A cognitive approach to semantic approximations in monolingual English-speaking children

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 277-313
Author(s):  
Lorena Pérez-Hernández ◽  
Karine Duvignau
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
First Language ◽  
Cognitive Strategies ◽  
Early Age ◽  
First Language Acquisition ◽  
Cognitive Modelling ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Cognitive Operations ◽  
English Speaking

AbstractThis paper represents a foray into the largely unexplored territory of the cognition of semantic approximations in first language acquisition. Current advances on cognitive modelling are applied to a corpus of 500 semantic approximations produced by 20 children between 1;06 and 5;00 years old. The results reveal that a large number of those semantic approximations are the output of a set of cognitive operations including those of comparison and correlation (i.e. metaphorical projections), domain expansion and reduction (i.e. metonymic mappings), and mitigation and strengthening (i.e. scalar operations). Far for being an impediment to communication, most semantic approximations in our data are found to help children capitalize on their incomplete lexical pool, maximizing its communicative potential. The set of cognitive strategies involved is available from an early age, underlying the use of language throughout our lifespan, and adapting its functions to diverse communicative needs in different stages of our lives.

scholarly journals Research on Second Language: Offering New Alternative to Introduce Second Language to Children in Early Age through Youtube Channel

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 60
Author(s):  
Enni Akhmad Daud
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
First Language ◽  
Silent Period ◽  
Early Age ◽  
First Language Acquisition ◽  
Child Age

This article is discussing about the children acquisition in second language. It is observing how a child acquires her second language through YouTube. It described the child age 3,7 years habit to watch video through YouTube. The daily notes were taken to see the child’s words, sentences, and also reaction after watching the video intensively for two months. The research observation result shown that a child starts her acquiring by perceiving the language through silent period. She needs 3-5 times to watch a video, and then she is able to imitate words and sentences in video, even though her pronunciation is not fluency yet. Moreover, she does not really understand about the meaning of the words or sentences. It is indicated that the children age 3,7 years old still has difficulties to understand the beyond meaning of the words or sentences. The implication of this research is to show the stages of children in acquiring their second language which is similar to their first language acquisition. Therefore, teaching and learning second language should not be different from teaching and learning first language.

Infant-Directed Speech Effects in Adult Artificial Grammar Learning

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krisztina Sára Lukics ◽  
Ágnes Lukács
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
First Language ◽  
Higher Learning ◽  
Artificial Grammar ◽  
Combined Effect ◽  
First Language Acquisition ◽  
Relative Contribution ◽  
Grammar Learning ◽  
Learning Rates

First language acquisition is facilitated by several characteristics of infant-directed speech, but we know little about their relative contribution to learning different aspects of language. We investigated infant-directed speech effects on the acquisition of a linear artificial grammar in two experiments. We examined the effect of incremental presentation of strings (starting small) and prosody (comparing monotonous, arbitrary and phrase prosody). Presenting shorter strings before longer ones led to higher learning rates compared to random presentation. Prosody marking phrases had a similar effect, yet, prosody without marking syntactic units did not facilitate learning. These studies were the first to test the starting small effect with a linear artificial grammar, and also the first to investigate the combined effect of starting small and prosody. Our results suggest that starting small and prosody facilitate the extraction of regularities from artificial linguistic stimuli, indicating they may play an important role in natural language acquisition.

Acquiring “Knowledge”—An Alternative Model

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avner Baz
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Alternative Model ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
First Language ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Empirical Science ◽  
First Language Acquisition ◽  
Method Of Cases ◽  
Striking Fact

The chapter argues that empirical studies of first-language acquisition lend support to the Wittgensteinian-Merleau-Pontian conception of language as against the prevailing conception that underwrites the method of cases in either its armchair or experimental version. It offers a non-representationalist model, inspired by the work of Michael Tomasello, for the acquisition of “knowledge,” with the aim of showing that we could fully account for the acquisition of this and other philosophically troublesome words without positing independently existing “items” to which these words refer. The chapter also aims at bringing out and underscoring the striking fact that, whereas many in contemporary analytic philosophy regard and present themselves as open and attentive to empirical science, they have often relied on a conception of language that has been supported by no empirical evidence.

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