L103 Discussion: Week 5

L103 Discussion, Week 5:
Constraints on learning
Relativity
Learning phonemes

Mini-projects

  • Oral report in last (two?) class(es?)
  • Learning
    • A "problem" in some language
    • Why this would be challenging problem for a learner
    • How a learner might go about it
  • Relativity

Language learning 1

  • Review: the need for constraints
  • Genetic constraints
    • The innatist (nativist) perspective
    • Relationship to the search for universals
    • The parameter-setting approach to learning grammar: types of languages
    • Constraints on possible meanings
  • Constraints from elsewhere
    • The empiricist perspective
    • Communicative constraints
    • General cognitive constraints
    • Constraints from regularity in the world
    • Constraints from language itself
    • Statistical learners

Some implications of the two perspectives

  • The relative importance of input
  • The relative continuity of development
  • Variability among learners
  • The influence of language on thought
    • The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, linguistic relativity
    • How to study LR
    • Social/moral implications of LR

Learning phonemes

  • The problem of tying together perception and production
  • Babbling and how it works
  • The problem of figuring out what (where) the phonemes in the target language are
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© 2003. Indiana University and Michael Gasser.
URL: www.indiana.edu/~gasser/L103/Discussion/mg5.html
13 Feb, 2003