Announcements

1. Announcements • Switching lecture schedule: • Move Pragmatics Unit to AFTER Bilingualism Unit to accommodate guest speaker on Nov. 27th (Tuesday) • If we have time after lecture today, we’ll discuss some posted questions.

2. Psy1302 Psychology of Language Language Acquisition I Lecture 17

3. Language Acquisition [The acquisition of language] is doubtless the greatest intellectual feat any one of us is ever required to perform. (L. Bloomfield, Language, 1933, p. 29)

4. Reading Assignment Fisher & Gleitman (2002) • I. Outline of the task of language learning • II. Where language learning begins • Categorization of Speech Sounds • Segmentation of Spoken Word • Role of Sound in Syntactic Analysis • Distributional Analysis and Discovery of Syntax • II. Meanings • Primitive Categories of Experience • Compositional Meaning • Interactions between linguistic and conceptual categories • IV. Forms to meaning • Mapping problem • Concrete words first • Old words make new words easier to learn • V. Where learning ends

5. High Amplitude Sucking Procedure What did this paradigm tell us about infants’ ability to discriminate speech sounds in the world’s languages? Review: Where we left off for lectures on Speech Perception Eimas et al.’s Study

6. Headturn Procedure What did this paradigm tell us about when children lose discrimination ability of non-native phonemes Review: Where we left off for lectures on Speech Perception Werker et al.’s Studies

7. A New Puzzle: Learning Native Phones • How do children learn which phonetic sounds are the phonemes in their language? • For example (minimal pairs): • ‘bear” and “pear” or • “rent” and “lent” are two different words? • What information could children use to learn the phonemes of their native language???

8. A New Puzzle: Learning Native Phones One Possibility: Semantic Learning • Learning word meanings drives phonological reorganization • Children notice changing some features changes meaning in some cases • /tip/ vs. /dip/ • They also notice changing some features does not change meaning in some cases • /tip/ vs. /tip/ (Hindi contrast) ,

9. A New Puzzle: Learning Native Phones One Possibility: Semantic Learning • Learning word meanings drives phonological reorganization • For reorganization to work, requires: • Noticing minimal pairs and meaning differences • Learning many words • Problem: 10 months-old children don’t know that many words!

10. Review Voice Onset Time • Production of words with /d/ or /t/ have different VOT

11. Dutch Easter Armenian Spanish Thai Hungarian Korean Tamil Hindi Cantonese Marathi English

12. A New Puzzle: Learning Native Phones Another Possibility: Distributional Learning • Distributional characteristics of input (i.e. speech of native speakers) provide cues to the phonemic categories • E.g. 2 clusters

13. A New Puzzle: Learning Native Phones Another Possibility: Distributional Learning • 1 cluster vs. 2 clusters d t

14. A New Puzzle: Learning Native Phones Maye, Werker, & Gerken (2002)(tested 6 & 8 months-old) • Created synthetic sounds ranging from [da] to [ta].

15. A New Puzzle: Learning Native Phones Maye, Werker, & Gerken (2002)(tested 6 & 8 months-old) • Familiarized infants to one of two sets • Bimodal Set: Sounds on the ends near [da] and [ta]. • Unimodal Set: Sounds in the middle. • Test preference for: • 3 6 3 6… (Alternating) vs. 3 3 3 3… (Non-alternating) Stimuli

16. A New Puzzle: Learning Native Phones Maye, Werker, & Gerken (2002)(tested 6 & 8 months-old) 3 3 3 3 3 6 3 6 … = = < < Infants trained on the Bimodal had a novelty preference for non-alternating trials. Infants trained on the Unimodal did not prefer/dis-prefer one over the other.

17. A New Puzzle: Learning Native Phones Summary • Infant’s initial lexicon is non-existent to small. • Makes it difficult to attribute lexical knowledge as source of initial phonological reorganization • Perhaps distributional information may be a first step into initial phonological reorganization • Learning the phonemes of one’s language could then help learn words & word meanings…

18. A New Puzzle: Learning Native Phones Posting @ Class Discussion Forum (10/12) Digression Minimal Pairs and Word Learning: Notice anything about the ages tested in these papers and when the Werker paper says that sensitivity to non-native phones disappears? Want to comment? Monolingual: • http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071001172817.htm Bilingual: • http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070928092050.htm

19. A New Puzzle: Learning Native Phones The “Switch” Task Digression Habituation Phase Test Phase Same Switch “lif” “neem” “lif” “neem” Werker, Cohen, Lloyd, Casasola, & Stager, Dev Psych, 1998

20. A New Puzzle: Learning Native Phones Digression The “Switch” Task Results Werker, Cohen, Lloyd, Casasola, & Stager, Dev. Psych. 1998

