Children’s Learning of a Semantics-Free Artificial Grammar with Center Embedding

Whether non-human animals have an ability to learn and process center embedding, a core property of human language syntax, is still debated. Artificial-grammar learning (AGL) has been used to compare humans and animals in the learning of center embedding. However, up until now, human participants have only included adults, and data on children, who are the key players of natural language acquisition, are lacking. We created a novel game-like experimental paradigm combining the go/no-go procedure often used in animal research with the stepwise learning methods found effective in human adults’ center-embedding learning. Here we report that some children succeeded in learning a semantics-free artificial grammar with center embedding (A2B2 grammar) in the auditory modality. Although their success rate was lower than adults’, the successful children looked as efficient learners as adults. Where children struggled, their memory capacity seemed to have limited their AGL performance

The Non-Hierarchical Nature of the Chomsky Hierarchy-Driven Artificial-Grammar Learning

Recent artificial-grammar learning (AGL) paradigms driven by the Chomsky hierarchy paved the way for direct comparisons between humans and animals in the learning of center embedding ([A[AB]B]). The AnBn grammars used by the first generation of such research lacked a crucial property of center embedding, where the pairs of elements are explicitly matched ([A1 [A2 B2] B1]). This type of indexing is implemented in the second-generation AnBn grammars. This paper reviews recent studies using such grammars. Against the premises of these studies, we argue that even those newer AnBn grammars cannot test the learning of syntactic hierarchy. These studies nonetheless provide detailed information about the conditions under which human adults can learn an AnBn grammar with indexing. This knowledge serves to interpret recent animal studies, which make surprising claims about animals’ ability to handle center embedding

The integration hypothesis of human language evolution and the nature of contemporary languages

How human language arose is a mystery in the evolution of Homo sapiens. Miyagawa et al. (2013) put forward a proposal, which we will call the Integration Hypothesis of human language evolution, that holds that human language is composed of two components, E for expressive, and L for lexical. Each component has an antecedent in nature: E as found, for example, in birdsong, and L in, for example, the alarm calls of monkeys. E and L integrated uniquely in humans to give rise to language. A challenge to the Integration Hypothesis is that while these non-human systems are finite-state in nature, human language is known to require characterization by a non-finite state grammar. Our claim is that E and L, taken separately, are in fact finite-state; when a grammatical process crosses the boundary between E and L, it gives rise to the non-finite state character of human language. We provide empirical evidence for the Integration Hypothesis by showing that certain processes found in contemporary languages that have been characterized as non-finite state in nature can in fact be shown to be finite-state. We also speculate on how human language actually arose in evolution through the lens of the Integration Hypothesis

Sound to Language: Different Cortical Processing for First and Second Languages in Elementary School Children as Revealed by a Large-Scale Study Using fNIRS

A large-scale study of 484 elementary school children (6–10 years) performing word repetition tasks in their native language (L1-Japanese) and a second language (L2-English) was conducted using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Three factors presumably associated with cortical activation, language (L1/L2), word frequency (high/low), and hemisphere (left/right), were investigated. L1 words elicited significantly greater brain activation than L2 words, regardless of semantic knowledge, particularly in the superior/middle temporal and inferior parietal regions (angular/supramarginal gyri). The greater L1-elicited activation in these regions suggests that they are phonological loci, reflecting processes tuned to the phonology of the native language, while phonologically unfamiliar L2 words were processed like nonword auditory stimuli. The activation was bilateral in the auditory and superior/middle temporal regions. Hemispheric asymmetry was observed in the inferior frontal region (right dominant), and in the inferior parietal region with interactions: low-frequency words elicited more right-hemispheric activation (particularly in the supramarginal gyrus), while high-frequency words elicited more left-hemispheric activation (particularly in the angular gyrus). The present results reveal the strong involvement of a bilateral language network in children’s brains depending more on right-hemispheric processing while acquiring unfamiliar/low-frequency words. A right-to-left shift in laterality should occur in the inferior parietal region, as lexical knowledge increases irrespective of language

Theory and evidence in second language research : the acquisition of English by native speakers of Japanese

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