From pcnorton at yahoo.com Mon Jul 2 16:06:28 2007 From: pcnorton at yahoo.com (Pam Norton) Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2007 09:06:28 -0700 Subject: Coding AAE features with Language Sample Transcription Programs In-Reply-To: <57601.698@mail.talkbank.org> Message-ID: Hello folks, I am re-checking phonological and grammatical features I have coded on language samples of AAE-speakers ages 4 to 7:5 and I want to have a good way to track all the features so that I can select sub-groups of them for analysis purposes. What has worked for others facing this task? I have transcriptions in SALT already and I'm told they can be transferred into CLAN files. Pros and cons of using either one? Thanks so much, Pam Norton, ABD, M.S., CCC-SLP University of California at Berkeley & San Francisco State University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bera at ozemail.com.au Wed Jul 4 05:47:56 2007 From: bera at ozemail.com.au (Maria Berarducci) Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2007 15:47:56 +1000 Subject: Coding AAE features with Language Sample Transcription Programs In-Reply-To: <272996.57741.qm@web81410.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Hi I also have a large number of transcriptions in SALT already and I would like to transfer them into CHAT format for CLAN. Although I've accessed the CLAN manual and had a go I still wasn't able to successfully transfer my files. I was wanting to use the VOCD utility to apply D. Is there any step by step guide for "dummies". Any suggestions welcomed. Many thanks, Maria -----Original Message----- From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org [mailto:info-childes at mail.talkbank.org] On Behalf Of Pam Norton Sent: Tuesday, 3 July 2007 2:06 AM To: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org Subject: Coding AAE features with Language Sample Transcription Programs Hello folks, I am re-checking phonological and grammatical features I have coded on language samples of AAE-speakers ages 4 to 7:5 and I want to have a good way to track all the features so that I can select sub-groups of them for analysis purposes. What has worked for others facing this task? I have transcriptions in SALT already and I'm told they can be transferred into CLAN files. Pros and cons of using either one? Thanks so much, Pam Norton, ABD, M.S., CCC-SLP University of California at Berkeley & San Francisco State University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From amanda-owen at uiowa.edu Thu Jul 5 13:01:27 2007 From: amanda-owen at uiowa.edu (Owen, Amanda J) Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2007 08:01:27 -0500 Subject: Coding AAE features with Language Sample Transcription Programs In-Reply-To: <000001c7bdfe$dfe7ed10$0202a8c0@MARIA> Message-ID: Hi, I believe there is a utility termed SALTIN that worked prior to the unicode conversion and made the process of transfer possible. You still had to handcheck non-standard SALT codes and unintelligible utterances for conversion (e.g. CHAT only accepts xxx whereas SALT uses 1 x per syllable). I haven't had any success with it since the unicode conversion. It's currently easier to convert from CHAT to SALT and, if you are using the research version, SALT has pretty powerful search tools. It doesn't have VOCD - but it does allow a variety of ways to standardize transcripts in terms of length, allowing for use of NDR and TNW. If you get to the point of applying D, feel free to email me for tips and thoughts about interpretation. Laura DeThorne is also quite familiar with the program and its application to a large number of transcripts. Amanda Amanda J. Owen Ph.D. CCC-SLP amanda-owen at uiowa.edu 121A WJSHC Dept of Speech Pathology & Audiology University of Iowa Iowa City, IA 52242 319-335-6951 ________________________________ From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org [mailto:info-childes at mail.talkbank.org] On Behalf Of Maria Berarducci Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2007 12:48 AM To: 'Pam Norton'; info-childes at mail.talkbank.org Subject: RE: Coding AAE features with Language Sample Transcription Programs Hi I also have a large number of transcriptions in SALT already and I would like to transfer them into CHAT format for CLAN. Although I've accessed the CLAN manual and had a go I still wasn't able to successfully transfer my files. I was wanting to use the VOCD utility to apply D. Is there any step by step guide for "dummies". Any suggestions welcomed. Many thanks, Maria -----Original Message----- From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org [mailto:info-childes at mail.talkbank.org] On Behalf Of Pam Norton Sent: Tuesday, 3 July 2007 2:06 AM To: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org Subject: Coding AAE features with Language Sample Transcription Programs Hello folks, I am re-checking phonological and grammatical features I have coded on language samples of AAE-speakers ages 4 to 7:5 and I want to have a good way to track all the features so that I can select sub-groups of them for analysis purposes. What has worked for others facing this task? I have transcriptions in SALT already and I'm told they can be transferred into CLAN files. Pros and cons of using either one? Thanks so much, Pam Norton, ABD, M.S., CCC-SLP University of California at Berkeley & San Francisco State University From kirsten.abbot-smith at plymouth.ac.uk Thu Jul 5 13:30:04 2007 From: kirsten.abbot-smith at plymouth.ac.uk (Kirsten Abbot-Smith) Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2007 14:30:04 +0100 Subject: BPS Developmental Programme Message-ID: BPS Developmental Conference (University of Plymouth, 29th-31st August 2007) The website of the conference http://www.bpsdevsec07.org has now been updated with the details of conference schedule. The titles for the keynote speakers are: Annette Karmiloff-Smith Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development School of Psychology Birkbeck, University of London "Understanding disorders of mind and brain: The necessity of a developmental perspective" Jay Belsky Institute for the Study of Children, Families and Social Issues Birkbeck, University of London "The Development of Evolutionary psychology of intergenerational transmission of attachment" Henry Markovits Department of Psychology University of Quebec at Montreal "The development of abstract reasoning" Details of the registration fee(s) are available on the Conference website at http://www.bpsdevsec07.org/default.asp?page=register Dr. Kirsten Abbot-Smith School of Psychology University of Plymouth B213 Portland Square Drake Circus Plymouth PL4 8AA UK Tel: +44 1752 233152 www.plymouth.ac.uk/staff/kabbotsmith -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pcomp at hunter.cuny.edu Thu Jul 5 14:19:56 2007 From: pcomp at hunter.cuny.edu (pcomp at hunter.cuny.edu) Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2007 10:19:56 -0400 Subject: Call for Participation: PsychoCompLA-2007 Message-ID: ************* Call for Participation ************** Psychocomputational Models of Human Language Acquisition PsychoCompLA-2007 http://www.colag.cs.hunter.cuny.edu/psychocomp/ August 1st at CogSci 2007 - Nashville, Tennessee Workshop Topic: The workshop is devoted to psychologically-motivated computational models of language acquisition. That is, models that are compatible with research in psycholinguistics, developmental psychology and linguistics. Program: * Elissa Newport, University of Rochester Statistical language learning: Computational and maturational constraints * Shimon Edelman, Cornell University The next challenges in unsupervised language acquisition: dependencies and complex sentences * Robert Frank, Johns Hopkins University Transformational Networks * Alex Clark, Royal Holloway University of London Learnable representations of languages: something old and something new * Charles Yang, University of Pennsylvania The next challenges in unsupervised language acquisition: dependencies and complex sentences * Robert C. Berwick, MIT & Sandiway Fong, University of Arizona The Great (Penn Treebank) Robbery: When statistics is not enough * Amy Perfors, MIT, Terry Regier, University of Chicago & Josh Tenenbaum, MIT Indirect evidence and the poverty of the stimulus * Dave Cochran, University of St. Andrews Selective Attention and Darwinised Data-Oriented Parsing * Garrett Mitchener, College of Charleston & Misha Becker, University of North Carolina A computational model of learning verb subclasses in natural L1 acquisition * Sharon Goldwater, Stanford University Distributional Models of Syntactic Category Acquisition: a Comparative Analysis * Marco Tamburelli, University College London Are set-theoretic concepts still useful to children? * Nicole Sager, Seth Herd & Eliana Colunga, University of Colorado at Boulder Modeling the Development of Bilingual and Second Language Reading * Andrew Olney, University of Memphis Semantic Heads for Grammar Induction Workshop Description: This workshop will present research and foster discussion centered around psychologically-motivated computational models of language acquisition, with an emphasis on the acquisition of syntax. In recent decades there has been a thriving research agenda that applies computational learning techniques to emerging natural language technologies and many meetings, conferences and workshops in which to present such research. However, there have been only a few (but growing number of) venues in which psychocomputational models of how humans acquire their native language(s) are the primary focus. By psychocomputational models we mean models that are compatible with, or might inform research in psycholinguistics, developmental psychology or linguistics. Psychocomputational models of language acquisition are of particular interest in light of recent results in developmental psychology that suggest that very young infants are adept at detecting statistical patterns in an audible input stream. Though, how children might plausibly apply statistical 'machinery' to the task of grammar acquisition, with or without an innate language component, remains an open and important question. One effective line of investigation is to computationally model the acquisition process and determine interrelationships between a model and linguistic or psycholinguistic theory, and/or correlations between a model's performance and data from linguistic environments that children are exposed to. Although there has been a significant amount of presented research targeted at modeling the acquisition of word categories, morphology and phonology, research aimed at modeling syntax acquisition has just begun to emerge. Workshop History: This is the third meeting of the Psychocomputational Models of Human Language Acquisition workshop following PsychoCompLA-2004, held in Geneva, Switzerland as part of the 20th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING 2004) and PsychoCompLA-2005 as part of the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-2005) held in Ann Arbor, Michigan where the workshop shared a joint session with the Ninth Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning (CoNLL-2005). Workshop Organizers: William Gregory Sakas, City University of New York (sakas at hunter.cuny.edu) David Guy Brizan, City University of New York (dbrizan at gc.cuny.edu) Topics and Goals: This workshop intends to bring together researchers from cognitive psychology, computational linguistics, other computer/mathematical sciences, linguistics and psycholinguistics working on all areas of language acquisition. Diversity and cross-fertilization of ideas is the central goal. Contact: Psycho.Comp at hunter.cuny.edu From katie at psych.ubc.ca Sun Jul 8 15:16:54 2007 From: katie at psych.ubc.ca (Katherine Yoshida) Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2007 11:16:54 -0400 Subject: ICIS 2008 Vancouver Message-ID: Abstracts are now being accepted for ICIS 2008. The deadline for submissions is 30 September 2007. Thursday, March 27, 2007- Saturday, March 29, 2008 XVIth Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada email: iciscoord at psych.ubc.ca link: http://www.isisweb.org/ Many thanks, Christie Michailopoulos on behalf of Drs. Janet Werker and Ron Barr, conference co-chairs -- Christie Michailopoulos Conference Coordinator XVIth Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies Vancouver, BC, Canada iciscoord at psych.ubc.ca tel: 604.827.5491 From wolter at eva.mpg.de Mon Jul 9 11:11:02 2007 From: wolter at eva.mpg.de (wolter at eva.mpg.de) Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2007 13:11:02 +0200 Subject: corpus situation analysis Message-ID: Dear child language researchers, I'm trying to create a coding scheme to analyze corpus data for situations and activities child and parents are involved in, e.g. vocal play, physical play, book reading, eating etc., and I wonder if anyone of you has done such an analysis already or knows of any study that might be of help for a