23 - Grammar

Question 1

How are words related to one another?

Answer 1

Both semantically and co-occurring in speech

Question 2

Why does “priming” work?

Answer 2

Because words are related to each other semantically and co-occur in speech, so hearing one word makes it easier to think of other similar words.

Question 3

What 3 things predict word learning?

Answer 3

1. Word length and frequency

This predicts the age of acquisition of a word

2. Contextual diversity

• The amount of different contexts they hear a certain word in*
• If a word coexists with a lot of other known words it predicts word learning (cross-situational learning)*

3. Knowing words associated with a word

Predicts the learning of that word (distributional theories)

Question 4

What is a “network graph”

Answer 4

A visual representation of how works are connected to one another

Question 5

What does this network graph show us?

Answer 5

Left is a typical talker, right is a late talker (less words than is expected for their age)

Late talkers connections are more sparse, it shows that words are less predictive of other words and there are less opportunities for priming

• Important to build word connections for language*
• Association between words helps us build our vocabulary*

Question 6

What impact does age have on the acquisition of a word when the person reaches adulthood?

Answer 6

Words learned earlier are:

Rated as more familiar

Recognised faster (lexical decision)

Named faster

Question 7

What changes happen to the effects of learning a word earlier in life change when you control for frequency, length, familiarity and imaginability?

Answer 7

Nothing, words are still rated as more familiar, recognised faster and named faster.

Shows the importance of learning words as a young child going into adulthood

Question 8

What is “grammar”?

Answer 8

How we put words together

Question 9

What are “open class” words?

Answer 9

Adjective, adverb, verbs and nouns

They carry most of the content and it is easy to add new words

They are also the first words infants learn and the easiest for second language learners

Question 10

What are “closed class” words?

Answer 10

Consists of: pronouns, auxillary verbs, conjunction, prepositions and determiners

These carry most of the grammar and it is difficult to add new words

These are hardest for second language learners

Question 11

Is it easier for second language learners to learn “open class” or “closed class” words?

Answer 11

Open class words are easier for second language learners

Question 12

Do infants learn closed class or open class words first?

Answer 12

Open class words

Question 13

What do “most sentences” consist of? (3 things)

Answer 13

A verb (an action doing word)

A subject (agent of the action)

The object not involved in the action (the patience)

Question 14

The most common sentence structures around the world are

Answer 14

Subject, object verb

And Subject, verb, object

Question 15

Which two sentence structures does english follow?

Answer 15

Subject, verb and object

Object verb and subject

Question 16

Name the 3 parts of the sentence shown here

Answer 16

Question 17

What is “passive language” in english?

Answer 17

Object, verb, subject

• Not used in practical reports*
• E.g. “mistakes were made”*

Question 18

Which part of the sentence is referred to as the “kings of the sentence”

Answer 18

The verb

Question 19

Why are the verbs important?

Answer 19

They determine what the arguments are and where they go

• E.g. “like” tells us we need a subject and an object*
• Someone to do the liking of something*

Question 20

What are the 5 theories that attempt to explain how we learn grammar?

Answer 20

Mimicry

Negative evidence

Subtle negative evidence

Bootstrapping

Statistical learning

Question 21

Is language limited?

Answer 21

No, it is generative and infinite

We are constantly coming up with new words and sentences that we have never heard or said before

Question 22

What is meant by ‘mimicry’?

Answer 22

Children copy what they hear and learn language this way

Question 23

What is meant by “children overgeneralise in language”?

Answer 23

Children utter false utterances (they generalise what they hear too far and state false statements)

They make up new phrases or use grammar that isn’t used

E.g. “do you want to disappear my head”

Question 24

What is the problem with ‘mimicry’?

Answer 24

Children need to generalise to utterances outside of what they have heard

• There are problems with meaning, novel sentences, generalisation*
• Not all verbs work the same way and therefore sometimes it wont make sense*
• E.g.*
• Jess is mooping jack the ball -> he is mooping the frisbee to her (works)*
• She is pilking the data to the screen -> she is pilking the screen the data (does not work)*

Question 25

What is **“negative evidence”** when learning grammar?

Answer 25

Adults provide some sort of negative evidence when the childs sentences are not grammatical

Question 26

How prolific is “negative evidence” when children are learning grammar?

Answer 26

Not at all, observational studies have shown that it is rare for a parent to fix a child’s grammar Even rarer to correct syntax

Question 27

What is the **no-negative-evidence** problem?

Answer 27

Children don’t seem to understand when you try to correct them using negative evidence Parents rarely correct their child’s grammar

Question 28

Describe “subtle negative evidence” in regards to learning grammar?

Answer 28

Rather than fully correct a child, parents subtly repeat the sentence a child makes back in a more grammatical way *E.g. yesterday I go to the playground - (parent repeats) “oh you went to the playground yesterday? Was it fun?”*

Question 29

Is the “subtle negative evidence argument” accurate?

