[Corpora-List] Language Acquisition

Fri Dec 2 03:51:18 UTC 2011

Dear David,

You wrote:

Maybe there will be a day when AI's rational
agents can feel peer pressure, can feel 'face' and
loss of 'face', the urge to be a member of a
social group, a day when an AI rational agent
draws its very identity from the 'culture' it
'belongs to', (or, for that matter, can feel an
identity of any sort) and can 'feel' the high
'personal' (robotic?) stakes of stepping out of
that cultural identity to risk entry into a
different one, risk being rejected, experience
being excluded or admitted to that 'speech
community' based on ones competence in using
another language. (To me, these human attributes
are central rather than peripheral to explanations
of (2nd) language learning.) When that day comes,
when AI's rational agents can be designed with
those attributes, then I'll be the first to want
them in my R&D team developing language learning
technologies. Until then, where are the
anthropologists (and where are the....(fill in the
blank; who else do we need to join in our
efforts?)!

Your point is well taken; that embedded, situated,
rational agent could learn a language (English?)
and then copies of the program and its learned
data and processes could be made.  That would
create ubiquitous agents for every conceivable
task that requires English and can fit within the
bounds of what was first learned.  The first agent
so constructed might have limited capability in
vocabulary, syntax, semantics, and practical uses.

The ability to "feel" as you put it could be
simulated using theories drawn from psychological
and sociological research information.  

The ability to acquire new words, syntax and
semantics would likely follow in the third tier of
agents, at least to a practical and pragmatic
extent needed to build a tier of learning agent
copies.  

Your insights as a language teacher are very
useful, and certainly aren't well represented in
current or past linguistics research, at least as
I am aware of.  

Thanks,

-Rich

Sincerely,

Rich Cooper

EnglishLogicKernel.com

Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com

9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2

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From: corpora-bounces at uib.no
[mailto:corpora-bounces at uib.no] On Behalf Of David
Wible
Sent: Sunday, November 20, 2011 10:28 PM
To: Mark Lybrand
Cc: corpora
Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] Language Acquisition

Mark mentions the possibility of AI-spawned
rational agents contributing to the design of
language learning technologies. Let me say
something about that, at least wrt second language
acquisition/learning. (Sorry this is ignoring
Mark's original question. And what follows is not
at all aimed at Mark.)

To me, the current area in which to look for
breakthroughs in language acquisition research (at
least the kind that hopes to be relevant to
educators in trying to foster language
acquisition) is research that enriches the scope
of contextual factors that matter to situated,
human learners, not research that further
decontextualizes its 'models' of learning
(scrubbing them clean of the messy variables that
muck up the research design). In my experience,
the most lamentable aspect of efforts to create
'assistive technologies for learners' is the
development of such technologies in sanitized,
lab-like conditions (or in the sanitized
conditions of certain technologists' own minds)
without the benefit of any front-line classroom
experience with living, breathing learners or
teachers (or parents or administrators). I have
spent a hefty chunk of my academic life trying to
develop technologies that assist in language
learning, so I'm all for it. But my own quirky
main conclusion from all these years is that the
stuff which is designed and made in 'idealized'
conditions is often hopelessly detached from what
would take hold in actual learning ecologies, and
because of that, it won't 'scale up' beyond the
stage of lab toys). What portion of teachers who
allow their students to be used as subjects in
testing out these technologies are glad when it's
over and, short of coercion, would never touch the
stuff again . R&D efforts in language learning
technology, need from the earliest stages, more
'anthropologists' and 'ethnographers' and teachers
from the 'trenches' where the technologies are
hoping to make a contribution, not more
decontextualized, sanitized models of language
acquisition.

Maybe there will be a day when AI's rational
agents can feel peer pressure, can feel 'face' and
loss of 'face', the urge to be a member of a
social group, a day when an AI rational agent
draws its very identity from the 'culture' it
'belongs to', (or, for that matter, can feel an
identity of any sort) and can 'feel' the high
'personal' (robotic?) stakes of stepping out of
that cultural identity to risk entry into a
different one, risk being rejected, experience
being excluded or admitted to that 'speech
community' based on ones competence in using
another language. (To me, these human attributes
are central rather than peripheral to explanations
of (2nd) language learning.) When that day comes,
when AI's rational agents can be designed with
those attributes, then I'll be the first to want
them in my R&D team developing language learning
technologies. Until then, where are the
anthropologists (and where are the....(fill in the
blank; who else do we need to join in our
efforts?)!

Sorry to ramble.

David Wible,
National Central University
Taiwan

On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 12:19 PM, Mark Lybrand
<mlybrand at gmail.com> wrote:

Okay, so this is probably not a "corpora" issue.
Forgive me please, as I am an NLP piker.  The
question that is plaguing me right now is if there
is any research in using AI to mimic language
acquistion.  Rather, have there been attempts made
to create a rational agent that uses typical human
strategies to learn a new language. It would seem
that such an approach could be helpful in creating
assistive technologies for learners of a foreign
language.  Can you guys steer me in the right
direction?

Thanks. Feel free to just ignore me altogether if
this is completely OT.

-- 
Mark :)

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