21. A New Puzzle: Learning Native Phones Switch task with Minimal Pairs Digression Habituation Phase Test Phase Same Switch “bih” “dih” “bih” “dih” Stager & Werker, Nature, 1997

22. A New Puzzle: Learning Native Phones Switch Task, Minimal Pairs Result Digression Stager & Werker, Nature, 1997, Werker, et al, Infancy, 2002; Pater, et al, Language, 2004

23. A New Puzzle: Learning Native Phones Posting @ Class Discussion Forum (10/12) Digression Minimal Pairs and Word Learning: Notice anything about the ages tested in these papers and when the Werker paper says that sensitivity to non-native phones disappears? Want to comment? Monolingual: • http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071001172817.htm Bilingual: • http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070928092050.htm

24. Old Puzzle, But Yet Another Issue: Word Segmentation Word segmentation problem • How do we as adults know where the word boundaries are located? • We make use of lexical knowledge.

25. Old Puzzle, But Yet Another Issue: Word Segmentation Word segmentation problem • What about infants who have none or few words in their lexicon?

26. Old Puzzle, But Yet Another Issue: Word Segmentation Word Segmentation Problem • Infants need to extract words from fluent speech in order to build a lexicon. • How??? • Cues recruited for segmentations: • Rhythmic cues • Metrical Stress • Phonotactic cues • Context sensitive allophonic cues • Statistical distributional properties • Transitional Probabilities of Syllables

27. Old Puzzle, But Yet Another Issue: Word Segmentation Rhythmic Cues Rhythmic Cues – stress pattern Stress Pattern in English: Cutler & Norris (1988): 95% of disyllabic English words (actually heard) are Strong-Weak. Common (Strong-Weak Stress): Button, Table Rare (Weak-Strong Stress): Guitar, Surprise • Do (English) infants take strong-weak as cue for segmentation?

29. Experimental setup http://psych.rice.edu/mmtbn/language/sPerception/infantHeadturn_h.html

30. Old Puzzle, But Yet Another Issue: Word Segmentation Rhythmic CuesJusczyk, Houston & Newsome (1999) Rhythmic Cues – stress pattern • 7.5 & 10 month-old infants • familiarized to Word, and test preference for passage w/ over passage w/o target word • Familiarized to Word in Passage, and test preference for target word over another (novel) word

31. Old Puzzle, But Yet Another Issue: Word Segmentation Rhythmic CuesJusczyk, Houston & Newsome (1999) Rhythmic Cues – stress pattern • 7.5 & 10 month-old infants familiarized to • Strong-Weak Word: • Kingdom… Kingdom… Kingdom… • Test on passages. Compare preference for passages w/ or w/o target word. Kingdom passage Yourkingdomis in a faraway place. The prince used to sail to thatkingdomwhen he came home from school. One day he saw a ghost in this oldkingdom… Hamlet passage Yourhamletlies just over the hill. Far away from here near the sea is an oldhamlet. People from thehamletlike to fish. Anotherhamletis in the country…

32. Old Puzzle, But Yet Another Issue: Word Segmentation Rhythmic CuesJusczyk, Houston & Newsome (1999) Rhythmic Cues – stress pattern • 7.5 & 10 month-old infants familiarized to • Strong-Weak Word in passage: • Your kingdom is in a … • Test on words. Compare preference of target word and another word Kingdom passage Yourkingdomis in a faraway place. The prince used to sail to thatkingdomwhen he came home from school. One day he saw a ghost in this oldkingdom… Hamlet passage Yourhamletlies just over the hill. Far away from here near the sea is an oldhamlet. People from thehamletlike to fish. Anotherhamletis in the country…

33. Old Puzzle, But Yet Another Issue: Word Segmentation 7.5 months Rhythmic Cues – stress pattern S/W (strong-weak): kingdom king king king king hear kingdom  parse as kingdom and not king

34. Old Puzzle, But Yet Another Issue: Word Segmentation Rhythmic CuesJusczyk, Houston & Newsome (1999) Rhythmic Cues – stress pattern • 7.5 & 10 month-old infants familiarized to • Weak-Strong: • Guitar… Guitar… Guitar… • Test on passages. Compare preference for passages w/ or w/o target word. Guitar passage The man put away his oldguitar. Yourguitaris in the studio. That redguitaris brand new. The pinkguitaris mine…. Device passage Your devicecan do a lot. Herdeviceonly fixes things. My new reddevicemakes ice cream. The pinkdevicesews clothes….

