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Author: Alan Juffs
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027224781
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 295
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Book Description
This book provides a critical review of recent theories of semantics-syntax correspondences and makes new proposals for constraints on semantic structure relevant to syntax. Data from several languages are presented which suggest that semantic structure in root morphemes is subject to parametric variation which has effect across a variety of verb classes, including locatives, unaccusatives, and psych verbs.The implications for first and second language acquisition are discussed. In particular, it is suggested that different parametric settings may lead to a learnability problem if adult learners do not retain access to sensitivity to underlying semantic organization and morphological differences between languages provided by Universal Grammar.An experiment with Chinese-speaking learners of English is presented which shows that learners initially transfer L1 semantic organization to the L2, but are able to retreat from overgeneralisations and achieve native-like grammars in this area.Suggestions for further research in this rapidly developing area of theory and acquisition research are also made.
Author: Alan Juffs
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027224781
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 295
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book provides a critical review of recent theories of semantics-syntax correspondences and makes new proposals for constraints on semantic structure relevant to syntax. Data from several languages are presented which suggest that semantic structure in root morphemes is subject to parametric variation which has effect across a variety of verb classes, including locatives, unaccusatives, and psych verbs.The implications for first and second language acquisition are discussed. In particular, it is suggested that different parametric settings may lead to a learnability problem if adult learners do not retain access to sensitivity to underlying semantic organization and morphological differences between languages provided by Universal Grammar.An experiment with Chinese-speaking learners of English is presented which shows that learners initially transfer L1 semantic organization to the L2, but are able to retreat from overgeneralisations and achieve native-like grammars in this area.Suggestions for further research in this rapidly developing area of theory and acquisition research are also made.
Author: Alan Juffs
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027285640
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
This book provides a critical review of recent theories of semantics-syntax correspondences and makes new proposals for constraints on semantic structure relevant to syntax. Data from several languages are presented which suggest that semantic structure in root morphemes is subject to parametric variation which has effect across a variety of verb classes, including locatives, unaccusatives, and psych verbs.The implications for first and second language acquisition are discussed. In particular, it is suggested that different parametric settings may lead to a learnability problem if adult learners do not retain access to sensitivity to underlying semantic organization and morphological differences between languages provided by Universal Grammar. An experiment with Chinese-speaking learners of English is presented which shows that learners initially transfer L1 semantic organization to the L2, but are able to retreat from overgeneralisations and achieve native-like grammars in this area. Suggestions for further research in this rapidly developing area of theory and acquisition research are also made.
Author: Joe Barcroft
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027268053
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 208
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Book Description
This book focuses on theory, research, and practice related to lexical input processing (lex-IP), an exciting field exploring how learners allocate their limited processing resources when exposed to words and lexical phrases in the input. Unit 1 specifies parameters of lex-IP research among other levels of input processing as well as key components (form, meaning, mapping) and contexts (incidental/intentional) of vocabulary learning. Unit 2 highlights theoretical advances, such as the type of processing – resource allocation (TOPRA) model, consistent with research on tasks (sentence writing, word copying, word retrieval) that learners may perform during vocabulary learning. Unit 3 highlights patterns in partial word form learning and input-based effects, including the value of increased exposure, drawbacks of presenting vocabulary in semantic sets, and advantages of input enhancement, particularly with regard to increasing talker, speaking-style, and speaking-rate variability in spoken input. The book unifies a range of research pertinent to lex-IP, summarizes theoretical and instructional implications, and proposes intriguing new directions for future research.
Author: Birgit Harley
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 340
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Book Description
The empirical studies in this text address key issues in the development and use of vocabulary by child bilinguals and older second-language learners. The thematic focus in this collection of articles is on the assessment of lexical development in bilinguals at different points in the lifespan.
Author: Steven Pinker
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674042174
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 474
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Book Description
In this influential study, Steven Pinker develops a new approach to the problem of language learning. Now reprinted with new commentary by the author, this classic work continues to be an indispensable resource in developmental psycholinguistics.
