Sampling linguistic diversity to understand language development
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Sabine Stoll
Abstract
Humans have an innate capacity to learn language. This is an undisputed fact. However, what this capacity actually consists of has yet to be worked out in full detail. The main reason for this is that language is an abstract capacity which manifests in thousands of languages that vary widely in every possible domain, and which change continuously over time. Furthermore, empirical research shows that linguistic features of individual languages can influence the learning process and so bias any generalizations about the human capacity for language learning. Thus, any understanding of language or its development must be considered in a cross-linguistic perspective. However, current research in the field has focused on only a small subset of the world’s languages; we have only scratched the surface of what children must learn and how they do it. In this chapter, I offer a solution to this sampling bias. The solution is a maximal diversity approach, which samples from languages that are as structurally diverse as possible. This allows us to simulate the linguistic variability that children must be able deal with in being able to learn any language. Maximum diversity sampling promises insights into the general mechanisms which underlie language development and how distributions of linguistic features in the input work hand in hand with these mechanisms.
Abstract
Humans have an innate capacity to learn language. This is an undisputed fact. However, what this capacity actually consists of has yet to be worked out in full detail. The main reason for this is that language is an abstract capacity which manifests in thousands of languages that vary widely in every possible domain, and which change continuously over time. Furthermore, empirical research shows that linguistic features of individual languages can influence the learning process and so bias any generalizations about the human capacity for language learning. Thus, any understanding of language or its development must be considered in a cross-linguistic perspective. However, current research in the field has focused on only a small subset of the world’s languages; we have only scratched the surface of what children must learn and how they do it. In this chapter, I offer a solution to this sampling bias. The solution is a maximal diversity approach, which samples from languages that are as structurally diverse as possible. This allows us to simulate the linguistic variability that children must be able deal with in being able to learn any language. Maximum diversity sampling promises insights into the general mechanisms which underlie language development and how distributions of linguistic features in the input work hand in hand with these mechanisms.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword vii
- Introduction 1
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Part 1. Levels of acquisition
- Learning how to communicate in infancy 11
- Heads, shoulders, knees and toes 39
- Insights from studying statistical learning 65
- From grammatical categories to processes of categorization 91
- The retreat from transitive-causative overgeneralization errors 113
- Where form meets meaning in the acquisition of grammatical constructions 131
- Social cognitive and later language acquisition 155
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Part 2. Levels of variation
- The emergence of gesture during prelinguistic interaction 173
- Individual differences in first language acquisition and their theoretical implications 189
- Understanding the cross-linguistic pattern of verb-marking error in typically developing children and children with Developmental Language Disorder 221
- Sampling linguistic diversity to understand language development 247
- Lessons from studying language development in bilingual children 263
- Language disorders and autism 287
- Index 323
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword vii
- Introduction 1
-
Part 1. Levels of acquisition
- Learning how to communicate in infancy 11
- Heads, shoulders, knees and toes 39
- Insights from studying statistical learning 65
- From grammatical categories to processes of categorization 91
- The retreat from transitive-causative overgeneralization errors 113
- Where form meets meaning in the acquisition of grammatical constructions 131
- Social cognitive and later language acquisition 155
-
Part 2. Levels of variation
- The emergence of gesture during prelinguistic interaction 173
- Individual differences in first language acquisition and their theoretical implications 189
- Understanding the cross-linguistic pattern of verb-marking error in typically developing children and children with Developmental Language Disorder 221
- Sampling linguistic diversity to understand language development 247
- Lessons from studying language development in bilingual children 263
- Language disorders and autism 287
- Index 323
