Introduction to Cognitive Science: Linguistics components

1. Introduction to Cognitive Science:Linguistics components Topic: Language and Literacy Acquisition Lecturer: Dr Bodomo Date: 2/11/00

2. language acquisition innateness hypothesis languagae faculty / Language Acquisition Device (LAD) literacy levels of literacy literacy acquisition Keywords

3. Introduction • Theme • A survey of how linguistic knowledge is acquired/learnt by speakers of a language, from the point of view of spoken language and from the point of view of literacy (reading and writing). • Objective • an understanding of the basic terms and issues in language and literacy acquisition • an interface approach: rather than rigidly discussing these issues from language acquisition as separate and different from literacy acquisition, we will look at how language acquisition relates to literacy acquisition.

4. Gleitman and Bloom 1999: 434 ‘refers to the process of attaining a specific variant of human language…the fundamental puzzle in understanding this process has to do with the open-ended nature of what is learned: children appropriately use words acquired in one context to make reference in the next, and they construct novel sentences to make known their changing thoughts and desires’ (in MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences). Crystal 1997: 430 The process of learning a first language in children. The analogous process of gaining a foreign or second language. What is language acquisition?

5. Explaining how languages are acquired • In previous lectures we have tried to account for how all and only the grammatical sentences of a language are accepted and represented in the brain of the speakers of a language. • However, a complete account of linguistic knowledge representation must address the issue of how we acquire a language as children and how we learn foreign languages as adults. • We will mainly be concerned with first language acquisitionandnot foreign language learning.

6. Stages of language development • the single word stage (12-18 months) • the language of the child consists of just a few isolated words of the target language, e.g. ‘mamma’, ‘daddy’,etc. • very little grammatical development • the grammar stage (19-29 months) • marked by the emergence of a few nominal and verbal inflections in languages that have these. • a few phrases and word utterances apparently strung together: ‘mammy, milk’; ‘daddy bye bye’, etc. • 30 months • can produce more adult-like speech: ‘Where's daddy ?’ ‘Daddy, I want to go with you.’

7. Explaining language acquisition: • The reason for the uniformity and rapidity in child language acquisition is contained in the innateness hypothesis. • This is, at least, the position of Chomsky and most cognitive approaches to linguistic explanation. • In this hypothesis, language acquisition is determined by a biologically endowed innate language faculty (also called Language Acquisition Device (LAD)). • LAD or language learning ‘program’ in children’s brains provides them with a set of procedures (let us call it an ‘algorithm’ since we are computer/cognitive science inclined) for developing a grammar. • Input: linguistic experience they get from the parents and teachers.

8. The nature of the language faculty • Children can acquire any language as their native tongue. • e.g. a child of Cantonese speaking parents growing up in England can learn to speak perfect English as her native tongue. • Those aspects of language innately determined are universal • language faculty does not vary significantly from human to human An important aspect in the language faculty is the search for principles of Universal Grammar!

9. Literacy Acquisition • Literacy: the ability to read and write and calculate basic numbers • Difficult to define: • can mean different things to different people in different areas: computer literacy, investment literacy, etc. • Is literacy part of our mental, cognitive faculty? • Yes, because any human can acquire literacy i.e. learn how to read and write given the right environment

10. Levels of Literacy (cf. Stages of language acquisition) • 6 stages of reading (Daswani 1999) • Stages 1-3: Prereading, decoding, fluency (approx. grades 1 – 3) • Stage 4: Acquiring new knowledge (approx.grades 4 – 8) • Stage 5: Reading a range of complex materials critically (grades 9 – 12) • Stage 6: Mature reader: able to read for various purposes: professional, personal, civic (university and beyond)

11. The relationship between language and literacy acquisition • Traditional/historical view of child language acquisition: • learning to speak happens up to the age of five years, while learning to read happens after five. • Now they are seen as very intertwined i.e. very related: learning to speak and learning to be literate both deal with learning to use language • the basis of learning to speak has been outlined to provide an ecology for literacy. The most important lesson is that learning to speak and learning to read are very much interwoven.

12. Evidence of the interface of language and literacy acquisition • They are both part of learning to USE language. • Both need input from the environment. • can be compared with Vygotsky's idea of ZOPED, zone of proximal development, i.e. the distance between child initiative and ability of child to do things under the influence of parental support. • The learning environment: participants, situation, activity and a mechanism • Literacy acquisition is like language acquisition (cf. Givon's idea of literacy acquisition as a weak reflex of language acquisition). • Literacy is best acquired in a language one has acquired.

