Acquisitions : an overview -- Assemblages of access -- Assemblages of discovery -- Assemblages of feedback -- The acquisitions assemblage : putting it all together.

For more than 60 years, Chomsky has been an intellectual Colossus bestriding the worlds of language, philosophy, and the cognitive sciences, and focusing attention on the whole field and emphasizing the crucial importance of domains overlooked by the mainstream. One such area is the study of first‐language acquisition. This chapter considers “atypical acquisition” to cover two conceptually related situations. First, it covers a variety of cases where there is an obvious “poverty of the stimulus” in that children either (...) receive or perceive no linguistic input at the essential early stages referred to as critical periods. Second, it covers where there is rather the opposite situation. The chapter presents atypicality in language acquisition that stems from the learner's atypical neurological profile rather than environmental or input properties. It focuses on Developmental Language Disorder, Autism Spectrum Disorder, and the case of the polyglot‐savant Christopher to exemplify atypical acquisition. (shrink)

A fundamental goal of linguistic theory is to explain how natural languages are acquired. This paper describes some recent findings on how learners acquire syntactic knowledge for which there is little, if any, decisive evidence from the environment. The first section presents several general observations about language acquisition that linguistic theory has tried to explain and discusses the thesis that certain linguistic properties are innate because they appear universally and in the absence of corresponding experience. A third diagnostic for (...) innateness, early emergence, is the focus of the second section of the paper, in which linguistic theory is tested against recent experimental evidence on children's acquisition of syntax. (shrink)

This book describes the repertoire and uses of referring expressions by French-speaking children and their interlocutors in naturally occurring dialogues at home and at school, in a wide-range of communicative situations and activities. Through the lens of an interactionist and dialogical perspective, it highlights the interaction between the formal aspects of the acquisition of grammatical morphemes, the discourse-pragmatic dimension, and socio-discursive, interactional and dialogical factors. Drawing on this multidimensional theoretical and methodological framework, the first part of the book deals (...) with the relation between reference and grammar, while the second part is devoted to the role of the communicative experience. Progressively, a set of arguments is brought out in favor of a dialogical and interactionist account of children's referential development. This theoretical stance is further discussed in relation to other approaches of reference acquisition. Thus, this volume provides researchers and students with new perspectives and methods for the study of referring expressions in children. (shrink)

Referring to entities is one of the key functions of language; learning to understand and use the relevant referential expressions is one of children’s major linguistic achievements. The 13 chapters of this volume bring together a wealth of information on the acquisition of referential processes in infants, pre-schoolers and school-age children drawing on data from more than 25 languages ranging from Italian to Inuktitut, and from Norwegian to Turkish. This book presents the state-of-the-art of corpus and experimental research on (...) the acquisition of reference. The breadth of aspects of referential acquisition will make the volume appealing to a wide audience of researchers, including linguists and psycholinguists working on phonological, morpho-syntactic, and discourse-pragmatic aspects of language development. The cross-linguistic perspective adopted by several of the contributors will be of particular interest to researchers investigating the relevance of typological differences. The state-of-the-art approach makes the research accessible to specialist and non-specialist researchers alike, and will provide an invaluable resource for graduate-level courses. (shrink)

Recent research suggests that language evolution is a process of cultural change, in which linguistic structures are shaped through repeated cycles of learning and use by domain-general mechanisms. This paper draws out the implications of this viewpoint for understanding the problem of language acquisition, which is cast in a new, and much more tractable, form. In essence, the child faces a problem of induction, where the objective is to coordinate with others (C-induction), rather than to model the structure of (...) the natural world (N-induction). We argue that, of the two, C-induction is dramatically easier. More broadly, we argue that understanding the acquisition of any cultural form, whether linguistic or otherwise, during development, requires considering the corresponding question of how that cultural form arose through processes of cultural evolution. This perspective helps resolve the “logical” problem of language acquisition and has far-reaching implications for evolutionary psychology. (shrink)

It has been argued that the primary acquisition of genericity in early child speech poses a problem for standard quantificational approaches to generics and instead motivates the claim that generics give voice to an innate, default mode of generalising. This article argues that analogous puzzles involving the acquisition of A‐quantifiers undermine the empirical support for a purely cognition‐based approach to generics. Instead, these acquisition puzzles should be solved by generalising the core insight of the cognitive defaults theory (...) to these expressions, reconciling formal semantic approaches with the role that cognitive development plays on lexical competence. (shrink)

