Course Of Language Acquisition Research Articles

The Iconicity Ring Hypothesis Bridges the Gap Between Symbol Grounding and Linguistic Relativity.

Kemmerer captured the drastic change in theories of word meaning representations, contrasting the view that word meaning representations are amodal and universal, with the view that they are grounded and language-specific. However, he does not address how language can be simultaneously grounded and language-specific. Here, we approach this question from the perspective of language acquisition and evolution. We argue that adding a new element-iconicity-is critically beneficial and offer the iconicity ring hypothesis, which explains how language-specific, secondary iconicity might emerge from biologically grounded and universally shared iconicity in the course of language acquisition and evolution.

Use of locative postposition-verb construction in Korean: analysis of L1-Korean corpora and L2-Korean textbooks

A usage-based account argues that the actual experience of language use greatly affects the course of language acquisition. On the basis of this premise, this study investigates how language textbooks, as a main input source for L2 learners, reflect the properties of a target language. We focus on a Korean locative postposition–verb construction, consisting of one of the three locative postpositions (– ey, – eyse and –( u) lo) and particular sets of verbs. For this purpose, we adopt representative L1 written/spoken corpora in Korean and two L2-Korean textbook corpora, and analysed three aspects of them: frequency of these postpositions and verbs, their association strength, and change in use of the construction’s components across the corpora. We find that ( i) verb types co-occurring with each postposition follow the Zipfian distribution in both datasets, ( ii) L1 corpora and L2 textbooks are inconsistent with their manifestation of postposition–verb associations within the construction, and ( iii) the two textbook types differ in verb use co-occurring with the postpositions. The implications of this study’s findings are discussed in terms of the acquisitional benefits of constructional frames and using corpora for L2 learning and teaching

Phonological features emerge substance-freely from the phonetics and the morphology

AbstractTheories of phonology claim variously that phonological elements are either innate or emergent, and either substance-full or substance-free. A hitherto underdeveloped source of evidence for choosing between the four possible combinations of these claims lies in showing precisely how a child can acquire phonological elements. This article presents computer simulations that showcase a learning algorithm with which the learner creates phonological elements from a large number of sound–meaning pairs. In the course of language acquisition, phonological features gradually emerge both bottom-up and top-down, that is, both from the phonetic input (i.e., sound) and from the semantic or morphological input (i.e., structured meaning). In our computer simulations, the child's phonological features end up with emergedlinksto sounds (phonetic substance) as well as with emergedlinksto meanings (semantic substance), withoutcontainingeither phonetic or semantic substance. These simulations therefore show that emergent substance-free phonological features are learnable. In the absence of learning algorithms for linking innate features to the language-specific variable phonetic reality, as well as the absence of learning algorithms for substance-full emergence, these results provide a new type of support for theories of phonology in which features are emergent and substance-free.

Failure to consolidate statistical learning in developmental dyslexia.

Statistical learning (SL), the ability to pick up patterns in sensory input, serves as one of the building blocks of language acquisition. Although SL has been studied extensively in developmental dyslexia (DD), much less is known about the way SL evolves over time. The handful of studies examining this question were all limited to the acquisition of motor sequential knowledge or highly learned segmented linguistic units. Here we examined memory consolidation of statistical regularities in adults with DD and typically developed (TD) readers by using auditory SL requiring the segmentation of units from continuous input, which represents one of the earliest learning challenges in language acquisition. DD and TD groups were exposed to tones in a probabilistically determined sequential structure varying in difficulty and subsequently tested for recognition of novel short sequences that adhered to this statistical pattern in immediate and delayed-recall sessions separated by a night of sleep. SL performance of the DD group at the easy and hard difficulty levels was poorer than that of the TD group in the immediate-recall session. Importantly, DD participants showed a significant overnight deterioration in SL performance at the medium difficulty level compared to TD, who instead showed overnight stabilization of the learned information. These findings imply that SL difficulties in DD may arise not only from impaired initial learning but also due to a failure to consolidate statistically structured information into long-term memory. We hypothesize that these deficits disrupt the typical course of language acquisition in those with DD.

