PSY 369: Psycholinguistics

1. PSY 369: Psycholinguistics Language Acquisition

2. Announcements • On-line Blackboard quiz for chapter 4 is now up. • You may take it 5 times, top score counts • I am pushing Exam 2 back a day. We will have the exam on Feb. 28. • Language development section includes information from Chapter 3, pages 72-87 • Homework #2 due Feb. 21st • Nice video series (6 parts) on language acquisition • Another nice clip about an experiment on infant language perception

3. Language Sponges • Learning words • General patterns and observations • Sounds • Meaning • Proposed Strategies/constraints • Learning Syntax • Learning Morphology

4. 12 ms first words 2 yrs 200 words 3 yrs 1,000 words 6 yrs 15,000 words Language Sponges • Learning words • About 3,000 new words per year, especially in the primary grades • As many as 8 new words per day • Production typically lags behind comprehension

5. Early word learning • First words (Around 10-15 months) • Emergence of systematic, repeated productions of phonologically consistent forms • 1 word stage typically lasts around 10 months • Have learned first 50 words by 15 – 24 months • Typically focused on the “here and now”

6. Early word learning • 1-general names • “dog” • 2- specific names • “mommy” • 3-action words • “bye-bye” • 4-modifiers • “red” • 5-personal/social • “yes, no, please” • 6-functional • “what” • First words (Around 10-15 months) • Emergence of systematic, repeated productions of phonologically consistent forms

7. Early word learning • Developed in systematic ways • Not simply imitation, rather are creative • Learned importance of consistency of names • First words (Around 10-15 months) • Emergence of systematic, repeated productions of phonologically consistent forms • Idiomorphs - personalized words • “Adult words” - Typically context bound (relevant to the immediate environment) • Important people, objects that move, objects that can be acted upon, familiar actions • Nouns typically appear before verbs

8. Early speech production • Transition to speech No. … my fis. No. My fis! This is your fis? Yes, my fis. Your fis? Oh, your fish.

9. Early speech production • Transition to speech This is your fis? No, … my fis. • Can’t hear the difference? • Rejects adult saying ‘fis’ • Can’t produce the correct sounds? • Sometimes, but evidence suggests not always the case • More general process of simplification • “frees up” resources for concentrating on other aspects of language learning Your fis. No, my fis. Oh, your fish. Yes, my fis.

10. Early speech production • Transition to speech • individual diffs, but some regularities • Common Phonological processes • Reduction • Delete sounds from words (“da” for dog) • Coalescence • Combine different syllables into one syllable (“paf” for pacifier) • Assimilation • Change one sound into a similar sound within the word (“fweet” for sweet) • Reduplication • One syllable from a multi-syllabic word is repeated (“baba” for bottle)

11. Indeterminacy: Frog Frog Frog? Green? Jumping? Ugly?

12. Indeterminacy: Frog Frog ????

13. Quine’s gavagai problem • The problem of reference: • A word may refer to a number of referents (real world objects) • A single object or event has many objects, parts and features that can be referred to Frog Frog? Green? Ugly? Jumping?

14. Extensions of meaning • Applying the words to referents • Extension • Finding the appropriate limits of the meaning of words • Overextension • Applying a word too broadly • Mostly based on perceptual features (but other features too: sound, movement, size, texture extension) • Very common in early word learning (Rescorla, 1980 1/3 of first 75 words) • Underextension • Applying a word too narrowly • e.g., “round” only for their ball

15. Extensions of meaning “tee”

16. Extensions of meaning “tee” 1:9,11

17. Extensions of meaning “tee” 1:9,11 1:10,18

18. Extensions of meaning “tee” 1:9,11 1:10,18 “googie” 1:11,1

19. Extensions of meaning “tee” 1:9,11 1:10,18 “googie” 1:11,1 1:11,2

20. Extensions of meaning “tee” 1:9,11 1:10,18 “googie” 1:11,1 1:11,2 1:11,24

21. Extensions of meaning “tee” 1:9,11 1:10,18 “googie” 1:11,1 1:11,2 1:11,24 “tee/hosh” 1:11,25

22. Extensions of meaning “tee” 1:9,11 1:10,18 “googie” 1:11,1 1:11,2 1:11,24 “tee/hosh” 1:11,25 “hosh” 1:11,26

23. Extensions of meaning “tee” 1:9,11 1:10,18 “googie” 1:11,1 1:11,2 1:11,24 “tee/hosh” 1:11,25 “hosh” 1:11,26 1:11,27 “pushi”

