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Examining Children’s Learning of Variation in a Miniature Artificial Language
Carla L. Hudson Kam
Department of Linguistics University of British Columbia
10/02/2012 ViLA 2012 1
Children’s Learning of Variation in a MAL
Two kinds of variation in language input: 1) stable variation
socio-linguistic/Labovian variation: e.g., –t/d deletion
2) variation that is changed, stabilized, by learners e.g., movement in NSL as in Senghas & Coppola, 2001; ASL
verbal morphology learned from non-native signers as in Singleton & Newport, 2004
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Children learning from non-native input
• variation that gets changed is variation present in non-native/late-learners speech
• variation introduced by errors, especially in use of grammatical morphology (tense/aspect marking, gender, case…)
• native language acquired from non-native variety does not contain the same degree of variation
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Children learning from non-native input
40%
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Simon Simon's Father Simon's Mother
% C
orre
ct
based on Singleton & Newport (2004) 10/02/2012 ViLA 2012 4
Children learning from non-native input
40%
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Simon Simon's Father Simon's Mother
% C
orre
ct
based on Singleton & Newport (2004) 04/03/2012 ViLA 2012 5
Children’s Learning of Variation in a MAL
Why is some variation stable and some not? Or
Why is some variation learned while some is changed?
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Children’s Learning of Variation in a MAL
Variation introduced by errors is ignored?
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Children’s Learning of Variation in a MAL
1) stable variation socio-linguistic/Labovian variation: e.g., –t/d deletion: deletion
influenced by following phonetic environment, morphological status of –t/d (tent, pint, went, kicked), factors’ influence differs by location, and social variables are involved
2) variation that is changed, stabilized, by learners variation characteristic of non-native speakers/signers: may be
some conditioning factors (Wolfram, 1985), but they are not consistent, social variables not involved
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Why is some variation stable and some not?
social factors necessary to trigger learning? evidence shows learning of linguistically conditioned variation prior
to socially/stylistically conditioned variation (Roberts, 1997; cf., Labov, 1989)
phonological variation vs. morphosyntactic? consistent with Payne (1980) who suggested that phonetically
conditioned phenomena are easier to acquire (in child L2) than morphologically conditioned ones (see also Roberts, 1997)…but there is stable morphosyntactic variation (Auger, 1998)
consistent conditioning factors? presence of consistent conditioning factors leads to learning of
variation
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Children’s Learning of Variation in a MAL
• expose participants to miniature languages containing variation
• control over input nature amount
• test
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Methodology
The language: 16 content words (nouns and verbs) 1 determiner (variable occurrence) 99 semantically possible sentences
S V - NS Det - (NO Det)
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Methodology
mirt fumpoga poe moves bird the ‘the bird moves’
flimm rungmawt poe slergen poe hit ball the alligator the ‘the ball hits the alligator’
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Methodology
• Participants: 27 5-7 year olds* (mean = 6;2) *(Some analyses based on 26 children)
• live exposure participants taught vocabulary (minus Det), but not grammar
• 6 exposure sessions: each 12-20 minutes
Session 1: vocab only (4x) Sessions 2-4: vocab (2x) & all 24 intransitive + transitive sentences (1x) Session 5: vocab (1x) & intransitive sentences (2x) + transitive
sentences (1x) Session 6: vocab (1x) & intransitive sentences (1x) + transitive
sentences (2x)
• tested in additional 7th session
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Experimental Manipulation
• Unconditioned Variation (UnCVar): Det occurred with 60% of the nouns – no further conditioning
same for subjects, objects, transitive sentences, intransitive sentences, each input session
variation by noun, but not consistent across sessions
• Conditioned Variation(CVar): Det occurred with 75% of subject nouns, 25% of object nouns (overall = 58%) – conditioning based on syntactic position
not same for subjects, objects, transitive sentences, intransitive sentences, or input session
variation by noun, but not consistent across sessions
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0%
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Overall Subject Object IT Subj Tr Subj
Mea
n De
term
iner
Pro
duct
ion
Category
UnCVar
CVar
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Internal Consistency
• Systematic: systematic users systematic non-users systematic other
• Unsystematic: variable user
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Percent Systematic and Unsystematic Producers by Input Condition
0%
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100%
UnCVar CVar
Unsystematic
Systematic
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Children’s Learning of Variation in a MAL
What are the unsystematic producers producing?
Does it reflect the variable patterns in their input?
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Mean Determiner Production for Subject and Object Nouns - Unsystematic Producers Only (n=2 & n=7)
Mea
n D
eter
min
er P
rodu
ctio
n
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0%
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100%
Subjects Objects
UnCVar
CVar
Mean Determiner Production by Sentence Type - Unsystematic Producers Only (n=2 & n=7)
0%
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IT Tr
UnCVar
CVar
Mea
n D
eter
min
er P
rodu
ctio
n
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Conclusion Variation and learning: • variation is learnable when the conditioning factors are present and
stable over time • otherwise, children have a strong tendency to impose regularity on
the language
Linguistic representation and learning: • the categories over which learning occurs (i.e., statistics are
tracked) are constrained subject and object – no for children (initially), OK for adults transitive and intransitive – yes consistent with a view that subject/object are not linguistic primitives, but
have to be acquired/created by the learner, in contrast with a transitivity distinction that is either innate or very salient in the usage/structure of the language (1 vs 2 argument sentences)
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Children’s Learning of Variation in a MAL
Acknowledgments:
• Funding from: NIH (NICHD, NIDC) NSERC
• Thanks to:
collaborators: Elissa Newport, Allison Kraus Marc Ettlinger, Amy Finn for lots of helpful conversations my lab managers: Allison Kraus, Jessica Morrison, Ann Chang, Xi
Sheng, Joanne Esse psychology and linguistics students in the Language and
Learning Lab at UC Berkeley Developmental Psychology area at UBC
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References Auger, J. (1998). Le redoublement des sujets en français informel québécois: Une approche variationiste. Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 43, 37– 63. Labov, W. (1989). The child as linguistic historian. Language Variation and Change, 1, 85-97. Payne, A. (1980). Factors controlling the acquisition of the Philadelphia dialect by out-of-state children. In W. Labov (Ed.) Locating Language in Time and Space, pp. 143-178. New York: Academic Press. Roberts, J. (1997). Acquisition of variable rules: A study of (-t/-d) deletion in preschool children. Journal of Child Language, 24, 351-372. Ross, D. S. (2001). Disentangling the nature–nurture interaction in the language acquisition process: Evidence from deaf children of hearing parents exposed to non-native input. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Rochester, 2001). Dissertation Abstracts International, 62-07B, 3402. Senghas, A., & Coppola, M. (2001). Children creating language: How Nicaraguan Sign Language acquired a spatial grammar. Psychological Science, 12, 4: 323-328. Singleton, J.L., & Newport, E.L. (2004). When learners surpass their models: The acquisition of American Sign Language from inconsistent input. Cognitive Psychology, 49, 370-407. Smith, J., Durham, M., & Fortune, L. (2007). “Mam, my trousers is fa’in doon!”: Community, caregiver, and child in the acquisition of variation in a Scottish dialect . Language Variation and Change, 19, 63-99. Wolfram, W. (1985). Variability in tense marking: A case for the obvious. Language Learning, 35, 229- 253.
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