A Constructivist Account of Child Language Acquisition

Ambridge, Ben; Lieven, Elena

doi:10.1002/9781118346136.ch22

Cited by 49 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 161 publications

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“…The dilemma again is one of lumping versus splitting; and the notion of a single abstract SVO transitive construction is perhaps the most extreme and inaccurate example of lumping that we have encountered so far. Consider the various different sentence types that must be subsumed by a unitary SVO transitive construction (adapted from Ambridge & Lieven, 2015 What is particularly problematic in this case is that certain concrete instantiations of this would-be unitary construction are not just radically different, but polar opposites (e.g. John feared Bill vs John frightened Bill).…”

Section: Sentence-level Constructionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Against stored abstractions: A radical exemplar model of language acquisition

Ambridge

2019

First Language

Self Cite

109

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The goal of this article is to make the case for a radical exemplar account of child language acquisition, under which unwitnessed forms are produced and comprehended by on-the-fly analogy across multiple stored exemplars, weighted by their degree of similarity to the target with regard to the task at hand. Across the domains of (1) word meanings, (2) morphologically inflected words, (3) n-grams, (4) sentence-level constructions and (5) phonetics and phonology, accounts based on independently-represented abstractions (whether formal rules or prototype categories) fail for two reasons. First, it is not possible to posit abstractions that delineate possible and impossible form; e.g. that (1) rule in pool tables and data tables, but rule out chairs, (2) rule in the past-tense forms netted and bet but rule out * setted and * jet, (3) rule in the bigram f+t but rule out (probabilistically) v+t, (4) rule in both John feared Bill and John frightened Bill but rule out * John laughed Bill, (5) rule in Speaker A but rule out Speaker B as the person who produced a particular word (e.g. Sa’urday). Second, for each domain, empirical data provide evidence of exemplar storage that cannot be captured by putative abstractions: e.g. speakers prefer and/or show an advantage for (1) exemplar variation even within word-meaning ‘category boundaries’, (2) novel inflected forms that are similar to existing exemplars, (3) n-grams that have occurred frequently in the input, (4) SVO sentences with he as SUBJECT and it as OBJECT and (5) repeated productions of ‘the same’ word that are phonologically similar or, better still, identical. An exemplar account avoids an intractable lumping-or-splitting dilemma facing abstraction-based accounts and provides a unitary explanation of language acquisition across all domains; one that is consistent with models and empirical findings from the computational modelling and neuroimaging literature.

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Section: Sentence-level Constructionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Against stored abstractions: A radical exemplar model of language acquisition

Ambridge

2019

First Language

Self Cite

109

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“…Some argue that purely distributional learning mechanisms could discover these high‐order abstractions precluding the need for analogical abstraction mechanisms (e.g., Twomey, Chang, & Ambridge, ; see Ambridge & Lieven, ; Ambridge, Goldwater, & Lieven, unpublished data); however, they need not be mutually exclusive as sequential‐statistical learning mechanisms, and mechanisms of analogical abstraction work together in other domains. For example, one could independently learn via the co‐occurrence statistics of causes and effects that two different natural phenomena are characterized by multiple causes causing a single effect (e.g., Fernbach & Sloman, ; Holyoak & Cheng, ), and then structural alignment can support recognizing this commonality in the causal relations between the two phenomena (Goldwater & Gentner, ).…”

Section: How Relational Learning Fits Into Domain‐general Accounts Ofmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grammatical Constructions as Relational Categories

Goldwater

2017

Topics in Cognitive Science

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This paper argues that grammatical constructions, specifically argument structure constructions that determine the "who did what to whom" part of sentence meaning and how this meaning is expressed syntactically, can be considered a kind of relational category. That is, grammatical constructions are represented as the abstraction of the syntactic and semantic relations of the exemplar utterances that are expressed in that construction, and it enables the generation of novel exemplars. To support this argument, I review evidence that there are parallel behavioral patterns between how children learn relational categories generally and how they learn grammatical constructions specifically. Then, I discuss computational simulations of how grammatical constructions are abstracted from exemplar sentences using a domain-general relational cognitive architecture. Last, I review evidence from adult language processing that shows parallel behavioral patterns with expert behavior from other cognitive domains. After reviewing the evidence, I consider how to integrate this account with other theories of language development.

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“…A number of scholars have staked out positions that place a maximum emphasis on the learner's sensitivity to language use by others. Often labeled the usage‐based theory of learning (Ambridge & Lieven, ; MacWhinney, ; Tomasello, ), this approach holds that learning arises through “language use itself, by means of social skills like joint attention, and by means of powerful generalization mechanisms” that are highly sensitive to experience (Behrens, , p. 383). Soderstrom, Conwell, Feldman, and Morgan () go so far as to call this perspective “the new paradigm of language acquisition” (p. 409).…”

Section: Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Processing Determinism

O’Grady

2015

Language Learning

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I propose that the course of development in first and second language acquisition is shaped by two types of processing pressures—internal efficiency‐related factors relevant to easing the burden on working memory and external input‐related factors such as frequency of occurrence. In an attempt to document the role of internal factors, I consider a series of case studies involving contrasts that are rarely instantiated in the input, yet show early mastery. I conclude with some general remarks about the nature of development and the possibility that it unfolds more uniformly than often suggested.

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A Constructivist Account of Child Language Acquisition

Cited by 49 publications

References 161 publications

Against stored abstractions: A radical exemplar model of language acquisition

Against stored abstractions: A radical exemplar model of language acquisition

Grammatical Constructions as Relational Categories

Processing Determinism

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