Multilingualism and the Development of the Brain

Multilingualism is merely a parametric variation in the faculty of natural language, and it is possible to simultaneously acquire multiple languages, including dialects, at any age. While acquisition of a native language, which occurs in synchrony with development of the brain, is a multiple-step process, second language acquisition is continuous. Here, we introduce the Cumulative-Enhancement model, which states that acquisition of one additional language is beneficial for the subsequent acquisition of another. We further discuss how syntax-related networks, including multiple language areas in the brain, become functional during the course of language acquisition.

형태론적 오류 분석의 함의와 유의 중첩어의 출혈과 급여

There are three main ways to form a word such as derivation, compounding and blending. Paradoxically, knowledge of morphemes and morphological rules of languages is revealed by the morphological mistakes we make. Amsel Greene collected errors and published them in a book which is called Pullet Surprises. A monomorphemic word may be subject to morphological parsing in the hypothetical ‘pullet surprise’-type analysis. The objectives of this paper are three-fold. First, when a compound-type idiom is decomposed into more than one word in the ‘pullet surprise’-type analysis, its figurative meaning disappears, which shows that it should be listed as a single figurative meaning in the lexicon. Second, when a compound in which a synonym is reduplicated is combined with another word to form a new compound, it may be essential or should not be used. Finally, a hypothetical ‘pullet surprise’ analysis shows that the bleeding and feeding effects of synonymous word reduplication should be markedly recognized in the course of language acquisition.

Grammaticalization without Feature Economy

AbstractThe present paper is a corpus-based study of the Voice Cycle in Hungarian. Based on data from the Old Hungarian Corpus and the Hungarian Historical Corpus, I will argue that while in Old Hungarian, middle voice was encoded through a separate inflectional paradigm (contextual allomorphy in the subject agreement suffix conditional on the feature content of a silent Voice head), in Modern Hungarian, middle voice is encoded through dedicated middle voice suffixes (i.e., the Voice head is spelled out overtly). I will claim that the underlying grammaticalization process involved the reanalysis of frequentative suffixes (v heads) as middle voice suffixes (Voice heads). I will show that this reinterpretation was not based on shared abstract features, but rather, on a principled correlation between middle voice and frequentative aspect: since some types of middles (antipassives and dispositional middles) were more likely to be associated with a frequentative or habitual reading than actives, frequentative suffixes were susceptible to reanalysis as middle suffixes in the course of language acquisition. I will thus claim that in addition to Feature Economy (vanGelderen 2011), reinterpretation based on correlation between featurally independent grammatical markers should also be regarded as a mechanism of grammaticalization.

