Language

1. Language What defines language? What properties does language have? How does language allow for communicative power? Why does language exist? What does it gain us? When does language develop?

2. Basic Language Properties Reference: The girl hit the boy. He cried. Productivity and expressiveness of natural language. Paraphrase: The dog chased the cat. The cat was chased by the dog. Recursion: Widely considered to be the most important aspect of human language  enables unlimited extension of a language Embedding: The boy who the girl hit cried.

3. Example Phrase Structure Diagrams

5. “John and Tom were in a fight. He hit himand he bled.” Language is full of ambiguity! Why do languages tolerate this? Example: Figurative language, such as metaphors “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”  “The vodka is good but the meat is rotten” How can we handle ambiguity? (Lexical, syntactic, perceptual. . .) “Time flies like an arrow” Groucho Marx: "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana”

6. Resolving ambiguity Social agreement, context, intention Grice (1975): Maxims of Conversation  Implicature What do people assume about their conversational partners? 1. Quality: Tell the truth! (Avoid falsehoods *and* statements for which you have no evidence) 2. Quantity: Include what is necessary to express information, and nothing extraneous. **e.g. tautologies 3. Relevance: Utterances will be related to the topic at hand 4. Manner: Avoid ambiguity, use common ground (Clark) “Could you open the door?” Application to irony, humor

7. Is Language Unique to Humans? What are the features that define a language? 1. Arbitrariness: Communication systems of many social species like dogs and wolves fail this one. But the call system of some monkeys satisfy this (chatter-snake, chirp-leopard, kraup-eagle) 2. Displacement: The call system fails this criterion as it is only used in the presence of predators.

8. What about the Language of the Bees? 1. The angle between vertical and the straight waggling run of the dance = the angle between the sun and the flight direction from hive to the food source. 2. Distance between nest and target encoded in the duration of the straight runs. The farther away the target, the longer the straight runs, with a rate of increase of about 75 milliseconds per 100 meters.

9. More Properties of Human Language 3. Discreteness. The language of the bees fails the criterion of having discrete symbols. 4. Combinatorial syntax: Discreteness is critical to enable the combinatorial power of natural language that is critical to its expressiveness.

10. Can We Teach Apes to Talk? Vocal apparatus not capable of human speech, so oral production is out. Efforts with sign language have been more successful. Most recent research uses a token system (item-based). Most successful subject has been Kanzi, a bonobo. Kanji was shown equivalent to a 2 year old in heard and generated speech. Is Kanji’s success like our success in imitating bird song? Is meaning being preserved? Do we have a language instinct?

11. Why do we use language? Directed attention e.g., warning systems: “look over there!” Social groupings Promote collaboration, collective survival behaviors Culture Mutual reference, common ground, expression of social ties

12. Is Language Innate? • Language is unique to humans. • Successful language use depends on specific brain structures. • Is language genetically coded in humans? • Is language learning different than the learning of anything else? (Biologically, behaviorally, etc.) Chomsky: Language Acquisition Device

13. Child Language Development How do children progress from non-verbal to competent speakers? • Categorical perception of speech sounds (~10-12 mo) -- Japanese infants and r/l • Babbling: 6 months • One word stage: ~1 year • Two word stage: ~2 years (vocab is about 50 words) • Multiword utterances; gradually increase in complexity Statistical learning Motherese! (now child-directed speech)

15. Features of Language Acquisition • Inflectional overgeneralizations (man,mans,men; sing, singed, sang). Can generalize the rule to new examples (past tense of wug, spling). • Children learn on the order of ~9 words /day 10,000-16,000 words by age 6 (Markman; Carey, 1978) • Put in > 10,000 hours exposed to their language by age 5. Compare to the expert performance benchmark What about second language learners?

16. The Issue of the Nature of Feedback (Poverty of Stimulus) Child: Nobody don’t like me. Mother: No, say “Nobody likes me.” Child: Nobody don’t like me. Mother: No, say “Nobody likes me.” Child: Nobody don’t like me. [dialogue repeated eight times] Mother: Now listen carefully, say “Nobody likes me.” Child: Oh! Nobody don’t likeS me. Children get little or no direct instruction. Children get little feedback and don’t listen to what they get -- so why do they ever correct their errors? Children hear many ungrammatical structures not identified as such -- how do they come to learn these are wrong? In some cultures adults don’t speak to children. Children will make up a language if they are not given one -- deaf children of hearing parents.

17. “Natural Experiments” Pidgins & Creoles Nicaraguan Sign Language “Wild Children” / Abuse Panglish vs. English

18. A Critical Period for Language Acquisition? Claim is that there is a critical period (2-11) during which language acquisition is easier. Recovering from aphasia due to brain injury. Actually older children learn faster initially but reach lower asymptotes of achievement.

19. Adult Processing of Syntactic Anomaly as a Function of Age of Acquisition Jill entrusted the recipe friends before she disappeared.

20. Emergentism Can you learn to be an expert at any complex skill if you take it up as an adult? (Golf, ballet, . . .) Why is expertise less likely as we age? Can this same explanation apply to language as well? What parts of language can’t be learned just from the input provided to a baby from the environment?