Statistical language acquisition: Difference between revisions

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{{Short description|Branch of developmental psycholinguistics}}

{{linguistics}}

'''Statistical language acquisition''', a branch of [[developmental psychology|developmental]] [[psycholinguistics]], studies the process by which humans develop the ability to perceive, produce, comprehend, and communicate with [[natural language]] in all of its aspects ([[phonology|phonological]], [[syntax|syntactic]], [[lexicon|lexical]], [[morphology (linguistics)|morphological]], [[semantics|semantic]]) through the use of general learning mechanisms operating on statistical patterns in the linguistic input. [[Statistical learning in language acquisition|Statistical learning]] acquisition claims that infants' language-learning is based on pattern perception rather than an innate biological grammar. Several statistical elements such as frequency of words, frequent frames, phonotactic patterns and other regularities provide information on language structure and meaning for facilitation of language acquisition.

==Philosophy==

Fundamental to the study of statistical language acquisition is the centuries-old debate between [[rationalism]] (or its modern manifestation in the psycholinguistic community, [[psychological nativism|nativism]]) and [[empiricism]], with researchers in this field falling strongly in support of the latter category. Nativism is the position that humans are born with innate [[___domain specificity|___domain-specific]] knowledge, especially inborn capacities for language learning. Ranging from seventeenth century rationalist philosophers such as [[Descartes]], [[Spinoza]], and [[Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz|Leibniz]] to contemporary philosophers such as [[Richard Montague]] and linguists such as [[Noam Chomsky]], nativists posit an innate learning mechanism with the specific function of language acquisition.<ref name = "philo">Russell, J. (2004). What is Language Development?: Rationalist, Empiricist, and Pragmatist Approaches to the Acquisition of Syntax. Oxford University Press.</ref>

In modern times, this debate has largely surrounded Chomsky's support of a [[universal grammar]], properties that all natural languages must have, through the controversial postulation of a [[language acquisition device]] (LAD), an instinctive mental 'organ' responsible for language learning which searches all possible language alternatives and chooses the parameters that best match the learner's environmental linguistic input. Much of Chomsky's theory is founded on the [[poverty of the stimulus]] (POTS) argument, the assertion that a child's linguistic data is so limited and corrupted that learning language from this data alone is impossible. As an example, many proponents of POTS claim that because children are never exposed to negative evidence, that is, information about what phrases are ungrammatical, the language structure they learn would not resemble that of correct speech without a language-specific learning mechanism.<ref>Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.</ref> Chomsky's argument for an internal system responsible for language, biolinguistics, poses a three-factor model. "Genetic endowment" allows the infant to extract linguistic info, detect rules, and have universal grammar. "External environment" illuminates the need to interact with others and the benefits of language exposure at an early age. The last factor encompasses the brain properties, learning principles, and computational efficiencies that enable children to pick up on language rapidly using patterns and strategies.

Standing in stark contrast to this position is empiricism, the [[epistemology|epistemological]] theory that all knowledge comes from sensory experience. This school of thought often characterizes the nascent mind as a [[tabula rasa]], or blank slate, and can in many ways be associated with the nurture perspective of the "[[nature versus nurture|nature vs. nurture debate]]". This viewpoint has a long historical tradition that parallels that of rationalism, beginning with seventeenth century empiricist philosophers such as [[John Locke|Locke]], [[Francis Bacon|Bacon]], [[Hobbes]], and, in the following century, [[David Hume|Hume]]. The basic tenet of empiricism is that information in the environment is structured enough that its patterns are both detectable and extractable by ___domain-general learning mechanisms.<ref name = "philo"/> In terms of [[language acquisition]], these patterns can be either linguistic or social in nature.

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===Conditioned Headturn Procedure===

Similar to HPP, the Conditioned Headturn Procedure also makes use of an infant's differential preference for a given side as an indication of a preference for, or more often a familiarity with, the input or speech associated with that side. Used in studies of [[prosody (linguistics)|prosodic]] boundary markers by Gout et al. (2004)<ref name = "review"/> and later by Werker in her classic studies of [[categorical perception]] of [[first language|native-language]] [[phoneme]]s,<ref name = "werker">{{cite journal | last1 = Werker | first1 = J. F. | last2 = Lalonde | first2 = C. E. | year = 1988 | title = Cross-Language Speech Perception : Initial Capabilities and Developmental Change | journal = Developmental Psychology | volume = 24 | issue = 5| pages = 672–683 | doi=10.1037/0012-1649.24.5.672| citeseerx = 10.1.1.460.9810 }}</ref> infants are [[classical conditioning|conditioned]] by some attractive image or display to look in one of two directions every time a certain input is heard, a whole word in Gout's case and a single phonemic syllable in Werker's. After the conditioning, new or more complex input is then presented to the infant, and their ability to detect the earlier target word or distinguish the input of the two trials is observed by whether they turn their head in expectation of the conditioned display or not.

