Course title
Asymmetries in grammar
Teacher
Petra Hendriks
E-mail: P.Hendriks@rug.nl
Postal Address: CLCG, Faculty of Arts, University of Groningen, P.O. Box 716, 9700 AS Groningen
Homepage: www.let.rug.nl/~hendriks
Introductory
In the past decades, research on language acquisition has identified several asymmetries between production and comprehension. For example, it is a well-known fact that in many languages children make errors interpreting object pronouns such as him as late as age 7. Yet, from a young age on these children use the object pronoun him in an adult-like and systematic way when they speak. This suggests that production may precede comprehension in language acquisition. In many other cases, however, children understand a form before they use it correctly themselves.
Such asymmetries between production and comprehension create difficulties for traditional rule-based grammars, since speakers who obey a rule in production are presumed to know this rule, and hence are expected to obey this rule in comprehension too (and vice versa for hearers).
The course reviews a number of attested production/comprehension asymmetries, and discusses the view that such asymmetries follow from an optimization perspective on grammar.
Monday: Language, cognition, and optimality. Slides day 1
Tuesday: Bidirectional optimization and late asymmetries in child language
(Delay of Principle B Effect, anaphoric subjects). Slides day 2
Wednesday: Constraint reranking and early asymmetries in child language
(early word forms, basic word order). Slides day 3
Thursday: Learning to optimize bidirectionally
(relation with: Theory of Mind, processing speed, working memory). Slides day 4
Friday: Optimality and adult sentence processing. Slides day 5
Saturday January 24 & Sunday January 25, 2009: In the weekend following this course,
there will be a related conference on language acquisition at the University of Groningen:
Relating
Asymmetries between Speech and Comprehension in the Acquisition of Language (RASCAL).
Background and preparatory readings:
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Course readings:
Day 1:
Prince, A. & P. Smolensky (1997).
Optimality: From neural networks to
universal grammar.
Science 275, 1604-1610.
Chapter 1 of Hendriks, P., H. de Hoop,
I. Krämer, H. de Swart, & J. Zwarts (2008),
Conflicts in Interpretation. Book manuscript,
to be published by Equinox, 2009.
Day 2:
Hoop, H. de & I. Krämer (2005/6).
Children's optimal interpretations
of indefinite subjects and objects. Language Acquisition 13, 103-123.
Hendriks, P. & J. Spenader (2005/6).
When production precedes comprehension:
An optimization approach to the acquisition of pronouns. Language Acquisition 13:4, 319-348.
Spenader, P., E.-J. Smits, & P. Hendriks (in press).
Coherent discourse solves
the Pronoun Interpretation Problem. Journal of Child Language.
Day 3:
Smolensky, P. (1996).
On the comprehension/production dilemma in
child language. Linguistic Inquiry 27, 720-731.
Hendriks, P., H. de Hoop, & M. Lamers (2005).
Asymmetries in language use reveal asymmetries in the grammar. In: P. Dekker & M. Franke (Eds.),
Proceedings of the 15th Amsterdam Colloquium, ILLC, Amsterdam, pp. 113-118.
Day 4:
Hendriks, P., H. van Rijn, & B. Valkenier (2007).
Learning to reason about speakers'
alternatives in sentence comprehension:
A computational account. Lingua 117:11, 1879-1896.
Day 5:
Hendriks, P., C. Englert, E. Wubs, & J. Hoeks (2008).
Age differences in adults'
use of referring expressions. Journal of Logic, Language and Information 17:4, 443-466.
Further readings:
Hendriks, P., H. de Hoop, I. Krämer, H. de Swart, & J. Zwarts (2008),
Conflicts in Interpretation. Book manuscript,
to be published by Equinox, 2009.
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