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Language Acquisition and Universal Grammar
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- Опубліковано 2 вер 2014
- How do babies get so good at language so quickly? Because they already know a lot from the beginning about how language works. In this week's episode of The Ling Space, we talk about Universal Grammar and evidence that babies are little language acquisition geniuses.
This week's tag language: Japanese!
This is Topic #1 - our very first video!
Find us on all the social media worlds:
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Twitter: @TheLingSpace
Facebook: thelingspace/
And at our website, www.thelingspace.com!
The website also has extra content about the topic, as well as forums to discuss this episode, and linguistics more generally!
If you're looking for the paper on the phonological models, that's Lisa Pearl's 2011 paper, "When unbiased probabilistic learning is not enough: Acquiring a parametric system of metrical phonology." www.socsci.uci....
Subtitles:
Spanish subtitles by Federico Falletti
Looking forward to next week!
"That's faster than your 3-credit undergraduate language course", lol
I laughed so hard for that lol
I know this all too well. My Girlfriend is Chinese and we met in a Chinese Language Association at my college im Minoring in Mandarin at. She has a little brother who is about two and a half, who, a year ago, could barely say anything, and is now watching 小猪佩奇 (peppa pig) understanding maybe more than I do.
Ryt
@@Michael-Hammerschmidt hahahahaha
I love the way he gleans what's going on inside our heads and comes up with such powerful concepts.
Moti is beyond awesome :) I'm a student at a university where he taught (Concordia) and I'll say that even though we didn't speak much, getting to hear moti speak about linguistics is a gift and an honour! Good luck with the channel :D
Thanks! I'll try to do you guys proud here. Teaching at Concordia was a great experience for me. ^_^
I have always wondered, how come some children can speak two languages between the ages of three and five without having to worry about learning grammar first. They are not worried about what to say and how to say it. Thank You this brief video shed some light I watched it three times.
There are thresholds, and I missed them all.
Children do learn grammar.
Really helpful! I'm taking my A2 English Language exam on friday and this perfectly sums up Chomsky's proposal of a L.A.D for my CLA section. Thank you!
xCandyLaughterx Glad to be of help! We definitely think that that part of the nativist argument is quite strong. Good luck with your exam! ^_^
The Ling Space has been a live-saver time and time again! I cannot express how thankful I am for these videos when it comes to studying in my communication sciences and disorders classes!
+Emily Ukulele Thanks for letting us know! We're really glad to be able to help. We have some other stuff coming up soon that'll hopefully be helpful for that kind of thing. ^_^
I am prepering for my BA in linguistics at an English speaking University, you are a great help
Peace to you from Israel
JakiFeldman Glad we're managing to help! Best of luck with your degree. ^_^
I wish you would have given a little more discussion about the criticisms of Chompsky and of nativist views. The commonalities between the world's languages can also be explained by other, more empiricist lines of thought. For instance, language learning would still be possible with merely domain-general cognitive mechanisms of pattern recognition, statistical discriminability, social interaction, and a desire to understand. The biggest problem with nativist theories is that, while you can never trace back far enough in the chains of causes-and-effects that determine how we develop, you can also never be aware of all things that shape our developmental processes.
I don’t think the nativist position requires complete awareness of all things that shaped our developmental processes. It seems (at least to me), that it’s merely an observation about the creative aspect of language use. The fact that humans are able to generate sentences that have never been constructed before (including what I am writing currently) indicates that there is an internal/innate aspect of language acquisition. This is almost a tautology of elimination - given that new complex structures cannot be created through reinforcement that doesn’t explicitly refer to such structures, it follows that the capacity to do this must be intrinsic (if it is not extrinsic).
Put simply , we cannot train a computer to generate entirely new sentences and structures without first implanting an algorithm that explicitly refers to the specific structure itself. Given that we as humans are able to do so without any explicit hardwiring, indicates that this must be an innate capacity of ours. From what I understand, this is Chomsky’s main point in his paper “Syntactic Structures”, in which he also develops an axiomatic system of rules that govern the syntax and grammar of language.
Also a common misconception of UG. UG is NOT an attempt to explain how we access language, or how its organised in our brains, processed and interperted. It also doesnt try to pinpoint its neurologicical origin/location in our brains.
