pragmatic bootstrapping

Tue Mar 22 12:36:31 UTC 2011

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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