Language

• The Premise of this lecture is that Language is what distinguishes humans from animals. All of us have it, none of them do. Is this just species-centrism, or is it accurate? In order to answer that question, we need to look at what language is.

Animal Signaling systems

• Animal signaling systems. White tailed deer, Monkeys, Bees etc. Characteristics of signal system: invariant-fixed mapping, unstructured, uncreative, unproductive....

Behavioral View of Language

• Language as sets of words: Simple behavior, responses to stimuli. Not so.Skinner: (de)mands & (con)tacts. control via echo, text, intraverbal or autoclitics (descriptive or functional--frames "the x's car". Chomsky's scathing attack led to alternative view

Language Can be Described as Complex Heirarchy of RulesStart with phonology: Phoneme (40 out of

200 sounds)Made up of distinctive features (8) ex.

-place (7) [bl, ld, d, a, p, v g] -manner (6) of artic. stop, fric,

affric, nas, lat, semivowelexample: /p/ /t/ /k/:: /b/ /d/ /g/ + VOT experiment 20msec

Word/Morpheme Level (Meaning)

• 50,000 Morphemes

• 200,000 Words

• You can say a lot….but still limited

Syntactic Level

• Rules of ordering/inflection convey meaning. (“Dog bites cat” and “Cat bites dog” mean different things while using same words!

• Language as “packaging” job is to convey underlying propositions

Ambiguity in Speech

Resolving Ambiguity

Social agreement, context, intention Grice (1975): Maxims of Conversation 1. Quality: Tell the truth! (Avoid falsehoods *and*

statements for which you have no evidence)2. Quantity: Include what is necessary to express

information, and nothing extraneous.3. Utterances will be related to the topic at hand4. Manner: Avoid ambiguity, use common ground

(Clark)

Properties of Language- Productivity

• We can say sentences we’ve never heard before– “I hate you, Mommy!”

• We have a limited set of words and structures that can be recombined.

• Generativity:– “He said that she told them that he thought

that we heard that they reported that…”

Pragmatic Level

• Language in social use within a community

• It’s all automatic and mostly effortless despite its complexity

• Enormous complexity and rapid online processing!

Ambiguity in Speech• Humor:

– Last night I shot an elephant in my pyjamas. What he was doing in my pyjamas, I’ll never know”- Groucho Marx

• Garden Path Sentences– The horse raced past the barn fell. – The prime number few.

Resolving Ambiguity

Social agreement, context, intention

Grice (1975): Maxims of Conversation 1. Quality: Tell the truth! (Avoid falsehoods *and* statements

for which you have no evidence)

2. Quantity: Include what is necessary to express information, and nothing extraneous.

3. Utterances will be related to the topic at hand

4. Manner: Avoid ambiguity, use common ground (Clark)

Hockett’s Defining Characteristics

A. displacement: bees do it vy limited (flagpole ex).B. productivity: say anything "palimony" bees cant' do

flagpole-no vertC. creativity: (cont. of above?) (not one of Hockett's)D. interchangeability: any speaker can understand any

messageE. discreteness: small separable units of soundF. duality of patterning: small set of building blocks--

>infinite wordsG. traditional transmission: knowledge passed onH. arbitrariness: no natural relationship necessary

between word & ref.I. semanticity: (cont. of above) ie. arbitrary

assignment of word--ref.J. vocal=auditory channel, specialization: unimp.K.

broadcast xmission, direct. reception, rapid fading, total feedback

Animals Learning Human Lang.

• Porpoises/whales/

• chimps/gorillas

• parrots!

Language/thought/impact

• Whorf/Sapir hypothesis

• Roesh and the Dani (BW-R-GYB-BR-PPOG-L)

• Why is language so important? --Cultural cumulation (and not oysters on rocks or termites on sticks!)

• Schactel

Development:Why study?

