Interview with Brian Macwhinney
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19 First Language Acquisition
466 Brian MacWhinney 19 First Language Acquisition BRIAN MACWHINNEY Nothing can make a parent prouder than a child’s first word. Whether it be “Mama,” “Papa,” or even “kitty,” we all recognize the first word as a major milestone in the child’s development – a clear token of the child’s entrance into a fuller membership in human society. We emphasize the child’s first word, because of the enormous importance that we place on language as a way of communicating with other people After all, we reason, the only species that uses language is the human species. Moreover, it is through language that we come to understand the deepest secrets of other people and come to appreciate the extent to which we share a common humanity. Fortunately, the ability to acquire language is present in almost every human child (Lenneberg 1967). Children who are born blind have few problems learning to speak, although they may occasionally be confused about words for colors or geographic locations. Children who are born deaf readily acquire a rich system of signs, as long as they are exposed to native sign language speakers. Even a child like Helen Keller, who has lost both hearing and sight, can still acquire language through symbols expressed in touch and motion. Children with neurological disorders, such as brain lesions or hydrocephalus, often acquire complete control over spoken language, despite a few months of early delay. Children with the most extreme forms of mental retardation are still able to acquire the basic units of human communication. Given the pervas- iveness and inevitability of first language acquisition, we often tend to take the process of language learning for granted. -
Two-Word Utterances Chomsky's Influence
Two-Word Utterances When does language begin? In the middle 1960s, under the influence of Chomsky’s vision of linguistics, the first child language researchers assumed that language begins when words (or morphemes) are combined. (The reading by Halliday has some illustrative citations concerning this narrow focus on “structure.”) So our story begins with what is colloquially known as the “two-word stage.” The transition to 2-word utterances has been called “perhaps, the single most disputed issue in the study of language development” (Bloom, 1998). A few descriptive points: Typically children start to combine words when they are between 18 and 24 months of age. Around 30 months their utterances become more complex, as they add additional words and also affixes and other grammatical morphemes. These first word-combinations show a number of characteristics. First, they are systematically simpler than adult speech. For instance, function words are generally not used. Notice that the omission of inflections, such as -s, -ing, -ed, shows that the child is being systematic rather than copying. If they were simply imitating what they heard, there is no particular reason why these grammatical elements would be omitted. Conjunctions (and), articles (the, a), and prepositions (with) are omitted too. But is this because they require extra processing, which the child is not yet capable of? Or do they as yet convey nothing to the child—can she find no use for them? Second, as utterances become more complex and inflections are added, we find the famous “over-regularization”—which again shows, of course, that children are systematic, not simply copying what they here. -
Language in Mind : Advances in the Study of Language and Thought
Language in Mind This page intentionally left blank Language in Mind Advances in the Study of Language and Thought edited by Dedre Gentner and Susan Goldin-Meadow A Bradford Book The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England ( 2003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or informa- tion storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in Sabon on 3B2 by Asco Typesetters, Hong Kong. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Language in mind ; advances in the study of language and thought / edited by Dedre Gentner and S. Goldin-Meadow. p. cm. ‘‘A Bradford book.’’ Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-262-07243-2 (hc. : alk. paper)—ISBN 0-262-57163-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Psycholinguistics. 2. Cognition. I. Gentner, Dedre. II. Goldin, Susan. P37 .L357 2003 4010.9—dc21 2002029578 Contents Contributors vii Acknowledgments ix I Introduction 1 Whither Whorf 3 Dedre Gentner and Susan Goldin-Meadow II Position Statements 15 1 Languages and Representations 17 Eve V. Clark 2 Language and Mind: Let’s Get the Issues Straight! 25 Stephen C. Levinson 3 The Key Is Social Cognition 47 Michael Tomasello III Language as Lens: Does the Language We Acquire Influence How We See the World? 59 4 Sex, Syntax, and Semantics 61 Lera Boroditsky, Lauren A. Schmidt, and Webb Phillips 5 Speaking versus Thinking about Objects and Actions 81 Barbara C. -
Introduction: Reconciling Approaches to Intra-Individual Variation in Psycholinguistics and Variationist Sociolinguistics
