Parameter Setting In Language Acquisition

Author : Dalila Ayoun
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 226 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2005-02-28
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781847143365

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Parameter Setting in Language Acquisition by Dalila Ayoun Pdf

This book provides a broad overview of parameter-setting theory in first and second language acquisition and refines the theory by revisiting and challenging the traditional assumptions that underlie it, based on cross-linguistic language data that cover a range of syntactic and phonological phenomena. From an historical perspective on parameter-setting theory to an introduction to its role in computational linguistics, neurolinguistics, and language change, the reader will find a critique of the most commonly made arguments, as well as an index of all the syntactic, phonological, lexical, and morphological parameters presented in the literature to date. A closer look at the theory itself addresses the following questions: What does a parameter-setting approach to language acquisition entail? What are the underpinnings of the theory? What issues and problems remain to be solved? The empirical studies carried out to test the null subject parameter and verb movement parameter are reviewed to re-examine long-standing theoretical assumptions as well as the learnability implications for first and second language acquisition.

Author : Dalila Ayoun
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2005-02-28
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781847143365

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Parameter Setting in Language Acquisition by Dalila Ayoun Pdf

This book provides a broad overview of parameter-setting theory in first and second language acquisition and refines the theory by revisiting and challenging the traditional assumptions that underlie it, based on cross-linguistic language data that cover a range of syntactic and phonological phenomena. From an historical perspective on parameter-setting theory to an introduction to its role in computational linguistics, neurolinguistics, and language change, the reader will find a critique of the most commonly made arguments, as well as an index of all the syntactic, phonological, lexical, and morphological parameters presented in the literature to date. A closer look at the theory itself addresses the following questions: What does a parameter-setting approach to language acquisition entail? What are the underpinnings of the theory? What issues and problems remain to be solved? The empirical studies carried out to test the null subject parameter and verb movement parameter are reviewed to re-examine long-standing theoretical assumptions as well as the learnability implications for first and second language acquisition.

Author : Nina Hyams
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 186 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2012-12-06
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789400946385

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Language Acquisition and the Theory of Parameters by Nina Hyams Pdf

This book is perhaps the most stunning available demonstration of the explanatory power of the parametric approach to linguistic theory. It is akin, not to a deductive proof, but to the discovery of a footprint in a far-off place which leaves an archeologist elated. The book is full of intricate reasoning, but the stunning aspect is that the reasoning moves between not only complex syntax and diverse languages, but it makes predictions about what two-year-old children will assume about the jumble of linguistic input that confronts them. Those predictions, Hyams shows, are supported by a discriminating analysis of acquisition data in English and Italian. Let us examine the linguistic context for a moment before we discuss her theory. The ultimate issue in linguistic theory is the explanation of how a child can acquire any human language. To capture this fact we must posit an innate mechanism which meets two opposite constraints: it must be broad enough to account for the diversity of human language, and narrow enough so that the child does not make irrelevant hypotheses about his own language, particularly ones from which there is no recovery. That is, a child must not posit a grammar which permits all of the sentences of a language as well as other sentences which are not in the language. In a word, the child must not create a language in which one cannot make adult discriminations between grammatical and ungrammatical.

Author : Jens Stuhlemer
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
Page : 29 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2017-11-23
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9783668578029

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Properties of parameters and their connection to language acquisition by Jens Stuhlemer Pdf

Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,3, University of Cologne, language: English, abstract: This paper is mainly investigating the properties of parameters and their connection to language acquisition. One of the core questions will be, in how far Chomsky ́s assumption of parameters being generally equipped with a default value can be validated. In order to obtain a more detailed account of parameters in language acquisition, a chronological analysis of relevant study areas will be made, moving from a broad perspective to more and more detailed descriptions. This analysis contains a brief overview of the Faculty of Language and the LAD as well as of Universal Grammar, simply because the parameters in question derive from these systems. Afterwards a detailed look will be taken on specific features of parameters, taking Meisel ́s text `Parameters in Acquisition ́ as a basis. To become more specific in order to further question certain features of parameters that have occurred by then, further linguistic fields will be taken into account, namely bilingual studies, neurolinguistics, and computational linguistics.

Author : Richard Towell,Roger D. Hawkins
Publisher : Multilingual Matters
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 1994
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 185359234X

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Approaches to Second Language Acquisition by Richard Towell,Roger D. Hawkins Pdf

Examines five central issues of second-language acquisition: transfer, staged development, cross-learner systematicity, incompleteness and variability.

