The Ontogeny of English Phrase Structure: The First Phase

The role of automatic reinforcement in early language acquisition

“…The current data suggest that not all of a child's novel vocalizations are acquired through imitation, in that at least some responses are acquired through automatic reinforcement. However, these newly acquired vocalizations are still a function of environmental variables, rather than the frequently proposed cognitive and physiological variables (e.g., Chomsky, 1959;Ervin-Tripp, 1964;McNeill, 1970 The analysis of automatic reinforcement also appears relevant to a number of complex human behaviors, such as thinking and creativity (Vaughan & Michael, 1982), the acquisition of syntax and grammar (Braine, 1963), equivalence relations (Palmer, 1996), and self-stimulation (Lovaas, Newsom, & Hicknan, 1987). It also has implications for a wide range of topics frequently discussed in linguistics and psychology such as accents, bonding, problem solving, perception, academics, literature, performing arts, and pathologies (Vaughan & Michael, 1982).…”

“…Miller and Dollard (1941) were perhaps the first to suggest that this two-stage conditioning process is partially responsible for an infant's high rate of babbling. Since their initial work, several other psychologists have also suggested that automatic reinforcement plays a significant role in language acquisition (e.g., Bijou & Baer, 1965;Braine, 1963;Mowrer, 1950;Novak, 1996;Osgood, 1953;Skinner, 1957;Spradlin, 1966;Staats & Staats, 1963;Vaughan & Michael, 1982). Skinner (1957) Figure 1.…”

An integrated three-stage model towards grammar acquisition

“…We have also described the method of cognitive robotics we 6 Adjectives are thus treated differently depending on whether they are attributive or predicative. See the last section for brief discussion.…”

“…The semantically bootstrapped words that were pre-allocated a type beforehand are excluded when calculating the scores. We considered common/proper nouns, determiners and attributive adjectives 6 to belong to the portion of the e * type, and all the other parts of speech to that of the e * t type.…”

“…Their earliest speech productions then are typically single-word utterances where the words are generally restricted to content words, later progressing to multi-word utterances. Furthermore, infants' initial multi-word utterances frequently come in the form of two-word combinations, including what Braine [6] called 'pivot schemata', such as 'Mummy gone', 'More milk' or 'All clean', which distinctly look like a predicate-argument structure, albeit incomplete and fragmented.…”