convenient categorization? Thanks Kristin ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program. From t.marinis at reading.ac.uk Wed Jul 11 18:58:57 2007 From: t.marinis at reading.ac.uk (Theodoros Marinis) Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 19:58:57 +0100 Subject: Child Language Seminar 2007 - programme Message-ID: The programme of Child Language Seminar 2007 is now available on-line in the link below: http://www.rdg.ac.uk/cls/programme.html ****************************************************************** Child Language Seminar 2007 - 30th Anniversary 18-20 July 2007 University of Reading, England http://www.reading.ac.uk/cls/cls2007.html ****************************************************************** v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^ Dr Theodoros Marinis School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences University of Reading Reading RG6 6AL, UK Tel. +44-118-378 7465 Fax +44-118-378 4693 http://www.rdg.ac.uk/cls/marinis.html v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From joko.k at telkom.net Fri Jul 13 06:52:55 2007 From: joko.k at telkom.net (Joko-Kusmanto) Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2007 13:52:55 +0700 Subject: inter-innateness interaction Message-ID: Dear all, Would anybody here please help me provide some explanations relating to my problem as follow. Currently I’m looking at the argument structure in children’s language from 2 – 5 years old. When I compare the verb types found in children’s production and in children directed speech (CDS), I found that they have the same proportion. I classify two basic verb types, i.e. (i) verb with Agent-like as Subject and (ii) verb with no Agent-like as Subject. The first verb type assigns directly, thus govern the theta role, the Object as Patient-like and the second verb type does not assigns, thus doesn’t govern the theta role, the Object. It seems to me that the same proportion of the 1st verb type and the 2nd verb type in the children’s production and in CDS provide an insight how language acquisition is possible. This proportion brings me to a conclusion that the proportion of the 1st and the 2nd verb type in children’s production and in CDS is the picture of the innate properties by which language acquisition is possible. The children’s production is a picture of pre-linguistic innate properties (not yet in form of lingual realization) and the CDS is a picture of linguistic innate properties (already in lingual realization). Thus, language acquisition is possible in the interaction between the mechanism of the pre-linguistic innate properties and the linguistic innate properties as triggering environment. I would say that this is an inter-innateness interaction in language acquisition. I assume here that CDS is constrained by the linguistic-innate properties which bring on a regular linguistic environment and that the poverty of stimulus does not really mean that the linguistic environment is random. Would it be possible to be like that? Thank you all for your explanations. Joko Kusmanto Postgraduate Student of Linguistics Universitas Sebelas Maret – Surakarta Indonesia ======================================================================================= Bosan dengan email yang biasa?? Ayo cobain kirim email diiringi musik dengan bergabung di Music Mail Telkom.net (http://www.telkom.net/mm_seputar.php), dijamin kirim email terasa lebih menyenangkan. Jadi tunggu apalagi buruan cobain beremail dengan Music Mail!! ======================================================================================= From slornat at psi.ucm.es Fri Jul 13 09:42:58 2007 From: slornat at psi.ucm.es (Susana Lopez Ornat) Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2007 11:42:58 +0200 Subject: inter-innateness interaction Message-ID: Joko: maybe you should consider this: if, and only if, the empirical evidence you have really, thoroughly, uncontrovertedly, supported those results** you mention, then you would have strong evidence against the non-innateness of the language learning system. You might want to give a thought to this. Susana López Ornat Dpto Psicología Básica II Facultad de Psicología Universidad Complutense de Madrid Madrid 28223 www.ucm.es/info/equial **: I refer to this paragraph: "It seems to me that the same proportion of the 1st verb type and the 2nd verb type in the children's production and in CDS provide an insight how language acquisition is possible" ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joko-Kusmanto" To: Sent: Friday, July 13, 2007 8:52 AM Subject: inter-innateness interaction > Dear all, > > Would anybody here please help me provide some explanations relating to my > problem as follow. > Currently I'm looking at the argument structure in children's language > from 2 - 5 years old. When I compare the verb types found in children's > production and in children directed speech (CDS), I found that they have > the same proportion. I classify two basic verb types, i.e. (i) verb with > Agent-like as Subject and (ii) verb with no Agent-like as Subject. The > first verb type assigns directly, thus govern the theta role, the Object > as Patient-like and the second verb type does not assigns, thus doesn't > govern the theta role, the Object. It seems to me that the same proportion > of the 1st verb type and the 2nd verb type in the children's production > and in CDS provide an insight how language acquisition is possible. This > proportion brings me to a conclusion that the proportion of the 1st and > the 2nd verb type in children's production and in CDS is the picture of > the innate properties by which language acquisition is possible. The > children's production is a picture of pre-linguistic innate properties > (not yet in form of lingual realization) and the CDS is a picture of > linguistic innate properties (already in lingual realization). Thus, > language acquisition is possible in the interaction between the mechanism > of the pre-linguistic innate properties and the linguistic innate > properties as triggering environment. I would say that this is an > inter-innateness interaction in language acquisition. I assume here that > CDS is constrained by the linguistic-innate properties which bring on a > regular linguistic environment and that the poverty of stimulus does not > really mean that the linguistic environment is random. Would it be > possible to be like that? > > Thank you all for your explanations. > > Joko Kusmanto > Postgraduate Student of Linguistics > Universitas Sebelas Maret - Surakarta > Indonesia > > > ======================================================================================== > Bosan dengan email yang biasa?? > Ayo cobain kirim email diiringi musik dengan bergabung di Music Mail > Telkom.net (http://www.telkom.net/mm_seputar.php), dijamin kirim email > terasa lebih menyenangkan. Jadi tunggu apalagi buruan cobain beremail > dengan Music Mail!! > ======================================================================================== > From msninio at pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il Fri Jul 13 14:55:32 2007 From: msninio at pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il (Anat Ninio) Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2007 17:55:32 +0300 Subject: inter-innateness interaction In-Reply-To: <000901c7c532$32452f20$22c76093@pcsusana2> Message-ID: Dear Joko, If I may paraphrase your message, you found a strong match between the proportion of transitive and intransitive verbs in children's speech and the proportions of the same in child-directed speech. As Susana Lopez Ornat suggested, such a finding is best interpreted as reflecting learning processes, not innate properties of language. Certainly the speech of children between 2 and 5 years of age cannot be easily taken as reflecting prelinguistic features, as they already speak at this point for several years. Why not consider that children actually learn to speak from the speech of others in their linguistic environment? Your own results join many others that show strong environmental influences on the global characteristics of children's speech, and as such, are a welcome addition to the empiricist literature. Anat Ninio Susana Lopez Ornat wrote: > Joko: maybe you should consider this: if, and only if, the empirical > evidence you have really, thoroughly, uncontrovertedly, supported > those results** you mention, then you would have strong evidence > against the non-innateness of the language learning system. > You might want to give a thought to this. > > Susana López Ornat > Dpto Psicología Básica II > Facultad de Psicología > Universidad Complutense de Madrid > Madrid 28223 > www.ucm.es/info/equial > > **: I refer to this paragraph: "It seems to me that the same > proportion of the 1st verb type and the 2nd verb type in the > children's production and in CDS provide an insight how language > acquisition is possible" > > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joko-Kusmanto" > To: > Sent: Friday, July 13, 2007 8:52 AM > Subject: inter-innateness interaction > > >> Dear all, >> >> Would anybody here please help me provide some explanations relating >> to my problem as follow. >> Currently I'm looking at the argument structure in children's >> language from 2 - 5 years old. When I compare the verb types found in >> children's production and in children directed speech (CDS), I found >> that they have the same proportion. I classify two basic verb types, >> i.e. (i) verb with Agent-like as Subject and (ii) verb with no >> Agent-like as Subject. The first verb type assigns directly, thus >> govern the theta role, the Object as Patient-like and the second verb >> type does not assigns, thus doesn't govern the theta role, the >> Object. It seems to me that the same proportion of the 1st verb type >> and the 2nd verb type in the children's production and in CDS provide >> an insight how language acquisition is possible. This proportion >> brings me to a conclusion that the proportion of the 1st and the 2nd >> verb type in children's production and in CDS is the picture of the >> innate properties by which language acquisition is possible. The >> children's production is a picture of pre-linguistic innate >> properties (not yet in form of lingual realization) and the CDS is a >> picture of linguistic innate properties (already in lingual >> realization). Thus, language acquisition is possible in the >> interaction between the mechanism of the pre-linguistic innate >> properties and the linguistic innate properties as triggering >> environment. I would say that this is an inter-innateness interaction >> in language acquisition. I assume here that CDS is constrained by the >> linguistic-innate properties which bring on a regular linguistic >> environment and that the poverty of stimulus does not really mean >> that the linguistic environment is random. Would it be possible to be >> like that? >> >> Thank you all for your explanations. >> >> Joko Kusmanto >> Postgraduate Student of Linguistics >> Universitas Sebelas Maret - Surakarta >> Indonesia >> >> >> ======================================================================================== >> >> Bosan dengan email yang biasa?? >> Ayo cobain kirim email diiringi musik dengan bergabung di Music Mail >> Telkom.net (http://www.telkom.net/mm_seputar.php), dijamin kirim >> email terasa lebih menyenangkan. Jadi tunggu apalagi buruan cobain >> beremail dengan Music Mail!! >> ======================================================================================== >> >> > > > From dalep at unm.edu Fri Jul 13 15:00:13 2007 From: dalep at unm.edu (Philip Dale) Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2007 09:00:13 -0600 Subject: inter-innateness interaction In-Reply-To: <46979264.2060208@pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il> Message-ID: Dear Joko and colleagues, It seems to me that this interchange already provides a good example of something that needs to be more generally acknowledged: correlations between parent input and child language are overdetermined; that is, there are a good many mechanisms that might lead to them, including both genetic/innate and environmental/learning ones. As interesting as they are, they do not by themselves settle any major questions; they are just very useful pieces of the puzzle. Philip Dale -----Original Message----- From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org [mailto:info-childes at mail.talkbank.org] On Behalf Of Anat Ninio Sent: Friday, July 13, 2007 8:56 AM To: Joko-Kusmanto Cc: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org; Uri Hershberg Subject: Re: inter-innateness interaction Dear Joko, If I may paraphrase your message, you found a strong match between the proportion of transitive and intransitive verbs in children's speech and the proportions of the same in child-directed speech. As Susana Lopez Ornat suggested, such a finding is best interpreted as reflecting learning processes, not innate properties of language. Certainly