We are reviewing and summarizing evidence for the processes of acquisition of information outside of conscious awareness (processing information about covariations, nonconscious indirect and interactive inferences, self-perpetuation of procedural knowledge). A considerable amount of data indicates that as compared to consciously controlled cognition, the nonconscious information-acquisition processes are not only much faster but also structurally more sophisticated in the sense that they are capable of efficient processing of multidimensional and interactive relations between variables. Those mechanisms of nonconscious (...) class='Hi'>acquisition of information provide a major channel for the development of procedural knowledge which is indispensable for such important aspects of cognitive functioning as encoding and interpretation of stimuli and the triggering emotional reactions. (shrink)

Syntax of displacing predicates -- Argument hierarchies -- Animacy and adult sentence processing -- Animacy and children's language -- Modeling displacing predicates -- Conclusions and origins.

In light of the dramatic growth of Chinese learners worldwide and a need for cross-linguistic research on Chinese literacy development, this study drew upon theories of visual complexity effect (Su & Samuels, 2010) and dual-coding processing (Sadoski & Paivio, 2013) and investigated a) the effects of character properties (i.e., visual complexity and radical presence) on character acquisition and b) the relationship between individual learner differences in radical awareness and character acquisition. Participants included adolescent English-speaking beginning learners of Chinese (...) in the U.S. Following Kuo et al. (2014), a novel character acquisition task was used to investigate the process of acquiring the meaning of new characters. Results showed that a) characters with radicals and with less visual complexity were easier to acquire than characters without radicals and with greater visual complexity; and b) individual differences in radical awareness were associated with the acquisition of all types of characters, but the association was more pronounced with the acquisition of characters with radicals. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings were discussed. (shrink)

This study examined patterns of auxiliary provision and omission for the auxiliaries BE and HAVE in a longitudinal data set from 11 children between the ages of two and three years. Four possible explanations for auxiliary omission—a lack of lexical knowledge, performance limitations in production, the Optional Infinitive hypothesis, and patterns of auxiliary use in the input—were examined. The data suggest that although none of these accounts provides a full explanation for the pattern of auxiliary use and nonuse observed in (...) children's early speech, integrating input-based and lexical learning-based accounts of early language acquisition within a constructivist approach appears to provide a possible framework in which to understand the patterns of auxiliary use found in the children's speech. The implications of these findings for models of children's early language acquisition are discussed. (shrink)

An experiment explored the acquisition of conscious and unconscious knowledge of semantic prosody in a second language under incidental and intentional learning conditions. Semantic prosody is the conotational coloring of the semantics of a word, largely uncaptured by dictionary definitions. Contrary to some claims in the literature, we revealed that both conscious and unconscious knowledge were involved in the acquisition of semantic prosody. Intentional learning resulted in similar unconscious but more conscious knowledge than incidental learning. The results are (...) discussed in terms of second language learning and the nature of unconscious knowledge. (shrink)

L’acquisition des pronoms chez les enfants à développement langagier typique est complexe car elle combine de nombreux paramètres, notamment une capacité d’abstraction. Dans une première partie, ces paramètres sont décrits en rapport avec les trajectoires d’apprentissage mises en évidence par la littérature. La seconde partie est consacrée aux difficultés que pose l’acquisition des pronoms chez des enfants à développement langagier atypique, pour des raisons de troubles spécifiques du langage ou de surdité profonde.

Suppose libertarians could prove that durable, unqualified private property rights could be created through 'original acquisition' of unowned resources in a state of nature. Such a proof would cast serious doubt on the legitimacy of the modern state. It could also render the approach to property rights that I favour irrelevant. I argue here that none of the familiar Lockean-libertarian arguments for a strong natural right to acquisition succeed, and that any successful argument for grounding a right to (...) acquire would have to use my favoured approach to property rights - the 'vector-sum' approach. I conclude with some doubts about original acquisition theory and natural property rights. (shrink)

