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Recollecting What We Once Knew: My Life in Psycholinguistics
Lila R Gleitman1, Claire Gleitman2
1Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA;
Annual Review of Psychology
|October 8, 2021
Summary
Children learn language through innate cognitive functions and by extracting evidence from context. Mechanisms like "propose but verify" and "syntactic bootstrapping" aid in understanding word meanings and grammar.
Area of Science:
- Linguistics
- Cognitive Science
- Developmental Psychology
Background:
- The mid-20th century marked a shift in linguistics from a taxonomic science to viewing language as a cognitive function.
- This article traces Lila Gleitman's engagement with this paradigm shift and her contributions to language acquisition research.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review Lila Gleitman's intellectual journey and contributions to understanding language acquisition.
- To explore how children learn language despite variations in linguistic input, focusing on innate mechanisms and contextual evidence.
Main Methods:
- Review of Lila Gleitman's research and theoretical contributions.
- Analysis of cognitive mechanisms involved in language learning, including information processing and evidence extraction.
Main Results:
- Children possess innate information-processing mechanisms to learn language.
- Word meanings are acquired by extracting evidence from observational and linguistic-syntactic contexts.
- Key mechanisms include "propose but verify" and "syntactic bootstrapping".
Conclusions:
- Language acquisition is guided by innate cognitive structures and learning strategies.
- Contextual cues, both observational and syntactic, are crucial for deciphering word meanings.
- Understanding language learning requires identifying both innate knowledge and the learning processes that utilize environmental input.
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