Notes for April 1, 1997

Today was the debate topic "Are nouns special?"

No: Alicia and Chuck

• What are nouns?
  • conceptual
  • ontological
  • grammatical
• What does it mean to be special? Compared to what? Do children have built-in mechanisms? Are they learned faster? Learned first?
• Empirical evidence proves nouns are different than other grammatical categories in children.
• Nouns are learned before predicates, and are produced and comprehended more.
• It's important to realize that there are two parts to this, linguistic and conceptual; one category alone does not answer the question.
• Linguistic: frequency, position in sentence, morphological differences
• Conceptual: Patterns of teaching, nouns used more.
• It's been found that adults borrow many more nouns that any other type of words.

  At this point, it was found that the overhead projector had been sabotaged, presumably by the opposing team. A new projector was brought in.

• Why? Structurally the nouns are "less integrated in the recipient discourse."
• So: linguistic features alone do not explain everything; you also need conceptual reasons.
• There seems to be a greater transparency for concrete nouns.
• The Natural Partition Hypothesis says objects can be learned one at a time.
• Simplicity in nouns:
  • dog -> pero
  • table -> mesa
• Phrasal verbs (not 1-to-1):
  • stand up for -> defender
  • put up with -> aguanter

  It should be noted that one member of each team wore a goatee.

• Admits nouns are special in some fashion, as are all parts of speech.
• Linda: "The diversity hypothesis"
• Obviously they're special in the sense that they are different parts of speech. But children aren't linguists. Nouns aren't special to children.
• What would prelinguistic mean? Perceptual obligation for noun referents? Getner?
• Is mapping easier for nouns?
• Perception is equal in children: no bias for motion, light, color, etc.
• Meanings are complex
  • We're used to nouns meaning a particular object; children don't have this bias.
  • They're making a complex relation. 'ball' has many aspects/concepts, whereas it's just a ball to us
  • Child learns how to use these words from adults
  • Meaning changes over time for the child; the memory of a word is a history.
• Pragmatic usage of words
  • Productivity used to test 'comfort' level of child with word
  • Children don't produce all the words they know
  • No conceptual advantage--getting things done practically
• Tremendous variability in types of nouns children acquire first--it's almost random chance
• They're being judged by adult standards; is it really a noun to a child?
• Frequency not only force at work. What about interactivity with the word? If the adult doesn't make the word special, why would child learn it more easily?
• Borrowing nouns: Nouns are useful. Interactions with people will often depend on interacting with objects.

Jim: It's just a result of linguistic properties, therefore not special.

Jim then mentions the fact strange bugs are eating his plants.

Doug suggests aphids.

Jim was demonstrating an instance where he was forced to describe something in a more complicated way because he didn't know the noun.

Alicia:Chomsky says language is simple to learn [sentence diagram]

Jim:

• Eventually can get the concept written down, but the concept of cat is not easy.
• Same process for any types of words.
• Phrasal verbs--plenty of other examples that have simple words.

  At this point, the word 'circumlocution' was used.

• Common tasks get simple words.

• Lots of ways to express action; few ways to express "spoon". More lexical decisions need to be made for action.
• 11 relational words used often.
• 72% of object names used in only one recording session
• 75% of relational words appeared in all sessions.

• What is special?
• Historically in literature, nouns used first
• Token vs. type - verbs can be considered special
• Gopnik showed non-object words can be used more frequently

Jim:If children use asparagus vs. candy--big problem! But if they say "get candy on plate" vs. "get candy in plate" they'll probably still get the candy. Don't have to appeal to the cognitive processes in child.

Chuck: Then they could just use "that" and point.

Jim: Just trying to communicate.

At this point, Doug begins going crazy.

The debate is now opened to general discussion.

David: 5 to 1 ratio learning nouns to verbs. In general adult speech, do they say more verbs or nouns? What's the ratio?

Corey: Varies--Infant-directed speech? Varies with language.

Doug: Neural net model proposal. "Mary walked the dog." Walked not meaningful without Mary and dog, therefore, nouns are special.

Jenett: What about without names? You can see walking without names being present.

Jim: Careful not to judge concepts by linguistic properties.

Linda: What evidence would demonstrate names are special? Theoretical experiment?

Jim: Simple and complex nouns and verbs.

Linda: What is simplicity?

Mike: Points out flaws with Chomsky.

Class breaks into murmurs at the very idea Chomsky could be wrong.

Alan flees.

Linda: We need to get down to data.

Emergent properties, not brain organization?

Alex: Proposes an experiment (no spaceships involved.) Computer vision: some program for distinguishing between nouns, and some for distinguishing between actions. What takes more hardwiring, more effort?

Can you distinguish one without distinguishing the other?

Mike now flees.