Logical Problem Of Language Acquisition Research Articles

PHONEMIC INTERFERENCE AND OVERREGULARIZATION IN THE /S/ AND /∫/ PHONEMES REALIZATION IN FRENCH

One of the problems in foreign language learning is interference, a rearrangement of patterns resulting from the presence of foreign elements in the language domain (Weinreich, 2010). This research shows how and why phonemic interference of /s/ and /∫/ phonemes occur from Indonesian and English although both phonemes exist in all three languages. Some interference begins from lexeme and then to phonemic level. Other faults are overregularization which is the application of regular grammatical patterns to irregular cases. This seems to support the Logical Problem of Language Acquisition which states that a student cannot correct his/her mistakes without explicit feedback from the linguistic environment (Pinker, 2004).The results of this research indicate that foreign language learning requires knowledge of non-structural elements that are outside of the language, not only following phonological, syntactic, morphological, or lexical rules (structural elements). For example, students' foreign language knowledge and cultural content in teaching materials.

Parametric Adjustments by Children Acquiring Urdu Language

The present research lies in the field of language acquisition. Chomsky’s principles and parameters (1981, 1986) serve as the theoretical framework for this study. The research takes acquisition of Urdu as a case. The data for the study comprises of common recorded utterances produced by children between the ages of 24-30 months, acquiring Urdu language. The study explores the parametric settings and adjustments in these utterances. The results show that children remained consistent with non-null subject, head last principle while wh fronting was rarely observed in these utterances. Knowledge of the parametric settings can be helpful for the language teachers in predicting difficulties in second language acquisition. It offers a plausible solution to the logical problem of language acquisition.

A Critique to Fundamental Differences Hypothesis

Chomsky’s Theory of Universal Grammar was proposed in response to “the logical problem of language acquisition”, that is, how children come to acquire L1with ease and complete success despite the insufficiency of the L1 stimulus. Chomsky attributes the phenomenon to the Language Acquisition Device or UG inherited by human brain. Since “the logical problem” exists in SLA. What is the role of LAD or UG in SLA? Or, is UG accessible to L2 learners? This is a question that has attracted SLA researchers since the establishment of UG theory. This paper gives some own analysis of one of the most influential theory of UG accessibility—Fundamental Difference Hypothesis, which belongs to the no-access views and points out its weakness by discussing its theoretical explanation as well as the supporting evidence. To be more specific, this paper will discuss mainly 2 points, one is the nine fundamental characters of foreign language learning and the other is its theoretical explanation related to the Critical Period Hypothesis.

Carroll's Autonomous Induction Theory: Combining Views from UG and Information Processing Theories

Without other mechanisms such as induction and parsers, UG-based approaches to linguistic cognition seem to fail to explain the logical problem of language acquisition. Hence, a property theory has to be adopted to combine UG views with other cognitive mechanisms like information processing and restructuring (Ellis, 2008). Pienemann (1998, 2003)'s Processibility Theory, and Levelt’s (1989) psycholinguistic theory of speech production, Jackendof's (1987, 1997, 2002) MOGUL, and Carroll’s (2001, 2002) Autonomous Induction Theory (AIT) are among the models which try to add new views to the UG-based approaches. Although suffering from a number of criticisms and having a high degree of abstractness, AIT with its major premises and conceptions related to the role of induction, attention, input, input processing, feedback, learning, and UG seems to be able to explain some of the UG enigma in second language acquisition.

Abductionism: An attempt to achieve symbiosis

The logical problem of language acquisition has turned out to be a pivotal argument in favor of the nativist view on language acquisition. Although much work has been conducted in favor of inductionism and deductionism, the following paper is an attempt to cast lights upon the notion of abductionism in language acquisition in order to achieve symbiosis between deduction/induction and abduction. Though linguistic, much of Chomsky’s writings are the revisited reflection on the philosophy pioneered by Plato and Peirce. Chomsky inclination towards Peirce’s abductionism reflects the fact that Chomsky never ignores the role of input offered by the external world, although to him the role of things that are external to organism is looked from an inferior light. In sum, what the present paper tries to account that the genesis of any logic in language acquisition is best described as an integrative development of observational verification, theoretical falsification, and hypothetical explanation. Henceforth, looking at one’s own scientific method (i.e., induction, deduction, and abduction) from a superior light entails ignoring the dynamicity of language acquisition.