"...we cannot train a computer to generate entirely new sentences and structures without first implanting an algorithm that explicitly refers to the specific structure itself. Given that we as humans are able to do so without any explicit hardwiring, indicates that this must be an innate capacity of ours'. Language acquisition is no different than learning how to walk. It is experiential: You hear it/do it once, and the pattern will have already been formed in your mind, which is then easily accessible whenever a similar patern occurs in communication. This is allowed by the long-term neurological connections set up in the brain. Our brain 'remembers' every instance of language use owing to the cognitive mechanisms that are mutually involved in language acquisition. Universality of some grammar rules stems from the general cognitive mechanisms (memorization, speech processing, etc) that ARE biologically universal. To talk about the 'universal grammar' today is futile - it was Daniel Everett who proved long ago that Pirahã lacks principles of recursion and color terms (deemed universal until then), as it was influenced by the tribe's culture and their way of life. Thus came Cognitive Linguistics.
So glad to see that they are these helpful videos about particular topics of linguistics. Not only helpful also super entertaining. I never get bored. Great job! 👍
Great work! And helped me a lot during my exams, so I decided to watch all the videos. Thank you :)
I'm happy this is a thing!
Some tips for the future, if you don't mind my input: Framing, Lighting, and Music.
- Framing: Your set is great, it's visually engaging without seeming too cluttered, but you kept nudging the camera between takes, and because the background is more than just a solid-coloured wall, the shifts were obvious. Set up some markers along the shelves so you know exactly where your camera should be pointing to keep the same framing for the whole thing.
- Lighting: This might not be a thing you will be able to do right away, but you might want to invest in some lighting equipment to film with. They don't have to be expensive, many people just use lamps with makeshift softboxes and place them somewhere that works. There was a distracting reflection in your glasses from the lights in the ceiling being on.
- Music: If you edit in some subtle, royalty-free background music throughout the video, it makes everything seem a lot more polished. It just brings everything together and has an overall positive effect for viewers. But make sure it's just subtle background music; speaking from what little personal experience with video editing that I have, it can be really hard to find a good volume for the music, but once you do it is just a vast improvement. Try something from incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/ they have a pretty decent library!
In fact, "Porch Swings - faster" fits quite well with your speaking. You can also use it as a tool to pace your editing a little better!
Thanks for the advice! It's probably too late for any of these for #2, and we've actually filmed the next few. That's the danger of building a buffer! But we'll definitely keep these in mind starting from the next ones we film, and I might be able to even get music into next week's episode. Our sound designer has been trying to come up with something for backing music, after he put together stuff for the intro and end themes, but I can see if we can find something in the meantime.
So the take home message: thanks, and you can probably start expecting to see changes for lighting around mid-October. Framing, I think we're somewhat better already for upcoming videos, and music, even sooner. Hope you enjoy what we have coming up, too! ^_^
The Ling Space It's always good to get a head start! It's great that you guys have already started to consider these things, because that means the production quality will go up and you'll have a really nice show on your hands!
The music doesn't have to be anything particularly special, the themes are one thing, but the backing track can be pretty much anything that fits the pace of your speech and that you sound good talking over!
No music. This is study, not entertainment. The primate brain--in relation to language--is a global perception organ. Music will confuse the uptake of the data.
I just watched this for a Masters in Teaching course I'm taking. Had to jump on and say THANK YOU! WOW!! I found this content to be so interesting and very helpful. It's all explained very concisely and expertly. I'm definitely subscribing. I sure hope it's still active...
Hey there, Moti! So happy a classmate of mine brought your channel to my attention, if only I had discovered this sooner! This is awesome and glad to see a familiar face as I recall having you for LING200 a few years back! Keep up the great work ^_^ Ganbatte!
Awesome! Glad you liked it. Did you have me at McGill or Concordia, then? ^_^
Concordia! >:D
I love the way you teach all these difficult subjects
Can I ask for a link on the experiment where 20 different computer models were designed to determine the English Stress System? I think it's a good example about UG and I want to share it to my classmates. Thanks!
are you from UP?
@@simpleanndizon1358 are u talking about the University of Potsdam (UP)?
So many comments having no clue about Chomsky or his theory: Universal Grammar is NOT an attempt to explain how we access language, or how its organised in our brains, processed and interperted. It also doesnt try to pinpoint its neurologicical origin/location in our brains. It is a theory of language competence in humans and how this develops in a child, its superficial indicators etc. It has much more empirical research backing it up than any other theory of language aquisition.
As for second language aquisiton, it is learned and processed in the same way as our first language, although much slower the older we are. Starting age is THE most consistant predictor of how well someone will master their second language, provided compareable exposure. There are also people with innate linguistic talent.
I very much enjoy your ability to present language/language theory accessibly.
