Language Acquisition PDF
Preview Language Acquisition
Language Acquisition Core Readings Paul Bloom The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts Second printing, 1996 First MIT Press edition, 1994 © 1993 Harvester Wheatsheaf All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Language acquisition : core readings / edited by Paul Bloom. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p.). ISBN 0262023725.—ISBN 0262521873 (pbk.) 1. Language acquisition. I. Bloom, Paul. 1963– P118.L2536 1994 401'.93—dc20 9327417 CIP Page v Contents Acknowledgments vii Preface: Language acquisitions 1 Paul Bloom Overview: Controversies in language acquisition 5 Paul Bloom Part 1: The onset of language development 49 1.1 Human maternal vocalizations to infants as biologically relevant signals: An evolutionary perspective 51 Anne Fernald 1.2 Modularity and constraints in early lexical acquisition: Evidence from children's early language and gesture 95 Laura Ann Petitto Part 2: Word learning 127 2.1 Infant contributions to the achievement of joint reference 129 Dare A. Baldwin 2.2 Constraints children place on word meanings 154 Ellen M. Markman 2.3 The structural sources of verb meanings 174 Lila Gleitman Page vi 2.4 Early word meanings: The case of object names 222 Janellen Huttenlocher and Patricia Smiley Part 3: Syntax and semantics 249 3.1 The notion of source in language acquisition 251 Eve V. Clark and Kathie L. Carpenter 3.2 Affectedness and direct objects: The role of lexical semantics in the acquisition of verb argument structure 285 Jess Gropen, Steven Pinker, Michelle Hollander and Richard Goldberg 3.3 Learning a semantic system: What role do cognitive predispositions play? 329 Melissa Bowerman 3.4 Language acquisition in the absence of experience 364 Stephen Crain 3.5 Language growth with experience without feedback 411 Richard F. Cromer Part 4: Morphology 421 4.1 On learning the past tenses of English verbs 423 D. E. Rumelhart and J. L. McClelland 4.2 Rules of language 472 Steven Pinker 4.3 Levelordering in lexical development 485 Peter Gordon Part 5: Acquisition in special circumstances 505 5.1 Beyond the input given: The child's role in the acquisition of language 507 Susan GoldinMeadow and Carolyn Mylander 5.2 Maturational constraints on language learning 543 Elissa L. Newport Part 6: Alternative perspectives 561 6.1 Innate constraints and developmental change 563 Annette KarmiloffSmith 6.2 The instinct to learn 591 Peter Marler Index 618 Page vii Acknowledgments The editor and publisher acknowledge with thanks permission granted to reproduce in this volume the following material previously published elsewhere. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity. Overview Bloom, P. "Language development," in Handbook of Psycholinguistics, 1993, copyright © 1993 Academic Press Inc., reprinted by permission of Academic Press and the author. Part 1: The Onset of Language Development Fernald, A. "Human maternal vocalizations to infants as biologically relevant signals: An evolutionary perspective," in Barkow et al., The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture, 1992, copyright © 1992 Oxford University Press, reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press. Page viii Petitto, L. A. "Modularity and constraints in early lexical acquisition: Evidence from children's early language and gesture," in Minnesota Symposium on Child Psychology, 25, copyright © 1992 Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, reprinted by permission of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and the author. Part 2: Word Learning Baldwin, D. A. "Infant contributions to the achievement of joint reference," in Child Development, 62, 1991, copyright © 1991 the Society for Research in Child Development, reprinted by permission of the Society for Research in Child Development. Markman, E. "Constraints children place on word meanings," in Cognitive Science, 14, 1990, copyright © 1990 Ellen M. Markman, reprinted by permission of the author. Gleitman, L. R. "The structural sources of verb meanings," in Language Acquisition, 1, 1, copyright © 1990 Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, reprinted by permission of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and the author. Huttenlocher, J. and Smiley, P. "Early word meanings: The case of object names," in Cognitive Psychology, 19, 1987, copyright © 1987 Academic Press Inc., reprinted by permission of Academic Press and the authors. Part 3: Syntax and Semantics Clark, E. V. and Carpenter, K. L. "The notion of source in language acquisition," in Language, 65, 1, 1989, copyright © 1989 the Linguistic Society of America, reprinted by permission of the Linguistic Society of America and the authors. Gropen, J. et al. "Affectedness and direct objects: The role of lexical semantics in the acquisition of verb argument structure," in Cognition, 41, 1991, copyright © 1991 Elsevier Science Publishers B. V., reprinted by permission of Elsevier Science Publishers and the authors. Bowerman, M. "Learning a semantic system: What role do cognitive predispositions play?," in Schiefelbusch, R. L. and Rice, M. L., eds. The Teachability of Language, copyright © 1989 Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., reprinted by permission of Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., the author, and the editors. Crain, S. "Language acquisition in the absence of experience," in Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 14, 1991, copyright © 1991 Cambridge University Press, reprinted by permission of Cambridge University Press and the author. Page ix Cromer, R. "Language growth with experience without feedback," in Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 16, 3, 1987, copyright © 1987 Plenum Publishing Corporation, reprinted by permission of Plenum Publishing Corporation. Part 4: Morphology Rumelhart, D. E. and McClelland, J. L. "On learning the past tenses of English verbs," in Parallel Distributed Processing, Volume 2, 1986, copyright © 1986 The MIT Press, reprinted by permission of The MIT Press. Pinker, S. "Rules of language," in Science, 253, 530–5, 2 August 1991, copyright © 1991 the American Association for the Advancement of Science, reprinted by permission of the A.A.A.S. and the author. Gordon, P. "Levelordering