the speech of children between 2 and 5 years of age cannot be easily taken as reflecting prelinguistic features, as they already speak at this point for several years. Why not consider that children actually learn to speak from the speech of others in their linguistic environment? Your own results join many others that show strong environmental influences on the global characteristics of children's speech, and as such, are a welcome addition to the empiricist literature. Anat Ninio Susana Lopez Ornat wrote: > Joko: maybe you should consider this: if, and only if, the empirical > evidence you have really, thoroughly, uncontrovertedly, supported > those results** you mention, then you would have strong evidence > against the non-innateness of the language learning system. > You might want to give a thought to this. > > Susana López Ornat > Dpto Psicología Básica II > Facultad de Psicología > Universidad Complutense de Madrid > Madrid 28223 > www.ucm.es/info/equial > > **: I refer to this paragraph: "It seems to me that the same > proportion of the 1st verb type and the 2nd verb type in the > children's production and in CDS provide an insight how language > acquisition is possible" > > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joko-Kusmanto" > To: > Sent: Friday, July 13, 2007 8:52 AM > Subject: inter-innateness interaction > > >> Dear all, >> >> Would anybody here please help me provide some explanations relating >> to my problem as follow. >> Currently I'm looking at the argument structure in children's >> language from 2 - 5 years old. When I compare the verb types found in >> children's production and in children directed speech (CDS), I found >> that they have the same proportion. I classify two basic verb types, >> i.e. (i) verb with Agent-like as Subject and (ii) verb with no >> Agent-like as Subject. The first verb type assigns directly, thus >> govern the theta role, the Object as Patient-like and the second verb >> type does not assigns, thus doesn't govern the theta role, the >> Object. It seems to me that the same proportion of the 1st verb type >> and the 2nd verb type in the children's production and in CDS provide >> an insight how language acquisition is possible. This proportion >> brings me to a conclusion that the proportion of the 1st and the 2nd >> verb type in children's production and in CDS is the picture of the >> innate properties by which language acquisition is possible. The >> children's production is a picture of pre-linguistic innate >> properties (not yet in form of lingual realization) and the CDS is a >> picture of linguistic innate properties (already in lingual >> realization). Thus, language acquisition is possible in the >> interaction between the mechanism of the pre-linguistic innate >> properties and the linguistic innate properties as triggering >> environment. I would say that this is an inter-innateness interaction >> in language acquisition. I assume here that CDS is constrained by the >> linguistic-innate properties which bring on a regular linguistic >> environment and that the poverty of stimulus does not really mean >> that the linguistic environment is random. Would it be possible to be >> like that? >> >> Thank you all for your explanations. >> >> Joko Kusmanto >> Postgraduate Student of Linguistics >> Universitas Sebelas Maret - Surakarta >> Indonesia >> >> >> =========================================================================== ============ >> >> Bosan dengan email yang biasa?? >> Ayo cobain kirim email diiringi musik dengan bergabung di Music Mail >> Telkom.net (http://www.telkom.net/mm_seputar.php), dijamin kirim >> email terasa lebih menyenangkan. Jadi tunggu apalagi buruan cobain >> beremail dengan Music Mail!! >> =========================================================================== ============ >> >> > > > From mei.lin at newcastle.ac.uk Fri Jul 13 16:43:27 2007 From: mei.lin at newcastle.ac.uk (Mei Lin) Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2007 17:43:27 +0100 Subject: Early stages of language acquisiton of early bilingual children Message-ID: Hi, Two of my students are working with bilingual children of 2 - 5 years old, looking at their acquisiton of English as a second/foreign language. In both cases, parents' first language is not English. The students have collected some data and found some interesting findings. For instance, my students found that after three months after listenting to stories books or in nursery the children can remember or say 'look at the picture', 'tough me' at right situations. They can sing with the CD. They would like to compare theirs with similar data outthere. Any information on the initial stages of bilingual acquisition, information on develping stages and features/examples would be highly appreciated. Thanks Mei From k1n at psu.edu Fri Jul 13 19:21:53 2007 From: k1n at psu.edu (Keith Nelson) Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2007 15:21:53 -0400 Subject: inter-innateness interaction In-Reply-To: <001a01c7c55e$83fecca0$fed91881@DC48F5B1> Message-ID: Dear Joko and colleagues, As comments already indicate it is very reasonable to take seriously not only innate biological factors but the multiple ways in which children learn from their environment. It is also very important to keep in mind that overall proportions in a sample of mothers of children do not create an average THE MOTHER or THE CHILD that should receive theoretical interpretation. Instead individual children vary tremendously and so do individual sources of input such as mothers, siblings, fathers, and daycare/preschool personnel that the particular child actually interacts with. Our work and that of many others demonstrates how in experimental causative designs it is possible to see how individual children have been caused to acquire particular structures by both prototypical and unprototypical input patterns that carry structural challenges of many types for the individual children. Keith Nelson At 9:00 AM -0600 7/13/07, Philip Dale wrote: >Dear Joko and colleagues, > >It seems to me that this interchange already provides a good example of >something that needs to be more generally acknowledged: correlations between >parent input and child language are overdetermined; that is, there are a >good many mechanisms that might lead to them, including both genetic/innate >and environmental/learning ones. As interesting as they are, they do not by >themselves settle any major questions; they are just very useful pieces of >the puzzle. > >Philip Dale > >-----Original Message----- >From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org [mailto:info-childes at mail.talkbank.org] >On Behalf Of Anat Ninio >Sent: Friday, July 13, 2007 8:56 AM >To: Joko-Kusmanto >Cc: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org; Uri Hershberg >Subject: Re: inter-innateness interaction > >Dear Joko, > >If I may paraphrase your message, you found a strong match between the >proportion of transitive and intransitive verbs in children's speech and >the proportions of the same in child-directed speech. As Susana Lopez >Ornat suggested, such a finding is best interpreted as reflecting >learning processes, not innate properties of language. Certainly the >speech of children between 2 and 5 years of age cannot be easily taken >as reflecting prelinguistic features, as they already speak at this >point for several years. Why not consider that children actually learn >to speak from the speech of others in their linguistic environment? Your >own results join many others that show strong environmental influences >on the global characteristics of children's speech, and as such, are a >welcome addition to the empiricist literature. > >Anat Ninio > > >Susana Lopez Ornat wrote: >> Joko: maybe you should consider this: if, and only if, the empirical >> evidence you have really, thoroughly, uncontrovertedly, supported >> those results** you mention, then you would have strong evidence >> against the non-innateness of the language learning system. >> You might want to give a thought to this. >> >> Susana López Ornat >> Dpto Psicología Básica II >> Facultad de Psicología >> Universidad Complutense de Madrid >> Madrid 28223 >> www.ucm.es/info/equial >> >> **: I refer to this paragraph: "It seems to me that the same >> proportion of the 1st verb type and the 2nd verb type in the >> children's production and in CDS provide an insight how language >> acquisition is possible" >> >> >> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joko-Kusmanto" >> To: > > Sent: Friday, July 13, 2007 8:52 AM > > Subject: inter-innateness interaction >> >> >>> Dear all, >>> >>> Would anybody here please help me provide some explanations relating >>> to my problem as follow. >>> Currently I'm looking at the argument structure in children's >>> language from 2 - 5 years old. When I compare the verb types found in >>> children's production and in children directed speech (CDS), I found > >> that they have the same proportion. I classify two basic verb types, >>> i.e. (i) verb with Agent-like as Subject and (ii) verb with no >>> Agent-like as Subject. The first verb type assigns directly, thus >>> govern the theta role, the Object as Patient-like and the second verb >>> type does not assigns, thus doesn't govern the theta role, the >>> Object. It seems to me that the same proportion of the 1st verb type >>> and the 2nd verb type in the children's production and in CDS provide >>> an insight how language acquisition is possible. This proportion >>> brings me to a conclusion that the proportion of the 1st and the 2nd >>> verb type in children's production and in CDS is the picture of the >>> innate properties by which language acquisition is possible. The >>> children's production is a picture of pre-linguistic innate >>> properties (not yet in form of lingual realization) and the CDS is a >>> picture of linguistic innate properties (already in lingual >>> realization). Thus, language acquisition is possible in the >>> interaction between the mechanism of the pre-linguistic innate >>> properties and the linguistic innate properties as triggering >>> environment. I would say that this is an inter-innateness interaction >>> in language acquisition. I assume here that CDS is constrained by the >>> linguistic-innate properties which bring on a regular linguistic >>> environment and that the poverty of stimulus does not really mean >>> that the linguistic environment is random. Would it be possible to be >>> like that? >>> >>> Thank you all for your explanations. >>> >>> Joko Kusmanto >>> Postgraduate Student of Linguistics >>> Universitas Sebelas Maret - Surakarta >>> Indonesia >>> >>> >>> >============================================================================ >============ >>> >>> Bosan dengan email yang biasa?? >>> Ayo cobain kirim email diiringi musik dengan bergabung di Music Mail >>> Telkom.net (http://www.telkom.net/mm_seputar.php), dijamin kirim >>> email terasa lebih menyenangkan. Jadi tunggu apalagi buruan cobain >>> beremail dengan Music Mail!! >>> >============================================================================ >============ >>> >>> >> >> >> -- Keith Nelson Professor of Psychology Penn State University 423 Moore Building University Park, PA 16802 keithnelsonart at psu.edu 814 863 1747 And what is mind and how is it recognized ? It is clearly drawn in Sumi ink, the sound of breezes drifting through pine. --Ikkyu Sojun Japanese Zen Master 1394-1481 From emily.mather at psy.ox.ac.uk Tue Jul 17 10:03:05 2007 From: emily.mather at psy.ox.ac.uk (Emily Mather) Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 11:03:05 +0100 Subject: Measuring the volume of auditory stimuli Message-ID: An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From pcomp at hunter.cuny.edu Wed Jul 18 03:22:11 2007 From: pcomp at hunter.cuny.edu (pcomp at hunter.cuny.edu) Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 23:22:11 -0400 Subject: PsychocompLA-2007: Final call for participation Message-ID: ************* Call for Participation ************** Psychocomputational Models of Human Language Acquisition PsychoCompLA-2007 http://www.colag.cs.hunter.cuny.edu/psychocomp/ August 1st at CogSci 2007 - Nashville, Tennessee Workshop Topic: The workshop is devoted to psychologically-motivated computational models of language acquisition. That is, models that are compatible with research in psycholinguistics, developmental psychology and linguistics. Invited Speakers: * Elissa Newport, University of Rochester Statistical language learning: Computational and maturational constraints * Shimon Edelman, Cornell University The next challenges in unsupervised language acquisition: dependencies and complex sentences * Robert Frank, Johns Hopkins University Transformational Networks * Alex Clark, Royal Holloway University of London Learnable representations of languages: something old and something new * Charles Yang, University of Pennsylvania The next challenges in unsupervised language acquisition: dependencies and complex sentences * Robert C. Berwick, MIT & Sandiway Fong, University of Arizona The Great (Penn Treebank) Robbery: When statistics is not enough * Amy Perfors, MIT, Terry Regier, University of Chicago & Josh Tenenbaum, MIT Indirect evidence and the poverty of the stimulus * Dave Cochran, University of St. Andrews Selective Attention and Darwinised Data-Oriented Parsing * Garrett Mitchener, College of Charleston & Misha Becker, University of North Carolina A computational model of learning verb subclasses in natural L1 acquisition * Sharon Goldwater, Stanford University Distributional Models of Syntactic Category Acquisition: a Comparative Analysis * Marco Tamburelli, University College London Are set-theoretic concepts still useful to children? * Nicole Sager, Seth Herd & Eliana Colunga, University of Colorado at Boulder Modeling the Development of Bilingual and Second Language Reading * Andrew Olney, University of Memphis Semantic Heads for Grammar Induction Workshop Description: This workshop will present research and foster discussion centered around psychologically-motivated computational models of language acquisition, with an emphasis on the acquisition of syntax. In recent decades there has been a thriving research agenda that applies computational learning techniques to emerging natural language technologies and many meetings, conferences and workshops in which to present such research. However, there have been only a few (but growing number of) venues in which psychocomputational models of how humans acquire their native language(s) are the primary focus. By psychocomputational models we mean models that are compatible with, or might inform research in psycholinguistics, developmental psychology or linguistics. Psychocomputational models of language acquisition are of particular interest in light of recent results in developmental psychology that suggest that very young infants are adept at detecting statistical patterns in an audible input stream. Though, how children might plausibly apply statistical 'machinery' to the task of grammar acquisition, with or without an innate language component, remains an open and important question. One effective line of investigation is to computationally model the acquisition process and determine interrelationships between a model and linguistic or psycholinguistic theory, and/or correlations between a model's performance and data from linguistic environments that children are exposed to. Although there has been a significant amount of presented research targeted at modeling the acquisition of word categories, morphology and phonology, research aimed at modeling syntax acquisition has just begun to emerge. Workshop Organizer: William Gregory Sakas, City University of New York (sakas at hunter.cuny.edu) Workshop Co-organizer: David Guy Brizan, City University of New York (dbrizan at gc.cuny.edu) Topics and Goals: This workshop intends to bring together researchers from cognitive psychology, computational linguistics, other computer/mathematical sciences, linguistics and psycholinguistics working on all areas of language acquisition. Diversity and cross-fertilization of ideas is the central goal. Contact: Psycho.Comp at hunter.cuny.edu FYI, Related 2007 Meetings Machine Learning and Cognitive Science of Language Acquisition 21-22 June, 2007 Cognitive Aspects of Computational Language Acquisition 29 June, 2007 Exemplar-Based Models of Language Acquisition and Use 6-17 August, 2007 From hitomi-murata at mri.biglobe.ne.jp Wed Jul 18 05:35:00 2007 From: hitomi-murata at mri.biglobe.ne.jp (Hitomi Murata) Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 14:35:00 +0900 Subject: TCP 2008: Call for Papers Message-ID: Dear Colleague, The Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies at Keio University will be holding the ninth Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics(TCP2008) on March 14 and 15, 2008. The invited speakers are Dr. Cedric Boeckx (Harvard University) and Dr. Koji Sugisaki (Mie University) We encourage you to submit papers for oral presentation and poster presentation. For details, visit our web site: http://www.otsu.icl.keio.ac.jp/tcp/ ---------------------------------------------------------- The Ninth Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics http://www.otsu.icl.keio.ac.jp Keio University, Mita, Tokyo March 14 & 15, 2008 THE TOKYO CONFERENCE ON PSYCHOLINGUISTICS welcomes papers that represent any scientific endeavor that addresses itself to “Plato’s Problem” concerning language acquisition: “How we can gain a rich linguistic system given our fragmentary and impoverished experience?” Its scope thus includes linguistic theory (phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics), L1 and L2 acquisition, language processing, and the neuroscience of language, among other topics. We believe that there are some types of studies which are suitable for oral presentations, and others, which are suitable for poster presentations. We would like to accept both types of studies at the Conference. The time for an oral presentation will be 20 minutes with a 10 minute discussion period (a total of 30 minutes). There is the possibility that some papers of outstanding quality will be given longer time slots (i.e., a 30 minute presentation with a 15 minute discussion period). Note that, unlike previous conferences, the TCP committee will decide which papers will be allotted to longer slots. Furthermore, the space allotted to a poster presentation will be 90 cm (width) x 180 cm (length). You may submit only one single paper for either an oral or poster presentation and only one joint (co-authored) paper for either an oral or poster presentation. This means that the maximum number of submissions per author is two. (Please note that the same abstract cannot be submitted for both an oral presentation and a poster presentation). No exceptions will be made. The guidelines for the abstract submission are as follows: 1. Only e-mail submissions will be accepted. 2. The abstract must be received by November 30, 2007 by 11:59 pm JST (Japan Standard Time) via e-mail to: tcpabst2008 at otsu.icl.keio.ac.jp. Late submissions will not be accepted. Notification of receipt will be e-mailed to the first author shortly after receipt. 3. The subject of the e-mail should be “abstract”. 4. The body of the e-mail should include: a. the author information (name, affiliation, mailing address, e-mail address, and telephone number; If your paper has multiple authors, provide information regarding all of the co-authors. And,　if you are in Japan, add kanji where relevant.), b. the type of presentation (Oral or Poster), c. the title of paper, d. the language(s) which you are focusing on in your paper, e. the field(s) which your abstract involves (e.g, Morphology, Phonetics, Phonology, Semantics, Syntax, Pragmatics, L1 acquisition, L2 acquisition, Language Processing, Neuroscience of Language, and so on), and f. 3 keywords/phrases that best describe your paper. 5. A PDF file of your abstract in English should be attached to the e-mail. Document files (e.g., MS Word format) cannot be accepted. (If you have any problems in applying by e-mail with a PDF file attachment, do not hesitate to contact us.). 6. Format the files of your abstracts (including bibliography) to A4 paper size, single-spaced, limiting the length to a maximum of 2 pages. Since the abstract, if accepted, will be photocopied to be included in the conference handbook, make sure your margins have ample room. This abstract will also be placed on the TCP website. 7. The font size should be 12 point. For any fonts used, a font file should be attached. 8. Indicate the type of presentation by putting “Oral” or “Poster” on the left side of the top of the first page. 9. Put the title in the center of the top of the first page. 10. Do not put your name on your abstract (The abstract reviews will be anonymous.). 11. Clearly state the nature of the problem that you are addressing. 12. Cite sufficient data, and explain why and how they support your argument. 13. Avoid vague promissory notes such as "A solution will be presented". 14. You cannot revise your abstract once it has been submitted. Abstracts for oral presentations and poster presentations will be reviewed separately. We will notify you of the results of our review process via e-mail by January 12, 2008 at the latest. Those who are accepted as speakers will be requested to reply within several days if they are willing to present their papers at TCP 2008. Please let us know if you plan to be away from e-mail in early January. In addition, we are planning to publish a volume of the conference proceedings. If your abstract is accepted, we will inform you of the details regarding this matter later. Most likely, you will be asked to e-mail us your paper as a MS Word and a PDF file attachment by mid-May 2008. Unfortunately, TCP has no funds for financial assistance. Participants are expected to make their own travel arrangements. For further information, contact: Yukio Otsu (Director) Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies Keio University 2-15-45 Mita, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8345 Japan tcp2008 at otsu.icl.keio.ac.jp From aananda at stanford.edu Thu Jul 19 15:25:43 2007 From: aananda at stanford.edu (Bruno Estigarribia) Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 11:25:43 -0400 Subject: inter-innateness interaction In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Our work and that of many others demonstrates how in experimental > causative designs it is possible to see how individual children have > been caused to acquire particular structures by both prototypical and > unprototypical input patterns that carry structural challenges of many > types for the individual children. > > Keith Nelson > I suggested in my dissertation something like that happens with the acquisition of English yes/no questions: children who hear fewer auxiliary-initial yes/no questions learn ynqs through a structure-building strategy, right to left (cf. Bloom 1970). The child in my sample who gets substantially more auxiliary-initial "input" uses a holistic strategy. The evidence is suggestive, but a lot more work is needed. Cheers, Bruno Estigarribia From k.j.alcock at lancaster.ac.uk Fri Jul 20 09:24:53 2007 From: k.j.alcock at lancaster.ac.uk (Katie Alcock) Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:24:53 +0100 Subject: Parent-administered reading test? Message-ID: I am wondering if anyone has developed or used a parent-administered reading test? The sample that we are seeing will be 5 next year, which in the UK means that some of them will be starting to read. I imagine therefore that something in use in the US or Canada for English-speaking 6-year-olds might also work. A quick straw poll of colleagues, who didn't know of any such test, gathered opinions ranging from "it should work, as other parent-completed questionnaires work" to "parents would just help the children too much, even teachers don't seem to be able to administer reading tests reliably". Thanks very much Katie Alcock Katie Alcock, DPhil Lecturer Department of Psychology University of Lancaster Fylde College Lancaster LA1 4YF Tel 01524 593833 Fax 01524 593744 Web http://www.psych.lancs.ac.uk/people/KatieAlcock.html From h.vanderlely at ucl.ac.uk Fri Jul 20 10:53:01 2007 From: h.vanderlely at ucl.ac.uk (Heather van der Lely) Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 11:53:01 +0100 Subject: Parent-administered reading test? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Katie, We have developed such a test for Grammar (morpho-syntax) and Phonology-- which are standardised-- so if a child is AT RISK for reading problems, it will pick them up-- and provide a standard percentile score. It is called the GAPS and you can find details on www.dldcn.com It is standardised from 3: 6 to 6:6. It is not a questionaire but an actual test that parents , teachers etc (anyone in fact) can administer. The development and standardisation was conducted on both non-professionals and professionals administering the test Hope this helps best wishes Heather Professor Heather K. J. van der Lely, Director UCL Centre for Developmental Language Disorders and Cognitive Neuroscience University College London Temporary address: 4th Floor 123-126 Grays Inn Road London WC1X 8WD Tel: +44 (0)20 7905 1292 FAX: +44(0)20 7905 1224 e-mail: h.vanderlely at ucl.ac.uk Web: www.ucl.ac.uk/DLDCN/ From menyuk at bu.edu Mon Jul 23 16:41:45 2007 From: menyuk at bu.edu (Paula Menyuk) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:41:45 -0400 Subject: info-childes Digest - 07/22/07 In-Reply-To: <72001.93517@mail.talkbank.org> Message-ID: There is a recent monograph of the Society for Child Development, Vol. 72 , 2007 by Michelle M. Chouinard, entitled "Children's Questions: A Mechanism for Cognitive Development that may be of help to you. P. Menyuk. On Jul 22, 2007, at 6:00 PM, wrote: > zhang.li1231 at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pcnorton at yahoo.com Mon Jul 2 16:06:28 2007 From: pcnorton at yahoo.com (Pam Norton) Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2007 09:06:28 -0700 Subject: Coding AAE features with Language Sample Transcription Programs In-Reply-To: <57601.698@mail.talkbank.org> Message-ID: Hello folks, I am re-checking phonological and grammatical features I have coded on language samples of AAE-speakers ages 4 to 7:5 and I want to have a good way to track all the features so that I can select sub-groups of them for analysis purposes. What has worked for others facing this task? I have transcriptions in SALT already and I'm told they can be transferred into CLAN files. Pros and cons of using either one? Thanks so much, Pam Norton, ABD, M.S., CCC-SLP University of California at Berkeley & San Francisco State University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bera at ozemail.com.au Wed Jul 4 05:47:56 2007 From: bera at ozemail.com.au (Maria Berarducci) Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2007 15:47:56 +1000 Subject: Coding AAE features with Language Sample Transcription Programs In-Reply-To: <272996.57741.qm@web81410.