• Child is father to the man

• Analysis of complex system

• Heredity --environment issues

• Heritability = Vg/Vt (variance)

• Why difficult? --right experiment

• Role of culture & socialization: Rosseau/Victor of Aveyron

Development: Basic Models• Basic issue: heritability (nature-nurture

interactions)• --no development: small adults!• --progressive differentiation• --instinct (maturation alone --> devel.)• --readiness (maturation is a pre-req for

learning)• --critical period (maturation is a pre-req but

opportunity disappears)• --stages and waves

Language Development

• Taught? -not an easy issue• Course of development--

– infant conversations– babbling (back to front, front to back)– one word– two word– Then syntax, and off and running– vocab. learning plus nuances (5000+ by

age 5)

Language• Children develop language fast and

effortlessly

1 year: 1 year: 1 word1 word

2 years: 2 years: 300 words300 words

3 years: 3 years: 1000 1000 wordswords

4 years: 4 years: 5000 5000 wordswords

5 years: 5 years: 10000 10000 wordswords

18 years: 18 years: 60000 60000 words words

0

50

100

150

200

10 12 14 16 18 20 22

Age in Months

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of

Wo

rds

Sa

id

Child Language Development

• How do children get from being completely non-verbal to being expert speakers?1. Can distinguish between vowel sounds (/a/ vs. /o/)- in

utero2. Can distinguish between all contrasts- from birth3. Categorical perception of speech sounds (8-12 months)4. Babbling: 6 months5. One word stage: ~1 year6. Two word stage: ~2 years (vocab is about 50 words)7. Multiword utterances; gradually increase in complexity

The Innateness of Language• Behaviorism: Language is learned like

everything else– We say something, we receive feedback,

which encourages us to say it again

• BUT: We can say things we’ve never heard; we can produce new structures.

• Chomsky: Language is innate to humans– Language Acquisition Device (LAD)– Universal Grammar– Poverty of the Stimulus

Innateness of Language?

• Chomsky’s Solution Universal Grammar: all natural languages share a

common structure that arises from the way our brain is designed to construct and process language.

• We have evolved specialized mechanisms for language because communication is advantageous

Problem - “Universal” structure could come from the constraints of the environment and communicative needs

Arguments for Innateness• semi-dedicated brain tissue (Broca's,

Wernicke's)• critical period• early start and early development +

difficulty of task (complexity of rules, 5000+ words by age 5 + semi-complete set of rules

• overgeneralization: not mimicry • syntactic uniqueness (numerous issues)

(many instances: wild chn. animals, no-input lang. etc.)

• poor teaching and poor examples (parsing problem)

Arguments for Innateness

• Dedicated brain regions – Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas– Damage to Broca’s area, near the motor cortex, is associated with difficulties

in producing speech

– Damage to Wernicke’s area, which is near the auditory cortex, is linked to difficulties with meaning

• FOXP2 gene

– Family missing the gene

show severe speech and

language impairments

The Critical Period

• If language learning doesn’t occur before a certain time, language will be impaired

• Johnson & Newport (1989)– Age of Acquisition affects

ability to learn second language

• Genie & Victor ++• Pinker (NR)

– Nicaraguan sign language– Deaf children

Critical Period?• Performance on a test

of English grammar by adults originally from Korea and China was directly related to the age at which they came to the United States and were exposed to English

• The scores of adults who emigrated before the age of 7 are indistinguishable from those of native English speakers

The Nature of Feedback (Poverty of the Stimulus)

1. Children get little or no direct instruction.2. Children get little feedback and don’t listen to what they

get -- so why do they ever correct their errors?3. Children hear many ungrammatical structures not

identified as such -- how do they come to learn these are wrong?

4. In some cultures adults don’t speak to children.5. Children will make up a language if they are not given one

-- deaf children of hearing parents.6. Some cost (simple vs. elaborated language) to low input.

The Language Gene

• SLI: Specific Language Impairment: Language is impaired without signs of impairment in other areas (motor, cognitive, etc.)

• The FOXP2 gene– Members of the KE family with a corruption of

this gene had SLI; the others didn’t.– The Language Gene?

The Language Gene

Thought Leads Language!

• Holophrastic speech

• Telegraphic speech

• “Bye bye cat” ex.

• Kid’s translations of adult speech

Verb Learning• Two types of past

tense verbs:– Regular: talked, liked,

hated– Irregular: ate, went,

was

• U-shaped curve of language learning– Early: correct usage– Middle:

overgeneralization– Late: correct usage