No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Context-Dependent Learning of Linguistic Disjunction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2022
Abstract
What are the constraints, cues, and mechanisms that help learners create successful word-meaning mappings? This study takes up linguistic disjunction and looks at cues and mechanisms that can help children learn the meaning of or. We first used a large corpus of parent-child interactions to collect statistics on or uses. Children started producing or between 18-30 months and by 42 months, their rate of production reached a plateau. Second, we annotated for the interpretation of disjunction in child-directed speech. Parents used or mostly as exclusive disjunction, typically accompanied by rise-fall intonation and logically inconsistent disjuncts. But when these two cues were absent, disjunction was generally not exclusive. Our computational modeling suggests that an ideal learner could successfully interpret an English disjunction (as exclusive or not) by mapping forms to meanings after partitioning the input according to the intonational and logical cues available in child-directed speech.
- Type
- Article
- Information
- Copyright
- © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press
References
Aloni, M. (2016). Disjunction. In Zalta, E. N. (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Stanford University. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/disjunction/
Google Scholar
Baldwin, D. (1993). Infants’ ability to consult the speaker for clues to word reference. Journal of Child Language, 20(2), 395–418.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Braine, M. D., & Rumain, B. (1981). Development of comprehension of “or”: Evidence for a sequence of competencies. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 31(1), 46–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, R. W. (1957). Linguistic determinism and the part of speech. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 55(1), 1.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cameron-Faulkner, T., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2003). A construction based analysis of child directed speech. Cognitive Science, 27(6), 843–873.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carvalho, A. de, He, A. X., Lidz, J., & Christophe, A. (2019). Prosody and function words cue the acquisition of word meanings in 18-month-old infants. Psychological Science, 30(3), 319–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chierchia, G. (2004). Scalar implicatures, polarity phenomena, and the syntax/pragmatics interface. Structures and Beyond, 3, 39–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chierchia, G., Crain, S., Guasti, M. T., Gualmini, A., & Meroni, L. (2001). The acquisition of disjunction: Evidence for a grammatical view of scalar implicatures. Proceedings of the 25th Boston University Conference on Language Development, 157–168. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Chierchia, G., Fox, D., & Spector, B. (2012). The grammatical view of scalar implicatures and the relationship between semantics and pragmatics. In Portner, P., Maienborn, C., & von Heusinger, K. (Eds.), Semantics: An international handbook of natural language meaning (Vol. 3, pp. 2297–2332). Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Chierchia, G., Guasti, M. T., Gualmini, A., Meroni, L., Crain, S., & Foppolo, F. (2004). Semantic and pragmatic competence in children’s and adults’ comprehension of or. In Noveck, I. & Sperber, D. (Eds.), Experimental pragmatics (pp. 283–300). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chouinard, M. M., & Clark, E. V. (2003). Adult reformulations of child errors as negative evidence. Journal of Child Language, 30(03), 637–669.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cicchetti, D. V., & Feinstein, A. R. (1990). High agreement but low kappa: II. Resolving the paradoxes. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology
, 43(6), 551–558.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clark, E. V. (1987). The principle of contrast: A constraint on language acquisition. In MacWhinney, B. (Ed.), Mechanisms of language acquisition (pp. 1–33). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Clark, E. V. (2010). Adult offer, word-class, and child uptake in early lexical acquisition. First Language, 30(3-4), 250–269.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crain, S. (2012). The emergence of meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crain, S., Gualmini, A., & Meroni, L. (2000). The acquisition of logical words. LOGOS and Language, 1, 49–59.Google Scholar