Author : Lyn Frazier,J. de Villiers
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 412 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 1990-09-30
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780792306597

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Language Processing and Language Acquisition by Lyn Frazier,J. de Villiers Pdf

Studies of language acqUiSItion have largely ignored processing prin ciples and mechanisms. Not surprisingly, questions concerning the analysis of an informative linguistic input - the potential evidence for grammatical parameter setting - have also been ignored. Especially in linguistic approaches to language acquisition, the role of language processing has not been prominent. With few exceptions (e. g. Goodluck and Tavakolian, 1982; Pinker, 1984) discussions of language perform ance tend to arise only when experimental debris, the artifact of some experiment, needs to be cleared away. Consequently, language pro cessing has been viewed as a collection of rather uninteresting perform ance factors obscuring the true object of interest, namely, grammar acquisition. On those occasions when parsing "strategies" have been incorporated into accounts of language development, they have often been discussed as vague preferences, not open to rigorous analysis. In principle, however, theories of language comprehension can and should be subjected to the same criteria of explicitness and explanatoriness as other theories, e. g. , theories of grammar. Thus their peripheral role in accounts of language development may reflect accidental factors, rather than any inherent fuzziness or irrelevance to the language acquisition problem. It seems probable that an explicit model of the way(s) processing routines are applied in acquisition would help solve some central problems of grammar acquisition, since these routines regulate the application of grammatical knowledge to novel inputs.

Author : Lydia White
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 210 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 1989-01-01
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027281814

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Universal Grammar and Second Language Acquisition by Lydia White Pdf

This book explores the relationship between linguistic universals and second language acquisition. Although no knowledge of generative grammar is presupposed, the theoretical framework underlying the work is the principles and parameters approach to Universal Grammar (UG), as realized in Chomsky's Government and Binding theory. In recent research, the question has arisen as to whether the principles and parameters of UG remain available in language acquisition that is non-primary. Within second language acquisition theorizing, hypotheses have ranged from UG playing no role at all to UG operating exactly as in primary language acquisition. In this work the theoretical arguments and data from the whole spectrum are reviewed.

Author : D.C. Lillo-Martin
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 259 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2012-12-06
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789401134682

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Universal Grammar and American Sign Language by D.C. Lillo-Martin Pdf

AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE American Sign Language (ASL) is the visual-gestural language used by most of the deaf community in the United States and parts of Canada. On the surface, this language (as all signed languages) seems radically different from the spoken languages which have been used to formulate theories of linguistic princi ples and parameters. However, the position taken in this book is that when the surface effects of modality are stripped away, ASL will be seen to follow many of the patterns proposed as universals for human language. If these theoretical constructs are meant to hold for language in general, then they should hold for natural human language in any modality; and ifASL is such a natural human language, then it too must be accounted for by any adequate theory of Universal Grammar. For this rea son, the study of ASL can be vital for proposed theories of Universal Grammar. Recent work in several theoretical frameworks of syntax as well as phonology have argued that indeed, ASL is such a lan guage. I will assume then, that principles of Universal Gram mar, and principles that derive from it, are applicable to ASL, and in fact that ASL can serve as one of the languages which test Universal Grammar. There is an important distinction to be drawn, however, be tween what is called here 'American Sign Language', and other forms of manual communication.

Author : Thomas Roeper,Edwin Williams
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 267 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2012-12-06
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789400937277

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Parameter Setting by Thomas Roeper,Edwin Williams Pdf

In May 1985 the University of Massachusetts held the first conference on the parameter setting model of grammar and acquisition. The conference was conceived in the belief that there is a new possibility of tightly connecting grammatical studies and language acquisition studies, and that this new possibility has grown out of the new generation of ideas about the relation of Universal Grammar to the grammar of particular languages. The papers in this volume are all concerned in one way or another with the 'parametric' model of grammar, and with its role in explaining the acquisition of language. Before summarizing the accompanying papers, I would like to sketch the intellectual background of these new ideas. It has long been the acknowledged goal of grammatical theorists to explicate the relation between the experience of the child and the knowledge of the adult. Somehow, the child selects a unique grammar (by assumption) compatible with a random partially unreliable sample of some language. In the earliest work in generative grammar, starting with Chomsky's Aspects, and extending to such works as Jackendoffs Lexicalist Syntax (1977), the model of this account was the formal evaluation metric, accompanied by a general rule writing system. The model of acquisition was the following: the child composed a grammar by writing rules in the rule writing system, under the constraint that the rules must be compatible with the data, and that the grammar must be the one most highly valued by the evaluation metric.

