A number of academic disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, are deeply interested in language acquisition. The process of acquiring a language is complicated and includes learning vocabulary, linguistic structures, and communication techniques. The most crucial factor in developing diverse cooperative networks for the…

Idiomatics--the scientific study of idiomatic language and figurative language--is a pervasive theme in global literature, yet its precise terminology often lacks clear definition. This article addresses this challenge directly by delving into the etymology, significance, and universality of idiomatics. It emphasizes the pivotal role of idiomatics…

In this dissertation, I establish a research program that uses computational modeling as a testbed for theories of phonological learning. This dissertation focuses on a fundamental question: how do children acquire sound patterns from noisy, real-world data, especially in the presence of lexical exceptions that defy regular patterns? For instance,…

How do children learn the meaning of words like "pretty" and "tall," which are not only gradable and context dependent (Kennedy & McNally 2005), but encode speaker subjectivity? Despite their complex semantics (Stephenson 2007; Lasersohn 2009; Bylinina 2014), these and other adjectives like them, are some of the most…

Data-driven learning uncontroversially plays a role in human language acquisition--how large a role is a matter of much debate. The success of artificial neural networks in NLP in recent years calls for a re-evaluation of our understanding of the possibilities for learning grammar from data alone. This dissertation argues the case for using…

In Krashen's theory of second-language acquisition he claims that there is distinction between language acquisition and language learning, a distinction which other second-language acquisition researchers have called "perhaps the most important conceptualization" in the field and which has made possible the most productive models of SLA.…

In this article, we propose a reconceptualization of the principles and parameters (P&P) framework. We argue that in lieu of discrete parameter values, a parameter value exists on a gradient plane that encodes a learner's confidence that a particular parametric structure licenses the utterances in the learner's linguistic input. Crucially,…

Humans can attribute beliefs to others. However, it is unknown to what extent this ability results from an innate biological endowment or from experience accrued through child development, particularly exposure to language describing others' mental states. We test the viability of the language exposure hypothesis by assessing whether models…

Young children can exploit the syntactic context of a novel word to narrow down its probable meaning. This is "syntactic bootstrapping." A learner that uses syntactic bootstrapping to foster lexical acquisition must first have identified the semantic information that a syntactic context provides. Based on the "semantic seed…

One of the fundamental questions in the field of language acquisition is a learnability problem, which considers how learners acquire certain aspects of language which are not directly provided in the input or whose referents are not readily observable. This dissertation investigates Japanese children's acquisition of various linguistic phenomena,…

Language is one of the hallmarks of intelligence, demanding explanation in a theory of human cognition. However, language presents unique practical challenges for quantitative empirical research, making many linguistic theories difficult to test at naturalistic scales. Artificial neural network language models (LMs) provide a new tool for studying…

The current study tests the hypothesis that language comprehension is, in part, influenced by language exposure, and the biases that people develop are related to the frequency of exposure to different linguistic input, like, for instance, pronoun coreference. As comprehenders filter the linguistic input they encounter, we ask, what is the impact…

Listening is widely regarded as the predominant language proficiency utilized in virtually all forms of communication. However, its intricacies often engender feelings of complexity and, at times, provoke anxiety and frustration among both foreign and second-language learners. The enhancement of successful communication fundamentally hinges upon…

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Stephen Krashen developed Monitor Theory--a group of hypotheses explaining second language acquisition with implications for language teaching. As the L2 scholarly community began considering what requirements theories should meet, Monitor Theory was widely criticized and dismissed, along with its teaching…

This paper outlines the general influence of Halliday's (1994, 2014) systemic functional linguistics on TESOL curriculum. Halliday's explanation of language as a social semiotic and language learning as learning to mean has been applied internationally in genre and textbased teaching. The concept of register in systemic functional linguistics…