The comparative method of language acquisition research by Clifton Pye

Reviewed by: The comparative method of language acquisition research by Clifton Pye Katherine Demuth The comparative method of language acquisition research. By Clifton Pye. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017. Pp. 304. ISBN 9780226481289 (Hb). $150. This book is a welcome addition to the literature on language acquisition and a testament to Clifton Pye’s life’s work on the acquisition of Mayan languages. It comes at a timely juncture, after a flurry of crosslinguistic studies of language acquisition during the 1980s and 1990s (cf. Slobin 1985, 1992). Researchers are now again reawakening to the fact that, to make theoretical progress in the field, we need to understand how languages with very different typological structures are acquired. As P notes, comparing the acquisition of closely related languages is also extremely valuable and can tell us much about both the course of language acquisition and why it proceeds as it does. Thus, just as comparative/historical linguistics provides a framework for refining theories of linguistic structure, comparing the acquisition of closely related languages provides an ideal laboratory from which to understand the ‘universals’ of language acquisition. One of the challenges, however, is translating this comparative understanding to languages that are typologically very different. As P notes, this raises the question of what the units of comparison are. Even the notion of a ‘word’ is not always straightforward in morphologically rich or polysynthetic languages. Calculating mean length of utterance (MLU) can thus be a challenge for making comparisons across typologically different languages (though see suggestions for how to do this in other polysynthetic languages in Allen & Dench 2015). The author then puts research on the acquisition of Mayan languages into a larger context, illustrating how the comparative method (henceforth CM) helps us understand why children produce the early forms of language that they do. P’s finding that children learning Mayan languages [End Page 814] tend to produce the stressed syllable of the verb complex, which may or may not land on the verb stem, is extremely revealing of the much more ‘universal’ processes found across typologically different languages (cf. Swedish; Peters & Strömqvist 1996). P then goes into detail regarding the CM, how it has been applied in historical linguistics, and the acquisition implications for Mayan and other language families. He suggests that much comparative acquisition research involving European languages has been conducted in the context of testing different theories of syntax and/or acquisition, whereas the CM can also be used with a more theory-neutral goal of describing how children acquire a linguistic system more generally. He then presents an overview of the structure of Mayan languages, outlining the general synthetic structure of these languages, providing details about the form of the lexicon, the structure of the Mayan verb (including person-marking and verb suffixes), the realization of stative predicates and verb nominalization processes, and syntactic processes more generally. This is then followed by a description of acquisition data from three Mayan languages. Two of these data sets P collected himself (K’iche: six children, Mam: eleven children), while the third (Ch’oi: five children) was collected by members of the community (for more detail, see pp. 98–100). P provides comparative examples of each. P then discusses the Mayan lexicon (nouns, relational nouns, adjectives, transitive and intransitive verbs, positionals, particles, pronouns) and how these categories are acquired across the three different Mayan languages. P notes that these categories are put to different uses across languages, resulting in different acquisition patterns. However, all of these languages exhibit cross-reference marking on nouns and verbs, licensing the omission of lexical arguments. This results in the verb playing a more important role in the Mayan grammar than in a language like English, as it does in many morphologically rich languages. The summary in this chapter includes a brief mention of how the acquisition of related Greater Tzeltalan languages differs from that of the Mayan languages (cf. Pye, Pfeiler, & Mateo Pedro 2017), some of this having to do with focus and person marking. He then examines the acquisition of Mayan intransitive and transitive verb complexes, respectively. The templatic structure of the morphologically complex verb, including the verb root and...

The Course of Language Acquisition in an Infant with Aglossia

The Course of Language Acquisition in an Infant with Aglossia

British English infants segment words only with exaggerated infant-directed speech stimuli

The word segmentation paradigm originally designed by Jusczyk and Aslin (1995) has been widely used to examine how infants from the age of 7.5months can extract novel words from continuous speech. Here we report a series of 13 studies conducted independently in two British laboratories, showing that British English-learning infants aged 8–10.5months fail to show evidence of word segmentation when tested in this paradigm. In only one study did we find evidence of word segmentation at 10.5months, when we used an exaggerated infant-directed speech style. We discuss the impact of variations in infant-directed style within and across languages in the course of language acquisition.

Relational Frame Theory--A Theoretical Framework for Contextual Behavioral Science

Therapists have to deal with verbal systems and often work with verbal exchange. Therefore, a psychological theory is required, which teaches the therapist how to accomplish this task. The BRT is a theory of human language and cognition that explains how people use their verbal behavior as stimuli in their interrelations and how they act and react, based on the resulting relationships. This behavior is learned very early in the course of language acquisition and functions as a generalized operant. A prerequisite for this is the ability of people to undergo mental simulation. This enables them to construct diverse relational frameworks between individual stimuli. Without relational frameworks, people cannot function. The ability to establish a relational framework is a prerequisite for the formation of rule-governed behavior. Rule-governed behavior economizes complex decision processes, creates interpersonal security and enables dealing with events before they take place. On the other hand, the same properties that enable people to solve problems effectively can also contribute to rigid adherence to rules and experience avoidance. Relational frameworks, once established, outweigh other sources of behavioral regulation. Thus, it can become the basis of psychopathology. Poor contextual control makes it difficult for people to devote flexible, focused and voluntary attention to the present and align their actions with the immediate present. Contextual psychotherapy methods that are based on the BRT start precisely at this point: Targeted establishment of new contingencies in the therapeutic interaction through systematic strengthening of metacognitive mode and through the establishment of new rules that make possible a change in the rule-governed behavior enable undermining of dysfunctional rule-governed behavior and build up desirable behavior. This allows any therapeutic process to be more effective--regardless of the patient's expressed symptoms.

