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Language Acquisition

Language Acquisition. 4. Elena Lieven, MPI-EVA, Leipzig School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester. Outline for Session 4. MAIN TOPIC: Studying languages other than English ‘Exotic languages’ and issues they raise Comparing cues within a language

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Language Acquisition

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  1. Language Acquisition 4. Elena Lieven, MPI-EVA, Leipzig School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  2. Outline for Session 4 MAIN TOPIC: Studying languages other than English ‘Exotic languages’ and issues they raise Comparing cues within a language Comparisons across languages POST BREAK Learning language environment in different cultures LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  3. Typological discoveries (1) Children are sensitive from the outset of speaking to the semantic distinctions made in their language (Bowerman & Choi) PICTURE Korean English Cassette in boxFit tightly In Apple in bowlPut loosely In Put top on penFit tightly On Put book in bagPut loosely In LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  4. Communicative Environment!! Typological discoveries (2) Chintang – a Tibeto-Burman language of East Nepal • Free ordering of verbal prefixes • Tense nearer to stem than aspect • Complex system of location marking • Location marking also used to express interpersonal relations Do children make errors predicted by putative linguistic or cognitive universals or do they learn the language in its specificity? What is the frequency and pattern of usage of these constructions in the speech of adults? How are they used in speech to children? LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  5. Within-language studies LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  6. Productive morphology • Does productivity develop? • Are children less productive than adults? Full competence model: with the verbs and affixes that they know, children are fully productive Constructivist model: children are less productive, even with the verbs and affixes that they know, at younger ages and than their parents, since they are slowly building the abstract categories LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  7. Spanish verb inflections[Aguado Orea & Pine] Nottingham corpus • Lucia: 22 hours: 2;2.25 – 2;7.14 • Juan; 31 hours: 1;1-.21 – 2;5.28 • Only verbs used by both adult and child • stem • agreement properties • Adult sample of verb tokens randomly reduced to number found in child’s speech LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  8. Number of inflections per stem • No significant difference between parents • Significant difference between children and parents at both tested ages • For Juan, significant difference between first and second half of the corpus High frequency verbs have significantly fewer errors Some person marking is almost always correct, but overgeneralised (1sg) Other person marking is almost always incorrect and another highly frequent form is used (3pl) LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  9. Marking of German plurals Köpcke: Cue strength: salience, type frequency, cue validity, iconicity Behrens:-s generalisation errors limited to distributional conditions in the input Szagun: growth rates in type frequencies per marker match the input Regularity – recurrent pattern Generality – type frequency Default – only productive plural marker – English -s - emergency general ending - German Schemas – independent of rest of noun declension Inflection classes – gender and four cases in singular LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  10. Morphological productivity[Laaha et al, in submission] • The ability to freely form new morphological forms • Degrees of productivity: • All feminine and animate masculine nouns ending in schwa take the –en plural •  -en plural fully productive for feminine nouns ending in schwa •  competes with –s for feminine nouns ending in consonant Even the youngest children sensitive to feminine/non-feminine distinction Degree of productivity played a role at all ages Input frequency had an effect for some plurals Morphological transparency for some forms – leave off Umlaut LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  11. Case marking and word order in German using novel verbs [Dittmar et al – MPI-EVA] LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  12. Distribution of SO- and OS-order with unambiguous and ambiguous case marking for German transitive sentences in the input LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  13. Availability, reliability and validity for the grammatical cues word order and case marking for German transitive sentences in the input LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  14. Mean proportion of correct pointing LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  15. Comparisons across languages LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  16. Novel verb studies of Syntax (Tomasello, Cognition, 2000) . Japanese [Matsui et al.] % children . Hebrew . German [Wittek] . Hebrew . Japanese LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  17. Weird linking[Abbot-Smith, MPI-EVA] Models: always weird Sentence: The bunnyNOMis pushing/domming the dogACC Action: Dog pushing/domming bunny Elicitation: Action: Lion domming frog LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  18. Exp: And now you tell me what happens, ok? Chi: Yes. Exp: Who is doing what? Chi: The lion, it [+nom] is domming the [+acc] frog. LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  19. Grammatical and ungrammatical linking used by German children (those who used both target verbs in a transitive or intransitive in both conditions at least once) LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  20. Mean proportion of grammatical and ungrammatical linking used by German versus English children LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  21. Weird word order in French [Matthews et al, submitted] • Il pousse Mary (He pushes Mary) • Il la pousse (He pushes her) LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  22. Mean proportion of Matches, Single Argument Reversions and Full Reversions as a function of verb frequency and modelled word order (mean age 2;10). LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  23. Weird word order in English and French [Matthews et al,submitted] Mean proportion of canonically ordered responses that expressed no object, a pronominal object or a lexical object as a function of age and language. LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  24. Other languages[Stoll, Abbot-Smith & Lieven, in prep.] • English has very fixed word order • The tiger ate the mouse • The mouse ate the tiger • German is more variable but has more case inflections • Der Tiger frisst den Hund • Den Hund hat der Tiger gefressen • Russian has ‘free word order’ • Ja videl svoju mašinu (all 24 words orders possible) LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  25. Proportions of utterances accounted for by frames LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  26. Proportions of one, two and three-word frames LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  27. Imperatives • ENGLISH: • Look.... = .10 Come/on... = .10 • GERMAN: • Guck(e)/mal ... =.14 Komm/mal... = .06 „ Look...