COGSCI 200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Upward Bound, Universal Grammar, Phrase Structure Grammar
13 Jun 2018
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Intro to Cognitive Science : Language
- Language is a device for communication → Based on sound-meaning pairings
- John Locke→ mind comes equipped with nothing (white-paper blank state) and becomes
furnished with experience
- B.F. Skinner→ give me a child and I’ll shape him
Associationistic View
What is “in the head” that explains language?
- A bunch of associations between specific verbal actions and specific situations
How did that stuff in the head get there
- Associationistic learning, in particular instrumental conditioning
I. Associations
A. Between events
1. Hears “cockadoodledoo and feels warm (from the sun) → associates events
B. Between situations & actions
1. Baby claps and dad smiles→ associates action w/ reward
C. Associationistic account of WORD learning
1. Baby says something that sounds like cat in the presence of a cat→ Family
gets excited and rewards baby→ Baby is more likely to repeat action
II. Problems with Associationistic Account
A. Stimulus Independence
1. People routinely utter sentences in contexts that are independent of the contexts
in which the sentences were learned
B. Novelty
1. Many of the sentences a person knows have never been encountered before
C. Productivity
1. A language is productive if there is no upward bound on the number of sentences
it can express
D. Systematicity
1. A language is systematic when: A person who knows the language reliably
knows “groups” of expressions at a time
a) Ex: If Paul knows the meaning of “The cat is on the mat” he also knows
the meaning of “The mat is on the cat”
Cognitive View
What is “in the head” that explains language?
- INNATE, abstract combinatoric rules
How did that stuff in the head get there?
- Most of it is innate, it is part of “Universal Grammar”
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