Bilingual first language learners face unique challenges that may influence the rate and order of early word learning relative to monolinguals. A comparison of the productive vocabularies of 435 children between the ages of 6 months and 7 years-181 of which were bilingual English learners-found that monolinguals learned both English words and all-language concepts faster than bilinguals. Howeve...

This article aims to provide an overview of major theoretical approaches and psychological considerations related to child language (first language acquisition). The field is multidimensional, as illustrated by the many courses on child language or language acquisition that are taught in departments of Linguistics, Psychology, Cognitive Science, Speech Pathology, Education, and Anthropology. Th...

One argument for parametric models of language has been learnability in the context of first language acquisition. The claim is made that “logical” arguments from learnability theory require non-trivial constraints on the class of languages. Initial formalisations of the problem (Gold, 1967) are however inapplicable to this particular situation. In this paper we construct an appropriate formali...

In a recent survey of early language acquisition, Gleitman, Gleitman, Landau, and Wanner (1988) cite Leonard Bloomfield (1933, p. 29) as remarking that "language learning is doubtless the greatest intellectual feat any one of us is ever required to perform." Given this, it is equally no small feat to attempt to build a computer model that does the same thing. Satake's book is one of but a handf...

This work investigates a computational model of first language acquisition; the Categorial Grammar Learner or CGL. The model builds on the work of Villavicenio, who created a parametric Categorial Grammar learner that organises its parameters into an inheritance hierarchy, and also on the work of Buszkowski and Kanazawa, who demonstrated the learnability of a k-valued Classic Categorial Grammar...

Preferably, the properties of grammar can be derived from the following factors: (i) The primary linguistic data as they are offered to the child. (ii) A language acquisition procedure. Hopefully, the language acquisition procedure is compatible with plausible assumptions about the neural abilities of human beings, but that is of no immediate concern here. The interaction of the primary data an...

NOTHING IS MORE important to a child’s development than the acquisition of language. Most children acquire language quickly and effortlessly, giving the impression that the entire process is simple and straightforward. However, the true extent of children’s achievement becomes evident when we compare their success with the difficulties encountered by adults who try to learn a second language. U...