24. Extensions of meaning “tee” 1:9,11 1:10,18 “googie” 1:11,1 1:11,2 1:11,24 “tee/hosh” 1:11,25 “hosh” 1:11,26 1:11,27 “pushi” “hosh” “moo-ka” 2:0,10

25. Extensions of meaning “tee” 1:9,11 1:10,18 “googie” 1:11,1 1:11,2 1:11,24 “tee/hosh” 1:11,25 “hosh” 1:11,26 1:11,27 “pushi” “hosh” “moo-ka” 2:0,10 2:0,20 “biggie googie”

26. “tee” 1:9,11 1:10,18 “googie” 1:11,1 1:11,2 1:11,24 “tee/hosh” 1:11,25 “hosh” 1:11,26 1:11,27 “pushi” “hosh” “moo-ka” 2:0,10 2:0,20 “biggie googie” • One-word-per-referent heuristic • If a new word comes in for a referent that is already named, replace it • Exception to that was “horse,” but it only lasted a day here Extensions of meaning

27. “tee” 1:9,11 1:10,18 “googie” 1:11,1 1:11,2 1:11,24 “tee/hosh” 1:11,25 “hosh” 1:11,26 1:11,27 “pushi” “hosh” “moo-ka” 2:0,10 2:0,20 “biggie googie” Strategies for learning • Expansion and contraction can occur at the same time

28. “tee” 1:9,11 1:10,18 “googie” 1:11,1 1:11,2 1:11,24 “tee/hosh” 1:11,25 “hosh” 1:11,26 1:11,27 “pushi” “hosh” “moo-ka” 2:0,10 2:0,20 “biggie googie” Strategies for learning • Child tries different things, if a word doesn’t work then they try something else • e.g., hosh didn’t for for the large dog, switched to biggie doggie

29. “Please give me the chromium tray. Not the blue one, the chromium one.” Learning word meanings • Learning words • Fast mapping (Carey & Bartlett, 1978) • Using the context to guess the meaning of a word • All got the olive tray • Several weeks later still had some of the meaning • Only took one trial to establish the mapping video

30. Constraints on Word Learning • Learning words • Perhaps children are biased to entertain certain hypotheses about word meanings over others • These first guesses save them from logical ambiguity • Get them started out on the right track • Cognitive Constraints (Markman, 1989) • Mutual exclusivity constraint • Object-scope (whole object) constraint • Taxonomic constraint

31. ‘Show me a dax’: Strategies for learning Mutual exclusivity constraint(Markam and Watchel 1988) • Each object has one label & different words refer to separate, non-overlapping categories of objects • An object can have only one label • Kids choose the corkscrew • it is a less well known object for which they don’t yet have a label.

32. Strategies for learning Object-scope (whole object) constraint • Words refer to whole objects rather than to parts of objects Dog

33. ‘See this? Can you find another one?’ ‘Show me another lux’ Strategies for learning Taxonomic constraint • Words refer to categories of similar objects • Taxonomies (categories) rather than thematically related obejcts No Word condition Word condition ‘Here is a lux’ Taxonomy response Taxonomy response Theme response Theme response

34. Strategies for learning Shape versus function • Category members often share shape and function. Do kids use both pieces of information? Landau, Smith, & Jones, (1998) Function Function Q condition No Function Name Q condition Function Name Q condition ‘Here is a dax. A Dax can mop-up water’ ‘Here is a dax’ ‘Here is a dax’ ‘Is this a rif/dax?’ ‘Is this a rif/dax?’ ‘Can you mop-up water with tihis?’ Same function Same function Same shape Same shape Same function Same shape

35. Strategies for learning Shape versus function • Category members often share shape and function. Do kids use both pieces of information? Landau, Smith, & Jones, (1998) • For kids, shape seems to be more important than function for learning names. Adults focus more on function.

36. Problem with constraints • Most of the constraints proposed apply only to object names. • What about verbs? (Nelson 1988) • There have been cases where children have been observed violating these constraints • Using for example the word ‘car’ only to refer to ‘cars moving on the street from a certain location’ (Bloom 1973) • The mutual exclusivity constraint would prevent children from learning subordinate and superordinate information (animal < dog < poodle)

37. Language explosion continues • The language explosion is not just the result of simple semantic development; the child is not just adding more words to his/her vocabulary. • Child is mastering basic syntactic and morphological processes.