Teacher : Zeineb Ayachi

Layout 1/2
 Section I
 Difference between acquisition and learning
 Contradictory approaches
 Current research questions
 Competing models
 Research results
 Section II
 What is acquired?
 What is language?
 Layout 2/2
 Language and thought
 Language and communication
 The discovery of the place of human language
in the mind
 A cognitive system: grammar
 A formal distinction: I-Language versus E-Language
 The computational system
 Designing the architecture of the Language Faculty:
The basic design
 Conclusions
 Section I
Difference between acquisition and learning
1/2
 Linguists distinguish
between language acquisition and
language learning.
 Children acquire language through a subconscious
process during which they are unaware of grammatical
rules.
 Language learning, on the other hand, is the result of
direct instruction in the rules of language
Difference between acquisition and
learning 2/2
• The acquisition of language is a silent feat.
• It is accomplished by the time a child is three
• Except under the most extreme conditions, one cannot
help but acquire a language.
• LAD Language Acquisition Device: an instinctive
mental capacity which enables an infant to acquire and
produce language. (Video: Noam Chomsky: On language acquisition)
• Yet an infant not exposed to a language cannot learn
that language
 Contradictory approaches
• Contradictory approaches in the study of language
acquisition:
 Developmental research: the course of acquisition is
described empirically
 Logical approach: the problem of language acquisition
is tackled independently from the empirical approach
 These approaches must be merged in order to solve
the mystery of language acquisition
 Current research questions
• What is about the human mind that makes it possible to
acquire a language?
• Which aspects of the language program are biologically
programmed?
• What linguistic knowledge is evident at early periods?
• What’s the difference between language acquisition in
children and adults?
• Is there a critical period for language acquisition that
distinguishes first and second language acquisition?
• Are there universal stages in the acquisition of sounds and
structures of language?
 Competing models 1/2
• Cognitive architecture:
 “computational component”
 “connectionist” or “neural nets” models.
• Although these alternative models admit the computational nature of
human cognition, many deny its specifically linguistic nature as well as
its symbolic and representational nature.
• language acquisition is inherently computational and thus as central to
Cognitive Science as Cognitive Science is to it.
• Language acquisition is not reducible to changes in fundamental
cognitive architecture for language.
• One of the major results of our (Lust, B.) research review will be that,
on the contrary, this architecture is “fixed.” There is no such thing as a
“prelinguistic” child.
 Competing models 2/2
 The research results reviewed also bear on questions in
epistemology:

 How is it possible that the human mind comes to

know so much, based on limited, diverse and
unstructured evidence?
 To what degree is “innateness” necessary to solve this
problem?
 Research results 1/4
 Universal Grammar (UG): biological programming in
the human species of formal properties of a Language
Faculty. (Video: What is Universal Grammar)

 Strong Continuity Hypothesis” (SCH) of UG: provides

evidence for the fundamental cognitive architecture of
language as continuous between child and adult.
 Research results 2/4
 Recent research shows that infants have a marvelous
capacity for analyzing language input from birth.
 However, their relation to input data is selective and
constructive, and consequently indirect.
 Paradigm related to a proposal for “innately guided
learning”
 Research results 3/4
 Innately guided learning” recognizes the
dichotomy between “innateness” and
“learning” but suggests that these are not
mutually exclusive.
 Research results 4/4
 Unless somehow cruelly impaired, children everywhere,
whether faced with Tulu in South India, Sinhala in Sri
Lanka, or English in Manhattan or London, are endowed
with a biologically programmed universal formal
architecture for language.
 Because of this biological programming and a refined,
almost indomitable (strong) “instinct to learn” (Marler
1991; Pinker 1994) and create, children construct vastly
complex, infinitely creative and systematic symbolic
theories of their own specific languages.
 Section II
What is acquired?
What is language?1/6
 Language is first and foremost symbolic. Sounds,
words and sentences represent and capture an infinity
of possible meanings and intentions.