Author: Bruce Tesar
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262264884
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 158
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Book Description
Highlighting the close relationship between linguistic explanation and learnability, Bruce Tesar and Paul Smolensky examine the implications of Optimality Theory (OT) for language learnability. Highlighting the close relationship between linguistic explanation and learnability, Bruce Tesar and Paul Smolensky examine the implications of Optimality Theory (OT) for language learnability. They show how the core principles of OT lead to the learning principle of constraint demotion, the basis for a family of algorithms that infer constraint rankings from linguistic forms. Of primary concern to the authors are the ambiguity of the data received by the learner and the resulting interdependence of the core grammar and the structural analysis of overt linguistic forms. The authors argue that iterative approaches to interdependencies, inspired by work in statistical learning theory, can be successfully adapted to address the interdependencies of language learning. Both OT and Constraint Demotion play critical roles in their adaptation. The authors support their findings both formally and through simulations. They also illustrate how their approach could be extended to other language learning issues, including subset relations and the learning of phonological underlying forms.
Author: Steven Pinker
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262518406
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 509
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Book Description
A classic book about language acquisition and conceptual structure, with a new preface by the author, "The Secret Life of Verbs." Before Steven Pinker wrote bestsellers on language and human nature, he wrote several technical monographs on language acquisition that have become classics in cognitive science. Learnability and Cognition, first published in 1989, brought together two big topics: how do children learn their mother tongue, and how does the mind represent basic categories of meaning such as space, time, causality, agency, and goals? The stage for this synthesis was set by the fact that when children learn a language, they come to make surprisingly subtle distinctions: pour water into the glass and fill the glass with water sound natural, but pour the glass with water and fill water into the glass sound odd. How can this happen, given that children are not reliably corrected for uttering odd sentences, and they don't just parrot back the correct ones they hear from their parents? Pinker resolves this paradox with a theory of how children acquire the meaning and uses of verbs, and explores that theory's implications for language, thought, and the relationship between them. As Pinker writes in a new preface, "The Secret Life of Verbs," the phenomena and ideas he explored in this book inspired his 2007 bestseller The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature. These technical discussions, he notes, provide insight not just into language acquisition but into literary metaphor, scientific understanding, political discourse, and even the conceptions of sexuality that go into obscenity.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Applied linguistics
Languages : en
Pages : 128
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Book Description
Author: Christine Doe
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527540596
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 333
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Book Description
This volume will appeal to anyone interested in knowing more about the fundamental building blocks of language: words. It brings together the fields of linguistics, neuroscience, psycholinguistics, speech-language pathology, and language education to present multifaceted perspectives on the topic of vocabulary. The theoretical and empirical contributions included consider some of the key questions facing the field, such as What is the mental lexicon? What constitutes a word? What are new and novel approaches to measuring and researching vocabulary? and What is the best way to teach vocabulary? This book will be useful to graduate students and scholars in the fields of theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics, applied linguistics, adult and child language acquisition, and modern languages. In addition, it will appeal to language educators at various institutions, immigrant service specialists, school board officials, and study abroad consultants.
Author: Sean A. Fulop
Publisher: Trafford Publishing
ISBN: 1412023815
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
This book presents the author's research on automatic learning procedures for categorial grammars of natural languages. The research program spans a number of intertwined disciplines, including syntax, semantics, learnability theory, logic, and computer science. The theoretical framework employed is an extension of categorial grammar that has come to be called multimodal or type-logical grammar. The first part of the book presents an expository summary of how grammatical sentences of any language can be deduced with a specially designed logical calculus that treats syntactic categories as its formulae. Some such Universal Type Logic is posited to underlie the human language faculty, and all linguistic variation is captured by the different systems of semantic and syntactic categories which are assigned in the lexicons of different languages. The remainder of the book is devoted to the explicit formal development of computer algorithms which can learn the lexicons of type logical grammars from learning samples of annotated sentences. The annotations consist of semantic terms expressed in the lambda calculus, and may also include an unlabeled tree-structuring over the sentence. The major features of the research include the following: We show how the assumption of a universal linguistic component---the logic of language---is not incompatible with the conviction that every language needs a different system of syntactic and semantic categories for its proper description. The supposedly universal linguistic categories descending from antiquity (noun, verb, etc.) are summarily discarded. Languages are here modeled as consisting primarily of sentence trees labeled with semantic structures; a new mathematical class of such term-labeled tree languages is developed which cross-cuts the well-known Chomsky hierarchy and provides a formal restrictive condition on the nature of human languages. The human language acquisition mechanism is postulated to be biased, such that it assumes all input language samples are drawn from the above "syntactically homogeneous" class; in this way, the universal features of human languages arise not just from the innate logic of language, but also from the innate biases which govern language learning. This project represents the first complete explicit attempt to model the aquisition of human language since Steve Pinker's groundbreaking 1984 publication, "Language Learnability and Language Development."