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Hi I also have a large number of transcriptions in SALT already and I would like to transfer them into CHAT format for CLAN. Although I've accessed the CLAN manual and had a go I still wasn't able to successfully transfer my files. I was wanting to use the VOCD utility to apply D. Is there any step by step guide for "dummies". Any suggestions welcomed. Many thanks, Maria -----Original Message----- From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org [mailto:info-childes at mail.talkbank.org] On Behalf Of Pam Norton Sent: Tuesday, 3 July 2007 2:06 AM To: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org Subject: Coding AAE features with Language Sample Transcription Programs Hello folks, I am re-checking phonological and grammatical features I have coded on language samples of AAE-speakers ages 4 to 7:5 and I want to have a good way to track all the features so that I can select sub-groups of them for analysis purposes. What has worked for others facing this task? I have transcriptions in SALT already and I'm told they can be transferred into CLAN files. Pros and cons of using either one? Thanks so much, Pam Norton, ABD, M.S., CCC-SLP University of California at Berkeley & San Francisco State University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From amanda-owen at uiowa.edu Thu Jul 5 13:01:27 2007 From: amanda-owen at uiowa.edu (Owen, Amanda J) Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2007 08:01:27 -0500 Subject: Coding AAE features with Language Sample Transcription Programs In-Reply-To: <000001c7bdfe$dfe7ed10$0202a8c0@MARIA> Message-ID: Hi, I believe there is a utility termed SALTIN that worked prior to the unicode conversion and made the process of transfer possible. You still had to handcheck non-standard SALT codes and unintelligible utterances for conversion (e.g. CHAT only accepts xxx whereas SALT uses 1 x per syllable). I haven't had any success with it since the unicode conversion. It's currently easier to convert from CHAT to SALT and, if you are using the research version, SALT has pretty powerful search tools. It doesn't have VOCD - but it does allow a variety of ways to standardize transcripts in terms of length, allowing for use of NDR and TNW. If you get to the point of applying D, feel free to email me for tips and thoughts about interpretation. Laura DeThorne is also quite familiar with the program and its application to a large number of transcripts. Amanda Amanda J. Owen Ph.D. CCC-SLP amanda-owen at uiowa.edu 121A WJSHC Dept of Speech Pathology & Audiology University of Iowa Iowa City, IA 52242 319-335-6951 ________________________________ From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org [mailto:info-childes at mail.talkbank.org] On Behalf Of Maria Berarducci Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2007 12:48 AM To: 'Pam Norton'; info-childes at mail.talkbank.org Subject: RE: Coding AAE features with Language Sample Transcription Programs Hi I also have a large number of transcriptions in SALT already and I would like to transfer them into CHAT format for CLAN. Although I've accessed the CLAN manual and had a go I still wasn't able to successfully transfer my files. I was wanting to use the VOCD utility to apply D. Is there any step by step guide for "dummies". Any suggestions welcomed. Many thanks, Maria -----Original Message----- From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org [mailto:info-childes at mail.talkbank.org] On Behalf Of Pam Norton Sent: Tuesday, 3 July 2007 2:06 AM To: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org Subject: Coding AAE features with Language Sample Transcription Programs Hello folks, I am re-checking phonological and grammatical features I have coded on language samples of AAE-speakers ages 4 to 7:5 and I want to have a good way to track all the features so that I can select sub-groups of them for analysis purposes. What has worked for others facing this task? I have transcriptions in SALT already and I'm told they can be transferred into CLAN files. Pros and cons of using either one? Thanks so much, Pam Norton, ABD, M.S., CCC-SLP University of California at Berkeley & San Francisco State University From kirsten.abbot-smith at plymouth.ac.uk Thu Jul 5 13:30:04 2007 From: kirsten.abbot-smith at plymouth.ac.uk (Kirsten Abbot-Smith) Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2007 14:30:04 +0100 Subject: BPS Developmental Programme Message-ID: BPS Developmental Conference (University of Plymouth, 29th-31st August 2007) The website of the conference http://www.bpsdevsec07.org has now been updated with the details of conference schedule. The titles for the keynote speakers are: Annette Karmiloff-Smith Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development School of Psychology Birkbeck, University of London "Understanding disorders of mind and brain: The necessity of a developmental perspective" Jay Belsky Institute for the Study of Children, Families and Social Issues Birkbeck, University of London "The Development of Evolutionary psychology of intergenerational transmission of attachment" Henry Markovits Department of Psychology University of Quebec at Montreal "The development of abstract reasoning" Details of the registration fee(s) are available on the Conference website at http://www.bpsdevsec07.org/default.asp?page=register Dr. Kirsten Abbot-Smith School of Psychology University of Plymouth B213 Portland Square Drake Circus Plymouth PL4 8AA UK Tel: +44 1752 233152 www.plymouth.ac.uk/staff/kabbotsmith -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pcomp at hunter.cuny.edu Thu Jul 5 14:19:56 2007 From: pcomp at hunter.cuny.edu (pcomp at hunter.cuny.edu) Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2007 10:19:56 -0400 Subject: Call for Participation: PsychoCompLA-2007 Message-ID: ************* Call for Participation ************** Psychocomputational Models of Human Language Acquisition PsychoCompLA-2007 http://www.colag.cs.hunter.cuny.edu/psychocomp/ August 1st at CogSci 2007 - Nashville, Tennessee Workshop Topic: The workshop is devoted to psychologically-motivated computational models of language acquisition. That is, models that are compatible with research in psycholinguistics, developmental psychology and linguistics. Program: * Elissa Newport, University of Rochester Statistical language learning: Computational and maturational constraints * Shimon Edelman, Cornell University The next challenges in unsupervised language acquisition: dependencies and complex sentences * Robert Frank, Johns Hopkins University Transformational Networks * Alex Clark, Royal Holloway University of London Learnable representations of languages: something old and something new * Charles Yang, University of Pennsylvania The next challenges in unsupervised language acquisition: dependencies and complex sentences * Robert C. Berwick, MIT & Sandiway Fong, University of Arizona The Great (Penn Treebank) Robbery: When statistics is not enough * Amy Perfors, MIT, Terry Regier, University of Chicago & Josh Tenenbaum, MIT Indirect evidence and the poverty of the stimulus * Dave Cochran, University of St. Andrews Selective Attention and Darwinised Data-Oriented Parsing * Garrett Mitchener, College of Charleston & Misha Becker, University of North Carolina A computational model of learning verb subclasses in natural L1 acquisition * Sharon Goldwater, Stanford University Distributional Models of Syntactic Category Acquisition: a Comparative Analysis * Marco Tamburelli, University College London Are set-theoretic concepts still useful to children? * Nicole Sager, Seth Herd & Eliana Colunga, University of Colorado at Boulder Modeling the Development of Bilingual and Second Language Reading * Andrew Olney, University of Memphis Semantic Heads for Grammar Induction Workshop Description: This workshop will present research and foster discussion centered around psychologically-motivated computational models of language acquisition, with an emphasis on the acquisition of syntax. In recent decades there has been a thriving research agenda that applies computational learning techniques to emerging natural language technologies and many meetings, conferences and workshops in which to present such research. However, there have been only a few (but growing number of) venues in which psychocomputational models of how humans acquire their native language(s) are the primary focus. By psychocomputational models we mean models that are compatible with, or might inform research in psycholinguistics, developmental psychology or linguistics. Psychocomputational models of language acquisition are of particular interest in light of recent results in developmental psychology that suggest that very young infants are adept at detecting statistical patterns in an audible input stream. Though, how children might plausibly apply statistical 'machinery' to the task of grammar acquisition, with or without an innate language component, remains an open and important question. One effective line of investigation is to computationally model the acquisition process and determine interrelationships between a model and linguistic or psycholinguistic theory, and/or correlations between a model's performance and data from linguistic environments that children are exposed to. Although there has been a significant amount of presented research targeted at modeling the acquisition of word categories, morphology and phonology, research aimed at modeling syntax acquisition has just begun to emerge. Workshop History: This is the third meeting of the Psychocomputational Models of Human Language Acquisition workshop following PsychoCompLA-2004, held in Geneva, Switzerland as part of the 20th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING 2004) and PsychoCompLA-2005 as part of the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL-2005) held in Ann Arbor, Michigan where the workshop shared a joint session with the Ninth Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning (CoNLL-2005). Workshop Organizers: William Gregory Sakas, City University of New York (sakas at hunter.cuny.edu) David Guy Brizan, City University of New York (dbrizan at gc.cuny.edu) Topics and Goals: This workshop intends to bring together researchers from cognitive psychology, computational linguistics, other computer/mathematical sciences, linguistics and psycholinguistics working on all areas of language acquisition. Diversity and cross-fertilization of ideas is the central goal. Contact: Psycho.Comp at hunter.cuny.edu From katie at psych.ubc.ca Sun Jul 8 15:16:54 2007 From: katie at psych.ubc.ca (Katherine Yoshida) Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2007 11:16:54 -0400 Subject: ICIS 2008 Vancouver Message-ID: Abstracts are now being accepted for ICIS 2008. The deadline for submissions is 30 September 2007. Thursday, March 27, 2007- Saturday, March 29, 2008 XVIth Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada email: iciscoord at psych.ubc.ca link: http://www.isisweb.org/ Many thanks, Christie Michailopoulos on behalf of Drs. Janet Werker and Ron Barr, conference co-chairs -- Christie Michailopoulos Conference Coordinator XVIth Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies Vancouver, BC, Canada iciscoord at psych.ubc.ca tel: 604.827.5491 From wolter at eva.mpg.de Mon Jul 9 11:11:02 2007 From: wolter at eva.mpg.de (wolter at eva.mpg.de) Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2007 13:11:02 +0200 Subject: corpus situation analysis Message-ID: Dear child language researchers, I'm trying to create a coding scheme to analyze corpus data for situations and activities child and parents are involved in, e.g. vocal play, physical play, book reading, eating etc., and I wonder if anyone of you has done such an analysis already or knows of any study that might be of help for a convenient categorization? Thanks Kristin ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program. From t.marinis at reading.ac.uk Wed Jul 11 18:58:57 2007 From: t.marinis at reading.ac.uk (Theodoros Marinis) Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 19:58:57 +0100 Subject: Child Language Seminar 2007 - programme Message-ID: The programme of Child Language Seminar 2007 is now available on-line in the link below: http://www.rdg.ac.uk/cls/programme.html ****************************************************************** Child Language Seminar 2007 - 30th Anniversary 18-20 July 2007 University of Reading, England http://www.reading.ac.uk/cls/cls2007.html ****************************************************************** v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^ Dr Theodoros Marinis School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences University of Reading Reading RG6 6AL, UK Tel. +44-118-378 7465 Fax +44-118-378 4693 http://www.rdg.ac.uk/cls/marinis.html v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From joko.k at telkom.net Fri Jul 13 06:52:55 2007 From: joko.k at telkom.net (Joko-Kusmanto) Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2007 13:52:55 +0700 Subject: inter-innateness interaction Message-ID: Dear all, Would anybody here please help me provide some explanations relating to my problem as follow. Currently I?m looking at the argument structure in children?s language from 2 ? 