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The Acquisition of Syntactic Knowledge by Robert C. Berwick Pdf
The computer model. Computation and language acquisition. The acquisition model. Learning phrase structure. Learning transformations. A theory of acquisition. Acquisition complexity. Learning theory: applications. Locality principles and acquisition.
Bilingual Selection of Syntactic Knowledge by Teresa Satterfield Pdf
Bilingual Selection of Syntactic Knowledge motivates a more formal approach in theoretical linguistics by investigating the parameters of syntactic variation and simultaneous acquisition of multiple languages. Taking the behavior of the Null Subject Parameter (NSP) across languages as an illustration, the book raises important questions concerning the adequacy of standard parameter-setting models in the face of compelling evidence from both mono- and bilingual child speech data. Teresa Satterfield argues convincingly that so-called `universal' premises guiding well-known parametric approaches greatly complicate attempts to construct an economical bilingual analysis. Further, she demonstrates the compatibility of more recent formulations in linguistic theory (i.e. the Minimalist Program) and studies on language learnability (Clark, 1992, 1993; Kapur, 1994) which present the view that while initially convincing, standard parameter models are potentially costly and less than effective in terms of monolinguals as well. Using Clark's application of the Genetic Algorithm as a point of departure, Bilingual Selection of Syntactic Knowledge describes a number of computational simulations. These simulations not only demonstrate the robustness of the GA-as-language-learner, they offer a more detailed account of the parameter-setting task confronting the bilingual child while also making more precise predictions regarding the process of syntactic knowledge.
The remarkable way in which young children acquire language has long fascinated linguists and developmental psychologists alike. Language is a skill that we have essentially mastered by the age of three, and with incredible ease and speed, despite the complexity of the task. This accessible textbook introduces the field of child language acquisition, exploring language development from birth. Setting out the key theoretical debates, it considers questions such as what characteristics of the human mind make it possible to acquire language; how far acquisition is biologically programmed and how far it is influenced by our environment; what makes second language learning (in adulthood) different from first language acquisition; and whether the specific stages in language development are universal across languages. Clear and comprehensive, it is set to become a key text for all courses in child language acquisition, within linguistics, developmental psychology and cognitive science.
Language Acquisition and Syntactic Theory by A.E. Pierce Pdf
The theory of language acquisition is a young but increasingly active field. Language Acquisition and Syntactic Theory presents one of the first detailed studies of comparative syntax acquisition. It is informed by the view that linguists and acquisitionists are essentially working on the same problem, that of explaining grammar learnability. The author takes cross-linguistic data from child language as evidence for recent proposals in syntactic theory. Developments in the structure of children's sentences during the first few years of life are traced to changes in the setting of specific grammatical parameters. Some surprising differences between the early child grammars of French and English are uncovered, differences that can only be explained on the basis of subtle distinctions in inflectional structure. This motivates the author's claim that functional or nonthematic categories are represented in the grammars of very young children. The book also explores the relationship between acquisition and diachronic change in French and English. It is argued that findings in acquisition, when viewed from a parameter setting perspective, provide answers to important questions arising in the study of language change. The book promises to be of interest to all those involved in the formal, psychological or historical study of linguistic knowledge.
Investigations in Universal Grammar by Stephen Crain,Rosalind Thornton Pdf
This introductory guide to language acquisition research is presented within the framework of Universal Grammar, a theory of the human faculty for language. The authors focus on two experimental techniques for assessing children's linguistic competence: the Elicited Production task, a production task, and the Truth Value Judgment task, a comprehension task. Their methodologies are designed to overcome the numerous obstacles to empirical investigation of children's language competence. They produce research results that are more reproducible and less likely to be dismissed as an artifact of improper experimental procedure. In the first section of the book, the authors examine the fundamental assumptions that guide research in this area; they present both a theory of linguistic competence and a model of language processing. In the following two sections, they discuss in detail their two experimental techniques.
Syntactic Theory and First Language Acquisition by (Vol.1)Barbara Lust,Margarita Su¤er,John Whitman,(Vol.2)Barbara Lust,Gabriella Hermon Pdf
Universal Grammar (UG) is a theory of both the fundamental principles for all possible languages and the language faculty in the "initial state" of the human organism. These two volumes approach the study of UG by joint, tightly linked studies of both linguistic theory and human competence for language acquisition. In particular, the volumes collect comparable studies across a number of different languages, carefully analyzed by a wide range of international scholars. The issues surrounding cross-linguistic variation in "Heads, Projections, and Learnability" (Volume 1) and in "Binding, Dependencies, and Learnability" (Volume 2) are arguably the most fundamental in UG. How can principles of grammar be learned by general learning theory? What is biologically programmed in the human species in order to guarantee their learnability? What is the true linguistic representation for these areas of language knowledge? What universals exist across languages? The two volumes summarize the most critical current proposals in each area, and offer both theoretical and empirical evidence bearing on them. Research on first language acquisition and formal learnability theory is placed at the center of debates relative to linguistic theory in each area. The convergence of research across several different disciplines -- linguistics, developmental psychology, and computer science -- represented in these volumes provides a paradigm example of cognitive science.
The Acquisition of Direct Object Scrambling and Clitic Placement by Jeannette C. Schaeffer Pdf
This book offers a new contribution to the debate concerning the real time acquisition of grammar in First Language Acquisition Theory. It combines detailed and quantitative observations of object placement in Dutch and Italian child language with an analysis that makes use of the Modularity Hypothesis. Real time development is explained by the interaction between two different modules of language, namely syntax and pragmatics. Children need to build up knowledge of how the world works, which includes learning that in communicating with someone else, one must realize that speaker and hearer knowledge are always independent. Since the syntactic feature referentiality can only be marked if this (pragmatic) distinction is made, and assuming that certain types of object placement (such as scrambling and clitic placement) are motivated by referentiality, it follows that the relevant syntactic mechanism is dependent on the prior acquisition of a pragmatic distinction.
