PSC 140 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Language Acquisition Device, Noam Chomsky, Regular Sequence
Development of Language & Communication
● Words as Mediators of Action
○ Language enables the experience of “2 worlds”
■ Directly through sensory contact: here and now
■ Symbolically through language: outside of the here and now
○ “With the help of language, [humans] can deal with things which they have not
perceived … and with things which were part of the experience of earlier
generations. Thus, the word adds another dimension to the world of humans”
(Luria, 1981)
● Challenge of language comprehension
○ Segment speech stream into meaningful units
○ Recognize when these units combine into words
○ Understand the meaning of individual words & parts of words (morphemes)
○ Comprehend the meaning of the combination of words
○ Verify that the message “received” is the intended message of the sender
● Challenge of language production
○ Enunciate individual sounds
■ Coordinate tongue, palage, & vocal chords to produce different phonemes
in meaningful combinations
○ Order words in sentences
○ Order sentences into a coherent message
○ Make sure the message is appropriate for the intended audience
■ Ex: level of complexity, appropriateness
○ Make sure the message is understood as intended
● Is language special?
○ AKA - are there parts of the brain that are specific for language?
○ Young children learn language very rapidly
○ Occurs quickly over a wide range of environments & cultures
○ Most human children have a strong desire
to communicate & develop language
skills
○ Language development occurs in a regular sequence (much like learning to walk)
○ Evidence for a sensitive, or critical period, in language learning
● Noam Chomsky
○ Proposed that humans have a “language acquisition device” (LAD)
■ Has innate knowledge of “universal grammar” imposes order on incoming
stimuli
○ He argued that the language children hear is often too complicated & too
ambiguous
■ Learning theories alone could NOT explain language acquisition
● Evidence of Biological Basis for Language
○ Language & mental abnormalities
■ Distinctions between language & thought
● Williams syndrome: low IQ but adequate language (average IQ =
100)
○ Localization
■ Left hemisphere dominant for language in most people
■ Broca’s area (in frontal lobe of LH: productive)
■ Wernicke’s area (in temporal lobe of LH: receptive)
● These areas are important for processing both spoken language &
sign language
● Evidence for Critical / Sensitive periods
○ Research on learning a second language
■ Cannot acquire the same level of complex grammar, correct accent, or
discriminate all phonemes if learn 2nd language after vs. before puberty
○ Research on language learning & the brain
■ Language organized differently in the brain for people learning 2nd
language “early” versus “late”
■ Suggest different cognitive processes for late language learning
○ Localized - earlier
○ Diffused - later
● Isolated children: the case of Genie
○ Isolated from age 2 to 13
■ Never developed normal language
■ Syntax especially poor
■ Questions about mental abilities prior to abuse
○ Issues of ethics in research
■ Was Genie’s well - being sacrificed for scientific inquiry?
■ Focused on building language instead of social relationships or
attachment to others
● Questions
○ Is there really a specific
biological basis for learning language, including innate
knowledge about the structure of language?
○ Does the environment really provide such impoverished input for learning
language?
● New Approach: Statistical Learning
○ The human brain has amazing ability to detect statistical regularities in the
environment, like speech
○ From infancy, humans are capable of statistical learning: attending to the
statistical regularities of speech sounds, music sounds, etc.
○ This tracking of sound sequences helps infants locate word boundaries in
streams of speech (speakers rarely pause in between words) and learn the
structure of language
■ Syllable combinations that are part of the same word co-occur more
frequently than syllable combinations that occur between words
● Example:
○ Consider the phrase: “prettybaby”
■ Prefix pre- more predictive of ty, than ty is of ba in the English language
○ Infants can distinguish between sequences with high & low transitional
probabilities
○ They use this info to identify word boundaries - even in invented languages
○ Infants more quickly learn “words” that have sound sequences with high
transitional probabilities (ex: TOMA) than nonsense words that have low
transitional probabilities (TTYBA)
○
● Implications
○ Language development may result from statistical learning mechanisms vs.
innate knowledge
○ These powerful learning mechanisms, rather than innate knowledge enable
humans to acquire language so rapidly
● Topics in language development
○ Phonology (how people speak)
○ Meaning
○ Grammar
○ Communication
● Development of language sounds
○ Crying and “vegetative sounds”
○ Cooing (starts around 1 - 2 months)
○ Simple articulation (starts around 3 months)
○ Babbling (starts around 6 months)
■ Dadadada, bababa
■ Differences for deaf vs. hearing children
○ Expressive Jargon (starts around 9 - 12 months)
■ Babbling w/ intonation & prosody of language
○ 1st words (starts around 12 months)
● Research by Janet Werker
○ Interested in
■ The kinds of perceptual biases infants bring to speech perception
■ The role that exposure to different languages plays in modifying
perceptual sound categories
○ Method
Document Summary
Language enables the experience of 2 worlds . Directly through sensory contact: here and now. Symbolically through language: outside of the here and now. With the help of language, [humans] can deal with things which they have not perceived and with things which were part of the experience of earlier generations. Thus, the word adds another dimension to the world of humans (luria, 1981) Recognize when these units combine into words. Understand the meaning of individual words & parts of words (morphemes) Comprehend the meaning of the combination of words. Verify that the message received is the intended message of the sender. Coordinate tongue, palage, & vocal chords to produce different phonemes in meaningful combinations. Make sure the message is appropriate for the intended audience. Make sure the message is understood as intended. Occurs quickly over a wide range of environments & cultures. Most human children have a strong desire to communicate & develop language.
