language acquisition julien musolino department of psychology & center for cognitive science,...

Language Acquisition

Julien MusolinoDepartment of Psychology & Center for Cognitive Science,

Rutgers University

The plan_______________________________________________________

Short break

Present for about an hour

[email protected]

Present for another hour

www.rutgers-psycholinguistics.com

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.

Approach_______________________________________________________

“To see the world in a grain of sand”

Focus on a single phenomenon and show that doing so in a systematic fashion can illuminate much broader issues

-- William Blake

My grain of sand_______________________________________________________

Developmental phenomenon

Research program that grew out of it

Musolino (1998)

General Outline_______________________________________________________

Part 1: background leading to developmental phenomenon

Part 2: exploring this developmental phenomenon and some of its implications

Outline_______________________________________________________

Part 1: background

General motivations

The preschool period

Experimental methodology

Linguistic phenomenon


Why study language acquisition?_______________________________________________________

Universality

Species-specificity

Complexity

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

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

A species-specific trait _____________________________

Close to 99% of our genes in common

They certainly look like us … _____________________________

Kasparov vs. Deep Blue

Computers beat minds at chess …

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.

A conversation with ElizaJulien: Yes, please.

Eliza: You are sure?

Eliza: You are sure?

Julien: Yes, I’m pretty sure.

Julien: I said Yes!!!


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?


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 [ ]

“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

Why study language acquisition?

Quantifiers_______________________________________________________

Some, all, two, many, every, no …

Give us the power to express generalizations about quantities of individuals.

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.”

“You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.”

Abraham Lincoln (attributed)

George W. Bush

Why Study Quantification?_______________________________________________________

Core property of natural language

Extremely complex phenomenon

Causes problems until late in development

Outline_______________________________________________________

Part 1: background

General motivations





4-5 year-olds

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

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”

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!”

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!”

_________________________________________________________ Cause problems until late

Adults: YES 5-year-olds: NO

Is every dog on a mat?

Not this one

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)

Incomplete knowledge (Musolino, Crain and Thornton, 2000)

Lack of pragmatic knowledge (Crain et al., 1996)

Why the preschool period?_____________________________

Preschoolers are linguistically sophisticated

However, they sometimes differ from adults in surprising and systematic ways

Outline_______________________________________________________

Part 1: background

Why study language acquisition





Experimental methodology_______________________________________________________

Crain and Thornton, (1998)

How to design experiments on language acquisition

How to interpret the results of those experiments

Tools to make predictions (learnability principles)

Experimental methodology_______________________________________________________

Truth Value Judgment Task

Crain and Thornton, (1998)

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)

Outline_______________________________________________________

Part 1: background

General motivations





not everybody

Buying candy …

Reading magazines …

Reading the newspaper …

Reading Time magazine …

And Newsweek …

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)

The phenomenon_______________________________________________________

(1) Every N neg VP

a. ‘None’

b. ‘Not all’

Scope_______________________________________________________

(2 X 3) + 5 = 11

2 X (3 + 5) = 16

Scope_______________________________________________________

(1) Every horse didn’t jump over the fence

Every horse (not jump) ‘none’

• Isomorphic interpretation

• Every horse is interpreted outside the scope of negation

Scope_______________________________________________________


(Not every horse) jumped ‘not all’

• Every horse is interpreted within the scope of negation

• Non-isomorphic interpretation

The President didn’t V two interns

_______________________________________________________Scope

(1a) Bill didn’t V two interns

[not V two interns] ‘not > two’

Two interns [not V] ‘two > not’

(1b) Bill didn’t V two interns

_______________________________________________________Scope

(2a) Bill didn’t V any interns

(not V some interns) ‘not > some’

* Some interns [not V] ‘some > not’

(2b) Bill didn’t V any interns

_______________________________________________________Quantifier-negation interaction

(1) QP(subject) … neg …

QP > Neg (some)

QP > Neg & Neg > QP (every)


(2) Neg … QP (object)

QP > Neg (some)

QP > Neg & Neg > QP (two, many)

Neg > QP (every, any)

_______________________________________________________QP-Neg interaction and children

(2) Neg … QP (object)

Fundamental Problem_______________________________________________________

The tension created by the need to:

Generalize

“ … children cannot simply stick with the exact sentences they hear, because they must generalize to the infinite language of their community.”

Pinker (1989:6)


And the risk of:

Overgeneralization

“ … if the child entertains a grammar generating a superset of the target language … no amount of positive evidence can strictly falsify the guess.”

Pinker (1989:7)

Overgeneralization_______________________________________________________

Target grammar

X

Hypothesized grammar

X is impossible (negative evidence)

Positive evidence

Child: My teacher holded the rabbits and we patted them.

Parent: Did you say your teacher held the baby rabbits?

Child: Yes.

Parent: What did you say she did?

Child: She holded the rabbits and we patted them.

Parent: Did you say she held them tightly?

Child: She holded them loosely.

Child: Nobody don’t like me

Parent: No, say “nobody likes me”

Child: Nobody don’t like me

(eight repetitions of this dialogue)

Parent: No, now listen carefully; say “nobody likes me”

Child: Oh! Nobody don’t likes me.

Child: Want other one spoon, Daddy.

Parent: You mean, you want the other spoon.

Child: Yes, I want other one spoon, please, Daddy.

Parent: Can you say “the other spoon”?

Child: Other … one …spoon.

Parent: Say “other”

Child: Other.

Parent: “Spoon.”

Child: Spoon.

Parent: “Other spoon”

Child: Other …spoon. Now give me other one spoon?