Author : Usha Lakshmanan
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 175 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 1994-01-01
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027224750

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Universal Grammar in Child Second Language Acquisition by Usha Lakshmanan Pdf

This book examines child second language acquisition within the Principles and Parameters theory of Universal Grammar (UG). Specifically, the book focuses on null-subjects in the developing grammars of children acquiring English as a second language. The book provides evidence from the longitudinal speech data of four child second language (L2) learners in order to test the predictions of a recent theory of null-subjects, namely, the Morphological Uniformity Principle (MUP). Lakshmanan argues that the child L2 acquisition data offer little or no evidence in support of the MUP s predictions regarding a developmental relation between verb inflections and null-subjects. The evidence from these child L2 data indicates that regardless of the status of null subjects in their first language, child L2 learners of English hypothesize correctly from the very beginning that English requires subjects of tensed clauses to be obligatorily overt. The failure on the part of these learners to obey this knowledge in certain structural contexts is the result of perceptual factors that are unrelated to parameter setting. The book demonstrates the value of child second language acquisition data in evaluating specific proposals within linguistic theory for a Universal principle.

Author : Lyn Frazier,J. de Villiers
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 394 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2012-12-06
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789401138086

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Language Processing and Language Acquisition by Lyn Frazier,J. de Villiers Pdf

Studies of language acqUiSItion have largely ignored processing prin ciples and mechanisms. Not surprisingly, questions concerning the analysis of an informative linguistic input - the potential evidence for grammatical parameter setting - have also been ignored. Especially in linguistic approaches to language acquisition, the role of language processing has not been prominent. With few exceptions (e. g. Goodluck and Tavakolian, 1982; Pinker, 1984) discussions of language perform ance tend to arise only when experimental debris, the artifact of some experiment, needs to be cleared away. Consequently, language pro cessing has been viewed as a collection of rather uninteresting perform ance factors obscuring the true object of interest, namely, grammar acquisition. On those occasions when parsing "strategies" have been incorporated into accounts of language development, they have often been discussed as vague preferences, not open to rigorous analysis. In principle, however, theories of language comprehension can and should be subjected to the same criteria of explicitness and explanatoriness as other theories, e. g. , theories of grammar. Thus their peripheral role in accounts of language development may reflect accidental factors, rather than any inherent fuzziness or irrelevance to the language acquisition problem. It seems probable that an explicit model of the way(s) processing routines are applied in acquisition would help solve some central problems of grammar acquisition, since these routines regulate the application of grammatical knowledge to novel inputs.

Author : Herbert W. Seliger,Robert M. Vago
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 284 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 1991-06-27
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 0521348838

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First Language Attrition by Herbert W. Seliger,Robert M. Vago Pdf

Examines linguistic aspects of the attrition or loss of first language abilities in bilinguals.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Psychology Press
Page : 580 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 1994
Category : Grammar, Comparative and general
ISBN : 0805813500

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Syntactic Theory and First Language Acquisition: Binding, dependencies, and learnability by Anonim Pdf

Author : S. Flynn
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2012-12-06
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789400937475

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A Parameter-Setting Model of L2 Acquisition by S. Flynn Pdf

Recent developments in linguistic theory have led to an important reorientation of research in related fields of linguistic inquiry as well as in linguistics itself. The developments I have in mind, viewed from the point of view of government-binding theory, have to do with the character ization of Universal Grammar (UG) as a set of subtheories, each with its set of central principles (perhaps just one principle central to each subtheory) and parameters (perhaps just one for each principle) according to which a principle can vary between an unmarked ('-') and a marked ('+') para metric value (Chomsky, 1985; 1986). For example, let us assume that there is an X-bar theory in explanation of those features of phrase structure irreducible to other subtheo ries of UG. Within X-bar theory variation among languages is then allowed only with respect to the position the head of a phrase occupies in rela t ion to its complemen ts such that the phrases of a language will be either right- or left-headed. Thus languages will vary between being right-headed in this respect (as in Japanese phrase structure) and being left-headed (as in English phrase structure). Everything else about the phrase structure of particular languages will be fixed within X-bar theory itself or else it will fallout from other subtheories of UG: Case theory; 0-theory, etc. (Chomsky, 1985:161-62; Chomsky, 1986:2-4; and references cited there). Hatters are the same in other modules of grammar.

Author : Muriel Saville-Troike
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 229 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2012-04-05
Category : Foreign Language Study
ISBN : 9781107010895

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Introducing Second Language Acquisition by Muriel Saville-Troike Pdf

A clear and practical introduction to second language acquisition, written for students encountering the topic for the first time.