PSYCH 240 1ST Edition Lecture 16 Outline of Last Lecture: Semantic Networks I. Major Features of LanguageII. Language ComprehensionIII. Language and the Brain Outline of Current Lecture: Episodic MemoryI. What must be learnedII. How does language development proceed?Current Lecture: Lecture 16: Language Acquisition (March 30, 2015)I. What must be learnedi. Language is complex1. Effortlessly and fast2. Most sentences completely novelii. Know > 100,000 wordsiii. No other species does this, all normal humans doiv. Bottom line: learning language is a big jobb. Distinguishing soundsi. Babies hear lots of sounds, only some of which are language1. Traffic, dishwashers, vacuumsii. First job in language acquisition:1. Distinguish language sounds from other soundsc. Parsing Language Soundsi. Then need to parse into phonemes1. Chop it up into atomic units of language soundii. Must also parse phonemes into wordsThese notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor’s lecture. GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes, not as a substitute.d. Assigning Meaningsi. Once we have words, we need to assign meaningsii. Problems: 1. Same sound can refer to different things2. Different sounds can refer to the same thing [bat (baseball) vs. bat (mammal)]e. Learning Rulesi. Must learn how words are combined1. Grammarii. Must generalize to novel sentences1. So can’t just memorize wordingsiii. Need to acquire rules that can be applied to new sentencesf. No Grammatical Feedbacki. Adults usually do not correct children’s grammar or punctuation1. Only correct meaningii. Furthermore, correcting grammar/pronunciation does not even helpiii. Kids correct themselves despite little feedbackg. Linguistic Universalsi. Language is very complexii. Acquisition task is not well constrained1. Irregular mappings from sounds to meanings2. Little negative feedbackiii. All normal humans acquire languageiv. Suggests linguistic universals1. General language principles2. Embodied in every language (innate)II. How does language development proceed?a. Discriminating phonemesi. In 1st year, infants can discriminate all phonemes from all languagesii. Gradually lose discriminations that are not important in their own languageiii. See video of infant sucking procedure (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFlxiflDk_o) (0:57-5:06iv.v. Motherese 1. Adults help kids by speaking “motherese”2. High pitch, slow rate, exaggerated intonations3. Falling pitch and pausing signals phrase boundariesa. Aids parsing4. Infants prefer to listen to mothereseb. Major Stages of Language Development i. Holophrastic stage: one-word stage1. One word utterancesa. “momma”2. No syntax, need context (gestures, affect) to disambiguate3. Under-generalization and overgeneralization for first ∼75 words4. Do understand some phrasesii. Telegraphic Stage: two-word stage1. Two word utterances2. Correct use of word order:a. Subject-action / “dog bark”b. Action-object / “drink milk”3. Can convey a lot of information succinctly (like a telegraph)iii. Learning Syntax/Rules: syntactic overgeneralization1. Start learning syntactic/grammar rules2. Examples a. Past tensei.ii. U-shaped curve for irregular past (went)1. Initially, use appropriate form (went)2. Learn rule (add –ed) and overgeneralize (goed)3. Relearn correct past tense (went)c. Nonsense wordsi. Learn general rules that apply to new casesii. 4-5 yr-olds know1. Plural of “wug” is “wugs”2. Past tense of “rick” is “ricked”iii. Implies language learning is generative, not just imitationd. Learning Word Meaningsi. By age 5, kids know 10,000 to 15,000 wordsii. Learning an average of ∼10 new words/day!iii. How?1. Video of preferential looking procedure (http ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFlxiflDk_o) (9:15-11:33)iv. Input gives clues about parts/wholes1. “This is a rabbit; these are his ears.”2. “his” cues the fact that “ears” is a partv. Inherent bias that new words refer to shape1. If something is a “biff”, children will claim other objects w/ same shape also “biffs”e. Critical Period Effects1. People who learn language after age 10-12 never acquire native abilitya. People raised in social isolationb. 2nd language learnersc. American sign