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Erdin Mujezinovic; Vsevolod Kapatsinski; Ruben van de Vijver – Cognitive Science, 2024
A word often expresses many different morphological functions. Which part of a word contributes to which part of the overall meaning is not always clear, which raises the question as to how such functions are learned. While linguistic studies tacitly assume the co-occurrence of cues and outcomes to suffice in learning these functions (Baer-Henney,…
Descriptors: Morphology (Languages), Phonology, Morphemes, Cues
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Aislinn Keogh; Simon Kirby; Jennifer Culbertson – Cognitive Science, 2024
General principles of human cognition can help to explain why languages are more likely to have certain characteristics than others: structures that are difficult to process or produce will tend to be lost over time. One aspect of cognition that is implicated in language use is working memory--the component of short-term memory used for temporary…
Descriptors: Language Variation, Learning Processes, Short Term Memory, Schemata (Cognition)
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Mansfield, John; Saldana, Carmen; Hurst, Peter; Nordlinger, Rachel; Stoll, Sabine; Bickel, Balthasar; Perfors, Andrew – Cognitive Science, 2022
Inflectional affixes expressing the same grammatical category (e.g., subject agreement) tend to appear in the same morphological position in the word. We hypothesize that this cross-linguistic tendency toward "category clustering" is at least partly the result of a learning bias, which facilitates the transmission of morphology from one…
Descriptors: Morphology (Languages), Morphemes, Grammar, Transfer of Training
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Lai, Wei; Rácz, Péter; Roberts, Gareth – Cognitive Science, 2020
How do speakers learn the social meaning of different linguistic variants, and what factors influence how likely a particular social-linguistic association is to be learned? It has been argued that the social meaning of more salient variants should be learned faster, and that learners' pre-existing experience of a variant will influence its…
Descriptors: Language Variation, Second Language Learning, Sociolinguistics, Prior Learning
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Atkinson, Mark; Smith, Kenny; Kirby, Simon – Cognitive Science, 2018
Languages spoken in larger populations are relatively simple. A possible explanation for this is that languages with a greater number of speakers tend to also be those with higher proportions of non-native speakers, who may simplify language during learning. We assess this explanation for the negative correlation between population size and…
Descriptors: Adult Learning, Second Language Learning, Difficulty Level, Morphology (Languages)
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Romberg, Alexa R.; Saffran, Jenny R. – Cognitive Science, 2013
Natural languages contain many layers of sequential structure, from the distribution of phonemes within words to the distribution of phrases within utterances. However, most research modeling language acquisition using artificial languages has focused on only one type of distributional structure at a time. In two experiments, we investigated adult…
Descriptors: Artificial Languages, Second Language Learning, Adults, Adult Learning
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Lany, Jill; Gomez, Rebecca L.; Gerken, Lou Ann – Cognitive Science, 2007
Learners exposed to an artificial language recognize its abstract structural regularities when instantiated in a novel vocabulary (e.g., Gomez, Gerken, & Schvaneveldt, 2000; Tunney & Altmann, 2001). We asked whether such sensitivity accelerates subsequent learning, and enables acquisition of more complex structure. In Experiment 1, pre-exposure to…
Descriptors: Second Language Learning, Phonology, Artificial Languages, Prior Learning