Entangled Parametric Hierarchies: Problems for an Overspecified Universal Grammar

This study addresses the feasibility of the classical notion of parameter in linguistic theory from the perspective of parametric hierarchies. A novel program-based analysis is implemented in order to show certain empirical problems related to these hierarchies. The program was developed on the basis of an enriched data base spanning 23 contemporary and 5 ancient languages. The empirical issues uncovered cast doubt on classical parametric models of language acquisition as well as on the conceptualization of an overspecified Universal Grammar that has parameters among its primitives. Pinpointing these issues leads to the proposal that (i) the (bio)logical problem of language acquisition does not amount to a process of triggering innately pre-wired values of parameters and (ii) it paves the way for viewing language, epigenetic (‘parametric’) variation as an externalization-related epiphenomenon, whose learning component may be more important than what sometimes is assumed.

The Logical Problem of Language Acquisition: A Probabilistic Perspective

Natural language is full of patterns that appear to fit with general linguistic rules but are ungrammatical. There has been much debate over how children acquire these "linguistic restrictions," and whether innate language knowledge is needed. Recently, it has been shown that restrictions in language can be learned asymptotically via probabilistic inference using the minimum description length (MDL) principle. Here, we extend the MDL approach to give a simple and practical methodology for estimating how much linguistic data are required to learn a particular linguistic restriction. Our method provides a new research tool, allowing arguments about natural language learnability to be made explicit and quantified for the first time. We apply this method to a range of classic puzzles in language acquisition. We find some linguistic rules appear easily statistically learnable from language experience only, whereas others appear to require additional learning mechanisms (e.g., additional cues or innate constraints).

Language acquisition recapitulates language evolution?

AbstractChristiansen & Chater (C&C) focus solely on general-purpose cognitive processes in their elegant conceptualization of language evolution. However, numerous developmental facts attested in L1 acquisition confound C&C's subsequent claim that the logical problem of language acquisition now plausibly recapitulates that of language evolution. I argue that language acquisition should be viewed instead as a multi-layered construction involving the interplay of general and domain-specific learning mechanisms.

Linguistic Self‐Correction in the Absence of Feedback: A New Approach to the Logical Problem of Language Acquisition

In a series of studies children show increasing mastery of irregular plural forms (such as mice) simply by producing erroneous over-regularized versions of them (such as mouses). We explain this phenomenon in terms of successive approximation in imitation: Children over-regularize early in acquisition because the representations of frequent, regular plural forms develop more quickly, such that at the earliest stages of production they interfere with children's attempts to imitatively reproduce irregular forms they have heard in the input. As the strength of the representations that determine children's productions settle asymptotically, the early advantage for the frequent regular forms is negated, and children's attempts to imitate the irregular forms they have observed become more likely to succeed (a process that produces the classic U-shape in children's acquisition of plural inflection). These data show that children can acquire correct linguistic behavior without feedback in a situation where, as a result of philosophical and linguistic analyses, it has often been argued that it is logically impossible for them to do so.

Comprehension matters: a commentary on ‘A multiple process solution to the logical problem of language acquisition’

MacWhinney (2004) has provided a clear and welcome synthesis of many strands of the recent research addressing the logical problem of first language acquisition from a non-nativist or non-generative grammar framework. The strand that I will comment on is the one MacWhinney calls the ‘pivot’ of his proposal, namely, that acquiring a grammar is primarily a function of learning ITEM-BASEDPATTERNS (e.g. pp. 23–29, 41, passim). These item-based patterns serve a number of dominant roles within MacWhinney's proposal, including enforcing children's conservatism (thereby reducing greatly their overgeneralizations and need to recover from the same), supporting the probabilistic nature of grammar, and enabling the competition that promotes recovery from the overgeneralizations that do occur. My concern here is primarily with the first role, that of enforcing children's conservatism, and especially with the exclusive use of language PRODUCTION as the demonstrated support of this conservatism.

The Multiple Processes Approach: reply to commentaries on ‘A multiple process solution to the logical problem of language acquisition’ by Brian MacWhinney

These twelve thoughtful commentaries demonstrate interesting shifts in our collective understanding of the ‘logical problem of language acquisition.’ The bulk of the commentary supports the multiple process approach to the logical problem. At the same time, there is strong and productive disagreement regarding the ways in which conservatism, competition, probabilistic identification, indirect negative evidence, item-based learning, cue construction, monitoring, and constraints make their separate and related contributions to the learning of specific target structures.

What can be learned from positive data? Insights from an ‘ideal learner’. Commentary on ‘A Multiple process solution to the logical problem of language acquisition’ by Brian MacWhinney

MacWhinney's stimulating discussion suggests that there are many lines of argument that may address concerns raised by theorists who are concerned that there is a logical problem of language acquisition. This commentary argues: (1) that if the ‘logical problem’ applied to language, it would apply, with curious consequences to any learning by experience; (2) that the logical problem does not apply – given sufficient positive data from any reasonable language, language can be learned, in a probabilistic sense, by an ‘ideal learner’ using a simplicity principle; and (3) that a simplicity, or minimum description length, principle may provide a useful methodology for assessing claims concerning learnability of particular linguistic structures.

