Week 12 Language Develpment

Question 1

The characteristics of biologically triggered behaviour

•Hallmarks of biologically-driven behaviour:

Answer 1

•1. Behaviour emerges before it is necessary
•2. It’s appearance is not the result of conscious decision
•3. It’s emergence is not triggered by external events (environment
can support adequate development)
•4. Direct teaching and intensive practice have little effect
•5. There is a regularity of development commensurate with age
•6. May be a critical period

Question 2

1. Behaviour emerges before it is necessary

Answer 2

• Law of anticipatory maturation: language develops before it is needed for survival
• Language develops ~18-24 months

Question 3

2. It’s appearance is not the result of conscious

decision

Answer 3

•A child does not think to itself: “tomorrow I will learn my first language”

Question 4

3. It’s emergence is not triggered by external events

environment can support adequate development

Answer 4

•Children begin to make noises without prompting
•~ 18months, 2-word utterances are being explored
•Coincides with massive establishment of neural
connections and weight increases from 300g to nearly
1000g.

Question 5

4. Direct teaching and intensive practice have little

effect

Answer 5

• Contrast language development with learning a sport
• Imitation (for past tense) and expansion (for truncated phrases) doesn’t seem to work
• In fact, it seems detrimental (Slobin, 1966a: 14

Question 6

5. There is a regularity of development commensurate

with age

Answer 6

•Approximate phases to language development: Language stage Beginning age
Crying Birth not language communication
Cooing 6 weeks not language strengthening of throat
Babbling 6 months not language CV sounds
Intonation patterns 8 months not language sounds and cadence
One-word utterances 1 year onset of word use
Two-word utterances 18 months onset of language (rudimentary)
Word inflections 2 years “…”
Questions, negatives 21⁄4 years
Rare or complex constructions 5 years
Mature speech 10 years

Question 7

Critical period hypothesis: The case of Genie

Answer 7

•American feral child 
•Grew up derelict and in isolation 
•20 months to 13 years in a room
•LA child welfare services caught wind
•Even with training and rehabilitation attempts she never successfully achieved 
a first language

Question 8

Phrase Structure Grammar: Principles and Parameters

Answer 8

•Linguistic theory largely formulated by Chomsky And
Lasnik
•Dominant form of mainstream generative linguistics
(superseding structuralism)
•Goal of this linguistic programme is to identify principles
and parameters that are universal to human language
(UG)
•Structural dependence vs. structural independence

Question 9

Observation and Ideas

Answer 9

• Children acquire any (one) language easily, despite the fact that languages are often complex (ask L2 learners!)
• Perhaps the common properties of language are present already, and only certain parameters need to be turned on or off.
• If so, principles and parameters do not need to be learned via exposure to language. Rather, exposure deploys principles that will prompt the parameters to take on the correct setting (on, off)

Question 10

Framework

Answer 10

•The basic idea is that a person’s syntactic knowledge can be modeled with two
formal mechanisms:
•(1) Finite set of fundamental principles that are common to all languages
•All sentences have a subject (even if it is not overtly marked/pronounced)
•(2) Finite set of parameters that determine syntactic variability among spoken
languages
•A parameter is binary (it can be on or off). Example: Italian is a pro-drop language:
•Vedi il gessetto?
•2PS[see] the chalk?
•“Do you see the chalk?”

Question 11

The critical period

Answer 11

•Lenneberg argued that language must be acquired by puberty in order to be
properly acquired.
•The critical period for normal language acquisition is thus from birth until some
age near puberty.
•The evidence for this comes from:
•Adult second language acquisition
•Socially isolated children (‘wild children’)
•However, we now believe that the upper limit on the critical period for
language acquisition is lower than puberty: more like 7-10 years old.

Question 12

Context

Answer 12

• From the outset, Chomsky (2004) claims there is a “species property, close to uniform across a broad range” that is responsible for the human capacity for language.
• This faculty of language is “more or less on a par with the systems of mammalian vision, insect navigation, and others” (Chomsky, 2005).
• This point of view is often referred to as Biolinguistics:

•An interdisciplinary field that sets out to explore the basic ties of
human language and to investigate how it matures in the individual,
how it is put to use in thought and communication, what brain
circuits implement it, what combination of genes support it, and
how it emerged in our species.

Question 13

Biolinguistics Tenets:

Answer 13

•Human faculty of Language is a cognitive system,
realized by the brain
•Innate

•Allows for production and comprehension of linguistic
communication (understood in the broadest sense)

•Generative (founded upon the idea of discrete
infinity) One of the main questions:

•If knowledge of language is innate, (how) did it
evolve?

Question 14

Language and Evolution

Answer 14

•Hauser, Chomsky, Fitch (hereafter: HCF) say that their
aim is “to further this goal [of interdisciplinary
collaboration] by, first, helping to clarify the
biolinguistic perspective on language and its
evolution.” (p. 1570).

•They pursue this goal by introducing a distinction
“between questions concerning language as a
communicative system and questions concerning the
computations underlying this system, such as those
underlying recursion.” (p. 1569)

Question 15

Main speculations

Answer 15

•Human language has some distinctive traits which animal communication
systems seem to lack.
•(1) Open-ended (creative)
•(2) Hierarchical (structural nodes of syntax)
•(3) Recursive (infinite iteration based on finite elements)

•According to HCF, these properties may not have evolved solely for
communication; rather that it is possible that usefulness for communication
may be a byproduct of their evolution.
•What do we make of this claim?