 We can produce, understand and think of an infinity

of possible statements, questions, commands or
exclamations.
 What is acquired?
What is language? 2/6
 These may concern the future, the past, what has
occurred and what has not, what is possible or
impossible.
 Through language, we can tell the truth or lie, regret or
hope.
 We can deploy an infinity of demands, requests,
contradictions, ranging from poetry to propaganda.
 What is acquired?
What is language? 3/6
 By about three years, children have acquired the
foundations for this infinite symbolic power of
language and through it can transcend immediate
situations.
 What is acquired?
What is language? 4/6
 a. No it’s too bad . . . looking . . .
 b. What’s that one too bad looking? (relative pronoun missing)
 c. That’s too bad looking . . . .
 d. They’re ’caring me . . . . . (Scaring)
 . . . pause . . . . .
 e. I’m not ’cared of those things
 f. They’re only nice birds
 What is acquired?
What is language? 5/6
 The child clearly had the essential knowledge leading
to sentence formation, sentence variation by
movement of elements (question formation), and
several grammatical operations involved in the use of
“only”, “too” and present progressive verb inflection
using “ing” as the verb ending, and he had the
competence to map from form to meaning in new
ways.
 What then has the child acquired?
 What is acquired?
What is language? 6/6
 Language (De Saussure): “Language is a system of signs that
express ideas . . . [B]eyond the functioning of the various organs
there exists a more general faculty which governs signs and
which would be the linguistic faculty proper” (16, 11).
 De Saussure’s analyses anticipated current scientific approaches
to the study of language, pointing us to the “fundamental
system” that underlies language knowledge (e.g., Anderson
1985).
 They open the fundamental questions: where/what is the
“coordinating faculty” which organizes language, i.e., the
“linguistic faculty proper”? What is the nature of this system and
how is it represented in the mind and brain?
 What is acquired?
Language and thought
 Linguistic (word) meanings are distinct from thoughts
or concepts related to these meanings.
 Aphasic patients with anomia often show an inability
to access lexical items, but retain related concepts: e.g.,
a patient unable to retrieve the lexical item for “wallet”
provides circumlocutions “describing the appearance
or function of the target concept” (as in, “I lost my . . . I
keep my money in it”)
 What is acquired?
Language and communication 1/2
 Use and knowledge of language are also not equivalent
to knowledge of means of social communication.

 The language of the child in (the previous example)

more clearly reflects the thought of the child than his
attempt to communicate with someone else.
 What is aqcuired?
Language and communication 2/2
 Distinct from other animal communication systems,
human language critically reveals “Duality of Patterning”
(Hockett, 1960).
 Through Duality of Patterning, permutations of units,
which are themselves meaningless, link to distinct
meanings at another level of representation. The words
below are distinct in meaning, but vary only in the order of
the component digital meaningless sounds.
 tack
 cat
 act
 What is acquired?
The discovery of the place of human language
in the mind
 We must look into the human mind in order to
discover the nature of natural language and to study it
scientifically.
 Noam Chomsky moved linguistic inquiry to this next
step.
 The human mind has a generative system, a
combinatorial system of computation, “a system that
makes infinite use of finite means” (Chomsky 1987, 54,
after von Humboldt).
 What is acquired?
A cognitive system: grammar
 The new focus for study of language has become internal, a
mental system which creates infinite language: a
“generative grammar.”
 The term “grammar” refers to this mental system, and
formalizes it so that we can study it precisely and
scientifically.
 This notion of grammar in the mind is distinct from the
“grammar” we were taught in school, which is a set of
prescriptive rules. We do not need to be taught it.
 We must account for how children acquire knowledge of
this generative system which maps form to meaning and to
sound infinitely. (Video: Genereative Grammar)
 What is acquired?
A formal distinction: I-Language versus E-Language 1/2
 Chomsky made a distinction between I-Language and E-Language.
 I-Language is the internal system which creates the language in the
mind of an individual;
 E-Language is the external reflection of language; “the E-language is a
set of expressions” and appears impossible to capture (Chomsky 1991,
9, 13; Chomsky and Lasnik 1996, 15–17).
 Chomsky’s question, and that of much current linguistics, is: what is
the nature of I-Language?” What is in the mind? What do we know
when we know a language?
 The linguistic system in the mind is tacit: we do not know consciously
what we know when we know a language, or how our mind works when
we know a language.
 What is acquired?
A formal distinction: I-Language versus E-Language 2/2
 We know language with such apparent ease that unless
we are linguists we are unaware of the complexities of
what we know.
 The system appears “inaccessible to consciousness”
(Chomsky 1993b, 25).
 How then can we ever study this knowledge
scientifically, or hope to begin to understand how it is
that children acquire this knowledge?
 What is acquired?
The computational system
From the finite to the infinite 1/2
 The essence of language knowledge consists of the
representation of a finite set of discrete units at several
levels (involving sound, syntax and meaning), their
combination and sequencing at each level, and the
mapping between the patterning at each of these
levels.
 Each level involves a different way of representing an
utterance.
 What is acquired?
The computational system
From the finite to the infinite 2/2

 This unit-based system reflects the “digital” nature of

language and underlies its infinite productivity.

