Learnability of Embedded Syntactic Structures Depends on Prosodic Cues

Abstract

The ability to process center-embedded structures has been claimed to represent a core function of the language faculty. Recently, several studies have investigated the learning of center-embedded dependencies in artificial grammar settings. Yet some of the results seem to question the learnability of these structures in artificial grammar tasks. Here, we tested under which exposure conditions learning of center-embedded structures in an artificial grammar is possible. We used naturally spoken syllable sequences and varied the presence of prosodic cues. The results suggest that mere distributional information does not suffice for successful learning. Prosodic cues marking the boundaries of the major relevant units, however, can lead to learning success. Thus, our data are consistent with the hypothesis that center-embedded syntactic structures can be learned in artificial grammar tasks if language-like acoustic cues are provided.

Auditory perception at the root of language learning

“…Infants, for example, take advantage of prosodic cues for detecting possible words in the linguistic input (11). Similarly, prosodic cues seem to assist adults' extraction of grammatical patterns from speech input (12,13).…”

Learning structure-dependent agreement in a hierarchical artificial grammar

“…[A i SB i ], S ? 0), in which As and Bs are paired within the constituent structure such that A1 is paired with B1, A2 with B2 and A3 with B3 in strings like [A3[A2[A1B1]B2]B3] (e.g., Bahlmann & Friederici, 2006;Bahlmann et al, 2008;Conway, Ellefson, & Christiansen, 2003;De Vries, Petersson, Geukes, Zwitserlood, & Christiansen, 2012;De Vries et al, 2008;Lai & Poletiek, 2011, 2013Mueller, Bahlmann, & Friederici, 2010;Perruchet & Rey, 2005). Fitch and Hauser (2004) initiated research with the aim of exploring potential differences between humans and cotton-top tamarins in their ability to learn a PSG as opposed to a FSG.…”

“…Whereas arbitrary pairings fail to give rise to the learning of center-embedded dependencies, the presence of phonological cues to the pairings improves the learning of paired dependencies (Bahlmann et al, 2008;Fedor et al, 2012;Lai & Poletiek, 2011;Mueller et al, 2010;Zimmerer et al, 2014). Various implementations of these cues have been proposed, usually involving shared phonological features between the units of the categories as well as shared features between the dependents.…”

“…In an experiment designed to specifically assess its role, Mueller and colleagues (Mueller et al, 2010) tested the learning of an A 2 B 2 rule contrasting four conditions:…”

How semantic biases in simple adjacencies affect learning a complex structure with non-adjacencies in AGL: a statistical account

“…Whereas during the first decades of the AGL paradigm, mostly regular grammars were used, the focus has shifted recently towards grammars with more hierarchical complexity [10,[19][20][21]. The results with artificial grammars are inconclusive, however, as to whether and how this complex type of structures can be learned by induction from stimulus exemplars only.…”