Language Acquisition

1. Language Acquisition Julien Musolino Department of Psychology & Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University

2. The plan _______________________________________________________ • Present for about an hour • Short break • Present for another hour • julienm@ruccs.rutgers.edu

3. www.rutgers-psycholinguistics.com

4. General goal _______________________________________________________ • Give you a sense of the problems faced by a child who is acquiring his/her native language, as well as the problems faced by someone trying to explain how this can happen.

5. Approach _______________________________________________________ “To see the world in a grain of sand” -- William Blake Focus on a single phenomenon and show that doing so in a systematic fashion can illuminate much broader issues

6. My grain of sand _______________________________________________________ Musolino (1998) Developmental phenomenon Research program that grew out of it

7. General Outline _______________________________________________________ Part 1:background leading to developmental phenomenon Part 2:exploring this developmental phenomenon and some of its implications

8. Outline _______________________________________________________ Part 1: background • General motivations • The preschool period • Experimental methodology • Linguistic phenomenon • Developmental phenomenon

9. Outline _______________________________________________________ Part 1: background • General motivations • The preschool period • Experimental methodology • Linguistic phenomenon • Developmental phenomenon

10. Why study language acquisition? _______________________________________________________ • Universality • Species-specificity • Complexity

11. Why study language acquisition? _____________________________ It is a very remarkable fact that there are none … without even excepting idiots, that cannot arrange different words together, forming of them a statement by which they make known their thoughts; while on the other hand, there is no other animal, however perfect and fortunately circumstanced it may be, which can do the same. René Descartes, Discours de la Méthode

12. Why study language acquisition? _____________________________ “When we study human language, we are approaching what some might call the “human essence”, the distinctive qualities of mind that are, so far as we know, unique to man.” Noam Chomsky, Language and Mind

13. A species-specific trait _____________________________ Close to 99% of our genes in common

14. They certainly look like us … _____________________________

15. Computers beat minds at chess … Kasparov vs. Deep Blue

16. A conversation with Eliza Eliza: Hello, I am Eliza. How can I help you? Julien: Could you tell me what a dog is? Eliza: Oh, I tell you what a dog is.

17. A conversation with Eliza Julien: Yes, please. Eliza: You are sure? Julien: Yes, I’m pretty sure. Eliza: You are sure? Julien: I said Yes!!!

18. A conversation with Eliza Eliza: Could you elaborate on that? Julien: I just want you to tell me what a dog is. Eliza: Do you wish to just want me? Julien: Are you going to tell me or not?

19. A conversation with Eliza Eliza: Would you prefer if I were not going to tell you or not? Julien: You just don’t understand a damn thing I say, do you? Eliza: Oh, I [ ]

20. Why study language acquisition? _____________________________ “Language acquisition is one of the most important topics in cognitive science. Every theory of cognition has tried to explain it … It is not hard to see why. Possessing a language is the quintessentially human trait: all normal humans speak, no non-human animal does … Every time we speak, we are revealing something about the nature of language, so the facts of language structure are easy to come by – facts that hint at a system of extraordinary complexity. Nonetheless, learning a first language is something every normal child does successfully, in a matter of a few years and without the need for formal lessons” -- Steven Pinker

21. Quantifiers _______________________________________________________ Some, all, two, many, every, no … • Give us the power to express generalizations about quantities of individuals.

22. Quantifiers _______________________________________________________ “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” • Abraham Lincoln(attributed) “You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.” • George W. Bush

23. Why Study Quantification? _______________________________________________________ • Core property of natural language • Extremely complex phenomenon • Causes problems until late in development

24. Outline _______________________________________________________ Part 1: background • General motivations • The preschool period • Experimental methodology • Linguistic phenomenon • Developmental phenomenon

25. 4-5 year-olds

26. Why the preschool period? _____________________________ • Because 4 and 5-year-olds are sophisticated enough linguistically to allow us to investigate complex linguistic questions • Yet, at the same time, preschoolers often differ from adults in systematic ways and these differences can be used to illuminate a broad range of issues of interest to linguists, psychologists, and cognitive scientists

27. Ulysses, 4;6 _____________________________ Julien: “This Troll has magic powers. Do you know anybody else who has magic powers?” Ulysses: “The only two people I know who have magic powers are God up there and the Power Rangers on the cartoon channel”

28. Ulysses, 4;6 _____________________________ Julien: “Does your nose grow when you tell lies?” Ulysses: “I never tell lies!” Julien: “Well, that’s great Ulysses!!!” Ulysses: “See, I just told you a lie and my nose didn’t grow!”

