Abstract
Children learn language from what they hear. In dispute is what mechanisms they bring to this task. Clearly some of these mechanisms have evolved to support the human speech capacity but this leaves a wide field of possibilities open. The question I will address in my paper is whether we need to postulate an innate \(\underline{syntactic}\)module that has evolved to make the learning of language structure possible. I will suggest that more general human social and cognitive capacities may be all that is needed to support the learning of syntactic structure.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Jusczyk, P.: The discovery of spoken language. MIT Press, Cambridge (1997)
Tomasello, M., Carpenter, M., Call, J., Behne, T., Moll, H.: Understanding and sharing intentions: The origins of cultural cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28, 675–735 (2005)
Tomasello, M., Stahl, D.: Sampling children’s spontaneous speech: how much is enough? Journal of Child Language 31, 101–121 (2004)
Lieven, E., Behrens, H., Speares, J., Tomasello, M.: Early syntactic creativity: A usage-based approach. Journal of Child Language 30, 333–370 (2003)
Dabrowska, E., Lieven, E.: Towards a lexically specific grammar of childrens question constructions. Cognitive Linguistics 16, 437–474 (2005)
Cameron-Faulkner, T., Lieven, E., Tomasello, M.: A construction based analysis of child directed speech. Cognitive Science 27, 843–873 (2003)
Stoll, S., Abbot-Smith, K., Lieven, E.: Lexically restricted utterances in russian, german and english child directed speech (submitted)
Cameron-Faulkner, T., Lieven, E., Theakston, A.: What part of no do children not understand? a usage-based account of multiword negation (submitted)
Theakston, A., Lieven, E., Pine, J., Rowland, C.: The acquisition of auxiliary syntax: Be and have. Cognitive Linguistics 16, 247–277 (2005)
McClure, K., Pine, J., Lieven, E.: Investigating the abstractness of children’s early knowledge of argument structure. Journal of Child Language (in press, 2006)
Abbot-Smith, K., Behrens, H.: How known constructions influence the acquisition of other constructions: the german passive and future constructions. Cognitive Science 30 (in press, 2006)
Aguado-Orea, J.: The acquisition of morpho-syntax in Spanish: implications for current theories of development. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham (2004)
Rowland, C.: Explaining errors in children’s questions. Cognition (in press, 2006)
Bates, E., Benigni, B., Camaioni, V.: The emergence of symbols: Cognition and communication in infancy. Academic Press, New York (1979)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Lieven, E. (2006). How Do Children Develop Syntactic Representations from What They Hear?. In: Vogt, P., Sugita, Y., Tuci, E., Nehaniv, C. (eds) Symbol Grounding and Beyond. EELC 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 4211. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11880172_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11880172_6
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-45769-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45771-8
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)