Against stored abstractions: A radical exemplar model of language acquisition
Against stored abstractions: A radical exemplar model of language acquisition
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DOI：
10.1177/0142723719869731
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发表时间：
2019-09-09
期刊：
影响因子：
1.9
通讯作者：
Ambridge, Ben
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Ambridge, Ben
这篇文章的目的是为儿童语言习得提供一个激进的范例描述，在这种描述下，通过对多个储存的范例进行即时类比，根据它们与目标对象关于手头任务的相似程度来产生和理解未见过的形式。在(1)词义，(2)词形变化词，(3)n-gram，(4)句子级结构和(5)语音和音系学领域，基于独立表示的抽象(无论是形式规则还是原型范畴)的解释都失败了，原因有两个。首先，不可能假设描述可能和不可能形式的抽象；例如，(1)台球桌和数据表中的规则，但排除椅子，(2)过去时形式的规则Netted和Bit，但排除*Setted和*Jet，(3)二元语法f+t中的规则，但(概率上)排除v+t，(4)John Feed Bill和John Feed Bill中的规则，但排除*John笑比尔，(5)在说话人A中规则，但排除发言人B作为产生特定单词的人(例如Sa‘urday)。其次，对于每个领域，经验数据提供了假设抽象无法捕捉到的样本存储的证据：例如，说话者更喜欢和/或显示出以下优势：(1)即使在词的意义的“范畴边界”内的样本变化，(2)与现有样本相似的新的屈折形式，(3)在输入中频繁出现的n-gram，(4)以he为主语和it为宾语的SVO句子，以及(5)在语音上相似或更好地说相同的单词的重复产生。范例描述避免了基于抽象的描述所面临的棘手的集中或分裂的困境，并对所有领域的语言习得提供了统一的解释；这种解释与计算模型和神经成像文献中的模型和经验发现是一致的。
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.