13. Conclusion • Literacy (reading and writing) is then another level/kind of linguistic knowledge representation. • Spoken and written linguistic knowledge representation interface with each other and are very intertwined. • Language and literacy acquisition have very important social, educational and cognitive implications. • Language and Literacy acquisition should therefore form an integral part of cognitive science.

14. References • David Barton. 1994. The roots of literacy. Literacy: An Introduction to the Ecology of Written Language. Oxford UK and Cambridge USA: Blackwell. Chapter 9, p.130-139. • C. J. Daswani. 1999. Literacy. In Bernard Spolsky (ed) 1999. Concise Encyclopedia of Educational Linguistics. Oxford: Elsevier Science Ltd.. • Viv Edwards and David Corson (eds.) 1997. Encyclopedia of Language and Education, Volume 2: Literacy. Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. • Talmy Givon. 1998. The grammar of Literacy. In Syntaxis, 1, 1998: 1-40. • Elfrieda Hierbert. 1994. Literacy in preschool programs. In Alan C. Purves et al.(eds.) 1994. Encyclopedia of English Studies and Language Arts. New York: Scholastic. 754-756. • Ernest Lepore and Zenon Pylyshyn (eds). 1999. What Is Cognitive Science. Blackwell Publishers. (especially chapters 10, 11, 12, and 13) • Neil Stillings and others. 1995. Cognitive Science: An Introduction. MIT Press. (especially chapters 6, 9, 10, and 11) • Daniel A. Wagner. 1994. Literacy: definitions. In Alan C. Purves et al.(eds.) 1994. Encyclopedia of English Studies and Language Arts. New York: Scholastic. 748-752. • R. Wilson and Frank C. Neil (eds.) 1999. The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences. MIT Press. • Lila Gleitman and Paul Bloom. Language Acquisition. p.434-438 • David Olson. Literacy. p.481-482

15. Research areas in Language and Literacy for cognitive science students • Language and Literacy as cognitive processes • 1. Chinese writing and computer technology: What opportunities and challenges does current computer technology present with regards to the Chinese writing system? • 2. New trends on the literacy scene in Hong Kong: How would you explain the rise in the use of simplified Chinese characters in advertisements? • 3. Outline the various ways in which you would connect written and spoken language to the study of the relationship between language and literacy?

16. Other research topics • Syntax: Theory, Description, and Application • 1 Subcategorization of verbs: • List as many subclasses of verbs as possible, using the notion of strict subcategorization. Illustrate with English and Chinese or any two languages of your choice. Use appropriate notations to state the environments in which the verbs occur. Give copious examples for each subclass. Remember to gloss your example sentences as clearly as possible. • 2. Grammatical functions: • Explain the term 'grammatical function'. Using various syntactic criteria, argue as clearly as possible for a distinction between the notions: 'subject', 'object', 'indirect object', 'oblique', etc. Produce copious example sentences from any two languages of your choice to illustrate the various patterns of occurrence for the various grammatical functions. • 3. Feature checking and binding in syntactic structure • 4. A transformational account of passivization in English and other languages

17. Other research topics (cont.) • 5. The difference between the Split-Infl and Split-VP hypotheses, using any two languages of your choice. • 6. Agreement projections in syntactic representation • (Lexically-oriented approach to Syntax and Semantics) • 7. Outline the main features of Optimality Theoretic syntax • 8. The LFG treatment of serial verbs in various languages: Chinese, Dagaare, etc • 9. The LFG treatment of Complex Predicates in various languages: French, Norwegian, Japanese, Chinese, Dagaare, etc • 10. The theory of structure-function correspondence • 11. The Lexical-Mapping Theory • 12. A detailed cross-linguistic analysis of the types and characteristics of one or more grammatical functions in LFG

18. Further studies - courses by Dr Bodomo • LING1002 - Language.com: Language in the Contemporary World (1st year undergraduate, co-taught with other staff members) • LING2011 - Language and Literacy (intermediate undergraduate) • LING2016 - Syntax II: The Theory of Grammar (advanced undergraduate/graduate) • LING2018 - Lexical-Functional Grammar (advanced undergraduate/graduate) • LINGXXXX - Educational Linguistics • LINGXXXX - Language and Information Technology