5 years old. When I compare the verb types found in children?s production and in children directed speech (CDS), I found that they have the same proportion. I classify two basic verb types, i.e. (i) verb with Agent-like as Subject and (ii) verb with no Agent-like as Subject. The first verb type assigns directly, thus govern the theta role, the Object as Patient-like and the second verb type does not assigns, thus doesn?t govern the theta role, the Object. It seems to me that the same proportion of the 1st verb type and the 2nd verb type in the children?s production and in CDS provide an insight how language acquisition is possible. This proportion brings me to a conclusion that the proportion of the 1st and the 2nd verb type in children?s production and in CDS is the picture of the innate properties by which language acquisition is possible. The children?s production is a picture of pre-linguistic innate properties (not yet in form of lingual realization) and the CDS is a picture of linguistic innate properties (already in lingual realization). Thus, language acquisition is possible in the interaction between the mechanism of the pre-linguistic innate properties and the linguistic innate properties as triggering environment. I would say that this is an inter-innateness interaction in language acquisition. I assume here that CDS is constrained by the linguistic-innate properties which bring on a regular linguistic environment and that the poverty of stimulus does not really mean that the linguistic environment is random. Would it be possible to be like that? Thank you all for your explanations. Joko Kusmanto Postgraduate Student of Linguistics Universitas Sebelas Maret ? Surakarta Indonesia ======================================================================================= Bosan dengan email yang biasa?? Ayo cobain kirim email diiringi musik dengan bergabung di Music Mail Telkom.net (http://www.telkom.net/mm_seputar.php), dijamin kirim email terasa lebih menyenangkan. Jadi tunggu apalagi buruan cobain beremail dengan Music Mail!! ======================================================================================= From slornat at psi.ucm.es Fri Jul 13 09:42:58 2007 From: slornat at psi.ucm.es (Susana Lopez Ornat) Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2007 11:42:58 +0200 Subject: inter-innateness interaction Message-ID: Joko: maybe you should consider this: if, and only if, the empirical evidence you have really, thoroughly, uncontrovertedly, supported those results** you mention, then you would have strong evidence against the non-innateness of the language learning system. You might want to give a thought to this. Susana L?pez Ornat Dpto Psicolog?a B?sica II Facultad de Psicolog?a Universidad Complutense de Madrid Madrid 28223 www.ucm.es/info/equial **: I refer to this paragraph: "It seems to me that the same proportion of the 1st verb type and the 2nd verb type in the children's production and in CDS provide an insight how language acquisition is possible" ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joko-Kusmanto" To: Sent: Friday, July 13, 2007 8:52 AM Subject: inter-innateness interaction > Dear all, > > Would anybody here please help me provide some explanations relating to my > problem as follow. > Currently I'm looking at the argument structure in children's language > from 2 - 5 years old. When I compare the verb types found in children's > production and in children directed speech (CDS), I found that they have > the same proportion. I classify two basic verb types, i.e. (i) verb with > Agent-like as Subject and (ii) verb with no Agent-like as Subject. The > first verb type assigns directly, thus govern the theta role, the Object > as Patient-like and the second verb type does not assigns, thus doesn't > govern the theta role, the Object. It seems to me that the same proportion > of the 1st verb type and the 2nd verb type in the children's production > and in CDS provide an insight how language acquisition is possible. This > proportion brings me to a conclusion that the proportion of the 1st and > the 2nd verb type in children's production and in CDS is the picture of > the innate properties by which language acquisition is possible. The > children's production is a picture of pre-linguistic innate properties > (not yet in form of lingual realization) and the CDS is a picture of > linguistic innate properties (already in lingual realization). Thus, > language acquisition is possible in the interaction between the mechanism > of the pre-linguistic innate properties and the linguistic innate > properties as triggering environment. I would say that this is an > inter-innateness interaction in language acquisition. I assume here that > CDS is constrained by the linguistic-innate properties which bring on a > regular linguistic environment and that the poverty of stimulus does not > really mean that the linguistic environment is random. Would it be > possible to be like that? > > Thank you all for your explanations. > > Joko Kusmanto > Postgraduate Student of Linguistics > Universitas Sebelas Maret - Surakarta > Indonesia > > > ======================================================================================== > Bosan dengan email yang biasa?? > Ayo cobain kirim email diiringi musik dengan bergabung di Music Mail > Telkom.net (http://www.telkom.net/mm_seputar.php), dijamin kirim email > terasa lebih menyenangkan. Jadi tunggu apalagi buruan cobain beremail > dengan Music Mail!! > ======================================================================================== > From msninio at pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il Fri Jul 13 14:55:32 2007 From: msninio at pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il (Anat Ninio) Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2007 17:55:32 +0300 Subject: inter-innateness interaction In-Reply-To: <000901c7c532$32452f20$22c76093@pcsusana2> Message-ID: Dear Joko, If I may paraphrase your message, you found a strong match between the proportion of transitive and intransitive verbs in children's speech and the proportions of the same in child-directed speech. As Susana Lopez Ornat suggested, such a finding is best interpreted as reflecting learning processes, not innate properties of language. Certainly the speech of children between 2 and 5 years of age cannot be easily taken as reflecting prelinguistic features, as they already speak at this point for several years. Why not consider that children actually learn to speak from the speech of others in their linguistic environment? Your own results join many others that show strong environmental influences on the global characteristics of children's speech, and as such, are a welcome addition to the empiricist literature. Anat Ninio Susana Lopez Ornat wrote: > Joko: maybe you should consider this: if, and only if, the empirical > evidence you have really, thoroughly, uncontrovertedly, supported > those results** you mention, then you would have strong evidence > against the non-innateness of the language learning system. > You might want to give a thought to this. > > Susana L?pez Ornat > Dpto Psicolog?a B?sica II > Facultad de Psicolog?a > Universidad Complutense de Madrid > Madrid 28223 > www.ucm.es/info/equial > > **: I refer to this paragraph: "It seems to me that the same > proportion of the 1st verb type and the 2nd verb type in the > children's production and in CDS provide an insight how language > acquisition is possible" > > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joko-Kusmanto" > To: > Sent: Friday, July 13, 2007 8:52 AM > Subject: inter-innateness interaction > > >> Dear all, >> >> Would anybody here please help me provide some explanations relating >> to my problem as follow. >> Currently I'm looking at the argument structure in children's >> language from 2 - 5 years old. When I compare the verb types found in >> children's production and in children directed speech (CDS), I found >> that they have the same proportion. I classify two basic verb types, >> i.e. (i) verb with Agent-like as Subject and (ii) verb with no >> Agent-like as Subject. The first verb type assigns directly, thus >> govern the theta role, the Object as Patient-like and the second verb >> type does not assigns, thus doesn't govern the theta role, the >> Object. It seems to me that the same proportion of the 1st verb type >> and the 2nd verb type in the children's production and in CDS provide >> an insight how language acquisition is possible. This proportion >> brings me to a conclusion that the proportion of the 1st and the 2nd >> verb type in children's production and in CDS is the picture of the >> innate properties by which language acquisition is possible. The >> children's production is a picture of pre-linguistic innate >> properties (not yet in form of lingual realization) and the CDS is a >> picture of linguistic innate properties (already in lingual >> realization). Thus, language acquisition is possible in the >> interaction between the mechanism of the pre-linguistic innate >> properties and the linguistic innate properties as triggering >> environment. I would say that this is an inter-innateness interaction >> in language acquisition. I assume here that CDS is constrained by the >> linguistic-innate properties which bring on a regular linguistic >> environment and that the poverty of stimulus does not really mean >> that the linguistic environment is random. Would it be possible to be >> like that? >> >> Thank you all for your explanations. >> >> Joko Kusmanto >> Postgraduate Student of Linguistics >> Universitas Sebelas Maret - Surakarta >> Indonesia >> >> >> ======================================================================================== >> >> Bosan dengan email yang biasa?? >> Ayo cobain kirim email diiringi musik dengan bergabung di Music Mail >> Telkom.net (http://www.telkom.net/mm_seputar.php), dijamin kirim >> email terasa lebih menyenangkan. Jadi tunggu apalagi buruan cobain >> beremail dengan Music Mail!! >> ======================================================================================== >> >> > > > From dalep at unm.edu Fri Jul 13 15:00:13 2007 From: dalep at unm.edu (Philip Dale) Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2007 09:00:13 -0600 Subject: inter-innateness interaction In-Reply-To: <46979264.2060208@pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il> Message-ID: Dear Joko and colleagues, It seems to me that this interchange already provides a good example of something that needs to be more generally acknowledged: correlations between parent input and child language are overdetermined; that is, there are a good many mechanisms that might lead to them, including both genetic/innate and environmental/learning ones. As interesting as they are, they do not by themselves settle any major questions; they are just very useful pieces of the puzzle. Philip Dale -----Original Message----- From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org [mailto:info-childes at mail.talkbank.org] On Behalf Of Anat Ninio Sent: Friday, July 13, 2007 8:56 AM To: Joko-Kusmanto Cc: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org; Uri Hershberg Subject: Re: inter-innateness interaction Dear Joko, If I may paraphrase your message, you found a strong match between the proportion of transitive and intransitive verbs in children's speech and the proportions of the same in child-directed speech. As Susana Lopez Ornat suggested, such a finding is best interpreted as reflecting learning processes, not innate properties of language. Certainly