Syntax

Question 1

Intro to Syntax

Answer 1

= Grammar
- Conventions (rules) for ordering words in ways that change the meaning of an utterance
- Finite number of words + rules create infinite number of sentences
- Is generative - generates semantics
- At age 5: master syntax –> equivalent to adults

Question 2

Kanzi Monkey

Answer 2

• Clear evidence she learned words
• Showed understanding of role of word order in generating meaning (syntax, beyond association) but limited relative to humans
• Output relatively poor given the extensive explicit training

Question 3

Comprehension of word order -study

Answer 3

• Happens very early
• Hirsh-Pasek + Golinkoff (1993):
  Comprehension of a sentence like ‘big bird ticking cookie monster’
• Preferential looking paradigm: infant looks longer at correct video representing sentence
• Ability to work out how word order creates meaning is in place at 19 months

Question 4

Syntactic category acquisition - study

Answer 4

• Infants can infer syntactic categories after only a few examples
• Mintz (2006)
• 12 montjh olds, head turning procedure
• Infants listen longer to ungrammartical sentences (novelty effect)
• Effect stronger for verb than noun frames
• Understanding different word categories in place around 12 months

Question 5

. Abstract rule learning - study

Answer 5

• Observed around 1 year old
• Gomez + Gerken (1999)
• Head turn preference procedure
• Created small lang with own syntax
• Exposure: 10 grammatical sentences of new lang
• Test: New correct sentences + non-grammatical
• Infants listened more to new corrtect (familiarity effect)

Question 6

3 approaches to lang learning - 1 = Vygotsky

Answer 6

• Mastery of lang emerges through practical activities in zone of proximal dev (learning with parent)

Question 7

3 approaches to lang learning - 2 = Skinner

Answer 7

• Children imitate what they see + hear
• Association are fine-tuned by pos + neg reinforcement (Hebbian learing)
• Emphasis on linguistic env
  Vygotsky + skinner are domain-general

Question 8

3 approaches to lang learning - 3 = Piaget

Answer 8

• Lang dev is connected to cog dev
• Cog prerequisities = dev lang
• Notion of stages

Question 9

Lang isn’t learned but is acquired

Answer 9

• Chomsky
• Child’s lang input is poor and contains limited neg evidence
• Children are rarely exposed to ungrammatical sequences as counterpoints
• Parents don’t correct syntactic errors
• Must have hard-wired ability to learn + process abstract tules
• Poverty of input claim: infants first sentences are ones they’ve probably never heard before

Question 10

Recursivity

Answer 10

• Problematic
• Ultimate hallmark of syntax (generate meaning to infinity)
• Boy who saw the dog that cahsed the cat that scratched the girl that…

Question 11

Critical period of syntactic dev

Answer 11

• Chomsky agrees linguistic env is important
• Only as it needs to trigger an innate syntax-acquistion device
• Must happen in first few years of life
• If exposed to lang during critical period = acquire lang
• Alternative ideas = open ended ability, no critical period + gradually decline in ablity to acquire lang as age increases

Question 12

Isolated children + critical period

Answer 12

• Genie - found at 13 years old + been rarely spoken to
• Sentences lacked key elements of syntax even after years of training (Supports Chomsky)
• ## Genies lang exposure happened after critical period

Question 13

Dominant view of syntactic dev

Answer 13

• Chomsky (1965)
• Children come equipped with biological endownment for lang processing
• Born with knowledge of universal grammer

Question 14

Universal grammar

Answer 14

• Continuity of linguistic representation –> innate knowledge doesn’t change as they grow, express lang evolving quantitatively as receive more input
• Parameter setting –> UG is not fixed, varies slightly from lang to lang (word order)
• Modularity –> Fodor - lang is stand-alone + human specific, is defininf core of a module, evidence from dev lang disorders

Question 15

Syntactic dev: Pinker

Answer 15

• Believe infants have innate capacity for lang
• Open to additional mechanisms contributing
• Lang is not modular
• Theory of lang must account for: lang instinct (chomsky), linguistic imput (skinner), cog ability of child (piaget)

Question 16

Semantic bootstrapping - Pinker

Answer 16

• There are regularities in observable world
• Children have pre-conceptions about links between semantic + grammatical oisition
• Syntactic knowledge can emerge from innate ability to compute co-occurance between lang + env
• Person-action-object structure

Question 17

Syntactic dev: Seidenberg et al (2002)

Answer 17

• Syntactic knowledge isn’t innate
• Represented in input
• Input is richer than believed - no poor input
• Adjectives preced nouns
• Verbs predict certain nouns
• Ing at end of verb
• While semantic bootstrapping can help isn’t necessary

Question 18

Is syntax simply algebra? Marcus (1999)

Answer 18

• Input is structured but complicated
• Innate mechanism is needed to detect structure in input
• Sentence - Noun Phrase + Verb phrase + noun phrase
• Tested with simple rules of syllable organisation
• XYX (repetition of unit with another unit between)
• XYY (contiguous repetiont of unit followed by another unit)
• Exposed to XYX utterances or XYY using head-turn procedure
• Novelty effect for ungrammatical sentences
• Sensitivity to algebraic rules could be bio endowment Chomsky alluded to