Cross-situational language learning : the effects of grammatical categories as constraints on referential labeling

Padraic Monaghan, Karen Mattock

    Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperConference Paperpeer-review

    Abstract

    ![CDATA[Infants learn to map words onto situations, even though there is a bewildering array of potential referents for each word in their environment. Previous studies of cross-situational learning have shown that learning correspondences between words and referents is possible, when all words refer to objects. However, in child-directed speech, the infants’ primary input is more complex as it comprises multi-word utterances from different grammatical categories, some of which do not form word-object pairings. In study 1, we confirmed in corpus analyses of child-directed speech that utterances typically contain words from several different grammatical categories. In study 2 we confirmed that participants could still learn from cross-situational statistics when (1) the language also incorporated words that did not refer to objects, and (2) when the language additionally contained function words that marked the referring and nonreferring words. Cross-situational learning is robust to grammatical categories in acquiring word-object pairings.]]
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationProceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society 2009 (CogSci 2009), 29 July - 1 August, 2009, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
    PublisherCognitive Science Society
    Pages2226-2231
    Number of pages6
    ISBN (Print)9780976831853
    Publication statusPublished - 2009
    EventAnnual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society -
    Duration: 29 Jul 2009 → …

    Conference

    ConferenceAnnual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
    Period29/07/09 → …

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