Schedule of Events

Spring 2004 Colloquium Series

Phoebe Ellsworth

University of Michigan
Emotion, Cognition, and Culture
Bousfield 160
Friday, February 13, 2004
4:00 PM

Elissa Newport

University of Rochester
Innately constrained learning: Blending old and new approaches to language acquisition
Bousfield 160
Friday, March 26, 2004
4:00 PM
Abstract

In collaboration with Richard Aslin, I have recently been developing an approach to language acquisition known as 'statistical learning.' Our basic idea is that important parts of human language acquisition involve computing, over a stream of speech, such things as how frequently sounds co-occur; how frequently words occur in similar contexts; and the like. The learner then uses these computations to determine regular versus accidental properties of the language being acquired. Our studies (initially in collaboration with Jenny Saffran) have shown that adults and infants are capable of performing such computations online and with remarkable speed, during the presentation of controlled speech streams in the laboratory. We have also found that adults and infants can perform similar computations on nonlinguistic materials (e.g., music), and (in collaboration with Marc Hauser) that even nonhuman primates can perform the simplest of these computations.

However, in our recent studies, when tested on more complex computations involving non-adjacent sounds, humans show strong selectivities (they can perform certain computations, but fail at others), corresponding to the patterns which natural languages do and do not exhibit. Primates do not show these same selectivities. Additional recent studies examine how statistics can be used to form non-statistical generalizations and to regularize irregular structures, and how the computations we have hypothesized for word segmentation extend to acquiring syntactic phrase structure. Overall this approach may provide an important mechanism for learning certain aspects of language. In addition, the constraints of learners in performing differing types and complexities of computations may provide part of the explanation for which learners can acquire human languages, and why languages have some of the properties they have.

Laura-Ann Petitto

Dartmouth University (Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, and Department of Education)
Insights into the neural dedication for language acquisition from the hands and mouths of babes
Bousfield 160
Friday, April 2, 2004
4:00 PM
Abstract

For hundreds of years our species has pondered the nature of Language. The fundamental question has been what are we born with, and what is in the environment, which makes possible the remarkable feat of acquiring Language? Traditional answers have assumed that the development of the mechanisms for speaking and hearing neurologically determine very early language acquisition as well as the cerebral organization of human language in the adult brain. Three decades of studies from my laboratory, however, have yielded discoveries that challenge this long-cherished view. Rather than language acquisition being driven by our capacity to speak and hear sounds, it is driven by our capacity to detect, discern and generate highly specific patterns that form the core of human Language. I will summarize key previous findings, as well as our latest Optical Topography (Near-Infra Red Spectroscopy) studies of the brains of very young babies processing language. I suggest that human language acquisition entails both specialized tissue and tissue that becomes specialized over time. One new implication here is that language modality, be it spoken or signed, is so plastic that it only becomes neurologically set through neurogenetic processes after birth.

Roy D'Andrade and James Boster

University of Connecticut
Color
Bousfield 160
Friday, April 23, 2004
4:00 PM