Acquisition of Spoken Language

Summer 2024, Möbius (Seminar, 2 SWS), LSF #148341

MSc Language Science and Technology / LCT
BSc Computerlinguistik

Thu 10:15-11:45, C7.3/1.12 (seminar room, foyer)

Updated: May 3, 2024


Entrance requirements

None.

Course description

In this seminar, participants will read, present, and discuss selected papers that pertain to various aspects of the acquisition of spoken language, including the phonological development, the role of the input and statistical learning, experiential influences on speech perception and production, bilingual and second language acquisition, and specific language impairment. Depending on participants' interest, we may also look at computational models of language acquisition.

Course credits

7 CP (presentation and paper) or 4 CP (presentation only).
Active participation on a regular basis required.

Requirements

Participation: You are expected to be physically present throughout the seminar and take part in the discussion.
You may miss maximally one class without formal consequences. Please send me an email message in this case, just saying that you will not take part, no explanation required. In case you cannot make it a second or third time, you have to write and submit a summary of the papers to be read (minimum one page per paper).

Reading: For each class, you are required to read one or two papers (see Schedule). For each paper, please send me one question that you want to be answered or discussed in class (on the day preceding the class, before midnight).

Presentation: An oral presentation of 30-45 minutes, typically based on a core paper and maybe some complementary reading. Please contact me (1) when you have been assigned a topic/paper and want to start working on it; (2) when you have a pre-final draft version of the presentation. After your presentation I will provide feedback to you. The final version of your slides will be posted on the course homepage.

Term Paper: MSc students opting for the 7 CP version have to write a term paper (approx. 15 pages, deadlines see below). The topic of the paper need not be identical or overlap with the topic of your oral presentation.

Specific instructions for term papers and the use of LMM-based generative AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT or similar): It is your responsibility to verify any information that you include in the term paper with respect to correctness and reliability of the source. LLM tools generate text based on probabilities without guaranteeing the veracity of information. This also pertains to bibliographic sources, which need to be verified. If you use such tools in the process of writing your term paper, you must indicate this in the declaration that the paper is your own academic work. You must also provide the prompts you used. See UdS guidelines (page 6).

Deadlines

Course registration in LSF: April 11, 2024
Exam registration: July 19, 2024
Term paper: September 30, 2024

Contact:
  Prof. Dr. Bernd Möbius
  Email
  C7.2/4.10


Background reading

A phonetic talent: Max Mangold


Schedule

Date Topic Presented by Slides / Questions
25.04. Introduction, organization BM read paper about Mangold
02.05. Paper assignment
Gerken:2008
BM/all
Anina
 
slides - questions
16.05.  
Gomez/Gerken:2000
Samuel
Sophia
23.05. Jusczyk:1999
Rice:2008
Mihan
Niranjan
06.06. Genesee/Nicoladis:2009 Ema
13.06. Saffran/etal:1996 Meropi
11.07. Evans/etal:2009 Natalia
18.07. StoelGammon/VogelSosa:2008 Marc

Literature

[BACH] = suitable for bachelor students
[SHARE] = suitable for sharing between two presenters

Stoel-Gammon, Carol and Vogel Sosa, Anna
Phonological development.
Blackwell Handbook of Language Development. 2008.
Hoff, Erika and Shatz, Marilyn (eds.).
238-256.
[PDF]

Curtin, Suzanne and Werker, Janet W.
The perceptual foundations of phonological development.
The Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics. 2009.
Gaskell, M. Gareth (ed.).
579-599.
[PDF, password "1946"]
[BACH][SHARE]

Kuhl, P. K. and Ramirez, R. and Bosseler, A. and Lin, J.-F. and Imada, T.
Infants' brain responses to speech suggest Analysis by Synthesis.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111, 11238-11245. 2014.
[PDF]

Gerken, LouAnn
Acquiring linguistic structure.
Blackwell Handbook of Language Development. 2008.
Hoff, Erika and Shatz, Marilyn (eds.).
173-190.
[PDF]
[BACH]

Mueller Gathercole, Virgina C. and Hoff, Erika
Input and the acquisition of language.
Blackwell Handbook of Language Development. 2008.
Hoff, Erika and Shatz, Marilyn (eds.).
107-127.
[PDF]
[BACH]

