Lecture 15 Language Flashcards
(19 cards)
Behaviorist view of language
- Language learned through imitation and reinforcement;
- emphasizes environmental input
- Highlights **external reinforcement **(e.g. explicit feedback) where adult like or meaningful speech is rewarded
- The problem: it doesn’t make a lot of assumptions about kind of rules and abstract knowledge that gets inferred from the input
Linguistic view - Skinner rev. by Chomsky
1) Poverty of stimulus
2) Speed/universality
3) Creativity → suggests innate language faculty
Statistical learning view
- Language is learned the same way in which all human learning occurs
- Highlights **experience **rather than innate principles
- emphasizes implicit learning
Social-interactionist view
Language develops through social context (joint attention, turn-taking); Vygotsky/Clark
Animal language limitations
Limited function words, morphology, sentence length; lacks complex syntax despite some grammar
Broca’s area function
- Speech production, **grammar **
- damage causes slow, poorly articulated speech (Broca’s aphasia)
Wernicke’s area function
- Language comprehension;
- damage causes fluent but meaningless speech (Wernicke’s aphasia)
Logical problem of acquisition
How children generate infinite novel sentences despite limited input → suggests innate capacity
Linguistic universals
1) Absolute (no question formation by reversal) 2) Statistical (SVO common) 3) Implicational (if X then Y)
Critical period evidence
Language learning ability peaks before puberty then declines (imprinting and learning rate studies)
Child-Directed Speech (CDS) features
Higher pitch, exaggerated intonation, simplified grammar, repetition, +gestures
CDS debate: Essential?
!Kung San children acquire language without CDS → suggests helpful but not necessary
TV language learning
Limited effectiveness without interaction; quality/timing matter (better after age 3 with engagement)
“Less is more” hypothesis
Limited working memory helps acquisition by focusing on smaller linguistic units first
Individual differences sources
1) Biological (imitation skills, genetics)
2) Environmental (SES, input quantity/quality)
Vocabulary growth factors
Correlates with amount of child-directed speech; SES impacts vocabulary size
Bilingualism advantages
Cognitive flexibility, metalinguistic awareness, potential delay in onset but not impairment
LLMs and language learning
Show creative generation but lack negative evidence and innate constraints humans have
Phonetic learning studies
Infants discriminate native/non-native sounds early; social interaction boosts retention
