Year: 2000
Type: article
Abstract: To what extent is linguistic structure learnable from statistical information in the input?One set of cues which might assist in the discovery of hierarchical phrase structure given serially presented input are the dependencies, or predictive relationships, present within phrases.In order to determine whether adult learners can use this statistical information, subjects were exposed to artificial languages which either contained or violated the kinds of dependencies which characterize natural languages.The results suggest that adults possess learning mechanisms which detect and utilize statistical cues to phrase and hierarchical structure.A second experiment contrasted the acquisition of these linguistic systems with the same grammars implemented as non-linguistic input (sequences of non-linguistic sounds or shapes).These findings suggest that constraints on the mechanisms which highlight the statistical cues which are most characteristic of human languages are not specifically tailored for language learning.
Author: Jenny R. Saffran
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W156559387