Question 16

Language: Distinctions

Answer 16

• There is a complication in defining “language”. It is not a proprietary notion of any single discipline.
• Many fields that investigate it mean something slightly or largely different.

Example:
•(Generative) Linguists  abstract core of computational operations, central to language and unique to humans

•Biologists and psychologists  communication system
used by human beings

•Explanations for one may not carry over to the other.

HCF, they argue for a distinction “between questions
concerning language as a communicative system and
questions concerning the computations underlying this
system, such as those underlying recursion.” (p.1569)

•FLB & FLN

Question 17

Faculty of language in the broad

sense (FLB)

Answer 17

•Includes all the mechanisms involved in speech and
language, regardless of their overlap with other cognitive
domains or with other species.

•3 components: (i) Sensory-motor (SM); (ii) Conceptual-
intentional (CI); (iii) and FLN (internal computational system).

•FLN includes only those components necessary for language (therefore omitting things such as respiration, memory, proprioception, etc.)

•SM includes general processing of perception and
vocal/gestural production

•CI includes conceptualization, theory of mind, signal learning

Question 18

Faculty of language in the narrow sense

Answer 18

•Subset of FLB (HCF, 2002)

•“[A] key component of FLN is a computational system
(narrow syntax) that generates internal representations
and maps them into the sensory-motor interface by the
phonological system, and into the conceptual-intentional interface by the (formal) semantic system.” (p. 1570)

• “computational core”; “cognitive subsystem responsible for generating the discrete infinity of linguistic expression”
• “independent of the other systems
• Notice anything about this definition?

Question 19

Evolutionary Trajectory: Comparative Analysis

Answer 19

•Proceed via comparative analysis of non-human animals

• Traits can be
• (i) shared or unique
• (ii) gradual or saltational [large/sudden mutational change]
• Polyploidy in plants (speciation in one generation)

•(iii) continuous or exaptational [a trait co-opted from an adaptation, used for something other than its
intended/adpated purpose]

•Think feathers of birds for flight co-opted from ornithomimid to stay
warm, attracting mates.

Question 20

Uniqueness

Answer 20

• Many properties of FLB are shared with other animals, in fact, not only with great apes but also with other animals like birds, whales, dolphins, etc.
• It presupposes that human beings share a common ancestor
• However, there may be something new in human brains/minds which is unique to them (FLN) and not shared by other animals because as far as it seems, no animal communication system have properties such as stimulus-independent rich expressivity and recursion
• The claim that this unique trait evolved gradually would require significant empirical corroboration via comparative studies (HCF).

Question 21

Saltational

Answer 21

•It is possible that some components (sensory-motor
and conceptual-intentional) of FLB evolved gradually,
on the other hand, recursion seems to be the result of
a saltational evolution since it enables discrete infinity,
namely forming infinite expressions from finite means.
A system can be finite or infinite; there is no half-
infinity!

Question 22

Exaptational

Answer 22

•HCF states that the empirical challenge is “to determine what was inherited from [our] common ancestor [with nonhuman animals], what has been subjected to minor modifications, and what (if
anything) is qualitatively new.” (p. 1570)

•Despite the inarguable existence of a broadly shared base of homologous mechanisms involved in FLB, minor modifications to this foundational system alone seem inadequate to generate the fundamental difference—discrete infinity—between language and
all known forms of animal communication (1574)

•The main claim of HCF, as repeated several time, is that although sensory-motor and conceptual-intentional systems of FLB are shared with other animals, FLN (recursion) is unique to humans and
was (at some later stage) co-opted for language.

Question 23

Hypothesis 1

Answer 23

• FLB is strictly homologous to animal communication
• Homologs of the components of FLB exist in nonhuman animals.
• This hypothesis is based on the assumption that human language is for communication.
• Therefore it tries to find parallels between human language and animal communication

Question 24

Hypothesis 2

Answer 24

•FLB is a derived, uniquely human adaptation for
language
•Focus is still on communication
•These scholars views language as a very complex system
which can only evolve by means of natural selection since
according to the argument from design, only natural
selection can generate such complex adaptive system.
•Some traits of FLB are selected and perfected to provide
adaptive advantages in communication

Question 25

Hypothesis 3

Answer 25

•This view holds that most components of FLB are shared with other animals and they have a long evolutionary history before the rise of language.

•“According to this hypothesis, much of the complexity
manifested in language derives from complexity in the
peripheral components of FLB, especially those underlying the sensory-motor (speech or sign) and conceptual-intentional interfaces, combined with sociocultural and communicative contingencies.” (P. 1573) Therefore, complexity is not intrinsic to
FLN.

• For HCF, FLN should/may be quite restricted and simple
• HCF conclude that FLB is shared among many species.

•SM: How special is speech?
“For perception, for example, many species show
impressive ability to discriminate between and
generalize over human sounds.” (p. 1574)
For production, HCF say birds and non-human primates naturally produce and perceive components of their species-specific vocalizations

•CI: They show data that many mammals and birds
have conceptual representations
•Many can make kind/type distinctions