Crain, S., & Khlentzos, D. (2008). Is logic innate? Biolinguistics, 2(1), 024–056.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crain, S., & Khlentzos, D. (2010). The logic instinct. Mind & Language, 25(1), 30–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Demuth, K., Culbertson, J., & Alter, J. (2006). Word-minimality, epenthesis and coda licensing in the early acquisition of English. Language and Speech, 49(2), 137–173.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Esteve-Gibert, N., Prieto, P., & Liszkowski, U. (2017). Twelve-month-olds understand social intentions based on prosody and gesture shape. Infancy, 22(1), 108–129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feinstein, A. R., & Cicchetti, D. V. (1990). High agreement but low kappa: I. The problems of two paradoxes. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 43(6), 543–549.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Feldman, J. (2000). Minimization of boolean complexity in human concept learning. Nature, 407(6804), 630–633.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fleiss, J. L., Levin, B., & Paik, M. C. (2013). Statistical methods for rates and proportions. New York: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Frota, S., Butler, J., & Vigário, M. (2014). Infants’ perception of intonation: Is it a statement or a question? Infancy, 19(2), 194–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gazdar, G. (1979). Pragmatics: Implicature, presupposition, and logical form. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Geisler, W. S. (2003). Ideal observer analysis. The Visual Neurosciences, 10(7), 12–12.Google Scholar
Geurts, B. (2006). Exclusive disjunction without implicatures. Ms., University of Nijmegen.Google Scholar
Gini, C. (1912). Variabilità e mutabilità. Reprinted in Memorie Di Metodologica Statistica (Ed. Pizetti, E, Salvemini, T
). Rome
: Libreria Eredi Virgilio Veschi.Google Scholar
Gleitman, L. (1990). The structural sources of verb meanings. Language Acquisition, 1(1), 3–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gleitman, L., Cassidy, K., Nappa, R., Papafragou, A., & Trueswell, J. C. (2005). Hard words. Language Learning and Development, 1(1), 23–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, A. E. (2003). Constructions: A new theoretical approach to language. TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences, 7(5), 219–224.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goodman, J. C., Dale, P. S., & Li, P. (2008). Does frequency count? Parental input and the acquisition of vocabulary. Journal of Child Language, 35(3), 515–531.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Grice, H. P. (1989). Studies in the way of words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Gualmini, A., & Crain, S. (2002). Why no child or adult must learn de Morgan’s laws. Proceedings of the Boston University Conference on Language Development. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Gualmini, A., Crain, S., & Meroni, L. (2000). Acqisition of disjunction in conditional sentences. Proceedings of the Boston University Conference on Language Development.
Google Scholar
Haspelmath, M. (2007). Coordination. In Shopen, T. (Ed.), Language typology and linguistic description,. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ho, T. K. (1995). Random decision forests. Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition, 1, 278–282. Washington, DC, USA: IEEE Computer Society.Google Scholar
Horn, L. R. (1972). On the semantic properties of logical operators in English. University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Jasbi, M., & Frank, M. C. (2021). Adults’ and children’s comprehension of linguistic disjunction. Collabra: Psychology, 7(1), 27702.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johansson, B. S., & Sjolin, B. (1975). Preschool children’s understanding of the coordinators “and” and “or.” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 19(2), 233–240.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kamp, H. (1973). Free choice permission. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 74, 57–74.Google Scholar
Landau, B., & Stecker, D. S. (1990). Objects and places: Geometric and syntactic representations in early lexical learning. Cognitive Development, 5(3), 287–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langacker, R. W. (1987). Foundations of cognitive grammar: Theoretical prerequisites (Vol. 1). Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Levinson, S. C. (2000). Presumptive meanings: The theory of generalized conversational implicature. MIT press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levy, E., & Nelson, K. (1994). Words in discourse: A dialectical approach to the acquisition of meaning and use. Journal of Child Language, 21(02), 367–389.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (2000). The CHILDES project: The database (Vol. 2). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Markman, E. M. (1990). Constraints children place on word meanings. Cognitive Science, 14(1), 57–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Markman, E. M., & Hutchinson, J. E. (1984). Children’s sensitivity to constraints on word meaning: Taxonomic versus thematic relations. Cognitive Psychology, 16(1), 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Markman, E. M., & Wachtel, G. F. (1988). Children’s use of mutual exclusivity to constrain the meanings of words. Cognitive Psychology, 20(2), 121–157.