In the Kuhnian and Post-Kuhnian Philosophy of Science, it is widely accepted that scientific revolutions always involve the replacement of an old paradigm by a new paradigm. This article attempts to refute this assumption by showing that there are paradigm-constellations that conform to the relation of a scientific revolution in a Kuhnian sense without a paradigm-replacement occurring. The paradigms investigated here are the linguistic paradigms of Generative Grammar and Construction Grammar that, contrary to Kuhn’s conception of a sequence of paradigm-replacements, (...) are reconstructed as coexisting competing paradigms. By choosing linguistic paradigms, Kuhn’s assumption that paradigm-led research takes place only in the natural sciences is implicitly challenged, and an insight into linguistic theory-construction largely underrepresented in the philosophy of science is given. (shrink)

In this paper, we identify the parallels and the differences between language and life as evolvable systems in pursuit of a framework that will investigate language change from the perspective of a general theory of evolution. Despite the consensus that languages change similarly to species, as reflected in the construction of language trees, the field has mainly applied biological techniques to specific problems of historical linguistics and has not systematically engaged in disentangling the basic concepts (population, reproductive unit, inheritance, etc.) (...) and the core processes underlying evolutionary theory, namely mutation, selection, drift, and migration, as applied to language. We develop such a proposal. Treating language as an evolvable system places previous studies in a novel perspective, as it offers an elegant unifying framework that can accommodate current knowledge, utilize the rich theoretical framework of evolutionary biology, and synthesize many independent strands of inquiry, initiating a whole new research program. (shrink)

Constructions marking information structure in French have been widely documented within the constructionist framework. C’est ‘it is’ clefts have been demonstrated to express the focus of the sentence. Nevertheless, it remains unclear how children are able to acquire clefts, and how they develop information structure categories. The aim of this study is to investigate the acquisition of clefts in French through the usage-based framework, to understand whether IS categories emerge gradually like other linguistic categories, and how children build IS categories. (...) For this, I analysed 256 c’est-clefts produced by three children between age 2 and 3. I show that most early clefts are produced by children with the chunk c’est moi associated with the concrete function of requesting to perform an action themselves. This chunk then becomes a frame with slot, extending the function to other human referents and discourse participants with the function of requesting adults to perform an action. Another large portion of early clefts seems to belong to a frame with slot c’est X whose function is to identify the agent who carried out an action. These findings suggest that the information structure category of focus emerges gradually. (shrink)

Following a usage-based approach to language acquisition, lexically specific patterns are considered to be important building blocks for language productivity and feature heavily both in child-directed speech and in the early speech of children (Arnon, Inbal & Morten H. Christiansen. 2017. The role of multiword building blocks in explaining L1-L2 differences. Topics in Cognitive Science 9(3). 621–636; Tomasello, Michael. 2003. Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press). In order to account for patterns, the traceback (...) method has been widely applied in research on first language acquisition to test the hypothesis that children’s utterances can be accounted for on the basis of a limited inventory of chunks and partially schematic units (Lieven, Elena, Dorothé Salomo & Michael Tomasello. 2009. Two-year-old children’s production of multiword utterances: A usage-based analysis. Cognitive Linguistics 20(3). 481–508). In the current study, we applied the method to code-mixed utterances (n = 1,506) of three German-English bilingual children between 2 and 4 years of age to investigate individual differences in each child’s own inventory of patterns in relation to their input settings. It was shown that units such as I see X as in I see a Kelle ‘I see a trowel’ could be traced back to the child’s own previous productions. More importantly, we see that each child’s inventory of constructions draws heavily on multiword chunks that are strongly dependent on the children’s language input situations. (shrink)

