Linguistics and English Language

Language evolution seminar

Speaker: Jennifer Culbertson (University of Edinburgh)

Title: Children’s sensitivity to phonological and semantic cues during noun class learning: evidence for a phonological bias. (Jennifer Culbertson and Kenny Smith).

Abstract: Previous research on natural language acquisition of noun classification systems, such as grammatical gender, has shown that child learners appear to rely disproportionately on phonological cues (e.g., Gagliardi & Lidz, 2014; Karmiloff-Smith, 1981). Surprisingly, this occurs even when competing semantic cues are more reliable predictors of class. Culbertson, Gagliardi & Smith (2017) present evidence from artificial language learning experiments with adults suggesting that the over-reliance on phonology may be due to the fact that phonological cues are generally available earlier than semantic cues; learners acquire early representations of phonological dependencies (e.g., between a gendered determiner and a noun) before acquiring the semantic referents of nouns. In other words, Culbertson et al. (2017) suggest there is no a priori bias in favor of phonological cues to noun class. In this talk, I will present follow-up work investigating whether our results hold for child learners. In a series of experiments, we show that two cues–one semantic and one phonological–which children are equally sensitive to in isolation, are in fact treated differently when they are in conflict. In particular, unlike adults, children prioritize phonological cues regardless of when cues are available. This suggests the possibility that children are in fact biased to attend to phonological cues when acquiring noun classification systems.

Contact

Seminars are organised by the Centre for Language Evolution

Svenja Wagner

Centre for Language Evolution

Dec 05 2017 -

Language evolution seminar

2017-12-05: Children’s sensitivity to phonological and semantic cues during noun class learning: evidence for a phonological bias

Room 1.17, Dugald Stewart Building, 3 Charles Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AD