29. Sarah, 5;2 _____________________________ Dr. M: “I am a Prince. If you marry me, you’ll become a Princess” Sarah: “I don’t want to get married!” Dr. M: “You don’t want to get married ever??!!” Sarah: “I’ll get married so that I can have kids. Then I’ll get divorced!”

30. Not this one Cause problems until late _________________________________________________________ Is every dog on a mat? Adults: YES 5-year-olds: NO

31. Previous Accounts _________________________________________________________ • Lack of conceptual knowledge (Inhelder & Piaget, 1964) • Lack of syntactic knowledge (Bucci, 1978; Roeper and deVilliers, 1991) • Lack of semantic knowledge (Philip 1995, Drozd & van Loosbroek, 1999) • Lack of pragmatic knowledge (Crain et al., 1996) • Incomplete knowledge (Musolino, Crain and Thornton, 2000)

32. Why the preschool period? _____________________________ • Preschoolers are linguistically sophisticated • However, they sometimes differ from adults in surprising and systematic ways

33. Outline _______________________________________________________ Part 1: background • Why study language acquisition • The preschool period • Experimental methodology • Linguistic phenomenon • Developmental phenomenon

34. Experimental methodology _______________________________________________________ • How to design experiments on language acquisition • How to interpret the results of those experiments • Tools to make predictions (learnability principles) Crain and Thornton, (1998)

35. Experimental methodology _______________________________________________________ Truth Value Judgment Task Crain and Thornton, (1998)

36. Truth Value Judgment Task _______________________________________________________ (1) Short stories are acted out in front of child participants (2) A puppet makes a statement about what happened in the story (3) Participants tell the puppet whether he’s right or wrong (and explains why)

37. Outline _______________________________________________________ Part 1: background • General motivations • The preschool period • Experimental methodology • Linguistic phenomenon • Developmental phenomenon

38. Buying candy … not everybody

39. Reading magazines …

40. Reading the newspaper …

41. Reading Time magazine …

42. And Newsweek …

43. The phenomenon _______________________________________________________ “There are extra copies of the handout on the chair here, in case everybody didn’t get one” (Kenneth Wexler, UMD colloquium, October 16, 1998) “All the birds don’t seem to be quite the same” (Lila Gleitman, Psych 135 lecture, February 25, 1999) “All semantic features are not going to be under direct syntactic control” (Merrill Garrett, IRCS Colloquium, February 26, 1999)

44. The phenomenon _______________________________________________________ (1) Every N neg VP a. ‘None’ b. ‘Not all’

45. Scope _______________________________________________________ (2X3)+ 5 = 11 2X(3+ 5) = 16

46. Scope _______________________________________________________ (1) Every horse didn’t jump over the fence Every horse (not jump) ‘none’ • Every horse is interpreted outside the scope of negation • Isomorphic interpretation

47. Scope _______________________________________________________ (1) Every horse didn’t jump over the fence (Not every horse) jumped ‘not all’ • Every horse is interpreted within the scope of negation • Non-isomorphic interpretation

48. The President didn’t V two interns

49. (1b) Bill didn’t V two interns • Two interns [not V] ‘two > not’ Scope _______________________________________________________ (1a) Bill didn’t V two interns • [not V two interns] ‘not > two’

50. (2b) Bill didn’t V any interns • * Some interns [not V] ‘some > not’ Scope _______________________________________________________ (2a) Bill didn’t V any interns • (not V some interns) ‘not > some’