 Without it we would not understand our own

thoughts, our next conversation or our poetry.
 What is acquired?
The computational system
A digital system

Sounds are combined to form

words, words are combined to form
sentences.
Each of these units is cognitively
“discrete, invariant and categorical”
(Liberman 1996, 32).
 What is acquired?
The computational system
A combinatorial system
 Even a small set of sounds can lead to a large set of
words, and even a small set of words can lead to a large
set of sentences.
 This is because language uses a “combinatorial
principle” to build a “large and open vocabulary out of
a small number of elements” (Liberman 1996, 32), and
to serve the function of building an infinite set of
sentences out of a small set of words.
 What is acquired?
The computational system
The power of sequencing
 If a language had only two units, e.g., “T” and “O,” and strings of only two
units were allowed in forming “words,” then variable sequencing of these
two units would provide the possibility for four different “words”
 Ex: TO/OT/TT/OO
 If strings of three units were allowed, this would provide exponentially
more possibilities for sequencing the two units and consequently more
words:
 TOT/TOO/OTT/OTO/TTT/TTO/OOTOOO
 If the language allowed three units, e.g., “T,” “O,” “B,” and strings of three
units, then a vocabulary of twenty-seven words would be possible, and so
on. The longer the sequence allowed, the larger the possible vocabulary
 Natural languages build on the power of sequencing. All natural languages
reveal a basic “word order” or constituent order, although the order
Chosen varies across languages
 What is acquired?
The computational system
The recursive property
 This combinatorial system is recursive, applying to its own output over
and over again. As in the example below, units can be created of
smaller units and these can be recombined by embedding one unit in
another, e.g., a [A man was walking in the street[holding an umbrella]],
subordinating one to another, e.g., [[When the man was walking in the
street. . . . . ,] he . . . . . . .], or coordinating one with another (e.g., by
“AND”), or coordinating and embedding .

 There is in principle no limit to the output of this recursive

combinatorial system that we are all capable of when we know
language, and that Children must acquire.
 What is acquired?
The computational system
Constituent structure
 The combinatorial system involved in language knowledge does not
simply operate on a linear string like a sequence of arbitrary numbers.

 In natural language, every unit reflects a combination of smaller units.

 Every linear sequence can and must be described in terms of its

“constituent structure,” which linguists identify through the use of
brackets. It is because of this internal structure, grouping of units
within units, that language can attain its infinite creativity.
 What is acquired?
The computational system
Hierarchical structure: the “secret skeleton”
 Combining structure recursively leads to a “secret
skeleton” that underlies every sentence we hear or
speak.
 Constituents must be organized hierarchically within
each sentence.
 Children and adults must both generate and discover
this skeleton for every sentence they hear or produce,
(video: How complex is natural language)
 What is acquired?
The computational system
Discovery of syntax: special features of the system
 In natural language, sequences of units (more precisely, of
constituent structures) can be permuted or “displaced.”
 Order variation is productively possible,
 ex:
 a. The Busy Beetle chased the poodle
 b. The poodle, the Beetle chased
 If young children spoke only in static orders in repeated
strings we would not say they had “acquired language.” In a
sense, they must not only acquire the basic word order of
the language, but acquire a “moving” system.
 What is acquired?
The computational system
Missing elements
 Natural language productively hides its units.
 It involves numerous devices for reducing redundancy.
 Many sentence constituents are null (represented as “Ø”).
 They are part of our knowledge, even though they are not
realized physically in the sequence of sounds which we
hear.
 “We see a bee.
 Now we see three Ø”
 Children must acquire a system whose elements are in
some sense free to “disappear.”
 What is acquired?
The computational system
Pronouns
 Pronouns provide another way for natural language to reduce
redundancy.
 “He went into the tent”
 “They yelp for help”
 “That one is my other brother
 While “pronoun resolution” (determining the reference of a pronoun)
remains one of the most challenging problems for formal machine-
based computational approaches to “natural language processing”
(NLP), it is one most naturally solved by anyone who knows a natural
language.
 The language faculty of the human species appears to include
particular facility for the special complex computation required by
pronouns and null elements.
 What is acquired?
The computational system
Knowing the impossible
 The infinitely productive special combinatorial system which underlies our
language knowledge is infinitely constrained.
 Without ever having heard either the possible or the impossible sentences in the
examples below, we know which are and which are not possible. So do children who
acquire the English language.
 Yet the number of “ungrammatical” constructions is infinite and so impossible to
 teach.
Constraints
 Although infinite in capacity, combination and/or displacement in language is not
always grammatical and thus not always possible.
 Example b) is not possible without changing the meaning of (a). (c)–(d) in
English are gibberish.

