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Minimalist Perspectives for Psycholinguistic Minimalist perspectives for psycholinguistic research* Perspectivas minimalistas en la investigación psicolingüística Perspectivas minimalistas na pesquisa psicolingüística LETÍCIA M. SICURO CORRÊA** Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil Abstract modelo procedimental de la adquisición del lenguaje, el cual reconcilia el procesamiento del habla en los niños, A particular approach to the study of psycholinguistic y la idea del aprendizaje innatamente guiado, con una processes is presented, which is based on a minimalist visión minimalista del estado inicial de la adquisición del conception of language. A procedural model of language lenguaje en una explicación del problema del arranque. acquisition is sketched, which reconciles infants speech La adquisición del lenguaje es vista como procedente processing and the idea of innately guided learning con la especificación progresiva de los rasgos formales with a minimalist view of the initial state of language de las categorías funcionales del léxico. Se discute la acquisition in an account of the bootstrapping problem. posibilidad de que una derivación minimalista sea incor- Language acquisition is viewed as proceeding with porada en un modelo de producción y/o comprensión de the progressive specification of formal features of the frases. Se consideran posibles fuentes de impedimentos functional categories of the lexicon. The possibility of del lenguaje, como los manifestados en el síndrome TEL a minimalist derivation to be incorporated in a sentence (Trastorno Específico del Lenguaje), a la luz de esta production and/or comprehension model is discussed. aproximación integrativa. Se hace referencia al trabajo Possible sources of language impairment, as manifes- experimental llevado a cabo en portugués brasileño, con ted in SLI (Specific Language Impairment) syndrome, alguna extensión al portugués europeo y al español del are considered in the light of this integrative approach. Río de la Plata. Reference is made to experimental work carried out in Palabras clave: procesamiento linguístico, adquisición Brazilian Portuguese, with some extension to European del lenguaje, minimalismo, Trastorno Específico del Portuguese and River-Plate Spanish. Lenguaje (TEL), portugués brasileño. Keywords: language processing, language acquisition, minimalism, Specific Language Impairment (SLI), Bra- Resumo zilian Portuguese. Apresenta-se uma abordagem particular para o estudo Resumen de processos psicolinguísticos, que tem por base uma concepção minimalista de língua. Um modelo procedi- Se presenta una aproximación particular al estudio de mental da aquisição da linguagem é esboçado, no qual los procesos psicolingüísticos, la cual está basada en una se conciliam, no tratamento do problema do desenca- aproximación minimalista del lenguaje. Se esboza un deamento da sintaxe, o processamento da fala por in- * This paper is based on research carried out in LAPAL (Laboratório de Psicolinguística e Aquisição da Linguagem, PUC-Rio) by a research group coordinated by the author and supported by grants from CNPq (Brazilian Research Council) and FAPERJ (Fundação de Apoio à Pes- quisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro) for the last ten years. The implementation of most of the ideas of the research program presented here has been carried out in collaboration with Marina Augusto, whose syntactic expertise has been crucial for them to take their present form. A number of research students have also been indispensable for the development of some of them. Possible misconceptions in the way they are presented in the present text are, in any case, my own fault. I would like to thank Mercedes Marcilese for her help in the final review and references. ** E-mail: [email protected]. 214<Avances en Psicología Latinoamericana/Bogotá (Colombia)/Vol. 29(2)/pp. 214-230/2011/ISSN1794-4724-ISSNe2145-4515 Letícia M. Sicuro Corrêa < fantes aliado à ideia de aprendizagem guiada por fatores possibility of integrating hypotheses derived from inatos, com uma visão minimalista do estado inicial da a formal grammar with experimental research on aquisição da linguagem. A aquisição da linguagem é language processing. However, once this attempt concebida como a progressiva especificação dos traços proved misconceived, chomskyan linguistics and formais das categorias funcionais do léxico. Discute- psycholinguistic research have developed quite se a possibilidade de incorporação de uma derivação apart (cf. Fodor, Bever & Garett, 1974; Altmann, minimalista em modelos de produção/compreensão de 2006). Divergences concerning the domain speci- sentenças. Possíveis fontes de problemas de linguagem, ficity of linguistic processes, the extent to which tais como os manifestos no quadro