Abstract
A classic debate in cognitive science revolves around understanding how children learn complex linguistic patterns, such as restrictions on verb alternations and contractions, without negative evidence. Recently, probabilistic models of language learning have been applied to this problem, framing it as a statistical inference from a random sample of sentences. These probabilistic models predict that learners should be sensitive to the way in which sentences are sampled. There are two main types of sampling assumptions that can operate in language learning: strong and weak sampling. Strong sampling, as assumed by probabilistic models, assumes the learning input is drawn from a distribution of grammatical samples from the underlying language and aims to learn this distribution. Thus, under strong sampling, the absence of a sentence construction from the input provides evidence that it has low or zero probability of grammaticality. Weak sampling does not make assumptions about the distribution from which the input is drawn, and thus the absence of a construction from the input as not used as evidence of its ungrammaticality. We demonstrate in a series of artificial language learning experiments that adults can produce behavior consistent with both sets of sampling assumptions, depending on how the learning problem is presented. These results suggest that people use information about the way in which linguistic input is sampled to guide their learning.
Highlights
Child language acquisition has been the focus of a major debate in cognitive science for over 50 years [1]
Significant effects were found for binary factors corresponding to condition (β = -0.86, p < .0001), whether a sentence structure was V4 in C2 or not (β = -0.48, p < .01), and the resulting interaction (β = -0.68, p < .001). Another difference we found between the two conditions, which was not predicted by our model, was that participants in the weak sampling condition were more willing to consider verbs to be alternating This is evidenced by the fact that participants in the strong sampling condition rated occurrences of V1 in C1 and C2 as grammatical only 68% and 72% of the time
Our results provide a clear illustration that adult learners make use of indirect negative evidence in learning simple aspects of syntax, and that they only do so when it is warranted by the way in which sentences are being generated
Summary
Child language acquisition has been the focus of a major debate in cognitive science for over 50 years [1]. A key question is how children learn correct linguistic generalizations. Communication requires the ability to form new utterances, beyond those already heard, i.e., generalize. Linguistic patterns often have exceptions, creating many opportunities to make generalizations that are ungrammatical. In English, many verbs undergo the dative alternation, which means the verb can appear in both the direct and prepositional construction. One such verb is give: I gave her the hat (direct) and I gave the hat to her (prepositional) are both grammatical.
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