Cazden, 1972; Mc Neill, 1970; Braine, 1971


Language is replete with ‘partial generalizations’

These provide a slippery basis for generalization

The case of ‘reverse scope’ readings


Unavailable

Depending on the nature of the quantifier and its syntactic position, non-isomorphic interpretations can be:

Required

Optional

Trouble

Trouble

Trouble

Research questions_______________________________________________________

How do people, including children, interpret such sentences?

What can we learn by studying the interpretive process?

How do children navigate the maze of interpretive options created by the interaction of quantifiers and negation?

Outline_______________________________________________________

Part 1: background

General motivation





Results to be presented_______________________________________________________

I won’t discuss all the details (number of

subjects, age range, types of analyses) but …

These results have been published

These results have been replicated

The children are 4 and 5-year-olds

Experiment 1: condition 1_______________________________________________________

(1) Every N neg VP

a. ‘None’

b. ‘Not all’

Musolino, Crain and Thornton (2000) Linguistics

One of the stories_______________________________________________________


The end of the story “Every horse didn’t jump over the fence, am I right?”

Results_______________________________________________________

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

5-year-olds Adults

Children’s justifications_______________________________________________________

“Every horse didn’t jump over the fence, am I right?”

Child:”You’re wrong because these two horses jumped over the fence!”

Every N didn’t VP

Isomorphic Non-isomorphic

AdultsChildren

(none) (not all)

Experiment 1: condition 2_______________________________________________________

(2) The Smurf didn’t buy every orange

b. ‘Not all’


a. ‘None’

b. ‘Not all’



“The Smurf didn’t buy every orange, am I right?”

The end of the story

Results (children)_______________________________________________________

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

Subject condition Object condition

Pro

po

rtio

n o

f Y

ES

res

po

nse

s

Experiment 2_______________________________________________________

(2) The Smurf didn’t catch two birds

Lidz and Musolino (2002) Cognition

a. Not (caught 2)

b. 2 (not caught)

Isomorphic Condition_______________________________________________________

2 (not caught) = FALSE

Not (caught 2) = TRUE

Non-Isomorphic Condition_______________________________________________________

2 (not caught) = TRUE

Not (caught 2) = FALSE

NP didn't V two N: adult data

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

WtNf WfNt

Pro

port

ion

of Y

ES

res

pons

esResults: Adults_______________________________________________________

IsomorphicNon-Isomorphic

Results: 4-year-olds_______________________________________________________

NP didn't V two N: child data

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

WtNf WfNt

Pro

po

rtio

n o

f Y

ES

re

sp

on

se

s

IsomorphicNon-Isomorphic

Children’s justifications (non-iso)_______________________________________________________

“The Smurf didn’t catch two birds, am I right?”

Child:”You’re wrong, she did catch two!”

Children’s justifications (iso)_______________________________________________________

“The Smurf didn’t catch two birds, am I right?”

Child:” You’re right! She only caught one”

Sentence Type Children Adults

Every horse didn’t jump over the fence

The Smurf didn’t buy every orange

The Smurf didn’t catch two birds

Every > not

In sum

not > Every

not > Every not > Every

not > 2not > 22 > not

_______________________________________________________

The observation of Isomorphism_______________________________________________________

“Young children, unlike adults, have a strong tendency to interpret sentences containing quantified NPs and negation on the basis of the surface syntactic position of these elements”


Results have been replicated_______________________________________________________

Noveck et al. (2007) Journal of SemanticsMusolino & Lidz (2006) Linguistics

The same quantifier/negation combinations

Different quantifier/negation combinations

Musolino & Lidz (2003) Language Acquisition

Lidz & Musolino (2002) Cognition

Different languages

Han, Lidz & Musolino (2007) Linguistic Inquiry

Lidz & Musolino (2002) Cognition

Questions

Developmental question

Causal question

Structural question

The structural question _______________________________________________________

What underlies isomorphism?

Linear order ?

C-command ?

IP

SUBJECT I’

English (SVO)_______________________________________________________

INeg

VERB OBJECT

VP

Subj > Neg

Neg > Obj

Kannada

Approximately 40 million speakers in Karnataka, south-western India.

Scope ambiguity in Kannada

naanu eraDu pustaka ood-al-illa

I-nom two books read-inf-neg

‘I didn't read two books.’

a. Not (read 2)b. 2 (not read)

S O V

IP

SUBJECT I’

Kannada (SOV)_______________________________________________________

INeg

OBJECT VERB

VP

Predictions for Kannada

To the extent that Kannada children display a preference for one of the two readings:

_______________________________________________________

C-command: same results as English

Linear order: opposite results from English

Results: Adults

'NP two Ns Ved not: adults"

0.87 0.85

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

Wide-true / Narrow-false Wide-false / Narrow-true

Pro

port

ion

of 'Y

es' r

espo

nses

2 (not caught) not (caught 2)

Results: English vs. Kannada

English KannadaNP didn't V two N: child data

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

WtNf WfNt

Prop

ortio

n of

YES

resp

onse

s

2 (not) Not (2)0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

2 (not) not (2)2 (not) Not (2)

Conclusions _______________________________________________________

They differ in ways that are constrained by fundamental linguistic principles (i.e. c-command).

Children systematically differ from adults.

Children’s ‘errors’ tell us about the kinds of linguistic representations that they entertain.

Controls

Reverse linear order Complexity Prosody Attentional focus Indefinites


“Young children, unlike adults, have a strong tendency to interpret sentences containing quantified NPs and negation on the basis of the surface c-command relations that hold between these elements”

Lidz and Musolino (2002) Cognition


Form (Syntax)

Meaning (Semantics)

Isomorphic mapping

For preschoolers overt syntactic scope determines semantic scope (in the case of QP-Neg)

Part 2

Why should this be?

What can we learn from systematically addressing this question?

language acquisition julien musolino department of psychology & center for cognitive science,...

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