do DEL (Défict Es- the initial state of the language acquisition process pecífico da Linguagem), são consideradas à luz dessa is linguistically informed and the intricacies of the abordagem integrada. Remete-se a resultados obtidos formalism developed for grammar, in order to re- em experimentos conduzidos em Português Brasileiro, concile universal properties of human languages alguns dos quais replicados em Português Europeu e with cross-language differences, may explain this Espanhol Rioplatense.. fact. In the 90´s, however, the Minimalist Program Palavras chave: processamento linguístico, aquisição of generative linguistics (Chomsky, 1995) brought da linguagem, minimalismo, Déficit Específico da Lin- to bear a conception of language which, in our view, guagem (DEL), Português Brasileiro. facilitates the establishment of a more fruitful dia- logue with Psycholinguistics than the one that has been maintained in the last decades. Introduction This paper is not intended to provide a historical review of the relationship between these areas (see Psycholinguistic research is concerned with provi- Kess, 1992), neither to compare and relate current ding a functional account of the mental processes approaches to psycholinguistic processes that de- by means of which language processing is carried part from a generative/minimalist perspective (see out in both the production and the comprehension Phillips, 1996). Rather, it is intended to present a of linguistic utterances. It interacts with a theory of particular research program under development, language in so far as linguistic theory, particularly in which language processing, acquisition and in the generative vein, is concerned with providing impairment (SLI in particular) are approached in a formal account of the knowledge of language that the light of minimalist assumptions (Correa, 2002; enables the speaker/hearer to carry out such lin- 2005; 2006; 2008). This research has been conduc- guistic processes. Psycholinguistics and linguistic ted with data from children and adults whose first theory are also bound to interact in the construction language is Brazilian Portuguese, mainly. Some of a theory of language acquisition, in so far as a data from children acquiring European Portuguese formal model of language knowledge must present and Plata-River Spanish have also been obtained. those proprieties that make any human language As far as language acquisition is concerned, a learnable by human beings, and psycholinguistic procedural model of language acquisition has been approaches to language acquisition are aimed at conceived of, in the light of the phonological boots- characterizing how such a state of knowledge is trapping hypothesis (Morgan & Demuth, 1996; achieved. The relationship between psycholinguis- Christophe et al., 2003). According to this model, tic research and linguistic theory has been, howe- the identification of prosodic and distributional ver, far from smooth. patterns during the first year of life converges to Generative linguistics had a fundamental role in the creation of a minimal lexicon with a minimal the constitution of Psycholinguistics as a research number of categories distinguished by underspeci- field in the XX century 60´s, under the information fied formal features. These features would enable processing approach of Cognitive Psychology. In a universal computational system to operate in this context, the Derivational Theory of Comple- the parsing of linguistic utterances and the very xity (DTC) was an early attempt to explore the ability to conduct a basic parsing would promote Avances en Psicología Latinoamericana/Bogotá (Colombia)/Vol. 29(2)/pp. 214-230/2011/ISSN1794-4724-ISSNe2145-4515 < 215 <Minimalist perspectives for psycholinguistic research the progressive specification of the formal features account to the bootstrapping problem of language of the lexicon, given the assumption that as soon acquisition is provided in terms of a feature based as naming starts to be recognized, children take model of language acquisition, and reference is ma- linguistic utterances to refer to entities and events de to some of the experimental results obtained so (Corrêa, 2009). far. Section 4 presents problems to be dealt with by As for processing, an on-line model of linguistic an on-line model of linguistic computation that in- computation has been characterized in the light of corporates minimalist operations. Section 5 synthe- a minimalist derivation. Unlike a linguistic deriva- sizes some of the hypotheses aimed to account for tion, which can be thought of as a virtual possibility the diversity of the SLI syndrome formulated in for a sentence to be built in a particular language, the light of this integrated approach to language on-line computation is part of the actual
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