the speech of children between 2 and 5 years of age cannot be easily taken as reflecting prelinguistic features, as they already speak at this point for several years. Why not consider that children actually learn to speak from the speech of others in their linguistic environment? Your own results join many others that show strong environmental influences on the global characteristics of children's speech, and as such, are a welcome addition to the empiricist literature. Anat Ninio Susana Lopez Ornat wrote: > Joko: maybe you should consider this: if, and only if, the empirical > evidence you have really, thoroughly, uncontrovertedly, supported > those results** you mention, then you would have strong evidence > against the non-innateness of the language learning system. > You might want to give a thought to this. > > Susana L?pez Ornat > Dpto Psicolog?a B?sica II > Facultad de Psicolog?a > Universidad Complutense de Madrid > Madrid 28223 > www.ucm.es/info/equial > > **: I refer to this paragraph: "It seems to me that the same > proportion of the 1st verb type and the 2nd verb type in the > children's production and in CDS provide an insight how language > acquisition is possible" > > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joko-Kusmanto" > To: > Sent: Friday, July 13, 2007 8:52 AM > Subject: inter-innateness interaction > > >> Dear all, >> >> Would anybody here please help me provide some explanations relating >> to my problem as follow. >> Currently I'm looking at the argument structure in children's >> language from 2 - 5 years old. When I compare the verb types found in >> children's production and in children directed speech (CDS), I found >> that they have the same proportion. I classify two basic verb types, >> i.e. (i) verb with Agent-like as Subject and (ii) verb with no >> Agent-like as Subject. The first verb type assigns directly, thus >> govern the theta role, the Object as Patient-like and the second verb >> type does not assigns, thus doesn't govern the theta role, the >> Object. It seems to me that the same proportion of the 1st verb type >> and the 2nd verb type in the children's production and in CDS provide >> an insight how language acquisition is possible. This proportion >> brings me to a conclusion that the proportion of the 1st and the 2nd >> verb type in children's production and in CDS is the picture of the >> innate properties by which language acquisition is possible. The >> children's production is a picture of pre-linguistic innate >> properties (not yet in form of lingual realization) and the CDS is a >> picture of linguistic innate properties (already in lingual >> realization). Thus, language acquisition is possible in the >> interaction between the mechanism of the pre-linguistic innate >> properties and the linguistic innate properties as triggering >> environment. I would say that this is an inter-innateness interaction >> in language acquisition. I assume here that CDS is constrained by the >> linguistic-innate properties which bring on a regular linguistic >> environment and that the poverty of stimulus does not really mean >> that the linguistic environment is random. Would it be possible to be >> like that? >> >> Thank you all for your explanations. >> >> Joko Kusmanto >> Postgraduate Student of Linguistics >> Universitas Sebelas Maret - Surakarta >> Indonesia >> >> >> =========================================================================== ============ >> >> Bosan dengan email yang biasa?? >> Ayo cobain kirim email diiringi musik dengan bergabung di Music Mail >> Telkom.net (http://www.telkom.net/mm_seputar.php), dijamin kirim >> email terasa lebih menyenangkan. Jadi tunggu apalagi buruan cobain >> beremail dengan Music Mail!! >> =========================================================================== ============ >> >> > > > From mei.lin at newcastle.ac.uk Fri Jul 13 16:43:27 2007 From: mei.lin at newcastle.ac.uk (Mei Lin) Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2007 17:43:27 +0100 Subject: Early stages of language acquisiton of early bilingual children Message-ID: Hi, Two of my students are working with bilingual children of 2 - 5 years old, looking at their acquisiton of English as a second/foreign language. In both cases, parents' first language is not English. The students have collected some data and found some interesting findings. For instance, my students found that after three months after listenting to stories books or in nursery the children can remember or say 'look at the picture', 'tough me' at right situations. They can sing with the CD. They would like to compare theirs with similar data outthere. Any information on the initial stages of bilingual acquisition, information on develping stages and features/examples would be highly appreciated. Thanks Mei From k1n at psu.edu Fri Jul 13 19:21:53 2007 From: k1n at psu.edu (Keith Nelson) Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2007 15:21:53 -0400 Subject: inter-innateness interaction In-Reply-To: <001a01c7c55e$83fecca0$fed91881@DC48F5B1> Message-ID: Dear Joko and colleagues, As comments already indicate it is very reasonable to take seriously not only innate biological factors but the multiple ways in which children learn from their environment. It is also very important to keep in mind that overall proportions in a sample of mothers of children do not create an average THE MOTHER or THE CHILD that should receive theoretical interpretation. Instead individual children vary tremendously and so do individual sources of input such as mothers, siblings, fathers, and daycare/preschool personnel that the particular child actually interacts with. Our work and that of many others demonstrates how in experimental causative designs it is possible to see how individual children have been caused to acquire particular structures by both prototypical and unprototypical input patterns that carry structural challenges of many types for the individual children. Keith Nelson At 9:00 AM -0600 7/13/07, Philip Dale wrote: >Dear Joko and colleagues, > >It seems to me that this interchange already provides a good example of >something that needs to be more generally acknowledged: correlations between >parent input and child language are overdetermined; that is, there are a >good many mechanisms that might lead to them, including both genetic/innate >and environmental/learning ones. As interesting as they are, they do not by >themselves settle any major questions; they are just very useful pieces of >the puzzle. > >Philip Dale > >-----Original Message----- >From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org [mailto:info-childes at mail.talkbank.org] >On Behalf Of Anat Ninio >Sent: Friday, July 13, 2007 8:56 AM >To: Joko-Kusmanto >Cc: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org; Uri Hershberg >Subject: Re: inter-innateness interaction > >Dear Joko, > >If I may paraphrase your message, you found a strong match between the >proportion of transitive and intransitive verbs in children's speech and >the proportions of the same in child-directed speech. As Susana Lopez >Ornat suggested, such a finding is best interpreted as reflecting >learning processes, not innate properties of language. Certainly the >speech of children between 2 and 5 years of age cannot be easily taken >as reflecting prelinguistic features, as they already speak at this >point for several years. Why not consider that children actually learn >to speak from the speech of others in their linguistic environment? Your >own results join many others that show strong environmental influences >on the global characteristics of children's speech, and as such, are a >welcome addition to the empiricist literature. > >Anat Ninio > > >Susana Lopez Ornat wrote: >> Joko: maybe you should consider this: if, and only if, the empirical >> evidence you have really, thoroughly, uncontrovertedly, supported >> those results** you mention, then you would have strong evidence >> against the non-innateness of the language learning system. >> You might want to give a thought to this. >> >> Susana L?pez Ornat >> Dpto Psicolog?a B?sica II >> Facultad de Psicolog?a >> Universidad Complutense de Madrid >> Madrid 28223 >> www.ucm.es/info/equial >> >> **: I refer to this paragraph: "It seems to me that the same >> proportion of the 1st verb type and the 2nd verb type in the >> children's production and in CDS provide an insight how language >> acquisition is possible" >> >> >> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joko-Kusmanto" >> To: > > Sent: Friday, July 13, 2007 8:52 AM > > Subject: inter-innateness interaction >> >> >>> Dear all, >>> >>> Would anybody here please help me provide some explanations relating >>> to my problem as follow. >>> Currently I'm looking at the argument structure in children's >>> language from 2 - 5 years old. When I compare the verb types found in >>> children's production and in children directed speech (CDS), I found > >> that they have the same proportion. I classify two basic verb types, >>> i.e. (i) verb with Agent-like as Subject and (ii) verb with no >>> Agent-like as Subject. The first verb type assigns directly, thus >>> govern the theta role, the Object as Patient-like and the second verb >>> type does not assigns, thus doesn't govern the theta role, the >>> Object. It seems to me that the same proportion of the 1st verb type >>> and the 2nd verb type in the children's production and in CDS provide >>> an insight how language acquisition is possible. This proportion >>> brings me to a conclusion that the proportion of the 1st and the 2nd >>> verb type in children's production and in CDS is the picture of the >>> innate properties by which language acquisition is possible. The >>> children's production is a picture of pre-linguistic innate >>> properties (not yet in form of lingual realization) and the CDS is a >>> picture of linguistic innate properties (already in lingual >>> realization). Thus, language acquisition is possible in the >>> interaction between the mechanism of the pre-linguistic innate >>> properties and the linguistic innate properties as triggering >>> environment. I would say that this is an inter-innateness interaction >>> in language acquisition. I assume here that CDS is constrained by the >>> linguistic-innate properties which bring on a regular linguistic >>> environment and that the poverty of stimulus does not really mean >>> that the linguistic environment is random. Would it be possible to be >>> like that? >>> >>> Thank you all for your explanations. >>> >>> Joko Kusmanto >>> Postgraduate Student of Linguistics >>> Universitas Sebelas Maret - Surakarta >>> Indonesia >>> >>> >>> >============================================================================ >============ >>> >>> Bosan dengan email yang biasa?? >>> Ayo cobain kirim email diiringi musik dengan bergabung di Music Mail >>> Telkom.net (http://www.telkom.net/mm_seputar.php), dijamin kirim >>> email terasa lebih menyenangkan. Jadi tunggu apalagi buruan cobain >>> beremail dengan Music Mail!! >>> >============================================================================ >============ >>> >>> >> >> >> -- Keith Nelson Professor of Psychology Penn State University 423 Moore Building University Park, PA 16802 keithnelsonart at psu.edu 814 863 1747 And what is mind and how is it recognized ? It is clearly drawn in Sumi ink, the sound of breezes drifting through pine. --Ikkyu Sojun Japanese Zen Master 1394-1481 From emily.mather at psy.ox.ac.uk Tue Jul 17 10:03:05 2007 From: emily.mather at psy.ox.ac.uk (Emily Mather) Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 11:03:05 +0100 Subject: Measuring the volume of auditory stimuli Message-ID: An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From pcomp at hunter.cuny.edu Wed Jul 18 03:22:11 2007 From: pcomp at hunter.cuny.edu (pcomp at hunter.cuny.edu) Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 23:22:11 -0400 Subject: PsychocompLA-2007: Final call for participation Message-ID: ************* Call for Participation ************** Psychocomputational Models of Human Language Acquisition PsychoCompLA-2007 http://www.colag.cs.hunter.cuny.edu/psychocomp/ August 1st at CogSci 2007 - Nashville, Tennessee Workshop Topic: The workshop is devoted to psychologically-motivated computational models of language acquisition. That is, models that are compatible with research in psycholinguistics, developmental psychology and linguistics. Invited Speakers: * Elissa Newport, University of Rochester Statistical language learning: Computational and maturational constraints * Shimon Edelman, Cornell University The next challenges in unsupervised language acquisition: dependencies and complex sentences * Robert Frank, Johns Hopkins University Transformational Networks * Alex Clark, Royal Holloway University of London Learnable representations of languages: something old and something new * Charles Yang, University of Pennsylvania The next challenges in unsupervised language acquisition: dependencies and complex