In Pitjantjatjara, a central Australian Indigenous language, speakers typically describe sequences of actions using clause chaining constructions. While similar constructions are common among the world’s languages, very little is known about how children acquire them. A notable exception are the converb constructions of Turkish, which have been relatively well-studied. The present paper examines the acquisition of Pitjantjatara clause chaining constructions and compares this with the acquisition of Turkish converb constructions. Data is drawn from a naturalistic corpus recorded between (...) 2016 and 2019. The corpus contains over 4000 utterances from 23 children aged between 10 months and 10 years, five of whom are recorded at multiple ages. The corpus also includes approximately 1600 utterances from 21 adults, aged between 16 and 70. Results show that the acquisition of Pitjantjatjara clause chains consists of three stages. Stage 1 features juxtaposition of finite verb forms. In Stage 2, children make regular use of clause chain morphology, but primarily for modification purposes. In Stage 3, clause chains are the preferred strategy for sequential actions as well as modification purposes. The initial use of verb juxtaposition followed by increasing use of dedicated morphology is consistent with findings for Turkish converb acquisition, with speakers of both languages utilizing dedicated forms from around 2;6 onwards. A notable difference between the acquisition of Pitjantjatjara clause chains and Turkish converbs is in the order of acquisition of semantic functions. In Turkish, children acquire temporal functions, such as sequential actions, before modifying functions, such as manner specification. In Pitjantjatjara, the order is reversed, with children first using clause chaining constructions for modification and simultaneous aspects of events before utilizing them to combine sequential actions. This raises questions regarding the distribution and relative timing of event combination and modification strategies. (shrink)

Debating on Second Language Acquisition is not merely in terms of concept but also the real phenomena which postulate each research result. It needs more investigation on SLA due to the various realities on how children and adults acquire and learn any language. This research aims to describe how children and adults acquire and learn their first and second language. Participants consisted of children and adults whose ages determined by the researcher based on the purposive sampling technique. They were (...) all six persons and chosen based on certain characteristics. Content analysis technique was applied in order to analyze all data gained. The result showed that since human alive inside mother’s womb especially at up to the age of three months, a fetus has tried to acquire sounds subconsciously. Language proficiency is really determined by three factors of Phased Process Approach namely Subconscious Acquisition, Conscious Acquisition, and Learning. The ideal time for learning something is begun from the age of 2 or 3 years old, by the fact that children have had the ability to bear a meaning on any input that they catch. The learning process has been begun within the process of acquisition. Based on the findings, it is clear that the children acquire the language step by step based on the development of the brain. Children acquire language is just the same as adult in acquiring the language although there will be some constraints faced by adult concern with the first language because adult has had the strong basis of the first language just than children. (shrink)

A recent hypothesis in empirical brain research on language is that the fundamental difference between animal and human communication systems is captured by the distinction between finite-state and more complex phrase-structure grammars, such as context-free and context-sensitive grammars. However, the relevance of this distinction for the study of language as a neurobiological system has been questioned and it has been suggested that a more relevant and partly analogous distinction is that between non-adjacent and adjacent dependencies. Online memory resources are central (...) to the processing of non-adjacent dependencies as information has to be maintained across intervening material. One proposal is that an external memory device in the form of a limited push-down stack is used to process non-adjacent dependencies. We tested this hypothesis in an artificial grammar learning paradigm where subjects acquired non-adjacent dependencies implicitly. Generally, we found no qualitative differences between the acquisition of non-adjacent dependencies and adjacent dependencies. This suggests that although the acquisition of non-adjacent dependencies requires more exposure to the acquisition material, it utilizes the same mechanisms used for acquiring adjacent dependencies. We challenge the push-down stack model further by testing its processing predictions for nested and crossed multiple non-adjacent dependencies. The push-down stack model is partly supported by the results, and we suggest that stack-like properties are some among many natural properties characterizing the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms that implement the online memory resources used in language and structured sequence processing. (shrink)

We use the comparative method of language acquisition research to investigate children’s expression of directional expressions in two Eastern Mayan languages – K’iche’ and Mam. Both languages add clitics derived from verbs such as ‘go’ and ‘stay’ to their verb complex to express the direction an agent takes in the course of accomplishing an event. Historic changes to the prosodic structure of the verb complex in both languages explain why the directional clitics are predominately postverbal in K’iche’, while they (...) occur in preverbal and postverbal positions in Mam. Prosody explains why K’iche’ children initially produce clitics postverbally, while Mam children produce clitics both preverbally and postverbally. Prosody also explains why the children acquiring both languages produce morphemes in the verb complex that are relatively infrequent but prosodically prominent, while omitting obligatory morphemes that are prosodically weak. (shrink)

