Tuesday 7th October, 11am-12:30, DSB 1.17

Jennifer Culbertson

Distinctions among cue types in semantically-based noun class learning

Work on natural language noun class acquisition suggests that phonological information – even if less reliable – may be privileged over semantics (e.g., Gagliardi, 2012). If phonological information is available to the child before meaning, then any privilege for phonological cues could be due to evidence accumulation rather than active down-weighting of semantics. We show that by removing the problem of acquiring meaning, classes in an artificial language can be readily learned based on semantics alone. However, as with phonological cues, some semantic distinctions may be more cognitively accessible than others. We compare shape- and flexibility-based systems and show that the former is learned more readily, in line with typology.

• «Previous Post
• Next Post »

---