Linguistics Vanguard 2021; 7(s2): 20200027 Lars Bülow* and Simone E. Pfenninger Introduction: Reconciling approaches to intra-individual variation in psycholinguistics and variationist sociolinguistics https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2020-0027 Abstract: The overall theme of this special issue is intra-individual variation, that is, the observable variation within individuals’ behaviour, which plays an important role in the humanities area as well as in the social sciences. While various fields have recognised the complexity and dynamism of human thought and behav- iour, intra-individual variation has received less attention in regard to language acquisition, use and change. Linguistic research so far lacks both empirical and theoretical work that provides detailed information on the occurrence of intra-individual variation, the reasons for its occurrence and its consequences for language development as well as for language variation and change. The current issue brings together two sub- disciplines – psycholinguistics and variationist sociolinguistics – in juxtaposing systematic and non- systematic intra-individual variation, thereby attempting to build a cross-fertilisation relationship between two disciplines that have had surprisingly little connection so far. In so doing, we address critical stock-taking, meaningful theorizing and methodological innovation. Keywords: psycholinguistics, variationist sociolinguistics, intra-individual variation, intra-speaker variation, SLA, language variation and change, language development 1 Intra-individual variation in psycholinguistics and variationist sociolinguistics The overall theme of this special issue is intra-individual variation, that is, the observable variation within individuals’ behaviour, which plays an important role in the humanities area as well as in the social sciences. While various fields have acknowledged the complexity and dynamism of human behaviour, intra-individual variation has received less attention in regard to language use. -
Part I: Perspectives on Usage in L2 Learning and Teaching
Part I: Perspectives on usage in L2 learning and teaching Brian MacWhinney Multidimensional SLA Complex natural phenomena, such as human language, are shaped by processes operating on very different scales in both time and space (MacWhinney, in press). Consider the case of timescales in Geology. When geologists study rock outcrops they need to consider the results of general processes such as vulcanism, orogeny, glaciation, continental drift, erosion, sedimentation, and metamorphism. Within each of these larger processes, such as vulcanism, there are many microprocesses operating across smaller timescales. For example, once the pressure in the magma chamber reaches a certain level, there can be a slow outpouring of lava or sudden explosions. Pressure can be released through steam vents with geysers operating at regular intervals. The lava may enter lakes or oceans forming pillows or it may rest in underground chambers forming columnar basalt. The variations in these volcanic processes and their interactions with each other and plate tectonics are extensive. The same is true of human language. Within human populations, the ability to articulate and process sounds has emerged across millennia of ongoing changes in physiology and neurology. Within particular language communities, ongoing change is driven by language contact, dialect shift, and group formation. Within individuals, language learning involves a continual adaptation for both first and second languages. Within individual conversations, all of these forces come together, as people work out their mutual plans, goals, and disagreements, using language. Each of these space-time frames interacts with the others at the actual moment of language use. To fully understand the process of second language acquisition (SLA), we must place it within this multidimensional context, both theoretically and prac- tically. -
Language Learning Research at the Intersection of Experimental, Computational and Corpus-Based Approaches Patrick Rebuschat
Language learning research at the intersection of experimental, computational and corpus-based approaches (1,2) (2,3) (1,4) Patrick Rebuschat , Detmar Meurers , and Tony McEnery (1) (2) Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University; LEAD Graduate (3) School and Research Network, University of Tübingen; Seminar für Sprachwissenschaft, (4) University of Tübingen; ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science Keywords: Psycholinguistics; corpus linguistics; computational linguistics; natural language processing; first language acquisition; second language acquisition; multimethod approaches; interdisciplinary research Acknowledgements: Our research was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, UK (grant ES/K002155/1) and by the LEAD Graduate School & Research Network (grant DFG-GSC1028), a project of the Excellence Initiative of the German federal and state governments. Correspondence: Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Patrick Rebuschat, Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YL, United Kingdom, E-mail: [email protected]. Language acquisition occupies a central place in the study of human cognition, and research on how we learn language can be found across many disciplines, from developmental psychology and linguistics to education, philosophy and neuroscience. It is a very challenging topic to investigate given that the learning target in first and second language acquisition is highly complex, and part of the challenge consists in identifying how different domains of language are acquired to form a fully functioning system of usage (Ellis, this volume). Correspondingly, the evidence about language use and language learning is generally shaped by many factors, including the characteristics of the task in which the language is produced (Alexopoulou et al, this volume). -