“ „Come...“ • RUSSIAN: • Skazhi ... = .09 Davaj ... = .15 „Say ...“ „Give / Let‘s ...“ LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  28. Wh-questions 27 13 16 LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  29. Wh-questions 1,2 and 3-word core frames 4 LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  30. German and English: wh word + aux/modal + pronoun/article/particle • Russian: wh word +/- particle Prodrop, no articles, no copula in present tense LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  31. Modelling OI errors(Pine, Freudenthal, Gobet, Aguado-Orea) LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  32. The AGR/TNS Omission Model • Child’s grammar identical to adult’s except Child is subject to a Unique Checking Constraint that results in under-specification of Tense and/or Agreement • Child uses non-finite verb forms in contexts where finite verbs forms obligatory • That go there v That goes there (3sg present) • Since AGR assigns NOM, child also produces Non-NOM subjects when AGR absent • Him naughty, Her coming LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  33. Strengths of the ATOM • Explains statistical patterns of error in English • He goes and He go, but few I goes • He goes, He go and Him go but few Him goes • Explains why children learning other obligatory subject languages (e.g. Dutch, French) use infinitives in main clauses • Hij lopen (He to walk) Il faire (He to do) • Explains why children learning optional subject languages (e.g. Spanish) do not use infinitives in main clauses • (El) habla (He speaks) not *(El) hablar (He to speak) LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  34. MOSAIC MOSAIC is a simple distributional learner that: • Learns utterance final words and sequences • Do you want a biscuit? Biscuit A biscuit Want a biscuit • Generates novel utterances by linking together words that have been preceded and followed by overlapping sets of words and substituting them in utterance final sequences • a linked to the on basis of: Want a biscuit Want the ball • allows: Want the biscuit Eat a biscuit Eat the biscuit LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  35. MOSAIC: Key Features • Takes as input (orthographically transcribed) samples of Child-Directed Speech • Produces output in the form of ‘utterances’ that can be compared with those of real children • Learns to produce progressively longer utterances as a function of the amount of input it has seen LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  36. MOSAIC-Speak GENERATED • MIGHT FALL OUT • CHEEKY FOOT • WHERE DO YOU WANT HIM TO GO? • TAKE THE CASE THEN • SHOW GRANDMA THEN • IT’S A PHONE • WHICH FRIENDS IS HE THEN? • GONNA WEE IN THE BALLOON ROTE LEARNED • DOESN’T FALL OUT • CHEEKY FACE • WHERE DO YOU WANT THEM TO GO? • HOLD THE CASE THEN • TELL GRANDMA THEN • IT’S THE PHONE • WHICH FRIENDS ARE THEY THEN? • GONNA WEE IN THE POTTY LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  37. Method • MOSAIC trained repeatedly on speech addressed to a particular child • Output generated after each run through input • Output files selected on basis of MLU • Compared with samples of child speech matched as closely as possible for MLU • Data from child and model coded for non-finites, simple finites and compound finites using same (automated) coding procedures LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  38. Simulating differences in patterns of finiteness marking in Dutch, German and Spanish • Children modelled: • Peter - Gronigen Dutch corpus (Bols, 1995) • Leo - MPI German corpus (Behrens, in press) • Juan - Nottingham Spanish corpus (Aguado-Orea, 2004) LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  39. Pattern of finiteness marking as a function of MLU for Peter and MOSAIC-Peter (Dutch) MOSAIC simulates high proportion of OI errors in Dutch (and low proportion of compound finites) LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  40. Pattern of finiteness marking as a function of MLU for Leo and MOSAIC-Leo (German) MOSAIC simulates the moderately high proportion of OI errors in German (and low proportion of compound finites) LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  41. Pattern of finiteness marking as a function of MLU for Juan and MOSAIC-Juan (Spanish) MOSAIC simulates the low proportion of OI errors in Spanish (and high proportion of simple finites) LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  42. OI errors as a function of compound finites in the input and percentage of utterance final verbs in the input that were finite vs. non-finite LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  43. Learning language in different cultures LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  44. Some claims made about language learning • There are cultures in which children are not spoken to before they speak • Children only require minimal input to learn language OR • Children can learn language through overhearing • There are cultures which believe children have to be taught language and corrected from ‘babytalk’ • Children can learn language from a highly didactic interactive style LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  45. How much input is enough? How does this relate to patterns of interaction with infants? ? Linguistic universals Learning patterns Identifying slots Creating paradigms Abstraction ? How does this relate to the amount and type of language that children hear? Communicative Environment!! Learning to talk Intention reading and preverbal communication Infant cognition Distributional analysis: prosody  phonemes  words Form-meaning mappings LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  46. LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  47. Our study Mostly outside Many different situations Mother often absent Many other children Most previous studies Inside the house Mother and child playing Only mother present No other children Comparing recording situations LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  48. Characterising children’s communicative environment • How much do people talk to children? • How many people do children interact with? • What types of interaction take place? • How much do children react to what they overhear? LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  49. Data collection LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

  50. Categories for characterising the communicative environment LOT 4: 16-20 jan06

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