Chomsky & Connectionist Theories

• universal grammar


  - noam chomsky

  - properties of language that all language's have (subject, verb, object)

  - initial state of language when you are born

  "language acquisition device"

  - domain specific and nature theory
• what role does the environment have?


  - children must be exposed to language input

  - BUT only need minimal exposure

  - environment sets parameters of language

  i.e. which order of subject, verb, object, which phonemes does the language use
• chomsky's transformational/generative grammar


  - grammar starts as a deep structure

  - transformations are made to change a sentence for to the surface structure

  EX: if we want to ask a questions, we start by forming a sentence: Jessica is pretty.

  Then we change things to make it a questions: is Jessica pretty?
• arguments for universal grammar


  - children hear limited input

  - children learn to produce sentences they have never heard

  - children are not directly taught language

  - language develops very quickly and easily for kids
• poverty of stimulus


  - the language kids hear isn't perfect, but kids use language correctly
• critical periods


  - class defining features:

  -- period of peak neural plasticity

  -- cutoff point for development

  -- occurs early in development

  -- brief

  -- deprivation has permanent and irreversible effects
• critical periods for language


  - eric lenneberg (theorist)

  - around puberty ability to develop language declines
• evidence for critical periods


  - children raised in isolation

  - deaf children raised by hearing parents

  - difficulty learning a second language as an adult

  - can never really conduct the "best" experiment to determine whether a critical period for language exists
• connectionist theories


  - a theory based on computer modeling that is applied to how humans develop language

  - children develop language due to the statistical regularities in the language they hear

  - brain processes this "statistical info" and figure out what it means based on parallel distributed processing
• parallel distributed processing


  - brain learns by processing multiple pieces of information across multiple layers of processing
• input


  - child hears input
• hidden layers (of processing)


  - child's brain sends that input to different neurons to be processed

  - which units it gets sent to is based on how they've processed similar info in the past

  - can trace a path from input to hidden units

  - path that is more likely to be activated is the one that has been most successful in the past (how much each path is weighted)
• output


  - after being processed by multiple hidden layers, the child produces output (speech/language)
• feedback


  - during the language phase, feedback is provided to the system

  - that feedback changes the weight for each pattern

  - that feedback changes which output will occur