ABSTRACTA paper in two parts, the first is a critique of the commonly held view among both cognitivist and non-cognitivist sport philosophers that conscious mental representation of knowledge that is a necessary condition for skill acquisition. The second is a defense of a necessary causal condition for skill acquisition, a necessary causal condition that is mimetic, physically embodied, and socially embedded. To make my case I rely throughout on a common thought experiment in and beyond the philosophy of (...) sport literature, the seminal work of Kuhn and Quine counter the representational theory of knowledge, and recent argument in the philosophy of sport related to neurophysiology, cognition, and intentionality. Ultimately I conclude that the failure of a necessary representational condition and its replacement by a necessary casual condition in skill acquisition jeopardizes much of what has been said in the philosophy of sport about not just skill acquisition but the more popular topic of high-level skill. It does, because it challenges the assumption that there is some necessary baseline knowledge that which, according to cognitivists, is brought forward in some way into highly skillful performance or, according to non-cognitivists, is somehow left behind or subsumed into a background in highly skillful performance. (shrink)

This paper argues that moral particularism, defined as the view that moral judgment does not require moral principles, depends upon a constricted and untenable view of rational judgment as simple syllogistic ratiocination. This I demonstrate by re-examining Nussbaum’s (1986/2002) case for particularism based on Sophocles’ Antigone. The central role of principles in moral judgment and in educational theory is supported by explicating ‘mature judgment’, which highlights key features of Thomas Green’s account of norm acquisition and of Kant’s account of (...) the autonomy of rational judgment. (shrink)

In this study, we test a number of predictions concerning children's knowledge of the transitive Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) construction between two and three years on one child (Thomas) for whom we have densely collected data. The data show that the earliest SVO utterances reflect earlier use of those same verbs, and that verbs acquired before 2;7 show an earlier move towards adult-like levels of use in the SVO construction and in object argument complexity than later acquired verbs. There is not a (...) close relation with the input in the types of subject and object referents used, nor a close adherence to Preferred Argument Structure (PAS) before 2;7, but both early and late acquired verbs show a simultaneous move towards PAS patterns in selection of referent type at 2;9. The event semantics underpinning early transitive utterances do not straightforwardly fit prototype (high or inalienable) notions of transitivity, but rather may reflect sensitivity to animacy and intentionality in a way that mirrors the input. We conclude that children's knowledge of the transitive construction continues to undergo significant development between 2;0 and 3;0, reflecting the gradual abstraction and integration of the SVO and VO constructions, verb semantics, discourse pragmatics, and the interactions between these factors. These factors are considered in the context of a prototype for the transitive construction. (shrink)

My aim in this essay is to explore the nature and force of “original-acquisition” justifications of private property. By “original-acquisition” justifications, I mean those arguments which purport to establish or importantly contribute to the moral defense of private property by: offering a moral/historical account of how legitimate private property rights for persons first arose ; offering a hypothetical or conjectural account of how justified private property could arise from a propertyless condition; or simply defending an account of how (...) an individual can make private property in some previously unowned thing . The “original acquisition” to which such justifications centrally refer, then, may be either the first instance of legitimate private property in human history , or only the first legitimate acquisition of some particular thing . But in either case, the justification will involve or entail the defense of one or more moral principles specifying how unowned things can become privately owned — that is, the defense of the kind of principles Robert Nozick has called “principles of justice in acquisition.”. (shrink)

Two experiments are reported that evaluated survey learning of youth with DS and typically developing children (TD) matched on Mental Age (MA). In Experiment 1, the experimenter navigated participants through a novel virtual environment along a circuitous path, beginning and ending at a target landmark (i.e., a door). Then, the participants were placed at a pre-specified location in the environment and instructed to navigate to the same door using the shortest possible path from their current location. They completed the task (...) three times: once after being shown the environment one time, once after three exposures, and once after five exposures. Results indicated that the participants with DS exhibited significantly less skill at identifying the shortcut than did the TD participants. In Experiment 2, participants learned two overlapping routes through a simple environment. Following acquisition, they were tested on several measures of survey knowledge: finding a shortcut, identifying the direction of landmarks not currently visible from their location in the environment, and recognizing a bird’s-eye representation of the overall environment. The results of Experiment2 indicated that the participants with DS were at least as good as the TD participants on all of our measures of survey learning. Hence, we concluded that people with DS can acquire some survey knowledge when they learn a simple environment. However, the performance of both groups was relatively poor in Experiment 2, indicating a need to consider identifying the mechanisms underlying the poor performance on wayfinding of people with DS. Identifying the underlying mechanisms, is a logical first step in devising methods of enhancing environmental learning of people with DS. (shrink)