Relational frame theory - a theoretical framework for contextual behavioral science

Therapists have to deal with verbal systems and often work with verbal exchange. Therefore, a psychological theory is required, which teaches the therapist how to accomplish this task. The BRT is a theory of human language and cognition that explains how people use their verbal behavior as stimuli in their interrelations and how they act and react, based on the resulting relationships. This behavior is learned very early in the course of language acquisition and functions as a generalized operant. A prerequisite for this is the ability of people to undergo mental simulation. This enables them to construct diverse relational frameworks between individual stimuli. Without relational frameworks, people cannot function. The ability to establish a relational framework is a prerequisite for the formation of rule-governed behavior. Rule-governed behavior economizes complex decision processes, creates interpersonal security and enables dealing with events before they take place. On the other hand, the same properties that enable people to solve problems effectively can also contribute to rigid adherence to rules and experience avoidance. Relational frameworks, once established, outweigh other sources of behavioral regulation. Thus, it can become the basis of psychopathology. Poor contextual control makes it difficult for people to devote flexible, focused and voluntary attention to the present and align their actions with the immediate present. Contextual psychotherapy methods that are based on the BRT start precisely at this point: Targeted establishment of new contingencies in the therapeutic interaction through systematic strengthening of metacognitive mode and through the establishment of new rules that make possible a change in the rule-governed behavior enable undermining of dysfunctional rule-governed behavior and build up desirable behavior. This allows any therapeutic process to be more effective - regardless of the patient's expressed symptoms.

The Acquisition of Logical Connectives in Child Mandarin

This study investigates 2–5-year-old Mandarin-speaking children’s interpretation of the disjunction word huozhe (‘or’) in two positions in ruguo (‘if’)-conditional statements, i.e., in the antecedent clause versus in the consequent clause. The findings from three experiments show that the meanings children assign to disjunction and to ruguo-conditionals conform closely to the meanings that are assigned to the corresponding logical connectives in classical logic. Experiment 1 demonstrates that children assign an inclusive-or interpretation to disjunction in both the antecedent clause and in the consequent clause of conditional statements, whereas adults assign an exclusive-or interpretation to disjunction when it appears in the consequent clause of conditional statements. The findings of Experiment 2 provide evidence of children’s adherence to a putative semantic universal—that disjunction licenses a conjunctive entailment in the antecedent clause of conditional statements, but not in the consequent clause. It is shown in Experiment 3, moreover, that children’s knowledge doesn’t stem from their mistaking disjunction as conjunction. Because the logical meanings of connectives emerge early in the course of language acquisition, and without decisive evidence from the adult input, these findings suggest that children draw upon an innate logical vocabulary at the initial stages of language acquisition.

Acquisition of features in the nominal domain in bilingual acquisition

The four papers in this special issue deal with the acquisition of morphology and semantics in the nominal domain in two groups of language learners: adult second-language (L2) learners (Sagarra & Herschensohn; Cuza, Guijarro-Fuentes, Pires, & Rothman) and simultaneous bilin- gual children (Eichler, Jansen, & Muller; Larranaga & Guijarro-Fuentes). The acquisition of gender is the focus of three of the papers, while the fourth explores the interpretation of plural noun phrases in specific and generic contexts. Romance (Italian, French, and Spanish), Germanic (English and German), and a non-Indo-European language (Basque) form the empirical basis of the four studies. Despite the different language populations and the different aspects of the nomi- nal domain under investigation, the articles share some theoretical concerns that will be explored in the following.Two main issues cut across the articles on the acquisition of gender: the inevitable question about differences and similarities between bilingual and monolingual speakers, and the nature of what it is that language learners actually need to acquire. As for the two papers on adult L2 learn- ers, the additional issue revolves around evidence for acquisition of L2 features that are not present in the first language (L1), and the degree to which learners can achieve native-like competence as a function of experience. The role of input is also explored in the article by Eichler et al. in terms of language dominance in bilingual children. Another theme that is at the forefront of the article by Sagarra and Herschensohn is the relationship between representation and computation and the extent to which extra-linguistic factors, such as working memory capacity, affect the online com- putation of gender.Similarities and differences between bilinguals and monolingualsOne of the items high on the agenda of bilingual research is the extent to which the linguistic behavior of bilinguals is similar or different from monolinguals'. In developmental terms this begs the question of how exposure to two languages affects the course of language acquisition; factors such as the quantity and quality of the input (e.g. Argyri & Sorace, 2007; Cornips & Hulk, 2006; Paradis & Navarro, 2003; Pearson, Fernandez, Lewedeg, & Oller, 1997; Sorace, Serratrice, Filiaci, & Baldo, 2009; Thomas & Gathercole, 2007), and the age at which children are first exposed to two languages (e.g. Meisel, 2008, 2010; Unsworth, 2008; Unsworth & Hulk, 2009) have been shown to play a role. The age of exposure is controlled for in the Eichler et al. and in the Larranaga and Guijarro-Fuentes papers, as the children are all simultaneous bilinguals who have been regu- larly exposed to two languages from birth. There is, however, variation in terms of children's lan- guage dominance in the Eichler et al.'s study that is related to the marking of gender in their weaker language. The issue of language dominance is not explicitly linked by the authors to the quantity and quality of the input addressed to the children, rather it is considered for the cascading effect that it has on the accuracy of gender marking. The case made by the authors is that although devel- opment in the weaker language can be slower, it does not necessarily mean that children are less accurate. Two of the children in their sample are reported to have a mean difference between the Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) values in their two languages of almost two words and as a result are classified as unbalanced bilinguals. Both children are, however, surprisingly accurate in German, their weaker language. The authors nevertheless point out that this superficially impres- sive performance betrays a low degree of lexical diversity with a small number of gender-marked noun types in the children's lexicon. Lexical conservatism is a trade-off for their relatively error- free use of gender marking; in more general terms, this could be viewed as an indication of low productivity and, therefore, call into question these children's overall acquisition of the complex gender system of German. …