Approaches to Bootstrapping by Jürgen Weissenborn,Barbara Höhle Pdf
Volume 1 of Approaches to Bootstrapping focuses on early word learning and syntactic development with special emphasis on the bootstrapping mechanisms by which the child using properties of the speech input enters the native linguistic system. Topics discussed in the area of lexical acquisition are: cues and mechanisms for isolating words in the input; special features of motherese and their role for early word learning; the determination of first word meanings; memory and related processing capacities in early word learning and understanding; and lexical representation and lexical access in early language production. The papers on syntactic development deal with the acquisition of grammatical prosodic features for learning language specific syntactic regularities.Volume 2 of Approaches to Bootstrapping focuses on the interaction between the development of prosodic and morphosyntactic knowledge as evidenced in the early speech of Dutch, English, German, Portugese, Spanish, Danish, Islandic, and Swedish children sheding new light on the relation between universal and language specific aspects of language acquisition. Another section of this volume deals with new approaches to language acquisition using ERP- techniques. The papers discuss in detail the relation between the development of language skills and changes in neurophysiological aspects of the brain. The potentials of these techniques for the development of new tools for an early diagnosis of children who are at risque for developmental language disorders are also pointed out. The closing section contains a synopsis of interactionist approaches to language acquisition, a discussion of the genetic and experiential origin of primitive linguistic elements in acquisition, and a discussion of structural and developmental aspects of bird song in comparison to human language. The two volumes making up Approaches to Bootstrapping present a state-of-the art interdisciplinary and cross-linguistic overview of recent developments in first language acquisition research.
The Acquisition of Direct Object Scrambling and Clitic Placement by Jeannette C. Schaeffer Pdf
This book offers a new contribution to the debate concerning the “real time acquisition” of grammar in First Language Acquisition Theory. It combines detailed and quantitative observations of object placement in Dutch and Italian child language with an analysis that makes use of the Modularity Hypothesis. Real time development is explained by the interaction between two different modules of language, namely syntax and pragmatics. Children need to build up knowledge of how the world works, which includes learning that in communicating with someone else, one must realize that speaker and hearer knowledge are always independent. Since the syntactic feature referentiality can only be marked if this (pragmatic) distinction is made, and assuming that certain types of object placement (such as scrambling and clitic placement) are motivated by referentiality, it follows that the relevant syntactic mechanism is dependent on the prior acquisition of a pragmatic distinction.
Speech Production and Second Language Acquisition by Judit Kormos Pdf
This extremely up-to-date book, Speech Production and Second Language Acquisition, is the first volume in the exciting new series, Cognitive Science and Second Language Acquisition. This new volume provides a thorough overview of the field and proposes a new integrative model of how L2 speech is produced. The study of speech production is its own subfield within cognitive science. One of the aims of this new book, as is true of the series, is to make cognitive science theory accessible to second language acquisition. Speech Production and Second Language Acquisition examines how research on second language and bilingual speech production can be grounded in L1 research conducted in cognitive science and in psycholinguistics. Highlighted is a coherent and straightforward introduction to the bilingual lexicon and its role in spoken language performance. Like the rest of the series, Speech Production and Second Language Acquisition is tutorial in style, intended as a supplementary textbook for undergraduates and graduate students in programs of cognitive science, second language acquisition, applied linguistics, and language pedagogy.
The Acquisition of Verbs at the Syntax-Semantics Interface by Paolo Lorusso Pdf
This book presents theoretical and experimental analyses of the nature of early verbs. At around the age of two years old, children start to combine words and produce their first verbs. Verbal items appear later than nouns in a child’s speech and refer to the relational concepts in the world that are represented in syntax through the argument structure. The central set of data investigated here is based on the analysis of the features of first verbal productions in Italian. Since the appearance of verbs implies the mastery of a mapping procedure between syntactic positions and semantic roles, the syntactic regularities found for each lexical verb class suggest that the relation at the syntax-semantics interface is well-established early on. The non-adult-like sentences are those which involve the mastery of the scope-discourse semantic interface or higher functional syntactic categories. The analysis of the delay in the production and comprehension of some constructions here uncovers some general characteristics of language acquisition devices.
Author : Ruya Li Publisher : Taylor & Francis Page : 242 pages File Size : 48,6 Mb Release : 2024-05-10 Category : Foreign Language Study ISBN : 9781315281032
The Acquisition of Anaphora in Child Mandarin by Ruya Li Pdf
The Acquisition of Anaphora in Child Mandarin explores how Mandarin-speaking children’s interpretation of the reflexive ziji and their use of null arguments can be understood under the notions of locality and prominence. This book investigates the interpretation of ziji and the use of null subjects and null objects by experimenting on Mandarin-speaking children and adults using a range of experimental techniques such as the truth value judgment task, the picture identification task, and the story-telling task. The book provides evidence to show that reflexive binding and argument dropping are determined by the interplay between universal principles and language-specific properties. It shows that children at the age of 4 make an adult-like distinction between the anaphoric and logophoric interpretations of ziji. The former is subject to the locality condition manifested by the blocking effect on the long-distance binding of ziji, whereas the latter is free from the locality condition and closely related to the understanding of the false beliefs of others. This book is an important contribution to language acquisition research and can serve as a valuable reference for graduate students and researchers in the field of language acquisition, Chinese linguistics, psycholinguistics, and cognitive science.