Acquisition of Language Phonological Development, Slides of Psychology

Download Acquisition of Language Phonological Development and more Slides Psychology in PDF only on Docsity! Psych 56L/ Ling 51: Acquisition of Language Lecture 8 Phonological Development III Announcements Pick up HW1 if you haven’t done so already Be preparing for the midterm & working on the first part of HW2 that covers phonology Next class: midterm review - bring questions!! Behaviorist Theory Idea: use behaviorist mechanisms of imitation and reinforcement Implementation: Babies produce the sounds they do because they imitate the sounds they hear and get positive reinforcement for doing so. QuickTime™ and a decompressor are needed to see this picture. Behaviorist Theory Problem: Ignores maturational constraints. Some sounds are later because they’re harder to physically produce (ex: T, Z), not because they aren’t reinforced. Problem: Parents do not selectively reinforce speech sounds - parents delight in all kinds of sounds children make (ex: laughter, burps, raspberries, …) Problem: Phonology isn’t just about sounds - it’s also about developing mental representations of contrastive sounds (phonemes) and the rules for when sounds are combined together. This isn’t conscious knowledge, and so it’s not able to be reinforced. Behaviorist Theory Basic Problem: Not fundamentally wrong, just mistaken. Positive reinforcement and a rich linguistic environment to imitate certainly help phonological acquisition. They’re just not exclusively responsible for it. QuickTime™ and a decompressor are needed to see this picture. Rule & Constraint-Based Approaches Two instantiations of this: (1) learning applicable phonological rules in Universal Grammar (2) learning rankings of rules in Optimality Theory Notice distribution of sounds & rank this rule above opposing rules: ASPIRATE more important than “pronounce all t sounds the same” “top” --> [tHap] “stop” --> [stap] “trip” --> [trIp] QuickTime™ and a decompressor are needed to see this picture. All ts the same More important! ASPIRATE Biologically-Based Theories Idea: phonological system is driven by inherent biological constraints (which then interact with the child’s experience with the language). Instantiation: development of sound is shaped by the development of the child’s motor capacity. Support 1: Correlation between development and crosslinguistic variation Sounds appearing early in infants’ vocal productions are most common sounds among the world’s languages (ex: [m]). Sounds appearing late are the rarest (ex: [T]). Biologically-Based Theories Idea: phonological system is driven by inherent biological constraints (which then interact with the child’s experience with the language). Instantiation: development of sound is shaped by the development of the child’s motor capacity. Support 2: Correlation between phonological processes employed by children and crosslinguistic variation Ex: Children often make a word-final consonant voiceless (ex: “bad” --> /bQt/, and this is a process some languages use (ex: German) Connectionist Approach QuickTime™ and a decompressor are needed to see this picture. /kQt/ Connectionist Approach QuickTime™ and a decompressor are needed to see this picture. /tQt/ Pronunciation mistake due to incorrect feature association Connecting the Connectionist Approach to Speech Perception: The Native Language Magnet Theory Empirical data: infants learn to distinguish native sound contrasts and to ignore non-native sounds contrasts before they begin word-learning (~10-12 months) Idea: experience hearing sounds of one language alters infant’s perception of distances among sounds, making differences that do not matter perceptually smaller and differences that do matter perceptually larger. The Native Language Magnet Theory Patricia Kuhl Sounds from Language 1 “Perceptual Magnet” x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x Infants maintain contrasts being used in their language and lose all the others. The Native Language Magnet Theory Patricia Kuhl Boundaries that are maintained to keep these sound clusters distinct “Perceptual Magnet” x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x Infants maintain contrasts being used in their language and lose all the others. The Native Language Magnet Theory Patricia Kuhl Sounds from Language 2 “Perceptual Magnet” x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x Infants maintain contrasts being used in their language and lose all the others. The Native Language Magnet Theory Patricia Kuhl “Perceptual Magnet” The perceived acoustic distance between these sounds is smaller (because they are within the same category) - even though acoustically they are pretty separated Perceived acoustic distance  Actual acoustic distance x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x The Native Language Magnet Theory Patricia Kuhl “Perceptual Magnet” Perceived acoustic distance  Actual acoustic distance The perceived acoustic distance between these sounds is larger (because they are in different categories) - even though acoustically they are pretty close x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x Connecting the Connectionist Approach to the Native Language Magnet Theory Idea: Exposure to native language data produces dedicated neural networks in the brain for processing native language sounds. If patterns come in that do not match the feature associations in these neural nets (ex: from a foreign language), these patterns are not processed - and so not perceived. velar nasal palatal fricative voiced QuickTime™ and a decompressor are needed to see this picture. Connecting the Connectionist Approach to Speech Perception: The Native Language Magnet Theory Idea: Exposure to native language data produces dedicated neural networks in the brain for processing native language sounds. If patterns come in that do not match the feature associations in these neural nets (ex: from a foreign language), these patterns are not processed - and so not perceived. velar palatal voiced n) nasal fricative QuickTime™ and a decompressor are needed to see this picture. N,dZ? Theories of Phonological Development: Recap Multiple theories proposed to explain empirical data on children’s speech perception and speech production. Some are not compatible with current data (ex: behaviorist), while most others are able to explain some aspects of the current data, if not all aspects. Current approaches differ in whether they view development as acquisition of actual rules or instead as acquisition of regularities in the input. Questions? QuickTime™ and a decompressor are needed to see this picture.