Clarifying the logical problem of language acquisition

MacWhinney is to be commended for reopening questions about the logical problem of language acquisition in the light of new data and models. Unfortunately his discussion is marred by technical errors, false dichotomies, and inadequate attention to detail.

Gold's theorems and the logical problem of language acquisition

Evaluating Brian MacWhinney's multiple ‘solutions’ to the logical problem of language acquisition requires delineating exactly what the alleged problem is. He takes it to stem from the theorems of Gold (1967), the most celebrated of which is G1.

Progress, but not a full solution to the logical problem of language acquisition

MacWhinney argues that the logical problem of language acquisition is no longer. It was a problem back in the 1970s when the guiding premises of the field were that language structure is highly abstract, that the child's input is a poor source of information about grammar, and that the child's learning mechanisms are inadequate to bridge the gap between the input the child receives and the grammar the child acquires. Now, however, we have new linguistic theories which show that language structure is not abstract but arises from cognition, and we have evidence that input is a rich source of information, and we have reason to believe that the child has a powerful array of learning procedures at his or her disposal. The gap between input and acquisition thought to exist in the 1970s has been closed, and thus, MacWhinney argues, there is no need to attribute innate linguistic knowledge to the child.

Inversion without grammar

MacWhinney's paper focuses on the role of input and learning strategies in explaining how language is acquired, essentially denying the poverty of stimulus assumption on which the so-called ‘logical problem of language acquisition’ is based.

Overgeneralizations, competition, and recovery: solving the logical problem with positive evidence

It would seem to be incomplete for any introduction to language acquisition to leave the ‘logical problem of language acquisition’ untouched – in fact, it would seem to be logical to just start the introduction with the logical problem. MacWhinney lays out a proposal here that attempts to dismantle the logical structure of the logical problem: there is no logical problem, if we consider carefully (a) the actual input that children receive from parents, and (b) the mechanisms that children use to handle possible pitfalls in extracting grammar from the input.

Learnability, stochastic input, and connectionist networks: a response to Brian MacWhinney's ‘A multiple process solution to the logical problem of language acquisition’

I would like to begin by clarifying some technical points regarding learnability and Gold's theorem and will work my way around to advocating the power of distributed connectionist networks. I may wind up repeating much of what MacWhinney has already said, but I hope to do so in a manner that clarifies the status of and relationship between his seven solutions to the language acquisition problem.

A multiple process solution to the logical problem of language acquisition

Many researchers believe that there is a logical problem at the centre of language acquisition theory. According to this analysis, the input to the learner is too inconsistent and incomplete to determine the acquisition of grammar. Moreover, when corrective feedback is provided, children tend to ignore it. As a result, language learning must rely on additional constraints from universal grammar. To solve this logical problem, theorists have proposed a series of constraints and parameterizations on the form of universal grammar. Plausible alternatives to these constraints include: conservatism, item-based learning, indirect negative evidence, competition, cue construction, and monitoring. Careful analysis of child language corpora has cast doubt on claims regarding the absence of positive exemplars. Using demonstrably available positive data, simple learning procedures can be formulated for each of the syntactic structures that have traditionally motivated invocation of the logical problem. Within the perspective of emergentist theory (MacWhinney, 2001), the operation of a set of mutually supportive processes is viewed as providing multiple buffering for developmental outcomes. However, the fact that some syntactic structures are more difficult to learn than others can be used to highlight areas of intense grammatical competition and processing load.

Comment on ‘A multiple process solution …’ (B. Macwhinney)

The central question posed by the so called ‘logical problem of language acquisition’ is how it comes to be that children are able to GENERALIZE from a finite set of linguistic data to acquire (learn, develop, grow) a computational system (grammar) that applies to novel examples not encountered before. The difficulty of this generalization problem was first posed cogently by Gold and while Macwhinney discusses the Gold framework and the linguistic literature on this matter, it is worth noting that the Gold framework is not the only one. There are at least two important new sources of insight from computational learning theory in the decades following Gold that need to be kept in mind. First, there is the development of empirical process theory that forms the basis of any analysis of statistical learning (see summary in Vapnik, 1998). Applying this approach to language (see Niyogi, 1998 for a treatment), one concludes that the family of learnable grammars must have a finite Vapnik Chervonenkis (VC) dimension. The VC dimension is a combinatorial measure of the complexity of a class of functions. Grammars may be viewed as functions mapping sentences to their grammaticality value. In this more sophisticated sense of the VC dimension, the class of grammars must be constrained. Second, there is the development of the theory of computational complexity suggesting that while a learning algorithm might exist, it may not be efficient, i.e. run in polynomial time. These two developments come together in the influential Probably Approximately Correct (PAC) model (Valiant, 1984).