Universal Grammar (UG) is a theory about the innate linguistic knowledge that child language learners bring to the task of language acquisition. This chapter examines the findings of experimental research on children's knowledge of one principle of UG, called Principle C. It presents the defining properties of Principle C. The chapter reviews empirical evidence showing that children apply Principle C to a range of disparate‐looking phenomena. It also presents empirical findings that document children's assignment of hierarchical structure to strings (...) of words. The empirical evidence supports a conclusion – that child language learners access a level of linguistic representation in addition to the constituent structure that is formed using Merge. This additional component of the language apparatus is called Logical Form. The chapter looks at a string of words where Principle C applies at the level of Logical Form. Cleft sentences are one such case. (shrink)

For obscure reasons, courts exclude some statutorily patentable inventions (‘judicial exceptions’) from patent protection. These exclusions have been criticized for impeding innovation, contrary to the purpose of patent law. I argue that freedom requires these exclusions even if they impede innovation. Patents, like property, can be unilaterally acquired, limiting others’ freedom without their consent. Kant explains why, to reconcile property with equal freedom, only rivalrous objects in acquirers’ first possession can be unilaterally acquired. States can rightfully authorize unilateral acquisition (...) of only these objects. Drawing from Kant, I explain how patent protection conflicts with equal freedom unless patented inventions involve inventive uses of rivalrous objects external to human bodies. Enabled by inventive concepts, these uses would be impossible without these concepts, and are thus in the first possession of their inventors. I then show how the most recent United States Supreme Court judicial exception decisions limit patent protection to inventive uses of rivalrous external objects. (shrink)

Noam Chomsky's ideas and work on the human language faculty and how language is acquired opened new territory on which a whole new framework in non‐native language acquisition was established: generative second language acquisition, or GenSLA. Investigating Chomsky's principles and parameters within the GenSLA framework has brought additional and convincing evidence for the essential validity of Chomsky's original insights. This chapter highlights Chomsky's lasting legacy embodied in the GenSLA framework. In addition to interpretation, poverty of the stimulus situations (...) provide an opportunity to test Universal Grammar (UG)‐based knowledge of graded distinctions beyond simple acceptability. The Subjacency Condition was probably the most studied principle of UG in the 1980s and 1990s. Structure dependence is directly demonstrated in languages with auxiliary verb movement to form questions. The Feature Reassembly Hypothesis brought grammatical features reflected in functional categories to the front of GenSLA research. (shrink)

This volume presents the state of the art of recent research on the acquisition of semantics. Covering topics ranging from infants' initial acquisition of word meaning to the more sophisticated mapping between structure and meaning in the syntax-semantics interface, and the relation between logical content and inferences on language meaning (semantics and pragmatics), the papers in this volume introduce the reader to the variety of ways in which children come to realize that semantic content is encoded in word (...) meaning (for example, in the event semantics of the verbal domain or the scope of logical operators), and at the level of the sentence, which requires the composition of semantic meaning. The authors represent some of the most established and promising researchers in this domain, demonstrating collective expertise in a range of methodologies and topics relevant to the acquisition of semantics. This volume will serve as a valuable resource for students and faculty, and junior and seasoned researchers alike. (shrink)

An analysis of student learning with the LISP tutor indicates that while LISP is complex, learning it is simple. The key to factoring out the complexity of LISP is to monitor the learning of the 500 productions in the LISP tutor which describe the programming skill. The learning of these productions follows the power‐law learning curve typical of skill acquisition. There is transfer from other programming experience to the extent that this programming experience involves the same productions. Subjects appear (...) to differ only on the general dimensions of how well they acquire the productions and how well they retain the productions. Instructional manipulations such as remediation, content of feedback, and timing of feedback are effective to the extent they give students more practice programming, and explain to students why correct solutions work. (shrink)

Children have difficulty comprehending novel verbs in the double object dative as compared to the prepositional dative. We explored this pattern with 3 and 4 year olds. In Experiment 1, we replicated the documented difficulty with the double object frame, even though we provided more contextual support. In Experiment 2, we tested a novel hypothesis that children would comprehend novel verbs in, and generalize them to, the double object frame if they were first familiarized to the verbs in the prepositional (...) frame. They did, suggesting that part of their difficulty with the double object frame is due to uncertainty about a new verb's semantic/syntactic properties, information that the easy-to-comprehend prepositional frame provides. The benefits of training were short-lived, however; children again struggled after a 2-h delay. The results are discussed in the context of mechanisms underlying verb acquisition. (shrink)