===Anticipatory eye movement===

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===Audio and audiovisual recordings===

Statistical learning has been shown to play a large role in language acquisition, but social interaction appears to be a necessary component of learning as well. In one study, infants presented with audio or audiovisual recordings of Mandarin speakers failed to distinguish the phonemes of the language.<ref name = "crackingcode">{{cite journal | last1 = Kuhl | first1 = Patricia K | year = 2004 | title = Early language acquisition: cracking the speech code | journal = Nature Reviews Neuroscience | volume = 5 | issue = 11| pages = 831–843 | doi = 10.1038/nrn1533 | pmid=15496861| s2cid = 205500033 }}</ref><ref name = "social learning">{{cite journal | last1 = Kuhl | first1 = Patricia K | year = 2007 | title = Is speech learning "gated" by the social brain | url = http://ilabs.washington.edu/kuhl/pdf/Kuhl_2007.pdf | journal = Developmental Science | volume = 10 | issue = 1| pages = 11–120 | doi = 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2007.00572.x | pmid = 17181708 }}</ref> This implies that simply hearing the sounds is not sufficient for language learning; social interaction cues the infant to take statistics. Particular interactions geared towards infants is known as "child-directed" language because it is more repetitive and associative, which makes it easier to learn. These "child directed" interactions could also be the reason why it is easier to learn a language as a child rather than an adult.

===Bilinguals===

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===Phonetic category learning===

The first step in developing knowledge of a system as complex as natural language is learning to distinguish the important language-specific classes of sounds, called phonemes, that distinguish meaning between words. [[University of British Columbia|UBC]] psychologist [[Janet Werker]], since her influential series of experiments in the 1980s, has been one of the most prominent figures in the effort to understand the process by which human babies develop these phonological distinctions. While adults who speak different languages are unable to distinguish meaningful sound differences in other languages that do not delineate different meanings in their own, babies are born with the ability to universally distinguish all speech sounds. Werker's work has shown that while infants at six to eight months are still able to perceive the difference between certain [[Hindi]] and [[English language|English]] [[consonant]]s, they have completely lost this ability by 11 to 13 months.<ref name = "werker"/>

It is now commonly accepted that children use some form of perceptual [[distributional hypothesis|distributional learning]], by which categories are discovered by clumping similar instances of an input stimulus, to form phonetic categories early in life.<ref name = "review"/> Developing children have been found to be effective judges of linguistic authority, screening the input they model their language on by shifting their [[attention]] less to speakers who mispronounce words.<ref name = "review" /> Infants also use statistical tracking to calculate the likelihood that particular phonemes will follow each other.<ref name = "Romberg/saffron"> Romberg, Alexa R and Sarron, Jenny R. (2010). "[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3112001/ Statistical Learning and Language Acquisition]." WIREs Cogn Sci 10.1002/wbs.78</ref>

===Parsing===

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===Differences in autistic populations===

According to recent research, there is no neural evidence of statistical language learning in children with [[Autistic spectrum disorder|autism spectrum disorders]]. When exposed to a continuous stream of artificial speech, neurotypical children displayed less cortical activity in the [[Frontal cortex|dorsolateral frontal cortices]] (specifically the [[middle frontal gyrus]]) as cues for word boundaries increased. However activity in these networks remained unchanged in autistic children, regardless of the verbal cues provided. This evidence, highlighting the importance of proper Frontal Lobe brain function is in support of the "Executive Functions" Theory, used to explain some of the biologically related causes of Autistic language deficits. With impaired working memory, decision making, planning, and goal setting, which are vital functions of the Frontal Lobe, Autistic children are at loss when it comes to socializing and communication (Ozonoff, et al., 2004). Additionally, researchers have found that the level of communicative impairment in autistic children was inversely correlated with signal increases in these same regions during exposure to artificial languages. Based on this evidence, researchers have concluded that children with autism spectrum disorders don't have the neural architecture to identify word boundaries in continuous speech. Early word segmentation skills have been shown to predict later language development, which could explain why language delay is a hallmark feature of autism spectrum disorders.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Scott-Van Zeeland | first1 = A. A. | last2 = McNealy | first2 = K. | last3 = Wang | first3 = A. T. | last4 = Sigman | first4 = M. | last5 = Bookheimer | first5 = S. Y. | last6 = Dapretto | first6 = M. | year = 2010 | title = No neural evidence of statistical learning during exposure to artificial languages in children with autism spectrum disorders | journal = Biological Psychiatry | volume = 68 | issue = 4| pages = 345–351 | doi=10.1016/j.biopsych.2010.01.011| pmid = 20303070 | pmc = 3229830 }}</ref>

=== Statistical language learning across situations ===

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===C/V hypothesis===

Along the lines of probabilistic frequencies, the C/V hypothesis basically states all language hearers use consonantal frequencies to distinguish between words (lexical distinctions) in continuous speech strings, in comparison to vowels. Vowels are more pertinent to rhythmic identification. Several follow-up studies revealed this finding, as they showed that vowels are processed independently of their local statistical distribution.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.sissa.it/cns/Books/Linguistic%20Contstraints_in%20Rebuschat%20%26%20Williams.pdf |title=Archived copy |access-date=2022-02-17 |archive-date=2016-03-04 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304043734/http://www.sissa.it/cns/Books/Linguistic%20Contstraints_in%20Rebuschat%20%26%20Williams.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Other research has shown that the consonant-vowel ratio doesn't influence the sizes of lexicons when comparing distinct languages. In the case of languages with a higher consonant ratio, children may depend more on consonant neighbors than rhyme or vowel frequency.<ref>Lambertsen, Claus; [[Janna Oetting|Oetting, Janna]]; Barlow, Jessica. Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research. Oct2012, Vol. 55 Issue 5, p1265-1273.</ref>

=== Algorithms for language acquisition ===