in lexical development," in Cognition, 21, 1985, copyright © 1985 Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., reprinted by permission of Elsevier Science Publishers and the author. Part 5: Acquisition in Special Circumstances GoldinMeadow, S. and Mylander, C. "Beyond the input given: The child's role in the acquisition of language," in Language, 66, 2, 1990, copyright © 1990 the Linguistic Society of America, reprinted by permission of the Linguistic Society of America and the authors. Newport, E. L. "Maturational constraints on language learning," in Cognitive Science, 14, 1990, copyright © 1990 Elissa L. Newport, reprinted by permission of the author. Part 6: Alternative Perspectives KarmiloffSmith, A. "Innate constraints and developmental change," copyright © 1993 Annette KarmiloffSmith, adapted from Carey, S. and Gelman, R., eds, The Epigenesis of Mind: Essays on biology and cognition, 1991, adapted by permission of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Marler, P. "The instinct to learn," in Carey, S. and Gelman, R., eds, The Epigenesis of Mind: Essays on biology and cognition, 1991, copyright © 1991 Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, reprinted by permission of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and the author. Page 1 Preface: Language Acquisitions Paul Bloom Language acquisition is one of the most important domains within the sciences of the mind, but it does not constitute a coherent field of study. Each aspect of language has unique properties, and it is unlikely that a single theory could capture the entire learning process. The psychological mechanisms that allow children to acquire the meanings of words, for instance, are almost certainly distinct from those that underlie their capacity to form and understand questions, or to establish narrative structure in storytelling. As such, there is no single process that one could call "language acquisition"; instead, we are left with the task of explaining different acquisitions (of word meaning, syntactic structure, morphological rules, and so on), and exploring the relationships that hold between them, if any. Why study these acquisitions? One motivation is an interest in the learning process itself. Even assuming that children innately possess a substantial base of linguistic knowledge, there exists considerable variation across languages. A child acquiring English, for instance, has to figure out what "dog" means, what the past tense of "go" is, and how to order nouns and adjectives. These are the acquisitions that any adequate theory must account for, and explaining how all normal children come to possess such knowledge on the basis of limited input poses puzzles of extraordinary intellectual depth. But there are other reasons for studying language acquisition. Scholars from Aristotle to Wittgenstein have used the process of a child acquiring her first language as a way to explore broader questions about the nature of grammar, thought, and meaning. Philosophers turn to the logical problem of lexical Page 2 acquisition when debating the nature of word meaning, linguists use the study of language acquisition to explore the nature of universal grammar, and psychologists have analyzed everything from infant babbling to overgeneralization of the pasttense morpheme when contrasting theories of learning and mental representation. The eighteen articles collected below reflect both motivations—a concern with language acquisition for its own sake, and a desire to use theory and evidence from this domain to enlighten us on other, broader issues. With the exception of the final section, the order of the papers roughly recapitulates the developmental process, starting with the infant's early sensitivity to linguistic input, followed by word learning, syntactic and semantic development, use and misuse of grammatical morphology, and ending with the adult's notverysuccessful attempt to acquire a first or second language. The authors apply several different research methodologies, including experimental manipulation, analysis of spontaneous speech samples, and computer modeling, and the theoretical perspectives they adopt are similarly diverse, ranging from linguistic theory to evolutionary biology. The collection begins with an introduction to the field of language acquisition; this outlines the sequence of normal language development, discusses the nature of the input that children receive, and then reviews four learning problems—the acquisition of word meaning, determining the syntactic categorization of new words, determining whether subjects are optional or obligatory, and recovering from errors of verb morphology and semantics. This review provides a useful, though not essential, background for the other articles in this collection. In the section devoted to the onset of language acquisition, Fernald adopts the perspective of evolutionary theory in her discussion of maternal vocalizations to infants. She argues that adults have evolved to use a certain style of speech that infants resonate to—what Darwin has called "the sweet music of the species"—and that this facilitates both social development and language acquisition. Petitto provides an interesting counterpoint to this, presenting evidence that the infant's sensitivity to language applies equally to speech and sign, and that in the course of lexical and syntactic development the linguistic use of sign can be dissociated from nonlinguistic gesturing. It is an intriguing question how to reconcile these two positions; in particular, are infants really sensitive to properties of speech, or do they instead respond to abstract linguistic properties that appear across all modalities? The section on word learning begins with Baldwin's finding that an infant's hypothesis about the meaning of a novel word is based in part on what the speaker is attending to when she uses this word. This suggests that nonverbal "social" cues (e.g., what the speaker is looking at) play a role even at the earliest stages of lexical development. Focusing on slightly older children, Markman outlines a contemporary perspective on the logic of word learning (attributed to Quine) and reviews some compelling evidence for the existence of certain
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