sentences * Robert C. Berwick, MIT & Sandiway Fong, University of Arizona The Great (Penn Treebank) Robbery: When statistics is not enough * Amy Perfors, MIT, Terry Regier, University of Chicago & Josh Tenenbaum, MIT Indirect evidence and the poverty of the stimulus * Dave Cochran, University of St. Andrews Selective Attention and Darwinised Data-Oriented Parsing * Garrett Mitchener, College of Charleston & Misha Becker, University of North Carolina A computational model of learning verb subclasses in natural L1 acquisition * Sharon Goldwater, Stanford University Distributional Models of Syntactic Category Acquisition: a Comparative Analysis * Marco Tamburelli, University College London Are set-theoretic concepts still useful to children? * Nicole Sager, Seth Herd & Eliana Colunga, University of Colorado at Boulder Modeling the Development of Bilingual and Second Language Reading * Andrew Olney, University of Memphis Semantic Heads for Grammar Induction Workshop Description: This workshop will present research and foster discussion centered around psychologically-motivated computational models of language acquisition, with an emphasis on the acquisition of syntax. In recent decades there has been a thriving research agenda that applies computational learning techniques to emerging natural language technologies and many meetings, conferences and workshops in which to present such research. However, there have been only a few (but growing number of) venues in which psychocomputational models of how humans acquire their native language(s) are the primary focus. By psychocomputational models we mean models that are compatible with, or might inform research in psycholinguistics, developmental psychology or linguistics. Psychocomputational models of language acquisition are of particular interest in light of recent results in developmental psychology that suggest that very young infants are adept at detecting statistical patterns in an audible input stream. Though, how children might plausibly apply statistical 'machinery' to the task of grammar acquisition, with or without an innate language component, remains an open and important question. One effective line of investigation is to computationally model the acquisition process and determine interrelationships between a model and linguistic or psycholinguistic theory, and/or correlations between a model's performance and data from linguistic environments that children are exposed to. Although there has been a significant amount of presented research targeted at modeling the acquisition of word categories, morphology and phonology, research aimed at modeling syntax acquisition has just begun to emerge. Workshop Organizer: William Gregory Sakas, City University of New York (sakas at hunter.cuny.edu) Workshop Co-organizer: David Guy Brizan, City University of New York (dbrizan at gc.cuny.edu) Topics and Goals: This workshop intends to bring together researchers from cognitive psychology, computational linguistics, other computer/mathematical sciences, linguistics and psycholinguistics working on all areas of language acquisition. Diversity and cross-fertilization of ideas is the central goal. Contact: Psycho.Comp at hunter.cuny.edu FYI, Related 2007 Meetings Machine Learning and Cognitive Science of Language Acquisition 21-22 June, 2007 Cognitive Aspects of Computational Language Acquisition 29 June, 2007 Exemplar-Based Models of Language Acquisition and Use 6-17 August, 2007 From hitomi-murata at mri.biglobe.ne.jp Wed Jul 18 05:35:00 2007 From: hitomi-murata at mri.biglobe.ne.jp (Hitomi Murata) Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 14:35:00 +0900 Subject: TCP 2008: Call for Papers Message-ID: Dear Colleague, The Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies at Keio University will be holding the ninth Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics(TCP2008) on March 14 and 15, 2008. The invited speakers are Dr. Cedric Boeckx (Harvard University) and Dr. Koji Sugisaki (Mie University) We encourage you to submit papers for oral presentation and poster presentation. For details, visit our web site: http://www.otsu.icl.keio.ac.jp/tcp/ ---------------------------------------------------------- The Ninth Tokyo Conference on Psycholinguistics http://www.otsu.icl.keio.ac.jp Keio University, Mita, Tokyo March 14 & 15, 2008 THE TOKYO CONFERENCE ON PSYCHOLINGUISTICS welcomes papers that represent any scientific endeavor that addresses itself to ?Plato?s Problem? concerning language acquisition: ?How we can gain a rich linguistic system given our fragmentary and impoverished experience?? Its scope thus includes linguistic theory (phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics), L1 and L2 acquisition, language processing, and the neuroscience of language, among other topics. We believe that there are some types of studies which are suitable for oral presentations, and others, which are suitable for poster presentations. We would like to accept both types of studies at the Conference. The time for an oral presentation will be 20 minutes with a 10 minute discussion period (a total of 30 minutes). There is the possibility that some papers of outstanding quality will be given longer time slots (i.e., a 30 minute presentation with a 15 minute discussion period). Note that, unlike previous conferences, the TCP committee will decide which papers will be allotted to longer slots. Furthermore, the space allotted to a poster presentation will be 90 cm (width) x 180 cm (length). You may submit only one single paper for either an oral or poster presentation and only one joint (co-authored) paper for either an oral or poster presentation. This means that the maximum number of submissions per author is two. (Please note that the same abstract cannot be submitted for both an oral presentation and a poster presentation). No exceptions will be made. The guidelines for the abstract submission are as follows: 1. Only e-mail submissions will be accepted. 2. The abstract must be received by November 30, 2007 by 11:59 pm JST (Japan Standard Time) via e-mail to: tcpabst2008 at otsu.icl.keio.ac.jp. Late submissions will not be accepted. Notification of receipt will be e-mailed to the first author shortly after receipt. 3. The subject of the e-mail should be ?abstract?. 4. The body of the e-mail should include: a. the author information (name, affiliation, mailing address, e-mail address, and telephone number; If your paper has multiple authors, provide information regarding all of the co-authors. And,?if you are in Japan, add kanji where relevant.), b. the type of presentation (Oral or Poster), c. the title of paper, d. the language(s) which you are focusing on in your paper, e. the field(s) which your abstract involves (e.g, Morphology, Phonetics, Phonology, Semantics, Syntax, Pragmatics, L1 acquisition, L2 acquisition, Language Processing, Neuroscience of Language, and so on), and f. 3 keywords/phrases that best describe your paper. 5. A PDF file of your abstract in English should be attached to the e-mail. Document files (e.g., MS Word format) cannot be accepted. (If you have any problems in applying by e-mail with a PDF file attachment, do not hesitate to contact us.). 6. Format the files of your abstracts (including bibliography) to A4 paper size, single-spaced, limiting the length to a maximum of 2 pages. Since the abstract, if accepted, will be photocopied to be included in the conference handbook, make sure your margins have ample room. This abstract will also be placed on the TCP website. 7. The font size should be 12 point. For any fonts used, a font file should be attached. 8. Indicate the type of presentation by putting ?Oral? or ?Poster? on the left side of the top of the first page. 9. Put the title in the center of the top of the first page. 10. Do not put your name on your abstract (The abstract reviews will be anonymous.). 11. Clearly state the nature of the problem that you are addressing. 12. Cite sufficient data, and explain why and how they support your argument. 13. Avoid vague promissory notes such as "A solution will be presented". 14. You cannot revise your abstract once it has been submitted. Abstracts for oral presentations and poster presentations will be reviewed separately. We will notify you of the results of our review process via e-mail by January 12, 2008 at the latest. Those who are accepted as speakers will be requested to reply within several days if they are willing to present their papers at TCP 2008. Please let us know if you plan to be away from e-mail in early January. In addition, we are planning to publish a volume of the conference proceedings. If your abstract is accepted, we will inform you of the details regarding this matter later. Most likely, you will be asked to e-mail us your paper as a MS Word and a PDF file attachment by mid-May 2008. Unfortunately, TCP has no funds for financial assistance. Participants are expected to make their own travel arrangements. For further information, contact: Yukio Otsu (Director) Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies Keio University 2-15-45 Mita, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8345 Japan tcp2008 at otsu.icl.keio.ac.jp From aananda at stanford.edu Thu Jul 19 15:25:43 2007 From: aananda at stanford.edu (Bruno Estigarribia) Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 11:25:43 -0400 Subject: inter-innateness interaction In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Our work and that of many others demonstrates how in experimental > causative designs it is possible to see how individual children have > been caused to acquire particular structures by both prototypical and > unprototypical input patterns that carry structural challenges of many > types for the individual children. > > Keith Nelson > I suggested in my dissertation something like that happens with the acquisition of English yes/no questions: children who hear fewer auxiliary-initial yes/no questions learn ynqs through a structure-building strategy, right to left (cf. Bloom 1970). The child in my sample who gets substantially more auxiliary-initial "input" uses a holistic strategy. The evidence is suggestive, but a lot more work is needed. Cheers, Bruno Estigarribia From k.j.alcock at lancaster.ac.uk Fri Jul 20 09:24:53 2007 From: k.j.alcock at lancaster.ac.uk (Katie Alcock) Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:24:53 +0100 Subject: Parent-administered reading test? Message-ID: I am wondering if anyone has developed or used a parent-administered reading test? The sample that we are seeing will be 5 next year, which in the UK means that some of them will be starting to read. I imagine therefore that something in use in the US or Canada for English-speaking 6-year-olds might also work. A quick straw poll of colleagues, who didn't know of any such test, gathered opinions ranging from "it should work, as other parent-completed questionnaires work" to "parents would just help the children too much, even teachers don't seem to be able to administer reading tests reliably". Thanks very much Katie Alcock Katie Alcock, DPhil Lecturer Department of Psychology University of Lancaster Fylde College Lancaster LA1 4YF Tel 01524 593833 Fax 01524 593744 Web http://www.psych.lancs.ac.uk/people/KatieAlcock.html From h.vanderlely at ucl.ac.uk Fri Jul 20 10:53:01 2007 From: h.vanderlely at ucl.ac.uk (Heather van der Lely) Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 11:53:01 +0100 Subject: Parent-administered reading test? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Katie, We have developed such a test for Grammar (morpho-syntax) and Phonology-- which are standardised-- so if a child is AT RISK for reading problems, it will pick them up-- and provide a standard percentile score. It is called the GAPS and you can find details on www.dldcn.com It is standardised from 3: 6 to 6:6. It is not a questionaire but an actual test that parents , teachers etc (anyone in fact) can administer. The development and standardisation was conducted on both non-professionals and professionals administering the test Hope this helps best wishes Heather Professor Heather K. J. van der Lely, Director UCL Centre for Developmental Language Disorders and Cognitive Neuroscience University College London Temporary address: 4th Floor 123-126 Grays Inn Road London WC1X 8WD Tel: +44 (0)20 7905 1292 FAX: +44(0)20 7905 1224 e-mail: h.vanderlely at ucl.ac.uk Web: www.ucl.ac.uk/DLDCN/ From menyuk at bu.edu Mon Jul 23 16:41:45 2007 From: menyuk at bu.edu (Paula Menyuk) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:41:45 -0400 Subject: info-childes Digest - 07/22/07 In-Reply-To: <72001.93517@mail.talkbank.org> Message-ID: There is a recent monograph of the Society for Child Development, Vol. 72 , 2007 by Michelle M. Chouinard, entitled "Children's Questions: A Mechanism for Cognitive Development that may be of help to you. P. Menyuk. On Jul 22, 2007, at 6:00 PM, wrote: > zhang.li1231 at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: