PSY 369: Psycholinguistics Language Acquisition

Announcements On-line Blackboard quiz for chapter 4 is now up. You may take it 5 times, top score counts I am pushing Exam 2 back a day. We will have the exam on Feb. 28. Language development section includes information from Chapter 3, pages 72-87 Homework #2 due today

Language explosion continues The language explosion is not just the result of simple semantic development; the child is not just adding more words to his/her vocabulary. Child is mastering basic syntactic and morphological processes. Some comprehension of syntax notes (from Language acquisition, by Maria Guasti): Acoustic information gives hints as to syntax (bootstrapping), between 6 and 9 months infants become sensitive to prosodic coherence of units of different size, by 7 months can parse speech stream into clause sized units, by 9 months phrase sized units Children can use this information, along with word meaning information to build simplified structural representations Another view is semantic bootstrapping of syntax (e.g., Pinker) – children have innate access to some semantically transparent notions (e.g., person, thing, action, agent, patient). These then serve as basis for syntactic category information Children by age of two can respond appropriately to sentence like “make the doggie bite the cat” so they recognize the importance and relevance of cannonical English word order

Syntax Mean length of utterance (MLU) in morphemes Take 100 utterances and count the number of morphemes per utterance Daddy coming. Hi, car. Daddy car comed. Two car outside. It getting dark. Allgone outside. Bye-bye outside. # morphemes: 3, 2, 4, 3, 4, 2, 2 ‘-ing’ and ‘-ed’ separate morphemes ‘allgone’ treated as a single word MLU = morphemes/utterances = 20/7 = 2.86

Language explosion continues Proto-syntax (??) Holophrases (around 1-1.5 years) Single-word utterances may be used to express more than the meaning usually attributed to that single word by adults “dog” might refer to the dog is drinking water Typically idiosyncratic, but some conventional/common (e.g., indicate the existence of an object, request recurrence of object or event) Often combined with intonation or gesture Controversial claim: May reflect a developing sense of syntax, but not yet knowing how to use it (e.g., see Bloom, 1973)

Language explosion continues Syntax Roger Brown (1973) proposed 5 stages (determined by MLU not age) Stage 1: Telegraphic speech (MLU ~ 1.75; around 24 months) Children begin to combine words into utterances Limited to a small set (11) of semantic relations (75% of their utterances) Nomination “That ball” Agent & action “Daddy hit” Action & locative “go store” Recurrence “More ball” Action & object “hit ball” Entity & locative “book table” Nonexistence “Allgone ball” Agent & object “Daddy ball” Entity & attribute “big house” Debate: learning semantic relations or syntactic (position rules) “baby sleep” agent & action or Noun Verb Children in telegraphic speech stage are said to leave out the ‘little words’ and inflections: e.g. “Mummy shoe” NOT Mummy’s shoe “Two cat” NOT two cats

Language explosion continues Syntax Roger Brown (1973) proposed 5 stages More than two words Stages 2 through 5 Stage 2 (MLU ~2.25) begin to modulate meaning using word order (syntax) Modulations for number, time, aspect Gradual acquisition of grammatical morphemes (“-ing”, “-s” Later stages reflect generally more complex use of syntax (e.g., questions, negatives)

Acquiring Syntax Innateness accounts Learned accounts Semantic bootstrapping (e.g., Pinker 1984, 1989) Child has innate knowledge of syntactic categories and linking rules Child learns the meanings of some content words Child constructs some semantic representations of simple sentences Child makes guesses about syntactic structure based on surface form and semantic meaning Learned accounts Acquired from the linguistic input from the environment (e.g. Bates, 1979) Some comprehension of syntax notes (from Language acquisition, by Maria Guasti): Acoustic information gives hints as to syntax (bootstrapping), between 6 and 9 months infants become sensitive to prosodic coherence of units of different size, by 7 months can parse speech stream into clause sized units, by 9 months phrase sized units Children can use this information, along with word meaning information to build simplified structural representations Another view is semantic bootstrapping of syntax (e.g., Pinker) – children have innate access to some semantically transparent notions (e.g., person, thing, action, agent, patient). These then serve as basis for syntactic category information Speech to children is not impoverished (Snow, 1977): Child-directed speech Similar words occur in similar linguistic contexts Acoustic information (e.g., prosody) may provide syntactic cues Children learn grammar by mapping semantic roles (agent, action, patient) onto grammatical categories (subject, verb, object)

Acquiring Morphology Morphology Typically things like inflections and prepositions start around MLU of 2.5 (usually in 2 yr olds) Kids acquire the “rules” for applying morphology Wug experiment (Berko-Gleason, 1958) This person knows how to rick. She did the same thing yesterday. Yesterday she ________. Typically children say that she “ricked.”

Acquiring Morphology Morphology: order of acquisition is relatively consistent (James & Kahn, 1982) Age (yrs) Morpheme Example(s) 2 Present progressive I driving Articles A dog, the doctor Plural Balls Uncontractible Copula He is asleep, am, are 3 Third person singular He wants an apple Full progressive Be + ing, I am singing Regular past tense She walked

Acquiring Morphology Children sometimes make mistakes. My teacher holded the baby rabbits. Yes She holded the baby rabbits. No, she holded them loosely. Did you say your teacher held the baby rabbit? What did you say she did? Did you say held them tightly?

My teacher holded the baby rabbits. Acquiring Morphology Children sometimes make mistakes. My teacher holded the baby rabbits. This is ungrammatical in the adult language Shows that children are not simply imitating In this case, what they produce something that is not in their input.

My teacher holded the baby rabbits. Acquiring Morphology Children sometimes make mistakes. My teacher holded the baby rabbits. Why do they make errors like these? In the case at hand, we have what is called overregularization The verb hold has an irregular past tense form, held Because this form is used, the regular past tense-- that with -ed-- is not found (*hold-ed)

Acquiring Morphology The case of verb past tense: Regular verb forms require no stored knowledge of the past tense form (wug test) Past tense is accomplished by applying a past tense rule (e.g., add -ed) to the verb stem With irregular verbs something must be memorized Examples: Horton heared a Who I finded Renée The alligator goed kerplunk

Acquiring Morphology The case of verb past tense: Stages in the acquisition of irregular inflections With regular verbs, the default form -ed is used With irregulars, lists associating the verb with a particular form of the past tense have to be memorized: Past tense is -t when attached to leave, keep, etc. Is -> was Dig -> dug Has -> had

Acquiring Morphology Stages in the acquisition of irregular inflections time On the face of it, learning these morphological quirks follows a peculiar pattern: Early: correct irregular forms are used Middle: incorrect regular forms are used Late: correct forms are used again

Memory & Rules Why do we find this type of pattern? Memory and rules The use of overregularized forms starts at around the same that that the child is beginning to apply the default -ed rule successfully Early: All forms-- whether regular or irregular-- are memorized Middle: The regular rule is learned, and in some cases overapplied Late: Irregulars are used based on memory, regulars use the rule (the idea is that if the word can provide its own past tense from memory, then the past tense rule is blocked)

Memory & Rules Why do we find this type of pattern? Memory and rules Other accounts Maratsos (2000) – frequency explanation It is possible to predict which verbs will be subject to overregularization The more often an irregular form occurs in the input, the less likely the child is to use it as an overregularization This is evidence that some part of overregularization occurs because of memory failures Something about irregulars is unpredictable, hence they have to be memorized

What kind of “teaching” do kids get? If language is learned (and not innate), how do kids do it? What kind of feedback do they get? Positive evidence: Kids hear grammatical sentences Negative evidence: information that a given sentence is ungrammatical Poverty of the stimulus Claim: Positive evidence is not sufficient for learning a language.

What kind of “teaching” do kids get? Are the kids even aware of mistakes? The children are apparently aware of the fact that their forms are strange: Parent: Where’s Mommy? Child: Mommy goed to the store Parent: Mommy goed to the store? Child: NO! Daddy, I say it that way, not you

What kind of “teaching” do kids get? How much Positive Evidence is there (in Child-Directed speech)? Estimated 5000 – 7000 utterances a day Between ¼ and ⅓ are questions Over 20% are not “full” adult sentences (typically Noun or Prepositional phrases) Only about 15% have typical English SVO form Roughly 45% of all maternal utterances began with one of 17 words (e.g., “what”, “that”, “it”, “you”) Cameron-Faulkner, et al (2003) So what kids do hear may be somewhat limited.

What kind of “teaching” do kids get? Negative evidence could come in various conceivable forms. Upon hearing “Bill a cookie ate”, an adult might Grammar teacher parent feedback? “The sentence Bill a cookie ate is not a sentence in English, Timmy. No sentence with SOV word order is.” More realistic Not understand Look pained Rephrase the ungrammatical sentence grammatically “Bill at a cookie.”

Kids resist instruction… McNeill (1966) Child: Nobody don’t like me. Adult: No, say ‘nobody likes me.’ [repeats eight times] Adult: No, now listen carefully; say ‘nobody likes me.’ Child: Oh! Nobody don’t likes me.

Kids resist instruction… Cazden (1972) (observation attributed to Jean Berko Gleason) Child: My teacher holded the baby rabbits and we patted them. Adult: Did you say your teacher held the baby rabbits? Child: Yes. Adult: What did you say she did? Child: She holded the baby rabbits and we patted them. Adult: Did you say she held them tightly? Child: No, she holded them loosely. So there doesn’t seem to be a lot of explicit negative evidence, and what there is the kids often resist

Negative evidence via feedback? Do kids get “implicit” negative evidence? Do adults understand grammatical sentences and not understand ungrammatical ones? Do adults respond positively to grammatical sentences and negatively to ungrammatical ones?

Negative evidence via feedback? Brown & Hanlon (1970): Case study of “Adam” - looked at things that were said to him by adults, and what he said to them Adults understood 42% of the grammatical sentences. Adults understood 47% of the ungrammatical ones. Adults expressed approval after 45% of the grammatical sentences. Adults expressed approval after 45% of the ungrammatical sentences. Suggests that there isn’t a lot of good negative evidence.

In a way, it’s moot anyway… One of the striking things about child language is how few errors they actually make. For negative feedback to work, the kids have to make the errors (so that it can get the negative response). But they don’t make enough relevant kinds of errors to determine the complex grammar. Pinker, Marcus and others, conclude that much of this stuff must be innate. But this isn’t the only view. There is an ongoing debate about whether there are rules, or whether these patterns of behavior can be learned based on the language evidence that is available to the kids

Critical (sensitive) periods

Critical (sensitive) periods Certain behavior is developed more quickly within a critical period than outside of it. This period is biologically determined. Examples: Imprinting in ducks (Lorenz, ; Hess, 1973) Ducklings will follow the first moving thing they see Only happens if they see something moving within the first few hours (after 32 hours it won’t happen) of hatching Binocular cells in humans Cells in visual system that respond only to input from both eyes. If these cells don’t get input from both eyes within first year of life, they don’t develop

Critical (sensitive) periods Certain behavior is developed more quickly within a critical period than outside of it. This period is biologically determined. Some environmental input is necessary for normal development, but biology determines when the organism is responsive to that input. That “when” is the critical period

Critical period for language Lenneberg (1967) proposed that there is a critical period for human language It assumes that language acquisition must occur before the end of the critical period Estimates range from 5 years up to onset of puberty

Evidence for critical period for language Feral Children Children raised in the wild or with reduced exposure to human language What is the effect of this lack of exposure on language acquisition? Two classic cases Victor, the Wild Boy of Aveyron Genie

Victor, The Wild Boy of Aveyron Found in 1800 near the outskirts of Aveyron, France Estimated to be about 7-years-old Considered by some to be the first documented case of autism Neither spoke or responded to speech Taken to and studied by Dr. Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard, and educator of deaf-mute and retarded children Never learned to speak and his receptive language ability was limited to a few simple commands. Described by Itard as “an almost normal boy who could not speak”

Genie Found in Arcadia, California in 1970, was not exposed to human language until age 13.5. Raised in isolation a situation of extreme abuse Genie could barely walk and could not talk when found Dr. Susan Curtiss made great efforts to teach her language, and she did learn how to talk, but her grammar never fully developed. Only capable of producing telegraphic utterances (e.g. Mike paint or Applesauce buy store) Used few closed-class morphemes and function words Speech sounded like that of a 2-year-old

Genie By age of 17 (after 4 years of extensive training) Vocabulary of a 5 year old Poor syntax (telegraphic speech mostly) Examples Mama wash hair in sink At school scratch face I want Curtiss play piano Like go ride yellow school bus Father take piece wood. Hit. Cry.

What Do These Cases Tell Us? Suggestive of the position that there is a critical period for first language learning (in particular for syntax and phonological development) If child is not exposed to language during early childhood (prior to the age of 6 or 7), then the ability to learn syntax will be impaired while other abilities are less strongly affected Not uncontroversial: Victor and Genie and children like them were deprived in many ways other than not being exposed to language Genie stopped talking after age 30 and was institutionalized shortly afterward (Rymer, 1993)

What Do These Cases Tell Us? Suggestive of the position that there is a critical period for first language learning (in particular for syntax and phonological development) Why? Nativist explanation (see pg 79 of text) Maturational explanation: “less is more”

Second language learning Learning a new language What if we already know one language, but want to learn another? Adults learning another language typically have a persistent foreign accent – perhaps a critical period for phonology (Flege & Hillenbrand, 1984) Adults typically do better initially at learning a new language compared to kids, but kids typically do better over the long term (Krashen, Long, & Scarcella, 1982)

Second language learning Johnson and Newport (1989) Native Chinese/Korean speakers moving to US Task: Listen to sentences and judge whether grammatically correct Test score Age of arrival 2 17 R = -.87 Types of sentences used Past tense Plural Third person singular Present progressive Determiners Pronominalization Particle movement Subcategorization Auxillaries Yes/no questions Wh-questions Word order Test score Age of arrival 17 40 R = -.16

Second language learning Johnson and Newport (1989) Native Chinese/Korean speakers moving to US Task: Listen to sentences and judge whether grammatically correct Concluded that around the age of 16 something happens Different factors operate on language acquisition before and after the age of 16 Types of sentences used Past tense Plural Third person singular Present progressive Determiners Pronominalization Particle movement Subcategorization Auxillaries Yes/no questions Wh-questions Word order Birdsong and Molis (2001) Replicated the Johnson and Newport study in Spanish/English speakers. Did not find a discontinuity around the age of 16

Effects of the Critical Period Learning a language: Under 7 years: perfect command of the language possible Ages 8- c.15: Perfect command less possible progressively Age 15-: Imperfect command possible But these claims are far from universally accepted

Bilinguals & Polyglots Many people speak more than one language Tucker (1999) - multilinguals outnumber monolinguals What is the impact of knowing/using more than one language? Factors affecting second language acquisition? What does the lexicon look like? Interesting effects in bilinguals Interference Code switching Cognitive advantages

Second language acquisition Contexts of childhood bilingualism Simultaneous Both languages are acquired at the same time Vocabulary growth of bilinguals is similar to that of monolinguals Some aspects of acquisition may be slowed, but by age of 4 typically caught up Doesn’t seem to matter whether languages are “related” or not (e.g., English - French versus English Japanese) Can achieve “fluency” in both languages Sequential acquisition The second language is learned after a first language When the second language (L2) is acquired is important Early versus late learning (e.g., see the Johnson and Newport study)

Second language acquisition Frequency of usage of both languages How often and in what contexts do you use the two languages “Use it or lose it” - language attrition Mode of acquisition Native bilingualism - growing up in a two language environment Immersion - schooling provided in a non-native language Submersion - one learner surrounded by non-native speakers Language dominance effects Relative fluency of L1 and L2 may impact processing

Bilingual Representations How do we represent linguistic information in a bilingual lexicon? Probably depends on many of the factors just discussed Let’s look at some models and research focusing on the situation where L1 is dominant relative to L2

Models of the bilingual lexicons Potter et al (1984): Separate Stores Models – separate lexicons for each language L1 L2 CONCEPTS Word Association Model L1 L2 CONCEPTS Concept Mediation Model L1=First Language L2=Second Language

Models of the bilingual lexicons Paivio, Clark, & Lambert (1988): Common Stores Models – words from both languages in same store L1 & L2 CONCEPTS L1=First Language L2=Second Language

Revised Hierarchical Model The results are mixed, supporting more complex models May be different in different bilinguals depending on things like age of acquisition, relative proficiency, etc. L1 L2 concepts lexical links conceptual Kroll & Stewart (1994) Proposed that the fluency of L2 needs to be considered in the processing model

Interesting effects in bilinguals Interference Code switching Cognitive advantages Types of sentences used Past tense Plural Third person singular Present progressive Determiners Pronominalization Particle movement Subcategorization Auxillaries Yes/no questions Wh-questions Word order

Interesting effects in bilinguals Interference Does knowing two languages lead to interference? When found, interference is at multiple levels Phonological - least amount of interference Lexical - mixing words from different languages Initially, appear to use a one word per thing strategy But as they realize there that they’re speaking two language, then they’ll use words from both languages simultaneously Syntactic Until year two, may use only one syntactic system which is common to both languages Then a brief period with two sets of lexical items, but still a common syntax Finally, two lexicons and two sets of syntax Types of sentences used Past tense Plural Third person singular Present progressive Determiners Pronominalization Particle movement Subcategorization Auxillaries Yes/no questions Wh-questions Word order

Interesting effects in bilinguals Determine who or what is the one performing the action. The waitress pushes the cowboys. The telephones pushes the cowboys. Kisses the table the apple. The baskets the teacher kicks. As a native speaker of English we can use many cues: Word order Animacy Verb agreement Not all languages use the same cues to the same extent e.g., German doesn’t rely as much on word order, but relies more on agreement processes Sentence 1: waitress doing the pushing (even though the semantics/real world knowledge is strange). Both word order and agreement support this view. Sentence 2: very strange, position favors telephone, but verb and animacy suggest cowboys Sentence 3: English word order suggests object follows the verb Sentence 4: animacy and agreement suggest teacher as actor

Interesting effects in bilinguals Determine who or what is the one performing the action. The waitress pushes the cowboys. The telephones pushes the cowboys. Kisses the table the apple. The baskets the teacher kicks. Kilborn (1989, 1994) Found that bilinguals (English as second language) typically carry over the dominant processing strategies from their native languages. This interacts with their level of fluency in the second language Sentence 1: waitress doing the pushing (even though the semantics/real world knowledge is strange). Both word order and agreement support this view. Sentence 2: very strnage, position favors telephone, but verb and animacy suggest cowboys Sentence 3: English word order suggests object follows the verb Sentence 4: animacy and agreement suggest teacher as actor

“I want a motorcycle VERDE” Code switching When bilinguals substitute a word or phrase from one language with a phrase or word from another language “I want a motorcycle VERDE” Switching is systematic, not random

Code switching When bilinguals substitute a word or phrase from one language with a phrase or word from another language “I want a motorcycle VERDE” The Spanish adjective “verde” follows a grammatical rule that is observed by most bilingual speakers that code-switch “I want a VERDE motorcycle” Would be incorrect because language switching can occur only if the adjective is placed according to the rules of the language of the adjective In this case, the adjective is in Spanish; therefore, the adjective must follow the Spanish grammatical rule that states that the noun must precede the adjective

“I want a motorcycle VERDE” Code switching When bilinguals substitute a word or phrase from one language with a phrase or word from another language “I want a motorcycle VERDE” Generally, bilinguals take longer to read and comprehend sentences containing code-switched words May be due to a “mental switch mechanism” that determines which of the bilingual’s two mental dictionaries are “on” or “off” during language comprehension. This mental switch is responsible for selecting the appropriate mental dictionary to be employed during the comprehension of a sentence. E.g., if reading an English, a Spanish code-switched word is encountered, the mental switch must disable the English linguistic system, and enable the Spanish linguistic system.

“I want a motorcycle VERDE” Code switching When bilinguals substitute a word or phrase from one language with a phrase or word from another language “I want a motorcycle VERDE” Generally, bilinguals take longer to read and comprehend sentences containing code-switched words This time difference depends on similarity of the languages Chinese-English bilinguals take longer to recognize English code-switched words in Chinese sentences only if the English words contain initial consonant-consonant (e.g., flight) clusters, simply because the Chinese language lacks this phonotactic structure. Another current view suggests that language dominance (i.e., which language is used more frequently) plays an important role in code-switching

Cognitive advantages Some evidence suggest that being bilingual can have an impact on cognition outside of language Bialystok and colleagues Bilinguals are very proficient at switching between languages Bilinguals also have to be good at suppressing the contextually inappropriate language