Sprachentwicklung von der U7 bis zur U7a bei Kindern mit und ohne Sprachentwicklungsverzögerungen

At the beginning the course of language acquisition has a high degree of variability and it is unclear so far, at what age language delay is of clinical relevance. The present study addresses the question whether language skills at the age of 2 years allow prognostic statements and whether children with language delay at this age, are to be considered as children of risk.Starting from birth announcements children of average (n=42), borderline (n=28) and below-average stage of language development (n=50) were recruited. The language skills were assessed at the age of 2 (25+0.6 months) and 3 years (37+0.6 months) using standardized language tests.The correlation between the global stage of language development at the age of 2 and 3 years was strong (rsp=0.78, p<0.001). At 3 years of age one third of the former late talkers reached language abilities within the normal range (late bloomers), one third showed language difficulties and the last third met the criteria of specific language impairment. The risk for language difficulties was increased in these children to the 13-fold. Even the late bloomers scored significantly lower in the language test compared to the control children.From the third year of live language development is relatively stable, and language skills at the age of 2 allow a prediction of the stage of language development one year later. Late talkers are at high risk for persistent language difficulties. A general language screening at the age of 2 years would enable an early identification of children at risk and an early parent-based intervention.

Evaluating the predictive validity of the Computerized Comprehension Task: Comprehension predicts production.

Until recently, the challenges inherent in measuring comprehension have impeded our ability to predict the course of language acquisition. The present research reports on a longitudinal assessment of the convergent and predictive validity of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories: Words and Gestures (CDI: WG; Fenson et al., 1994, 1993, 2007) and the Computerized Comprehension Task (CCT; Friend & Keplinger, 2003, 2008). The CDI: WG and the CCT evinced good convergent validity; however, the CCT better predicted subsequent parent reports of language production. Language sample data in the 3rd year confirm this finding: The CCT accounted for 24% of the variance in unique word use. These studies provide evidence for the utility of a behavior-based approach to predicting the course of language acquisition into production.

Cortical systems that process language, as revealed by non-native speech sound perception

Over the course of language acquisition, the brain becomes specialized in the perception of native language speech sounds or phonemes. As a result, adult speakers are highly efficient at processing their native language, but may struggle to perceive some non-native phonemes. This specialization is thought to arise from changes that occur in a person's brain as a result of maturation and language experience. In this study, adult native speakers of English were asked to discriminate between phonemes of varying degrees of difference from English (similar to English: Tagalog /na/-/ŋa/; different from English: Ndebele /k||i/-/k!i/), as their brain activity was measured using functional near infrared spectroscopy imaging. The left inferior frontal region showed activation only during the native condition; this finding is discussed in the context of developmental and adult neuroimaging work and suggests that the left inferior frontal region is critical for perceiving native phoneme contrasts during development and in adulthood.