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mintz, T. H. (2003). Frequent frames as a cue for grammatical categories in child directed speech. Cognition, 90(1), 91–117.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Monaghan, P., & Christiansen, M. (2014). Multiple cues in language acquisition. In Brooks, P. & Kempe, V. (Eds.), Encyclopedia of language development (pp. 389–392). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Morris, B. J. (2008). Logically speaking: Evidence for item-based acquisition of the connectives “and” and “or.” Journal of Cognition and Development, 9(1), 67–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Naigles, L. (1990). Children use syntax to learn verb meanings. Journal of Child Language, 17(2), 357–374.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Neisser, U., & Weene, P. (1962). Hierarchies in concept attainment. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64(6), 640.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Notley, A., Thornton, R., & Crain, S. (2012). English-speaking children’s interpretation of disjunction in the scope of “not every.” Biolinguistics, 6(1), 32–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Notley, A., Zhou, P., Jensen, B., & Crain, S. (2012). Children’s interpretation of disjunction in the scope of “before”: A comparison of English and Mandarin. Journal of Child Language, 39(03), 482–522.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Noveck, I. A. (2001). When children are more logical than adults: Experimental investigations of scalar implicature. Cognition, 78(2), 165–188.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pedregosa, F., Varoquaux, G., Gramfort, A., Michel, V., Thirion, B., Grisel, O., … others. (2011). Scikit-learn: Machine learning in python. Journal of Machine Learning Research, 12(Oct), 2825–2830.Google Scholar
Piantadosi, S. T., Tenenbaum, J. B., & Goodman, N. D. (2016). The logical primitives of thought: Empirical foundations for compositional cognitive models. Psychological Review, 123(4), 392.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pouscoulous, N., & Noveck, I. A. (2009). Going beyond semantics: The development of pragmatic enrichment. In Foster-Cohen, S. (Ed.), Language acquisition (pp. 196–215). Berlin: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pruitt, K., & Roelofsen, F. (2013). The interpretation of prosody in disjunctive questions. Linguistic Inquiry, 44(4), 632–650.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rijsbergen, C. J. V. (1979). Information retrieval (2nd ed.). Newton, MA, USA: Butterworth-Heinemann.Google Scholar
Roelofsen, F., & Gool, S. van. (2010). Disjunctive questions, intonation, and highlighting. In Aloni, M., Bastiaanse, H., de Jager, T., & Schulz, K. (Eds.), Logic, language and meaning (pp. 384–394). Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanchez, A., Meylan, S., Braginsky, M., MacDonald, K., Yurovsky, D., & Frank, M. C. (2018). Childes-db: A flexible and reproducible interface to the child language data exchange system. PsyArXiv. Retrieved from https://psyarxiv.com/93mwxpsyarxiv.com/93mwx
CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shepard, R. N., Hovland, C. I., & Jenkins, H. M. (1961). Learning and memorization of classifications. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 75(13), 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Siskind, J. M. (1996). A computational study of cross-situational techniques for learning word-to-meaning mappings. Cognition, 61(1-2), 39–91.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sison, C. P., & Glaz, J. (1995). Simultaneous confidence intervals and sample size determination for multinomial proportions. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 90(429), 366–369.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, K., Smith, A. D., & Blythe, R. A. (2011). Cross-situational learning: An experimental study of word-learning mechanisms. Cognitive Science, 35(3), 480–498.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soja, N. N. (1992). Inferences about the meanings of nouns: The relationship between perception and syntax. Cognitive Development, 7(1), 29–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, M., & Gelman, S. A. (1988). Adjectives and nouns: Children’s strategies for learning new words. Child Development, 411–419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Von Wright, G. H. (1968). An essay in deontic logic and the general theory of action.
CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yu, C., & Smith, L. B. (2007). Rapid word learning under uncertainty via cross-situational statistics. Psychological Science, 18(5), 414–420.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed