Hsu, Anne S. and Chater, Nick. (2010) The logical problem of language acquisition : a probabilistic perspective. Cognitive Science, Vol.34 (No.6). pp. 972-1016. ISSN 0364-0213

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Abstract

Natural language is full of patterns that appear to fit with general linguistic rules but are ungrammatical. There has been much debate over how children acquire these “linguistic restrictions,” and whether innate language knowledge is needed. Recently, it has been shown that restrictions in language can be learned asymptotically via probabilistic inference using the minimum description length (MDL) principle. Here, we extend the MDL approach to give a simple and practical methodology for estimating how much linguistic data are required to learn a particular linguistic restriction. Our method provides a new research tool, allowing arguments about natural language learnability to be made explicit and quantified for the first time. We apply this method to a range of classic puzzles in language acquisition. We find some linguistic rules appear easily statistically learnable from language experience only, whereas others appear to require additional learning mechanisms (e.g., additional cues or innate constraints).

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Divisions:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School > Behavioural Science Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School
Journal or Publication Title:	Cognitive Science
Publisher:	Psychology Press
ISSN:	0364-0213
Date:	August 2010
Volume:	Vol.34
Number:	No.6
Number of Pages:	45
Page Range:	pp. 972-1016
Identification Number:	10.1111/j.1551-6709.2010.01117.x
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Published
Access rights to Published version:	Restricted or Subscription Access
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/44434

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