LING101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Inflection, Universal Grammar, Reinforcement
13 Apr 2017
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Document Summary
The innateness hypothesis argues that our ability to acquire (human) language is innate (genetically encoded) Universal grammar (ug) refers to the set of structural characteristics shared by all language . Innateness hypothesis takes ug to be innate. Ug is not, however, dependent on innateness hypothesis. The goal of theoretical linguistics is to discover the properties of ug. Main idea: children imitate what they hear. Words are arbitrary, thus children must hear them to imitate them . Children produce things not said by adults. Often fail to accurately mimic adult utterances. May invent a new language in the right circumstances. Main ideas: children learn through positive and negative reinforcement. Ignores how children initially learn to produce utterances. Children are expected to follow non-random patterns. Explains why why children fail to accurately produce adult forms. Claims that exposure to language develops and strengthens neural connections. There are clear frequency effects in some apects of language.
