Department of Linguistics and Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania, 619 Williams Hall, Philadelphia, PA 19081, USA.
Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, and ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Sydney, Australia.
Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2017 Oct;81(Pt B):103-119. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2016.12.023. Epub 2017 Jan 7.
Human infants develop language remarkably rapidly and without overt instruction. We argue that the distinctive ontogenesis of child language arises from the interplay of three factors: domain-specific principles of language (Universal Grammar), external experience, and properties of non-linguistic domains of cognition including general learning mechanisms and principles of efficient computation. We review developmental evidence that children make use of hierarchically composed structures ('Merge') from the earliest stages and at all levels of linguistic organization. At the same time, longitudinal trajectories of development show sensitivity to the quantity of specific patterns in the input, which suggests the use of probabilistic processes as well as inductive learning mechanisms that are suitable for the psychological constraints on language acquisition. By considering the place of language in human biology and evolution, we propose an approach that integrates principles from Universal Grammar and constraints from other domains of cognition. We outline some initial results of this approach as well as challenges for future research.
人类婴儿能够惊人地迅速且无需明显指导地发展语言。我们认为，儿童语言的独特发生源于三个因素的相互作用：语言的特定领域原则（普遍语法）、外部经验以及认知的非语言领域的特性，包括一般学习机制和有效计算的原则。我们回顾了发展证据，表明儿童从最早阶段开始并在语言组织的所有层次上都利用了层次组成的结构（“合并”）。同时，发展的纵向轨迹对输入中特定模式的数量表现出敏感性，这表明使用了概率过程以及适合语言习得的心理限制的归纳学习机制。通过考虑语言在人类生物学和进化中的位置，我们提出了一种方法，该方法整合了来自普遍语法和认知其他领域的原则。我们概述了该方法的一些初步结果以及未来研究的挑战。
