pragmatic bootstrapping

Tom Roeper roeper at linguist.umass.edu
Fri Apr 15 07:47:10 UTC 2011 

DEar Parisa---

   We share a lot of Common Ground with other human beings.  If I see you
eating---which
a half blind person might---and you say "delicious" or just "good"---I can
fairly safely
infer that it is about the food (which actually may no longer be visible)
and an autistic
child may not.  This has a lot to do with whole situations and not just
seeing I think.
   Determining Cmmon Ground is a semantic term, but still a huge mystery.

Tom


On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 6:40 PM, parisa Daftarifard
<pdaftaryfard at gmail.com>wrote:

> Dear Tom,
>
> You Wrote
> "YOur eyes don't choose the light that they take in, but they choose to
> form extremely complex objects.  How to
> connect the object with a sound involves many pre-existing mental
> assumptions.  Suppose you associate a word with an object in motion.  Why do
> that?  It is not inevitable, it is a mental bias."
>
> I am not against mental assumption but would this explain why a semi blind
> person can perceive what a normal person can see but an Autistic child
> cannot perceive what a normal child can do as far as pragmatic competence
> and language development are concerned.
>
>
> Best,
> Parisa
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 5:23 AM, Tom Roeper <roeper at linguist.umass.edu>wrote:
>
>> Hi---
>>     yes the name of the game is to specify the mechanism.  I think there
>> will be what I call "strict interfaces"
>> that link many of these things.  For instance: imperatives involve a
>> mapping between speaker and hearer,
>> situation, syntax of subject deletion, intonation and the mapping seems
>> automatic.   Social and distributional
>> factors are a part of the situation.  I am not sure about Bayseian
>> information.  Frequency is not a meaningful
>> notion if it is not frequency of something, as soon as it is a something,
>> a phonetic or phonologial object, it already
>> has a representation--so you cannot "get" the representation through
>> frequency, although it might seem that way
>> because in fact you get many subparts of the representation one by one.
>> LIke the phonology of the beginning middle
>> and end of a word might have separate learning events before you ever say
>> the word.
>>      The challenge is to specify the mapping---pragmatics, phonetics,
>> intonation, phonology, syntax, semantics---
>> bootstrapping is a very misleading term because it makes things seem one
>> way when they never are.
>> YOur eyes don't choose the light that they take in, but they choose to
>> form extremely complex objects.  How to
>> connect the object with a sound involves many pre-existing mental
>> assumptions.  Suppose you associate a word
>> with an object in motion.  Why do that?  It is not inevitable, it is a
>> mental bias.
>>
>> Tom
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 3:52 PM, Mohinish <mohinish.s at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> if I may jump in - I think (specially in early formulations) it was left
>>> somewhat unspecified what the various, *sufficient* sources of
>>> information that lead to acquisition are; the strong claim was that they
>>> lead to the induction of *linguistic* structures. So, if the baby sees
>>> that a hypothesized, projected linguistic structure leads to an inference
>>> that is wrong for pragmatic reasons, this should lead to the baby projecting
>>> a new hypothesis about the linguistic structure. Tom's argument is that this
>>> is an important source for the child to understand what kind of structures
>>> might contain transformations.
>>>
>>> More generally, one can replace 'pragmatic reason' with any of the other
>>> cognitive factors, like 'distributional reason' or 'social reason' or
>>> 'Bayesian reason' - in every case, however, what these must do is inform the
>>> learner about the hypotheses regarding possible linguistic structures. -
>>> i.e., confirm or disconfirm the hypotheses about the underlying linguistic
>>> structure. I think in this sense, it is simultaneous syntactic and pragmatic
>>> in what Tom writes. Nothing stops it being simultaneously  syntactic and
>>> distributional and pragmatic, or any other combination. Maybe *all* of
>>> them are necessary...
>>>
>>> Mo
>>>
>>>  On Mar 22, 2011, at 3:22 PM, parisa Daftarifard wrote:
>>>
>>>  Dear Tom, you wrote
>>> "That means a simultaneous syntactic and pragmatic information.  "
>>> I think pragmatic information should be followed by syntactic. babies
>>> learn pragmatics well sooner than syntax when they respond their parents
>>> smile with smile. What Chomsky states, I believe, is that syntactic
>>> bootstrapping is what actually happened through triggering the UG system,
>>> not pragmatic one. I mean first language learning / acquisition is triggered
>>> then other things happen. I think Anat , please correct me if I am wrong,
>>> believes that pragmatic bootstrapping is the starting point for the kids?
>>>
>>> Autistic children have problem in processing pragmatics and have language
>>> delay. through ABA program what they learn, besides many things, even in
>>> high functioning autism, is how to respond different discourses and learn to
>>> respond pragmatically. Some of them, when learn to be pragmatic, turn into
>>> creative language user.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Parisa
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 4:06 PM, Tom Roeper <roeper at linguist.umass.edu>wrote:
>>>
>>>> Anat---
>>>>     in the paper I wrote in 1981 for the Wanner Gleitman volume, I
>>>> argued that children needed pragmatic
>>>> mapping onto syntax to justify transformations.  That means a
>>>> simultaneous syntactic and pragmatic