Does the sign behind him say "I love phonerics"? I'm confused...!?
cognitive psychology finals.. thank for the help
I'm watching this video in El Salvador, Central America, Thanks Mr. Lieberman to share your knowledge. I like the way you explain these stages. I'm a teacher and I will share this knowledge with my students if you allow me. Thanks a lot.
i'm from Malaysia and i love your video.
it really helps me to review for my test.
i like the way you put analogy as the example for certain rule.
Thank you and keep making video.
i'll look forward to it. =D
Thanks so much! I really appreciate it, and I'll share the comment with the rest of our team. ^_^
I love MALAYSIAN English.
"What a cute baby. Where's the kitty, baby?"
10/10 delivery. No notes.
Me: sitting in psych class and casually looks at the shirt he’s wearing
My thoughts: “this dude has played Persona 4!”
"teddy dressed up as alice" mightve been a p4 reference too lol
late, but u saw the yasogami tshirt, huh? lmao
Can you do a video or comment on the difference(s) between Generative Grammar versus Universal Grammar? These two are confusing to me...help!
"I eated" applies by far the most relevant, sensible general rules to reasonably, concisely and unambiguously communicate the correct meaning.
"I ate" is more of a sort of wart on the language which English speakers unfortunately have to use, the baby seems to have a better understanding in some ways than most adults.
Super informative..... Plz keep making videos like this.....u make me fall in love with linguistics
Fantastic! Thanks for this video - informative anda nice intro to Universal Grammar.
I agree with you,.I hope this video can add more knowledge.tq
Hey there, I know this is an older video and you may not reply, but I was wondering if you could provide me with a source for the study you mentioned comparing the babbling of babies who came from different language backgrounds. Thanks :)
+sunshee nee - Yep - this is Lisa Pearl's 2011 paper, "When unbiased probabilistic learning is not enough: Acquiring a parametric system of metrical phonology." You can find it here! It's a good paper. ^_^ www.socsci.uci.edu/~lpearl/papers/Pearl2011_UnbiasedAcqParam.pdf
Thanks for this very good explanation! Could you please name that experiment where 15 kids were studied and it turned out they create the same sounds?
Astute content, indeed. A book I read on similar topics was an eye-opener. "Galaxies United" by Olivia Whitestone
Thank you For your Explanation and material for today.
Really useful, I think that's the comprehensible input called.
So, what is the universal grammar?
Alright. Thank you for the explanation. 🙏
Alright.. Thank you for your explanation 🙏
thank you! very helpful for a philosophy of language essay I am writing :)
Glad to be able to help! Hope your essay goes well. ^_^
"depending on your language, you might not be able to tell the difference between 'talk' and '_____' " I guess my native language isn't English then because you sounded as if you said the same thing twice. At first I though you said "talk" and "torque" but then those sound the same. Your example is to show that to us english speakers distinctive sounds sound the same to non native speakers. I might just be the accent but I can't tell the difference.
New information, correct. Thanks a lot
what is the difference between LAD and UG, though?! Are they just synonyms?
Language Acquisition Device, they are not synonyms
UG is a hyponym my of the hypernym LAD
I'm interested in the part about "Dressed Teddie up like Alice?" part. I immediately thought about how this form IS correct in German, and that the way we generalize a rule (all verbs can be put at the front of the sentence to form a question like "is") must be greedier than a child (we want to generalize as much as possible and apply it to all things). Cool thought
Right! Not all languages ask questions in the same way, so it's totally normal for a German kid to make a question like that, but English speaking kids know enough about how English questions work by the time they start being able to ask them that they never make that sort of mistake, too. So the child data definitely looks different depending on what language you're looking at. Thanks for the comment!
So, does that mean that a child must have communication to be able to set off these 'blue prints' in their head? What about the case of the 'feral' child, that did not acquire any language because he never spoke to anyone? Surely if we had set 'blue prints' couldn't we just figure it out for ourselves? There are so many questions that could be asked!
This is a fair point! It's really not sufficient just to have the knowledge about how language can theoretically work in our heads. We also need input from particular languages to filter through this system to build up our linguistic knowledge. Only by having both input and a framework to interpret the input within can we build the language systems we structure as quickly as we do. For "feral" children, they may have the same filters to use as everyone, but they don't have anything to filter, and so you don't get a system out. Hope this helps! ^_^
Please provide the details of 20 models developed as mentioned in the middle of the video. That would be very helpful.
+Sandeep Saini This is in Lisa Pearl's 2011 paper, "When unbiased probabilistic learning is not enough: Acquiring a parametric system of metrical phonology." You can find it here! It's a good paper. I'll add it to the description, too. ^_^ www.socsci.uci.edu/~lpearl/papers/Pearl2011_UnbiasedAcqParam.pdf
+The Ling Space Thank You very Much :)
So , can we say that LAD (language acquisition device) and Universal grammar are the same???
