Modeling the Development of Children's Use of Optional Infinitives in Dutch and English Using MOSAIC

Freudenthal, Daniel; Pine, Julián M.; Gobet, Fernand

doi:10.1207/s15516709cog0000_47

Cited by 68 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…The connectionist model MOSAIC was employed by Freudenthal et al (2002) to simulate the stages of acquisition regarding nonfinite and finite forms in English and Dutch. The model managed to acquire verbal inflection in the order of acquisition similar to that attested in child learners, simply by enlarging the model's working memory and by processing the input sentences, all of which were questions from right to left (because the end of the sentence is what children hear last).…”

Section: Islands and Slot And Frame Patternsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Usage-based and emergentist approaches to language acquisition

Behrens

2009

Linguistics

233

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It was long considered to be impossible to learn grammar based on linguistic experience alone. In the past decade, however, advances in usage-based linguistic theory, computational linguistics, and developmental psychology changed the view on this matter. So-called usage-based and emergentist approaches to language acquisition state that language can be learned from language use itself, by means of social skills like joint attention, and by means of powerful generalization mechanisms. This paper first summarizes the assumptions regarding the nature of linguistic representations and processing. Usage-based theories are nonmodular and nonreductionist, i.e., they emphasize the form-function relationships, and deal with all of language, not just selected levels of representations. Furthermore, storage and processing is considered to be analytic as well as holistic, such that there is a continuum between children's unanalyzed chunks and abstract units found in adult language. In the second part, the empirical evidence is reviewed. Children's linguistic competence is shown to be limited initially, and it is demonstrated how children can generalize knowledge based on direct and indirect positive evidence. It is argued that with these general learning mechanisms, the usage-based paradigm can be extended to multilingual language situations and to language acquisition under special circumstances.

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Section: Islands and Slot And Frame Patternsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Usage-based and emergentist approaches to language acquisition

Behrens

2009

Linguistics

233

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“…The learning mechanism within EPAM-VOC means that a word containing seven phonemes would require six learning passes (the initial phoneme in the word would already be known below the null top node). Although it may seem that EPAM-VOC learns very quickly, it is possible to reduce the rate of learning (e.g., by altering the probability of learning a new node), and this has been successful for other variants of EPAM/CHREST models (e.g., Croker, Pine, & Gobet, 2003;Freudenthal, Pine, & Gobet, 2002). Slowing down the rate of learning yields similar networks, but over a longer period of time.…”

Section: Learning Phoneme Sequences In Epam-vocmentioning

confidence: 99%

Computer Simulations of Developmental Change: The Contributions of Working Memory Capacity and Long‐Term Knowledge

Jones

Gobet

Pine³

2008

Cognitive Science

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Increasing working memory (WM) capacity is often cited as a major influence on children's development and yet WM capacity is difficult to examine independently of long-term knowledge. A computational model of children's nonword repetition (NWR) performance is presented that independently manipulates long-term knowledge and WM capacity to determine the relative contributions of each in explaining the developmental data. The simulations show that (a) both mechanisms independently cause the same overall developmental changes in NWR performance, (b) increase in long-term knowledge provides the better fit to the child data, and (c) varying both long-term knowledge and WM capacity adds no significant gains over varying long-term knowledge alone. Given that increases in long-term knowledge must occur during development, the results indicate that increases in WM capacity may not be required to explain developmental differences. An increase in WM capacity should only be cited as a mechanism of developmental change when there are clear empirical reasons for doing so.

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“…MOSAIC has already been used to simulate child language data in English and Dutch, German and Spanish (Freudenthal, Pine & Gobet, 2002a, 2002b, 2004, 2005, 2006). It learns from Child Directed Speech, and produces output that consists of actual utterances that can be directly compared to children's speech.…”

Section: Went Home)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Children) has already been used successfully to simulate several phenomena in language acquisition including the Verb Island phenomenon (Jones, Gobet & Pine, 2000), patterns of pronoun case marking error (Croker, Pine & Gobet, 2000, 2001, and the Optional Infinitive phenomenon (Freudenthal, Pine & Gobet, 2002a, 2004, 2006 unstressed morphemes and will learn sequences including unstressed function words (e.g.…”

Section: Mosaic (Model Of Syntax Acquisitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the developmental dynamics of subject omission: the role of processing limitations in learning

2007

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P. Bloom's (1990) data on subject omission are often taken as strong support for the view that child language can be explained in terms of full competence coupled with processing limitations in production. This paper examines whether processing limitations in learning may provide a more parsimonious explanation of the data without the need to assume full competence. We extended P. Bloom's study by using a larger sample (12 children) and measuring subject-omission phenomena in three developmental phases. The results revealed a Verb Phrase-length effect consistent with that reported by P. Bloom. However, contrary to the predictions of the processing limitations account, the proportion of overt subjects that were pronominal increased with developmental phase. The data were simulated with MOSAIC, a computational model that learns to produce progressively longer utterances as a function of training. MOSAIC was able to capture all of the effects reported by P. Bloom through a resource-limited distributional analysis of child-directed speech. Since MOSAIC does not have any built-in linguistic knowledge, these results show that the phenomena identified by P. Bloom do not constitute evidence for underlying competence on the part of the child. They also underline the need to develop more empirically grounded models of the way that processing limitations in learning might influence the language acquisition process.Subject omission and processing limitations in learning 3

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Modeling the Development of Children's Use of Optional Infinitives in Dutch and English Using MOSAIC

Cited by 68 publications

References 39 publications

Usage-based and emergentist approaches to language acquisition

Usage-based and emergentist approaches to language acquisition

Computer Simulations of Developmental Change: The Contributions of Working Memory Capacity and Long‐Term Knowledge

Understanding the developmental dynamics of subject omission: the role of processing limitations in learning

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