New horizons in the study of child language acquisition

URL to paper on conference site.Naturalistic longitudinal recordings of child development promise to reveal fresh perspectives on fundamental questions of language acquisition. In a pilot effort, we have recorded 230,000 hours of audio-video recordings spanning the first three years of one child's life at home. To study a corpus of this scale and richness, current methods of developmental cognitive science are inadequate. We are developing new methods for data analysis and interpretation that combine pattern recognition algorithms with interactive user interfaces and data visualization. Preliminary speech analysis reveals surprising levels of linguistic fine-tuning by caregivers that may provide crucial support for word learning. Ongoing analyses of the corpus aim to model detailed aspects of the child's language development as a function of learning mechanisms combined with lifetime experience. Plans to collect similar corpora from more children based on a transportable recording system are underway.National Science Foundation (U.S.)MIT Center for Future BankingMassachusetts Institute of Technology. Media LaboratoryUnited States. Office of Naval ResearchUnited States. Dept. of Defens

It’s Not Brain Science… Or Is It? How Early Second Language Learning Can Impact Future Achievement

Capstone paper from 2015 spring MPA program. Instructed by Allen Zagoren.We live in a global economy, yet U.S. citizens lag far behind in the knowledge of other countries’ languages, cultures, customs, geographies and peoples. Equipping the next generation with foreign language skills as well as knowledge of other cultures and customs will not only provide increased career opportunities for individuals but also aid in the future success of the U.S. economy. The U.S. educational system does not stress the learning of language beyond English: K-12 curriculum is rigidly mandated, budgets are tight, class time and teacher training is limited, and language programs are often among the first to be cut during budget crises. There is a time period when a child’s brain is developing and most receptive to learning, and that is early childhood. If the seed were planted in a child before he/she enters kindergarten to learn the basics of a foreign language and culture, perhaps that knowledge could be nourished throughout the rest of their lives, preparing those children to embrace cultural differences, live and compete more successfully in an evolving and diverse world, and be better equipped for later education. Besides examining the current state of foreign language education in the U.S. and how learning occurs, the benefits of foreign language learning in relation to business and human relations are examined in this paper. Multiple solutions to solving the foreign language deficit are mentioned including a proposal for an early-learning language program

Machine Learning and the Cognitive Basis of Natural Language

Articl

Enactivism and Robotic Language Acquisition: A Report from the Frontier

In this article, I assess an existing language acquisition architecture, which was deployed in linguistically unconstrained human–robot interaction, together with experimental design decisions with regard to their enactivist credentials. Despite initial scepticism with respect to enactivism’s applicability to the social domain, the introduction of the notion of participatory sense-making in the more recent enactive literature extends the framework’s reach to encompass this domain. With some exceptions, both our architecture and form of experimentation appear to be largely compatible with enactivist tenets. I analyse the architecture and design decisions along the five enactivist core themes of autonomy, embodiment, emergence, sense-making, and experience, and discuss the role of affect due to its central role within our acquisition experiments. In conclusion, I join some enactivists in demanding that interaction is taken seriously as an irreducible and independent subject of scientific investigation, and go further by hypothesising its potential value to machine learning.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

The acquisition of the English dative alternation by Russian foreign language learners

Ditransitive verbs include a “recipient” and a “theme” argument (in addition to the subject). The choice of putting one argument before the other (i.e., either recipient-theme, or theme-recipient) is associated with multiple discourse-pragmatic factors. Language have different options to code the ditransitive construction. In English, a ditransitive verb can take two alternating patterns (“the dative alternation”): the Double Object Construction (DOC) (John gives Mary a book) and the to-dative construction (to-dative) (John gives a book to Mary). In Russian, theme and recipient are marked by accusative and dative, respectively. In addition, word order is flexible and either the accusative-marked theme (Pjotr dal knigu Marii), or the dative-marked recipient (Pjotr dal Marii knigu) can come first. This article reports on two sentence rating experiments (acceptability judgments) to test whether Russian learners of English transfer their preferences about the theme-recipient order in Russian to the ditransitive construction in English. A total of 284 Russian students were tested. Results for both tests showed a great variability in the ratings. A comparison of the ratings seems to suggest a small positive correlation, but no statistically significant relation was found between the order preferences in both languages. However, we found a small preference for the use of the to-dative, which we relate to the language acquisition process as proposed by Processability Theory

A review of daily conversations and practices at home: Exploring practices that promote early literacy in Spanish-speaking homes and home-school interactions

Coming from a low-income heritage language family, like 17% of Latino families, entails important academic risk factors related to lower scores on reading tests. Considering that it is estimated that Latino students will represent 50% of the U.S. public schools’ population by 2050, their literacy learning must be supported adequately. The purpose of this literature review is to explore, from an ecocultural perspective, early literacy practices of low-income Spanish-speaking families and analyze the nature of literacy home-school interventions implemented for this group. The literature highlights non-traditional literacy practices that are strengths of the Latino families, such as a robust oral tradition focused on social cues, children’s engagement in written household chores, and the use of the Bible to pass values. Parents have mixed beliefs regarding literacy promotion: they do not feel prepared to support their children; thus, they support teachers as experts. Three types of home-school literacy interventions were found: printed material sharing; printed material exchange; family programs. As the literature posits, interventions should consider and be based on family beliefs, culture, and strengths; otherwise, effectivity and attrition are at risk. Moreover, new research should be conducted to bridge the gap regarding the role of family actors other than the mother, as well as the differences within the Latino community and immigrant generation

The optimality of attaching unlinked labels to unlinked meanings

Vocabulary learning by children can be characterized by many biases. When encountering a new word, children as well as adults, are biased towards assuming that it means something totally different from the words that they already know. To the best of our knowledge, the 1st mathematical proof of the optimality of this bias is presented here. First, it is shown that this bias is a particular case of the maximization of mutual information between words and meanings. Second, the optimality is proven within a more general information theoretic framework where mutual information maximization competes with other information theoretic principles. The bias is a prediction from modern information theory. The relationship between information theoretic principles and the principles of contrast and mutual exclusivity is also shown.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Expanding to outward foreign direct investment or not? A multi-dimensional analysis of entry mode transformation of Chinese private exporting firms

This research examines the factors determining whether or not exporting firms expand to outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) as part of their internationalisation strategy, using a recent survey of Chinese private-owned enterprises. We carry out a multi-dimensional analysis to investigate the impact of firm productivity, internal resources and the external environment on OFDI decisions, including both the decision to undertake OFDI and the volume of OFDI flows. It is found that productivity, technology-based capability, export experience, industry entry barriers, subnational institutions and intermediary institutional support affect firms’ OFDI decisions. The findings have important policy and managerial implications