+Nada Nqila not quite; UG is a model that linguists hope to create so as to understand the structure of every human language - whereas LAD is a means of language acquisition. So, UG is a superb model - target, and LAD is our "weapon" to get there... it's a really really slight defference, hope I made myself understood :|
They are something similar but are a bit different from each other.So they are clearly not the same.You can notice the obvious differences.
Thank you sooooo much from Argentina!!
That makes sense. You talked about grammar and how some grammatical constructions never appear, or even some sounds never appear. Have they done attention studies to see if babies react differently to "legal" nonsense sounds or sentences than "illegal" ones?
This is definitely an interesting question! I know of studies for these issues with adults and second language learners, and I figure there probably are some for kids, too. Let me do some digging and come back about this.
Diana Kennedy Sorry it took a bit to get back to reply about this! It turns out a number of studies have been done looking at how infants deal with listening to, say, words or sound combinations that are possible versus impossible in their own language. It turns out that babies, as they start to get older and closer to knowing what their phonological system is like, start to prefer listening to clusters of sounds that are appropriate for the language they're learning, and pay less attention to ones that don't.That's even if the sound combination is possible in other languages. So Mackenzie, Curtin and Graham reported in 2012 that 12-month-old English babies will start doing word mapping for sound combinations that are viable in English, or sounds from Japanese as long as they match English rules (like "hashi"). But something like "ptak" won't be picked up by them, even though [pt] is totally okay as a cluster in Czech. It's not in English, so English babies don't really listen to it the same way.Even more interestingly, it seems babies are sensitive to whether it occurs at the beginning or end of a word. For examples, studies by Zamuner show that Dutch babies pay more attention at the beginning of a word to good sound combinations than bad ones, but at the end of a word, there's no reliable difference. So they do better with beginnings than ends. Pretty cool! It's not just the sounds, but where they happen, that guide infants. ^_^
The Ling Space Very cool. But nothing earlier than that, sort of at the blank/not blank place, for legal and not legal sounds?
Diana Kennedy I think I'm not really entirely clear on your question. Do you mean whether babies respond different to sound combinations that are universally impossible, compared to ones that are okay in some language somewhere? Or do you mean sound versus absence of sound? Earlier babies can deal with sounds from anywhere and deal with clusters that exist in any language, because they have to be able to deal with anything, so I'm thinking you mean the former, but I'd appreciate a little clarification before I go for it. ^_^
The Ling Space Yes, I mean the former. You know how babies respond differently to abstract shapes that look like a face versus ones that don't? I think that is within the first four hours after birth. I'm wondering if they respond differently to sounds that are ok in some language somewhere versus sounds that never seem to appear in any language. Didn't you mention that there are some sounds that seem "illegal" across all languages? Do babies care less about those?
your explanation is very helpful, thank you
So happy to know this video,its so good. He explanin it so clear.
Excellent video! I love it!
Thanks guys, thats amazing
+Nun Gh Glad you liked it! ^_^
well done, very informative. Thank you
Thank you brother's
How amazing! I loved knowing this!
Hello sir. You did a very good job! You explain things so well. You helped me a lot. God bless, more power.
Thank you guys. This is a really interesting topic
That's great..
Thank you for your explanation 👍
I would agree.. except people have raised native klingon and esperanto speakers. So even made up languages can be aquired.
Yeah, which is really cool! What's interesting to see in these cases is if in the course of acquisition, the languages actually change. Under our predictions, we'd expect that the conlangs would conform to UG rules as the price of acquisition in kids. But that's something we can check empirically. ^_^
The Ling Space
So if a child aquires a conlang as a native language.
The language changes in the hcilds mid authomatically to the closest natural version of itself?
Or did I undestand you wrong?
That would be our prediction, yeah. The places where the conlang doesn't match with UG principles, when a child learns it, they modify it to make it fit within the UG framework. So that even if the original system doesn't obey everything, the system that the kid will learn will be shaped to it. ^_^
The Ling Space
That's very interesting. Thank you for the answers.
That doesn't just happen with ConLangs; Spanish speakers who learn english alongside it as children will fit English grammar onto Spanish a lot.
thank you for this clear explanation, it helps lot.
Thank you for the explanation 👍
Thank you.
You're welcome! ^_^
Thank you
You explain things so well.
You helped me a lot
That's a great explanation
Thank you
Sos crack hermaneto, segui asi no aflojes
Thanks for the explanations
It's great
Thank you!
+Andrew Tobey Sure! Glad to help. ^_^
that'll help a lot with my linguistic exam, thanks.
Thanks!
+Jackie Vicente Glad to help! ^_^
Thank you very much
The Pirahã language , your thoughts Moti?
that's an interesting explanation thanks 🙏
oh my gosh! very informative and it's been helping me during my Master's presentation! yahoo! mabuhay!
Great! Glad to be able to help. Thanks for watching! ^_^
Your channel is really interesting! Thanks for making this happen. And for making me so self conscious about the words I use (for some reason) ;-)
Thanks for the infos!
+Marie Estela De Guzman Thanks for watching! Glad you liked it. ^_^
Great video! What do you think of Steven Krashen's theory on SLA, the 'comprehensible input' (built around the concept that "we acquire language when we understand messages")?
What kind of input do they need to pick up language? Presumably we can't churn out polyglots by just playing a bunch of tapes in learning pods, Brave New World style. That said, it's not as if we're actually conversing with babies in early years, though I guess the words we're using are relevant to the situation which can help in its own right.
Thanks for your question! We probably can't expect kids to really totally acquire a language that they're only hearing from tapes (or learning pods, if those become a thing), but we probably would predict that they'd get some aspects of the language from that, like the phonology, for example. But for more complete acquisition, kids need to hear a sufficient amount of the language in a real-world context, so they can learn the meanings of words. Without seeing nouns and verbs in action, it's hard to know how to interpret them, particularly without using meta-linguistic strategies. But as long as they get the context and the input, they should learn the language. How much input is enough input is another question, and one that we'll return to when we talk about bilingualism and other topics.
Sam Green
Right, so perhaps even the phonology is too much. This fits with some of the research from Lila Gleitman and various colleagues about how kids basically let data go if it's not clear how to associate it to specific things in the environment. Kids need input, but that input should be given within a context that's natural enough for babies to be in and pick up language.
This was really helpful, thank you
Sure! Glad to be able to help. ^_^
Hi Moti!!! Awesome channel, great video, can't wait to watch more!!! - Sigal
Sigal Karasik Hey! Glad you liked the video. Hope you like the future ones, as well. ^_^
Question: You say babies learn languages way faster than anything else, so it must be preprogrammed in them. I look at my toddler and I can see that if it was fun and useful to do so, she would learn to tie her shoe in a matter of a few days if what we did all day is practise tying shoes. Babies learn language quickly because we speak all day long. We don't practise other areas of learning all day long. Thoughts?
Hello there! At 5:52 you said kids never make those types of mistakes. So are you specifically talking about making syntax mistakes in their mother tongue?
From which studies about making the initial sounds did your information come from please. id like to read it. Great video by the way, thank you :)
Thanks! Very helpful.
I once stumbled over articles that, while you just said that word acquisition seems to happen at the same time, suggested that grammar perfection actually happens at different ages, earlier for simpler ones like English and late for complex ones like German, Russian or Arabic, what do you know about that?
Hi! Love your video! What was the name of the study that analysed the "babble" made by infants? Thank You!
+Iskra Glad you liked it! You can find the babbling study with the 15 different languages reported in John Locke's 1983 book, Phonological Acquisition and Change. Hope this helps! ^_^
Thank you sir🙏
somewhat surprised that genie wasn't mentioned in the video about language acquisition.
Genie is an interesting case study, and her story is definitely tragic, but it's not clear to me how much we can really generalize from her experiences. Friend of the channel Stan Carey recently wrote a post about Genie, if you're curious, for more discussion on this: stancarey.wordpress.com/2016/08/23/language-acquisition-and-the-wild-child-genie/
+The Ling Space: But Genie and also other cases are clear arguments against the innate-theory. Would you disagree?
Great video!
do you have any more references? e.g. that babbling is identical in all languages?
awesome, great work!
Plz can im student can provide me with dffrence b/w fist lge aquisiton & SLA ?
isnt it about the nature of their brains since it is like an empty vessel and it can get a lot of vocab in short period comparing to an adult, for instance if we applied the same conditions of a baby learning his L1 on an adult it will take longer to acquire it
Example universal grammar in daily life ?
"Kids never make mistakes like that" 😂
That's Great
Thank you, very helpful!!!!!!!!
Great video man !!
Please, what resources did you use ?
Great lecture!
Thanks for the kind words!
I decided to go back to the first video and start taking notes, as I find this channel so interesting and very well made :)
I have a question about language acquisition
At around what age do we stop learning language so easily ?
And why ? What happens ?
Thank you so much
6-7 years old you pass the critical period
Thank you so much man!
I need you to do my test :(
good