Phonetic imitation by school-age children

Phonological representations such as phoneme and feature are often assumed in prevailing linguistic theories. However, little is known about how these representations are formed during the course of language acquisition. The current study aims to investigate developmental changes of phonological representations by examining how children imitate fine phonetic details of recently heard speech. Previous studies have shown that adult speakers implicitly imitate the phonetic properties of recently heard speech (e.g., Goldinger, 1998; Pardo, 2009). Recently, Nielsen (2011) showed that phonetic imitation was generalized at phoneme and feature levels, providing support for sub-lexical representations. The current study extends these findings and examines whether school-age children manifest similar patterns of phonetic imitation. The experiment employed the imitation paradigm in which participants' speech is compared before and after they are exposed to model speech with extended VOT on the target phoneme /p/. A preliminary analysis of data revealed that participants produced longer VOTs after being exposed to model speech with extended VOTs. The change was generalized to new instances of the target phoneme /p/ and the new phoneme /k/, indicating that sub-lexical units were also involved in phonetic imitation by children.

Personal Agency across Generations: Evolutionary Psychology or Religious Belief?

Although the authors of modern scientific psychology agreed on precious little, Freud and Jung both insisted that any complete science of psychology requires some way to explain the intergenerational inheritance of character traits or personal habits of mind and action. Yet neither they nor their heirs in contemporary philosophy, psychology or cognitive science have been able to provide a plausible conceptual framework, much less a mechanism to account for the conservation of forms of personal agency across multiple lives. Is there a role in contemporary philosophy and psychology for an intergenerational theory of human agency informed by the Buddhist theory of karma? This paper argues the affirmative case, offering both a current scientific reading of karma and a Buddhist scientific approach to the metaphysical and metapsychological problems caused by the divergence of modern science and religion in the West. The model of intergenerational agency I present here is based on a comparative study of ordinary language philosophy in ancient India and the contemporary West. Its premise is that most theories of moral development and psychological agency are limited by the insistence on a substantial or essential ground for the designation of a person or self. Ordinary language philosophy offers greater conceptual freedom because it accepts a distinctively human theory of self as a linguistic construction that refers to mind/body systems and elements in which there is no substantial or essential self. This conceptual freedom permits a model of human agency as an open system of linguistic reference that can be transmitted across generations in the course of language acquisition. Such a system is not merely discursive in that language serves to guide the social construction not just of discursive thinking but also of learned patterns of perception and action mastered together with language in the course of neuropsychological development. This model has implications for both Buddhist and Western worldview, popular and scientific, as well as for bioethics and the practice of psychotherapy.

Symmetry in comprehension and production of pronouns: A comparison of German and Hebrew

In the course of language acquisition, children interpret pronouns differently from adults. In some languages and ages, children accept “The girl and grandma met, and then the girl drew her” as describing the girl drawing herself. This study tested whether this difficulty is symmetrically reflected in comprehension and production, by assessing the comprehension and production of pronouns and reflexives in children acquiring German and Hebrew. Comprehension was tested using a sentence-picture matching task in 44 German-speaking children aged 3;3-6;2, and 54 Hebrew-speaking children aged 2;4-6;7. Production was assessed using a sentence elicitation task for 44 German-speaking children aged 3;1-6;8, and 60 Hebrew-speaking children aged 2;4-6;7. The results indicate a very clear symmetry between comprehension and production of pronouns in language acquisition. German-speaking children master the comprehension of pronouns and do not allow for local antecedents for pronouns already from age 4;3, and they also do not use pronouns for local antecedents in production. Crucially, the Hebrew-speaking children, who allow local antecedents in pronoun interpretation up to age 6, also produce pronouns with local antecedents (namely, to describe reflexive actions) up to this age. An individual-level analysis of the performance of 50 Hebrew-speaking children who were tested in both comprehension and production yielded a similar symmetrical pattern: the children who incorrectly produced pronouns in the reflexive condition showed the same pattern in comprehension, choosing a reflexive picture (with local antecedent) for sentences with pronouns.