pragmatic bootstrapping

Thu Apr 14 22:40:53 UTC 2011

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 tha
>>>>> t 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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