>>>> information.  It is in my book as well---and actually embedded in
>>>> Chomsky's remark in 1076 Reflections
>>>> on Language, that acqusition must be consistent with "trigtering
>>>> experience" I said to him that must include
>>>> pragmatics and he agreed.
>>>>    It is obvious that it is hard to understand:
>>>>        the cat was chased by the dog.
>>>> but the chld has a big semantic.pragmatic  advantage when they hear:
>>>>
>>>> the milk was drunk by the boy
>>>>
>>>> because they know that milk cannot drink boy.  If there is syntax is
>>>> ready to project a transformation,
>>>> then they use that information and visual support to say "milk has to
>>>> get into the object position somehow,
>>>> do I have a mental operation to do it".
>>>>       Once acquired, it will be autonomous and apply without pragmatics,
>>>> so if I tell a 3yr old:
>>>>
>>>>       the cheese ate the mouse
>>>>
>>>> they laugh, because they know, anti-pragmatically, that it is true.  An
>>>> anti-pragmatic ability is the
>>>> sign of true acquisition.
>>>>
>>>> best, Tom  Roeper
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 6:17 PM, parisa Daftarifard <
>>>> pdaftaryfard at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Dear Anat,
>>>>>
>>>>> Very interesting topic.....I am not sure but lack of language
>>>>> development or language development delay can occur because of problems in
>>>>> pragmatic bootstrapping in some children. Kids with low possibility of being
>>>>> involved in interaction-- when mothers or fathers are busy or when kids live
>>>>> in a poor-interaction environment-- showed to have language delay. This is
>>>>> especially interesting when we consider that TVs are always on and they can
>>>>> get enough input in a unilateral way.
>>>>>
>>>>> Best.
>>>>> Parisa Daftarifard
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 7:37 AM, Anat Ninio <
>>>>> msninio at pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Dear List,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Sorry to have sent this to the whole list by mistake, but actually I'd
>>>>>> love to hear from anybody who knows of studies that can be said to test the
>>>>>> hypothesis that children learn syntax by "pragmatic bootstrapping".
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Anat Ninio
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 17-03-11 06:01, Anat Ninio wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi Nameera,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks a lot!  Absolutely coincidentally this very minute I'm reading
>>>>>> your 2008 (or is it 2009?) encyclopedia entry
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Akhtar, N., & Herold, K. (2008). Pragmatic development. In M. M. Haith
>>>>>> & J. B. Benson (Eds.), *Encyclopedia of infant and early childhood
>>>>>> development,* Vol. *2* (pp. 572-581). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
>>>>>> which I want to cite for a research proposal for an European grant.
>>>>>> First, is it 2008 or 2009? Second, you say
>>>>>>
>>>>>> "We know of no empirical research, however, that has directly
>>>>>> addressed the question of whether children learn syntactic constructions in
>>>>>> the same way as they learn words; that is,  through "pragmatic
>>>>>> bootstrapping" or attention to speakers' intentions." (p.319)
>>>>>> Would you still say so? Or is there some new study that you know of
>>>>>> that I should mention? Any newer publication of yours on this point?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks a lot and see you in SRCD for sure,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Anat
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 17-03-11 05:14, nameera akhtar wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> congratulations, anat!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> hope to see you at srcd,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> nameera
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 7:44 PM, Anat Ninio <
>>>>>> msninio at pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Dear Friends and Colleagues,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I'm very happy to be able to announce the publication of my new book
>>>>>>> by Oxford University Press.  It is entitled   "Syntactic
>>>>>>> development, its input and output" and a description of it, as well
>>>>>>> as a link to the Introduction, can be found on the publisher's on-line
>>>>>>> catalogue at http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199565962.do
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I hope you'll like it!
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Anat Ninio
>>>>>>>
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>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Parisa Daftarifard
>>>>> Phd Student of TEFL
>>>>> Islamic Azad University of Science and Research
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
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>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Tom Roeper
>>>> Dept of Lingiustics
>>>> UMass South College
>>>> Amherst, Mass. 01003 ISA
>>>> 413 256 0390
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Parisa Daftarifard
>>> Phd Student of TEFL
>>> Islamic Azad University of Science and Research
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Tom Roeper
>> Dept of Lingiustics
>> UMass South College
>> Amherst, Mass. 01003 ISA
>> 413 256 0390
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Parisa Daftarifard
> Phd Student of TEFL
> Islamic Azad University of Science and Research
>
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-- 
Tom Roeper
Dept of Lingiustics
UMass South College
Amherst, Mass. 01003 ISA
413 256 0390

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