
1) no word
2) unaccusative
3) transitive
4) multiple frame
- no word: not a significant difference
- transitive: not a significant difference
- unaccusative: significant difference
- multiple frame: significant difference
-complicated verbs, 2 year olds are sensitive enough to syntax to focus on the one component in the verb
