Harmonic biases in child learners: In support of language universals
Harmonic biases in child learners: In support of language universals
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DOI：
10.1016/j.cognition.2015.02.007
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发表时间：
2015-06-01
期刊：
影响因子：
3.4
通讯作者：
Newport, Elissa L.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Culbertson, Jennifer;Newport, Elissa L.
认知科学的一个基本问题是语言学习者的偏见如何塑造语言。最近的研究使用实验室语言学习范式，主要是与成年人，已经表明，结构或规则，是常见的世界语言更容易学习或处理比模式，是罕见的或未经证实的。在这里，我们以儿童学习者为目标，调查了卡伯特森、斯摩棱斯基和勒让德（2012）在大学年龄段成年人中研究的名词短语中语序学习的一系列偏见。我们提供的第一个证据表明，儿童学习者表现出对类型学上常见的和谐语序模式的偏好，这些模式保留了头部的顺序，相对于其补充验证了心理现实的原则，形式化在许多不同的语言学理论。我们还讨论了儿童和成人学习者在语言学习过程中发挥作用的偏见的强度和内容方面的重要差异。特别是，偏向谐波模式是明显强于儿童比成人，和儿童（不像成人）更容易获得形容词排序比数字排序。研究结果表明，为了了解这些偏见如何塑造自然语言的历史和结构，调查整个发展过程中的学习偏见非常重要。(C)2015 Elsevier B.V.版权所有。
A fundamental question for cognitive science concerns the ways in which languages are shaped by the biases of language learners. Recent research using laboratory language learning paradigms, primarily with adults, has shown that structures or rules that are common in the languages of the world are learned or processed more easily than patterns that are rare or unattested. Here we target child learners, investigating a set of biases for word order learning in the noun phrase studied by Culbertson, Smolensky, and Legendre (2012) in college-age adults. We provide the first evidence that child learners exhibit a preference for typologically common harmonic word order patterns those which preserve the order of the head with respect to its complements validating the psychological reality of a principle formalized in many different linguistic theories. We also discuss important differences between child and adult learners in terms of both the strength and content of the biases at play during language learning. In particular, the bias favoring harmonic patterns is markedly stronger in children than adults, and children (unlike adults) acquire adjective ordering more readily than numeral ordering. The results point to the importance of investigating learning biases across development in order to understand how these biases may shape the history and structure of natural languages. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.