PSYCH 120A Chapter Notes - Chapter 10.3: Bootstrapping (Linguistics), Wolf Children, Linguistic Relativity
Document Summary
Children are sensitive to patterns and regularities that they hear. Derive broad principles from what they hear. By age 3, children realize they don"t have to memorize each word"s past tense as a separate vocab item but can produce past tense by manipulating morphemes. Overregularization errors: yesterday we goed, tooths instead of teeth. Semantic bootstrapping: rely on knowledge of semantic relationships for figuring out syntax. Other species have sophisticated communication systems but are limited. Small vocab and little that corresponds to rules of syntax. Don"t have the sort of generativity seen in human language. Training animals can lead to usage of symbols but cannot master it to the level of humans. Biology provides a start on language learning but we require a communicative partner. Children found in india raised by wolves. None could be rehabilitated to use language normally although some did learn to speak a few words. Indicates that language learning depends on biology and human environment.