Preprint Ellis, NC (2013). Second Language Acquisition. in Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar
Second Language Acquisition Nick C. Ellis University of Michigan [email protected] preprint Ellis, N. C. (2013). Second language acquisition. In Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar (pp. 365-378), G. Trousdale & T. Hoffmann (Eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1. Introduction Usage-based approaches hold that we learn linguistic constructions while engaging in communication, the “interpersonal communicative and cognitive processes that everywhere and always shape language” (Slobin 1997). Constructions are form-meaning mappings, conventionalized in the speech community, and entrenched as language knowledge in the learner’s mind. They are the symbolic units of language relating the defining properties of their morphological, syntactic, and lexical form with particular semantic, pragmatic, and discourse functions (Bates and MacWhinney 1987; Lakoff 1987; Langacker 1987; Croft 2001; Croft and Cruse 2004; Goldberg 1995, 2003, 2006; Tomasello 2003; Robinson and Ellis 2008; Bybee 2008). Broadly, Construction Grammar argues that all grammatical phenomena can be understood as learned pairings of form (from morphemes, words, and idioms, to partially lexically filled and fully general phrasal patterns) and their associated semantic or discourse functions. Such beliefs, increasingly influential in the study of child language acquisition, have turned upside down generative assumptions of innate language acquisition devices, the continuity hypothesis, and top-down, rule-governed, processing, bringing back data-driven, emergent accounts of linguistic systematicities. Constructionist theories of child first language acquisition (L1A) use dense longitudinal corpora to chart the emergence of creative linguistic competence from children’s analyses of the utterances in their usage history and from their abstraction of regularities within them (Goldberg 1995, 2006, 2003; Diessel, this volume; Tomasello 1998; Tomasello 2003). -
Chapter 2: First Language Acquisition
King Abdul Aziz University Applied Linguistics /LANE 423 Department of European Languages and Literature Sections: AC 16-18 March 2008 First Language Acquisition References: Brown, D. H. (2000). Principles of language learning & teaching. (4th ed.). New York: Longman. (pp. 20-27) Lightbown, P.M. & Spada, N. (1993). How Languages are Learned. Oxford University Press. (pp. 1-8) Children have a remarkable ability to communicate: . Small babies: children babble and coo and cry and vocally and nonvocally send messages and receive messages. End of first year: children start to imitate words and speech sounds and about this time use their first words. 18 months: their vocabulary in terms of words has increased and are beginning to use 2-word 3-word utterances (known as “telegraphic utterances”). 3 years: Children can comprehend an incredible quantity of linguistic input, they chatter nonstop . School age: Children start to internalize increasingly complex structures, expand their vocabulary and sharpen their communication skills and they also learn the social functions of their language. Three Positions in First Language Acquisition . Behavioristic Position . Nativist Position . Functional Position Behavioristic Approach Characteristics: . Children come into this world with a tabula rasa (a clean slate bearing no preconceived notions about the world or about language) and that these children are then shaped by the environment and slowly conditioned through various schedules of reinforcement. Language is a fundamental part of total human behavior. This approach focused on the immediately perceptible aspects of linguistic behavior-the publicly observable responses-and the relationships or associations between those responses and events in the world surrounding them. -
And Post-Doctoral Students with Backgrounds in Linguistics And, Thesocial Sciences
DOCUMENT RESUME ED 029 294 AL 001 940 By-Ervin-Tripp. Susan Summer Workshops in Sociolinguistics:Research on Children's Acquisition of CommunicativeCompetence. California Univ.. Berkeley.: Social Science ResearchCouncil. New York. N.Y. Committee on Sociolinguistics. Pub Date Jun 69 Note- 5p. Available from-Limited number of copiesavailable from the Social Science ResearchCouncil. 230 Park Avenue, New York. N.Y. 10017. Journal Cit-Items: v23 n2 Jun 69 EDRS Price MF-$0.25 HC-$0.35 Descriptors- Child Language. °CrossCultural Studies. Cultural Differences. DoctoralPrograms. Intercultural Programs. Interdisciplinary Approach.Language Usage. Nonverbal Communication. ResearchDesign. Research Methodology.Sociocultural Patterns.Sociolinguistics. Student Research. Summer Workshops. Verbal Commuira*7-tion During the summer of1968 a special summer program insociolinguistics (Language. Society, and theChild') was held at the University ofCalifornia. Berkeley. This program grew out of theresearch on 'children's language acquisition in avariety of cultures* which has beenunderway at that institutionfor four years. Originally it was planned torestrict the program to32 pre- and post-doctoral students with backgrounds in linguistics and, thesocial sciences. Among these were sevenwho had recently returned from makingfieldstudies. guided by the 'Field Manualfor Cross-Cultural Study of theAcquisition of Communicative Competence*(ED 015 434). The participants attended fourworkshops. each restricted to eight participants: one on child grammar.two on sociolinguistics.and -
Language Development Brian Macwhinney