 . a. The poodle chased the beetle

 b. The beetle chased the poodle
 c. * Chased poodle the beetle the
 d. * Chased the poodle the beetle
 What is acquired?
The computational system
Knowing the impossible
 Constraints hold at every level (sounds, words, sentences), over all
combinations of units.
 We tacitly know these constraints
 We know that while the combinations of morphemes in (26) appear to
create possible words in English, those in (27) do not.
 26. a. overdose
 b. awesome
 c. downsize
 27. a. *underdose
 b. *bigsome
 c. *upsize.
 What is acquired?
The computational system
Finding the meaning
 The formal computational system of language knowledge
(syntax) must be integrated with other parts of human
competence so that we, and children, can say what we
mean and mean what we say.
 In part, the syntax of a sentence determines its meaning, as
we can see simply by noting the difference between “I eat
what I see” and “I see what I eat,” varying only word order.
 Acquisition of syntax is fundamental to children’s
acquisition of meaning and avoidance of gibberish.
 Not words alone. Not syntax alone ( Chomsky’s sentence
Colorless ideas sleep furiously: grammatically correct but
semantically nonsensical).
 What is acquired?
The computational system
Summarizing the basic properties of the hidden system
 Natural language knowledge involves a system which is/has
 a. symbolic
 b. combinatorial and infinitely generative
 c. based on units which are combined and sequenced, possibly in
variable orders
 d. structured hierarchically
 e. recursive
 f. constrained
 g. specific formal linguistic properties, i.e., specific design features of
human language, both allowing and constraining precise computation
over missing and moved elements
 h. instantiated in a human context of thought and interpersonal
exchange
 What is acquired?
The computational system
Summarizing the basic properties of the hidden system
 “Hidden” to a large degree, the system can be clothed
in the sounds (or signs) of many different languages,
but it always exists if a natural language exists.
 It is hidden behind moving and reduced expressions.
 Its principles and constraints are never directly
revealed through any particular linguistic expression
or set of expressions.
 What is acquired?
Designing the architecture of the Language Faculty
The basic design
 Figure 2.2 (P. 24)sketches the basic design of the Language Faculty
(adapted from Chomsky 1995).
 This overall architecture is necessary to generate sentences (syntax)
and perceive and articulate the sounds of language (phonology) in a way
which has meaning (semantics), and to use that knowledge to proclaim,
exclaim, argue or beg, to interact in the world socially or otherwise
(pragmatics).
 In figure 2.2, the central component is the grammar, which provides a
theory of how a language works: it relates sound (the auditory
interface) and meaning (the conceptual interface).
 It is the core “computation for human language” or CHL (Chomsky
1995), the essence of our “language faculty”.
 What is acquired?
Designing the architecture of the Language Faculty
The interfaces
 The Language Faculty coordinates – or “interfaces” –
with other forms of cognition.

 Sound and meaning of language are both points of

cognitive interfaces, acting as “modes of interpretation
by performance systems” (Chomsky 1995, 171).
 What is acquired?
Designing the architecture of the Language Faculty
The interfaces
 The auditory interface: PF (Phonetic Form). A
formalization of the interface between the
computational systems and sensorimotor systems
involved in audition and articulation.
 The conceptual interface: LF (Logical Form). A
formalization of the interface between the
computational system and systems of conceptual
structure and language use
 What is acquired?
Designing the architecture of the Language Faculty
Levels of representation
 As in figure 2.2, children must deal with several levels
of representation at once so that these are interrelated
and susceptible to computation.

 Units must be discovered at leach level (figure 2.3).

(P.25).
 What is acquired?
Designing the architecture of the Language Faculty
Relation of child language acquisition to linguistic theory
 The child is a good material for empirical evidence
regarding the Language Faculty.

 Every normal child in normal circumstances will solve

the problem which all linguists are pursuing, acquiring
the “true” formal computational system for any and all
possible languages.
 What is acquired?
Designing the architecture of the Language Faculty
Does the Language Faculty develop?
 The organization of the Language Faculty is “internally
modular”; that is, the formal computational system CHL is
distinct from the conceptual and auditory components, although
these interact.
 Is this “internal modularity” in place from the beginning?
 Do the basic components or “modules” of this faculty, i.e.,
knowledge of grammar (syntax), knowledge of the sound system
(phonology) and knowledge of meaning (semantics) develop in
parallel?
 Is development across these areas independent?
 Is development across the areas linked?
 What are the interactions among the internal modules?
 Conclusions
 We now see more clearly the complexity of the “intellectual feat” which
is involved in the acquisition of a natural language.
 Computation in every sentence must operate at once on each of the
units at each of the levels of representation in language knowledge.
 The architecture of the Language Faculty must allow children to
accomplish this complex computation naturally and without conscious
effort.
 It provides the “coordinating faculty” that allows this computation.
 Because we apply a combinatorial system with its special design
features, we are able to acquire language.
 Because we integrate this linguistic knowledge with our cognitive
knowledge and understanding, we are able to use our knowledge of
language.