According to usage-based theories, children initially acquire surface-level constructions and then abstract representations. If so, bilingual children might show lags relative to monolingual children early in acquisition, but not later on, once they rely on abstract representations. We tested this prediction with comprehension of passives in 3- to 6-year-old children: French–English bilinguals and English monolinguals. As predicted, younger bilingual children tended to be less accurate than monolingual children. In contrast, the older bilingual children scored equivalently to monolinguals, despite less exposure (...) to English. When the children made errors, the bilingual children were more likely to interpret the subject as the agent of the action than the monolingual children. These results are consistent with the argument that children develop increasingly abstract representations of linguistic constructions with usage. They further suggest that bilingual children might catch up with monolingual through use of selective attention and/or a semantic bias. (shrink)

Una dificultad frecuente en los trabajos sobre desarrollo sintáctico infantil es la de explicar usos cuya configuración no responde a una forma canónica aunque cumplan esa función. En el caso de las Cláusulas Relativas la tipología de lenguas propone el concepto de “Estrategia de relativización” para comprender las diferentes formas con las que las lenguas articulan modificadores complejos posnominales. Este trabajo presenta los resultados de una investigación que analizó la producción espontánea y la recuperación de Cláusulas Relativas en 32 niños (...) y niñas, hablantes de español de 5 años, de Nivel Socioeconómico Medio y Bajo. Se consideró el desempeño sintáctico según variables poblacionales, pues existe una extensa tradición en la literatura sobre desarrollo sintáctico que atiende a esta incidencia. Se relevaron, describieron y clasificaron las CR siguiendo a Givón y Silva . Los objetivos de la investigación son, por un lado, considerar las ER y comparar su forma y frecuencia y, por otro lado, indagar cuáles son los factores que inciden en las diferencias. Los resultados muestran que las formas son comparables a usos de Estrategias de relativización descriptos previamente en población infantil y adulta para el español. Se releva una variación sintáctica novedosa, aducible al contexto particular de renarración. El análisis de diferencias de desempeño, según variables poblacionales, no reporta diferencias significativas, aunque sí se reportan al considerar tareas y Cláusulas Relativas Recuperadas ). El análisis de incidencia de variables poblacionales según tareas reporta diferencias significativas entre NSE Medio y Bajo para las CRREP. Los resultados permiten inferir que el uso infantil de CR no es una condición unicausal, ni completamente acreditable a la incidencia de factores poblacionales sino que es el resultado de la interacción entre condiciones poblacionales, lingüísticas, pragmáticointeraccionales y cognitivas. (shrink)

According to usage‐based approaches to language acquisition, linguistic knowledge is represented in the form of constructions—form‐meaning pairings—at multiple levels of abstraction and complexity. The emergence of syntactic knowledge is assumed to be a result of the gradual abstraction of lexically specific and item‐based linguistic knowledge. In this article, we explore how the gradual emergence of a network consisting of constructions at varying degrees of complexity can be modeled computationally. Linguistic knowledge is learned by observing natural language utterances in an ambiguous (...) context. To determine meanings of constructions starting from ambiguous contexts, we rely on the principle of cross‐situational learning. While this mechanism has been implemented in several computational models, these models typically focus on learning mappings between words and referents. In contrast, in our model, we show how cross‐situational learning can be applied consistently to learn correspondences between form and meaning beyond such simple correspondences. (shrink)

The computations involved in statistical learning have long been debated. Here, we build on work suggesting that a basic memory process, chunking, may account for the processing of statistical regularities into larger units. Drawing on methods from the memory literature, we developed a novel paradigm to test statistical learning by leveraging a robust phenomenon observed in serial recall tasks: that short‐term memory is fundamentally shaped by long‐term distributional learning. In the statistically induced chunking recall (SICR) task, participants are exposed to (...) an artificial language, using a standard statistical learning exposure phase. Afterward, they recall strings of syllables that either follow the statistics of the artificial language or comprise the same syllables presented in a random order. We hypothesized that if individuals had chunked the artificial language into word‐like units, then the statistically structured items would be more accurately recalled relative to the random controls. Our results demonstrate that SICR effectively captures learning in both the auditory and visual modalities, with participants displaying significantly improved recall of the statistically structured items, and even recall specific trigram chunks from the input. SICR also exhibits greater test–retest reliability in the auditory modality and sensitivity to individual differences in both modalities than the standard two‐alternative forced‐choice task. These results thereby provide key empirical support to the chunking account of statistical learning and contribute a valuable new tool to the literature. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 206 Seiten: 89-108.

