Child Language Acquisition: Verb Learning and Syntactic Bootstrapping (Week 7)

Verb Learning

Acquisition of action/event concepts in language.

Noun Learning

Acquisition of object concepts in language.

Syntactic Bootstrapping

Using syntax knowledge to infer word meanings.

Mapping Problem

Linking phonological forms to concepts.

Induction

Deriving general principles from specific examples.

Conceptual Complexity Hypothesis

Action/event concepts are more complex than object concepts.

Linguistic Experience Hypothesis

Syntactic structure understanding aids verb learning.

Local Dependencies

Verbs require subjects and/or objects in sentences.

Whole Object Bias

Tendency to assume words refer to whole objects.

Human Simulation Paradigm

Using human models to simulate language learning.

Gillette et al. (1999)

Study on word learning using various evidence types.

Lexical Bootstrapping

Using known words to infer meanings of new words.

Syntactic Structures

Grammatical arrangements that convey meaning.

Preferential Looking Paradigm

Method to study language acquisition in infants.

Condition 1

Silent scene with no linguistic input.

Condition 2

List of nouns in sentences without scenes.

Condition 3

Combination of conditions 1 and 2.

Condition 4

Jabberwocky syntax with no scene.

Condition 5

Full sentence except verb, no scene.

Condition 6

Scene with full sentence providing context.

Developmental Observation

Some words are harder to learn than others.

Theoretical Hypothesis

Link exists between sentence meanings and structures.

Learning Hypothesis

Syntactic knowledge helps solve mapping problems.

Arguments in Sentences

Correspondence between arguments and event participants.

Yuan & Fisher (2009)

Study on learning without visual input.

Naigles (1990)

Research on novel word learning from ambiguous input.

Gillette et al. (1999) Experiment 1

Tested word learning with silent scenes.

Gillette et al. (1999) Experiment 3

Varied conditions to assess input for word learning.

Spectrogram

Visual representation of sound amplitude over time.