The marker hypothesis : a constructivist theory of language acquisition
This thesis presents a theory of the early stages of first language acquisition. Language is characterised as constituting an instructional environment - diachronic change in the language serves to maintain and enhance sources of structural marking which act as salient cues that guide the development of linguistic representations in the childâs brain. Language learning is characterised as a constructivist process in which the underlying grammatical representation and modular structure arise out of developmental processes. In particular, I investigate the role of closed-class elements in language which obtain salience through their high occurrence frequency and which serve to both label and segment useful grammatical units. I adopt an inter-disciplinary approach which encompasses analyses of child language and agrammatic speech, psycholinguistic data, the development of an developmental linguistic theory based on the Dependency Grammar formalism, and a number of computational investigations of spoken language corpora. I conclude that language development is highly interactionist and that in trying to understand the processes involved in learning we must begin with the child and not with the end-point of adult
Pake, James Michael
The marker hypothesis : a constructivist theory of language acquisition. This thesis presents a theory of the early stages of first language acquisition. Language is characterised as constituting an instructional environment - diachronic change in the language serves to maintain and enhance sources of structural marking which act as salient cues that guide the development of linguistic representations in the childâs brain. Language learning is characterised as a constructivist process in which the underlying grammatical representation and modular structure arise out of developmental processes. In particular, I investigate the role of closed-class elements in language which obtain salience through their high occurrence frequency and which serve to both label and segment useful grammatical units. I adopt an inter-disciplinary approach which encompasses analyses of child language and agrammatic speech, psycholinguistic data, the development of an developmental linguistic theory based on the Dependency Grammar formalism, and a number of computational investigations of spoken language corpora. I conclude that language development is highly interactionist and that in trying to understand the processes involved in learning we must begin with the child and not with the end-point of adult
marker hypothesis constructivist theory language_acquisition present theory early_stage first_language_acquisition language characterise constitute instructional environment diachronic_change language serve maintain enhance source structural mark act salient cue guide development linguistic representation child brain language_learn characterised constructivist process_underlie grammatical representation modular structure arise developmental process particular investigate_role closed class element language obtain salience high occurrence frequency serve label segment useful grammatical unit adopt inter_disciplinary encompasses analyse child language speech psycholinguistic data development developmental linguistic_theory base dependency_grammar formalism number computational investigation speak_language corpus conclude language development highly try process_involve learn must begin child end_point adult