Complex-transitive argument structures have received a large amount of attention from syntacticians of both formalist and cognitive-functional orientations. To account for expressions with causative resultative meanings, construction grammar has postulated a family of argument-structure constructions whose core is constituted by the Caused-Motion Construction and the Resultative Construction, exhibiting a locative complement and a predicative complement in the form of an AjP, respectively. Argument structures with NP complements, however, have been largely neglected. The present study investigates these patterns in the International (...) Corpus of English (ICE-GB) by means “collostruction analysis”. It shows that the formal distinction between AjP and NP complements corresponds to a constructional distinction hitherto unrevealed, viz. that between the Resultative Construction and another argument-structure construction, here called the “Denominative Construction”. Apart from improving existing descriptions of the network of complex-transitive argument-structure constructions, this study demonstrates that collostruction analysis can be employed in an exploratory way to discover constructions. (shrink)

Resumen: En este artículo se presentan y discuten los resultados preliminares de una investigación en torno a la competencia lingüístico-comunicativa en mapuzungun de niños procedentes de una zona reconocida por su alta vitalidad lingüística. La muestra del estudio se compone de 34 niños mapuches, de 6 a 10 años. Los datos se recogieron mediante la aplicación de un instrumento de medición directa, realizada individualmente en dependencias de la escuela rural a la que asisten los participantes. Los resultados generales muestran que (...) la competencia en la lengua es de un bajo nivel, y que el desempeño es mejor en comprensión que en producción. Se destacan cuatro casos que presentan niveles de competencia media o alta, y que corresponden a niños de mayor edad. Se discuten las implicaciones de estos resultados a la luz de los procesos de adquisición y transmisión intergeneracional del mapuzungun.: This article presents and discusses the preliminary results of an investigation about the linguistic and communicative competence in mapuzungun of children from an area renowned for its high linguistic vitality. The sample consists of 34 Mapuche children between 6 and 10 years of age. Data were collected through the application of a direct measurement instrument. The application was carried out individually at the rural school attended by the participants. The overall results show low levels of language proficiency, and performance is better in comprehension than production. Four cases with medium or high level proficiency in mapuzungun, corresponding to older children, were highlighted. The implications of these results in light of the processes of language acquisition and the intergenerational transmission of mapuzungun are discussed. (shrink)

La spécificité de la faculté de langage est l’objet d’une controverse fondamentale entre les représentants de la modularité de l’esprit et spécifiquement d’une grammaire universelle modulaire concernée seulement par la modélisation de la compétence linguistique — communément désignés comme "formalistes" — et les défenseurs d’une vision fonctionaliste dont la dominante peut être pragmatique ou cognitive. Le propos de cet article est en premier lieu d’éclairer le débat épistémologique entre fonctionalisme et formalisme en linguistique. Puis, après avoir évoqué brièvement la corrélation (...) entre les universaux cognitifs et les universaux du langage, je présenterai les arguments de chercheurs d’orientation fonctionaliste sur l’innéité des propriétés du langage et sur le ‘paradoxe’ de l’acquisition des structures linguistiques selon Jackendoff, avant d’évoquer deux tentatives de simulation par réseaux neuronaux de l’ontogénèse du langage et de la transmission des langues. La première concerne la constitution et la stabilisation de la syntaxe de la transitivité et de la relativisation, la seconde illustre la nécessité de prendre en compte les exigences communicationnelles du locuteur et celles de l’allocutaire pour simuler la transmission efficace de signes linguistiques entre deux générations de locuteurs. (shrink)