35. Old Puzzle, But Yet Another Issue: Word Segmentation 7.5 months Rhythmic Cues – stress pattern W/S (weak-strong): guitar tar tar guitar is tar guitar is taris hear “guitar”  parse as tar and not guitar hear “guitar is”  parse as taris and not guitar or tar

36. Old Puzzle, But Yet Another Issue: Word Segmentation 10 months Rhythmic Cues – stress pattern W/S (weak-strong): guitar tar guitar is taris guitar is Older children not as dependent on strong-weak strategy. hear “guitar”  parse as guitar

37. Old Puzzle, But Yet Another Issue: Word Segmentation Rhythmic CuesJusczyk, Houston & Newsome (1999) Rhythmic Cues – stress pattern • For SW: Both 7.5 & 10 month-olds gave the correct parse • For WS: Only the 10 month-olds gave the correct parse • Young (English-learning) infants rely on SW pattern for segmenting speech

38. Old Puzzle, But Yet Another Issue: Word Segmentation PhonotacticsMattys & Jusczyk (2001) Phonotactic Cues • Headturn Preference Procedure again • 9 mos. familiarized to passage with 1 of 2 novel words • Gaffe • Tove • The novel words were either flanked by • good between-word cues or • bad between-word cues. (e.g. /vt/ is rare within a word, but more common across words) • Test word in isolation (e.g. gaffe, gaffe, gaffe…)

39. Old Puzzle, But Yet Another Issue: Word Segmentation PhonotacticsMattys & Jusczyk (2001) Rhythmic Cues – stress pattern • gaffe • tove • Words flanked by good between-word cues or bad between-word cues. • C CVC C Novel word Onset of Another word Offset of Another word

40. Old Puzzle, But Yet Another Issue: Word Segmentation Statistical LearningSaffran, Aslin, & Newport (1996) Syllable Transitional Probabilities • Transitional Probabilities of Syllables • Likelihood of a syllable (B) following another (A) • Probability of B given A freq AB freq A pr B|A = A B

41. Old Puzzle, But Yet Another Issue: Word Segmentation Syllable Transitional Probabilities Statistical Learning Syllable Transitional Probabilities High likelihood High likelihood PRE TTYBA BY Low likelihood Continuations withinwords are systematic Continuations betweenwords are arbitrary

42. Old Puzzle, But Yet Another Issue: Word Segmentation Transitional probabilities Syllable Transitional Probabilities PRETTYBABY (freq) pretty (freq) pre .80 versus (freq) tyba (freq) ty .0002

43. Statistical Learning Demo http://whyfiles.org/058language/images/baby_stream.aiff

44. tokibugikobagopilatipolutokibu gopilatipolutokibugikobagopila gikobatokibugopilatipolugikoba tipolugikobatipolugopilatipolu tokibugopilatipolutokibugopila tipolutokibugopilagikobatipolu tokibugopilagikobatipolugikoba tipolugikobatipolutokibugikoba gopilatipolugikobatokibugopila

45. tokibugikobagopilatipolutokibu gopilatipolutokibugikobagopila gikobatokibugopilatipolugikoba tipolugikobatipolugopilatipolu tokibugopilatipolutokibugopila tipolutokibugopilagikobatipolu tokibugopilagikobatipolugikoba tipolugikobatipolutokibugikoba gopilatipolugikobatokibugopila

46. Old Puzzle, But Yet Another Issue: Word Segmentation Statistical LearningSaffran, Aslin, & Newport (1996) Syllable Transitional Probabilities • Headturn preference paradigm Familiarization: • 2 minute exposure to an artificial language • 4 3 syllable words: tokibu, gopila, gikoba, tipolu • Synthesized speech. • Only statistical cues to word boundaries • No prosodic information, coarticulation cues Tested isolated word and part-word (sequences spanning word boundaries)

47. tokibugikobagopilatipolutokibu gopilatipolutokibugikobagopila gikobatokibugopilatipolugikoba tipolugikobatipolugopilatipolu tokibugopilatipolutokibugopila tipolutokibugopilagikobatipolu tokibugopilagikobatipolugikoba tipolugikobatipolutokibugikoba gopilatipolugikobatokibugopila

48. tokibugikobagopilatipolutokibu gopilatipolutokibugikobagopila gikobatokibugopilatipolugikoba tipolugikobatipolugopilatipolu tokibugopilatipolutokibugopila tipolutokibugopilagikobatipolu tokibugopilagikobatipolugikoba tipolugikobatipolutokibugikoba gopilatipolugikobatokibugopila

49. Old Puzzle, But Yet Another Issue: Word Segmentation Syllable Transitional Probabilities Test: TOKIBU vs. BUGIKO Part Word Word BU BA TO GI KI KO

50. Old Puzzle, But Yet Another Issue: Word Segmentation * 8 6 4 2 0 Words Part-words Results Syllable Transitional Probabilities Looking times (sec) Infants can use statistical cues to find word boundaries