Answer 29

More intuitively correct and is done more, but children rarely notice and fix their sentences It also fails to explain novel words *Parents rephrase more when children make errors (first line is when sentences have been rephrased back when the sentence was correct, second column is when the sentence was rephrased back when a grammatical mistake was made)*

Question 30

Do parents rephrase children when children don’t make grammatical errors

Answer 30

Yes, but not as much as when children do make grammatical errors

Question 31

Is the “subtle-negative-evidence” argument deemed accurate? Why?

Answer 31

Not really, it still succumbs to the no-negative-evidence problem Also fails to account for why children tend to overgeneralise in such common ways

Question 32

What is the **“semantic bootstrapping”** grammar learning theory?

Answer 32

There are many subtle differences in meaning in verbs (and sentences) that are used in different ways * (An extension of mimicry, we learn something in the meaning of a sentence and then transfer this to many sentences)* * E.g. if a verb refers to the subject of a possession, it can only go a certain way (e.g. subject, verb, object)*

Question 33

What is the issue with the **“semantic bootstrapping”** theory?

Answer 33

No linguist has come up with any explanation of what the subtle differences between verbs are * E.g. “he carried the girl the ball” doesn't sound right* * However “he kicked the girl the ball” does*

Question 34

What is the **“statistical learning” theory** for how we learn grammar?

Answer 34

People track the frequency of what you have heard (the more you hear the more you build up a general idea of what works and what does not) The more examples of a verb they see but not the other way around means they begin to understand that the way the sentence should be phrased This is called **negative implicit evidence** * E.g. “he brought his son a bike - (his son (indirect object) and bike (direct object)* * They sent him a postcard (him (indirect object) and postcard (direct object)* * Very rarely do we see DO - IO and so children pick up on that*

Question 35

Define **“negative implicit evidence”**

Answer 35

Where you track the frequency of the way a verb is used and then imply what the proper way of using the verb is

Question 36

What is the evidence for the statistical learning theory?

Answer 36

Children overgenerate verbs a lot, adults do not as much potentially but have heard the common verbs more For less common verbs, it is more likely that adults and children get them incorrect * Implies that we learn from the number of examples we hear of the word* * Theory can solve why children use “overgeneralisation”*

Question 37

Does **“implicit negative evidence”** in statistical learning solve our questions regarding how we learn grammar?

Answer 37

No * It doesn’t explain how children know what arguments are in the first place or how they know which out of an infinite amount of semantic features are plausible* * There is evidence that ‘bootstrapping’ can help, but statistical learning is playing a major role*

Question 38

What are **“regular grammars”** in grammar rules?

Answer 38

Regular grammars state that there is a chain of rules where one word leads to another * Words within a sentence are produced based on the previous word* * We can apply rules based on the previous words to generate sentences* * Can be thought of as a ‘word chain grammar’*

Question 39

Explain the grammar chain shown here

Answer 39

S = subject Then you can select any “the A” (happy, boy. dog) Happy calls on itself (called a recursive) This then leads to B, which leads to C etc. The rules follow along the chain and are linked one after the other

Question 40

What is the problem with **“regular grammars”**?

Answer 40

They cannot explain **“long-distance dependencies”** This is the **“argument from simplicity”** * In order to learn long-distance dependencies, they would have to be incredibly complicated* * Language seems to instead have a hierarchical phase structure* * The mistakes children make cannot be explained by regular grammars*

Question 41

What are **“long-distance dependencies”**?

Answer 41

Where a word a long way down the sentence could be dependent on another word far away from it

Question 42

Explain **“context-free grammars”**

Answer 42

Trees of hierarchical phase structures called **“pastries”** Basic idea: there are a bunch of phrases nested within each other (rather than words) Phrases are clusters of words that map onto larger units of meaning Regular grammars cannot grasp this structure This explains the types of mistakes children make

Question 43

Context-free grammar argues that…

Answer 43

Grammar is written with production rules based on “phrases” (or chunks of information) * E.g. subject is always followed by a “noun-phrase” or a “verb-phrase”* * - This allows the clusters of phrases rather than chains*

Question 44

How does **context-free grammar** explain **long-distance dependencies**?

Answer 44

You move up and across the second part of the phrase rather than having to memorise everything along the way

Question 45

What is “substitution” in grammar?

Answer 45

When we substitute whole phrases rather than individual words

Question 46

What evidence supports “context-free grammar” and phrase learning?

Answer 46

Children make most mistakes at the boundaries of phrases They seem to perceive phrases as a whole rather than individual words We use “substitution” - We can substitute whole phrases rather than individual words

Question 48

How does “context-free grammar” link back to the “poverty of the stimulus” argument? (or why do some people believe that grammatical rules are innate - poverty of the stimulus argument)

Answer 48

Children show behaviour and understanding which is not possible without certain knowledge, and understanding of this knowledge is not possible without first knowing it Children would not be able to learn a specific behaviour without learning a strict grammatical rule However, it is impossible to have learnt “G” just because of “D” in the example above Therefore, many believe that knowledge about grammatical rules is innate

Question 49

Do we perceive grammar in a hierarchical structure or a chain-like manner?

Answer 49

**Hierarchical structure** This accounts for long-distance dependencies, grammatical errors that are made and the substitution of whole phrases rather than words Also supported by “poverty of stimulus” learning.