P1: HEF/FGC P2: HEF/FGC QC: HEF/FGC T1: HEF 0521651174c42.xml CU1767B-Hopkins November 19, 2004 21:58 Language development brian macwhinney Introduction hard-wired instinct and the view of language as an emergent process, let us review a few basic facts about Almost every human child succeeds in learning the developmental course of language acquisition and language. As a result, people often tend to take the some of the methods used to study it. process of language learning for granted. To many, language seems like a basic instinct, as simple as breathing or blinking. But, in fact, language is the most Early auditory development complex ability that a human being will ever master. The fact that all people succeed in learning to use William James (1890) described the world of the language, whereas not all people learn to swim or do newborn as a “blooming, buzzing confusion.” However, calculus, demonstrates how fully language conforms we now know that, at the auditory level at least, the to our human nature. In a very real sense, language is newborn’s world is remarkably well structured. The the complete expression of what it means to be cochlea and auditory nerve provide extensive pre- human. processing of signals for frequency and intensity. In the Linguists in the Chomskyan tradition (Pinker, 1994) 1970s and 1980s, researchers discovered that human tend to think of language as having a universal core from infants were specifically adapted at birth to perceive which individual languages select out a particular contrasts such as that between /p/ and /b/, as in pit and configuration of optional features known technically as bit.Subsequent research showed that even chinchillas ‘parameters’ (Chomsky, 1982). -
Apt Ratner Cv May 2020.Pdf
Curriculum Vitae Notarization. I have read the following and certify that this curriculum vitae is a current and accurate statement of my professional record. Signature____________________ Date: May 2020__________ Personal Information A. UID nratner, Ratner, Nan Bernstein 0141GG Lefrak Hall, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 Mailing address: 0100 Lefrak Hall 301-405-4217, 301-314-2023 (fax) [email protected] https://hesp.umd.edu/facultyprofile/Bernstein%20Ratner/Nan ORCID iD 0000-0002-9947-0656; link to my public record: http://orcid.org/0000-0002- 9947-0656 Google Scholar profile: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C21&q=Nan+Bernstein+Ratner& btnG= B. Academic Appointments at UMD Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, Assistant Professor (1983-1989) Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, Associate Professor (1989-1999) Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, Professor (1999 – present) (1993 - 2014) C. Administrative Appointments at UMD Chairman, Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences (1993-2014) D. Other employment 1982 - 1983 Howard University Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Communication Sciences 1978 - 1982 Boston College Instructor, Department of Special Education 1978 - 1982 University of Massachusetts, Boston (formerly Boston State College) Instructor, Depts. of Psychology and Special Education 1980 - 1982 Bridgewater State College, MA Instructor, Department of Communication Disorders 1977 - 1981 Tufts University Director, Forensics Program Intercollegiate Varsity Debate Coach Instructor, Experimental College 1977 - 1978 Child Development Center, Brockton, MA Director, Speech and language services 1977 - 1978 Southeast Massachusetts Head Start, Brockton, MA Director, Speech and language services E. Educational Background Boston University 1982 Ed.D. Applied Psycholinguistics Temple University 1976 M.A. -
Bilingual Sentence Production and Code-Switching: Neural Network Simulations
Bilingual sentence production and code-switching: Neural network simulations Chara Tsoukala 556869-L-bw-Tsoukala Processed on: 9-3-2021 PDF page: 1 The educational component of the doctoral training was provided by the International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) for Language Sciences. The graduate school is a joint initiative between the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and two partner institutes at Radboud University – the Centre for Language Studies, and the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour. The IMPRS curriculum, which is funded by the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science, ensures that each member receives interdisciplinary training in the language sciences and develops a well-rounded skill set in preparation for fulfilling careers in academia and beyond. More information can be found at www.mpi.nl/imprs ISBN: 978-94-92910-27-1 Cover design: Amalia Tsichla Printed by: Ipskamp printing Layout: This thesis was typeset with LATEX2ε. It uses the Clean Thesis style developed by Ricardo Langner. © Chara Tsoukala, 2021. All rights reserved. This thesis was funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) Gravitation Grant 024.001.006 to the Language in Interaction Consortium. 556869-L-bw-Tsoukala Processed on: 9-3-2021 PDF page: 2 Bilingual sentence production and code-switching: Neural network simulations Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen op gezag van de rector magnificus prof. dr. J.H.J.M. van Krieken, volgens besluit van het college van decanen in het openbaar te verdedigen op woensdag 21 april 2021 om 14.30 uur precies door Chara Tsoukala geboren op 18 april 1986 te Athene (Griekenland) 556869-L-bw-Tsoukala Processed on: 9-3-2021 PDF page: 3 Promotor Prof.