W4 Early multi-word speech (Constructivist) ✅ Flashcards
Describe two approaches on how children form multi-word speech
What is the background understanding of syntax?
- Syntax = word combination rule, has two grammatical features:
* category (noun/verb/phrase)
* role (subject/action) - Language is:
* Specific to humans: little evidence of primates acquiring syntax even with training
* Species-universal: all children have acquire the majority of the grammar by 5yrs - Children utterances follow:
* Lexical rule -> limited variety until children can generalise between schemas
* Syntactic rule -> not restricted, allow all utterances possible in the adult language
What are the 4 features of early word combination?
- Mainly content words
- Context-dependent
- Creative (make up for limited vocab)
- Using adult word order
-> Have basic organising principles
What is meant by the constructivist approach?
Infants are motivated to communicate by learning grammar using general cognitive learning mechanisms:
1. Communicative intention-reading
2. Drawing analogies
3. Distributional learning
WHEN - learning through routines (repetitive, allow children to predict and infer words in specific contexts)
What kind of evidence would support the constructivist approach?
- Start with word-based (lexical) utterance
- High frequency items are learned early
- Gradual generalisation -> more untterances
Example - The word island hypothesis: with familiar verbs (e.g. chasing), 2-yr-olds able to describe actions correctly but can’t do with novel ones (even 3yrs old struggle)
Conclusion:
* Knowledge of grammar tied to individual verbs until 2½ - 3yrs.
* Initially unable to generalise between verbs with similar meanings or used in similar context.
What are three ways in which children link up their lexically-based constructions to form a more adult-like grammar?
- Structure combining
- Semantic analogies
- Distributional learning
What is the overall conclusion of the constructivist approach?
- Children begin to combine words together at 18-24 months
- Argue that children learn word meaning and how to combine words BY interpreting intentions FROM hearing speech in predictable contexts (routines)
- Children build up grammar by starting with more limited scope rules (e.g. lexical rules) THEN using general cognitive mechanisms to generalise.
What is the criticism for the constructivist approach?
- Production studies difficult for children:
* significant memory load in remembering and recalling novel words
* planning entire sentences. - Underestimate how children’s abstract knowledge of sentence structure?
- How sentence structures become more abstract over development is not specified
What is the evidence that structure combining help children generalise lexical-based constructions to adult grammar?
- Diary study of a 2 yrs old show that new utterance (target) is repetition of previous utterances (63%)
- Only 37% new utterances (3/4 is single operation change from previous ones)
-> Suggests child is operating with an extensive inventory of specific utterances
-> limited mechanisms to alter these utterances for different contexts.
What is the evidence that semantic analogy helps children generalise lexical-based constructions to adult grammar?
- Children need to learn a number of verbs before they can recognise similarities and build more general schemas.
- Commonalities reinforced, differences forgotten.
- Evidence: In a fill-in-the-blank study, 2&3-yr-olds made fewer errors when the items that occur in the slot are semantically similar.
=> Suggests overlap in meaning helps build flexible constructions
What is the evidence that distributional learning (statistics) help children generalise lexical-based constructions to adult grammar?
- Children learn language by tracking the co-occurance of syllables (statistical patterns) in language input.
- Pronouns helped children extract a more abstract representation of the S-V-O sentence structure for new verbs
