Cognitive Science - Linguistics

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Chomsky's "Three Models of language"

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1) Markov models
2) phrase structure grammars
3) transformations

-discusses mathematics of syntax (unlike Markov models which predict letters and words from letters and words behind them, his models are context-free and depend on syntax, the parts of the sentence)

-language acquisition (we have innate constraints, a universal grammar that is shared over every language

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linguistic competence vs. performance

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the knowledge that one possesses of a language vs. the way they use it

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generative grammar

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a set of rules that provide grammatically correct sentences.
for English: S --> NP VP, VP --> V AP, AP --> A

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universal grammar

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rules that are shared over any language spoken by a human--theory for the genetic component of language faculty

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Chomsky's idea of language

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a set of grammatically correct sentences that are of finite length and are constructed out of a finite set of elements

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syntax's role in cogsci

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to model a system of knowledge that determines which utterances constitute a certain language, and to understand where this knowledge comes from

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phrase structure grammar

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a grammar able to capture arbitrarily long dependencies using recursion and a fixed number of constituents

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transformations

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moving words around in a sentence to change meanings.

-Wh-movement: puts a 'what' or 'where' in front of the sentence to specify that a noun is the subject. this takes us from a yes/no question to a Wh-question

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Connectionist approach to language

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rather than language being governed by a set of rules, words are points in a distributed representational space and grammatical sentences are paths through that space

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stages of language acquisition

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6 mos.: babbling (identifiable phonemes, will eventually converge into native language)
one yr.: single word utterances. over and underextension is common
two yrs.: two-word utterances made of a very simple grammar

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over/underextension

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when a child uses a word with a broader/narrower meaning than it has in adult language.
e.g. 'dog' for any four-legged animal / 'dog' is only their dog, not any dog in the park

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overregularization and u-shapred learning

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the act of applying a rule to an exception to the rule.
e.g. children know that 'went' is PT of 'go', but at a certain point, they may say 'goed'

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three factors of language acquisition

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1. genetic components of language faculty
2. genetic components of general learning mechanisms
3. linguistic experience

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poverty of the stimulus

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the rules for a language are far too complex and children could never have been exposed to all of these. also, there are an infinite amount of sentences. therefore, there must be a genetic mechanism for language.

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"logical problem" of language acquisition

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-children receive mostly positive evidence (grammatically correct sentences), rather than examples of sentences that are labeled 'grammatical' or 'ungrammatical'.
-if target language is a subset of hypothesis, then no positive evidence can rule out mistakes

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poverty of the stimulus rebuttal

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assumption: ideas relies on the fact that there are too many rules to learn.
- are there actually that many rules?
- are there both powerful ways to learn a language?

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empiricism in language acquisition (arguments against a universal grammar)

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- neural networks (connectionism)
- probability helps explain aspects of language learning
- parts of language that Chomsky believes innate are actually emphasized more to children and are more common (e.g. Motherese exaggerates linguistics features --> facilitates learning)

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linguistics' role in cogsci

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language represents human thought in a comprehensible way, so we are given insight into thought processes

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generative grammars and ambiguity

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when we make a generative grammar tree, we're able to understand where the ambiguity comes and what syntax can be manipulated without changing meaning
e.g. the people talked over the noise

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attractive properties of grammars

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- infinite ends from finite means: we're able to make an infinite number of sentences from a few rules
- looking at trees helps us find meanings in sentences. we can get through ambiguity this way, sometimes