Polka, Linda and Rvachew, Susan and Mattock, Karen
Experiential influences on speech perception and speech production in
infancy.
Blackwell Handbook of Language Development. 2008.
Hoff, Erika and Shatz, Marilyn (eds.).
153-172.
[PDF]
[BACH]

Jusczyk, Peter W.
How infants begin to extract words from speech.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences 3 (9), 323-328. 1999.
[PDF]
[BACH]

Gomez, Rebecca
Statistical learning in infant language development.
The Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics. 2009.
Gaskell, M. Gareth (ed.)
601-616.
[PDF]
[BACH]

Saffran, J. R. and Aslin, R. N. and Newport, E. L.
Statistical learning by 8-month-old infants.
Science, 274, 1926-1928. 1996.
[PDF]
[BACH]

Roy, Deb
New horizons in the study of child language acquisition.
Proceedings of Interspeech 2009 (Brighton, UK), 13-20. 2009.
[PDF]
[BACH]
  in conjunction with
Roy, Brandon C. and Frank, Michael C. and DeCamp, Philip and Miller, Matthew and Roy, Deb
Predicting the birth of a spoken word.
PNAS Early Edition, 1-6, 2015.
[PDF]
[BACH]

Daland, Robert and Pierrehumbert, Janet
Learning diphone-based segmentation.
Cognitive Science 35, 119-155. 2011.
[PDF]

Gomez, Rebecca and Gerken, LouAnn
Infant artificial language learning and language acquisition.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4 (5), 178-186. 2000.
[PDF]

Scharenborg, Odette and Wan, Vincent and Ernestus, Mirjam
Unsupervised speech segmentation: An analysis of the hypothesized phone boundaries.
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 127 (2), 1084-1095. 2010.
[PDF]
[BACH]

Goldwater, Sharon and Griffiths, Thomas L. and Johnson, Mark
A Bayesian framework for word segmentation: Exploring the effects
of context.
Cognition 112, 21-54. 2009.
[PDF]
[SHARE]

ten Bosch, Louis and Van hamme, Hugo and Boves, Lou
Unsupervised detection of words questioning the relevance of segmentation.
Proceedings ITRW ISCA (Aalborg). 2008.
[PDF]
[BACH]
  in conjunction with
ten Bosch, Louis and Van hamme, Hugo and Boves, Lou
A computational model of language acquisition: focus on word discovery.
Proceedings of Interspeech 2008 (Brisbane), 2570-2673. 2008.
[PDF]
[BACH]

Batchelder, Eleanor Olds
Bootstrapping the lexicon: A computational model of infant speech segmentation.
Cognition 83 (2), 167-206. 2002.
[PDF]
[SHARE]

Abend, Omri and Kwiatkowski, Tom and Smith, Nathaniel J. and Goldwater, Sharon and Steedman, Mark
Bootstrapping language acquisition.
Cognition 164, 116-143. 2017.
[PDF]
[SHARE]

Fleck, Margaret
Lexicalized phonotactic word segmentation.
Proceedings of ACL-08: HLT (Columbus, OH), 130-138. 2008.
[PDF]
[BACH]

Duran, Daniel and Schütze, Hinrich and Möbius, Bernd and Walsh, Michael
A computational model of unsupervised speech segmentation for correspondence learning.
Research on Language and Computation 8 (2-3), 133-168. 2010.
[PDF]

Peperkamp, S. and Le Calvez, R. and Nadal, J.P. and Dupoux, E.
The acquisition of allophonic rules: Statistical learning with linguistic constraints.
Cognition, 101(3), B31-B41. 2006.
[PDF]

Larsen, Elin and Cristia, Alejandrina and Dupoux, Emmanuel
Relating unsupervised word segmentation to reported vocabulary acquisition.
Proceedings of Interspeech 2017 (Stockholm), 2198-2202, 2017.
[PDF]
[BACH]

Messum, Piers and Howard, Ian
Creating the cognitive form of phonological units: the speech sound correspondence problem in infancy could be solved by mirrored vocal interactions rather than by imitation.
Journal of Phonetics 53, 125-140. 2015.
[PDF]
[BACH]

Paradis, Johanne
Second language acquisition in childhood.
Blackwell Handbook of Language Development. 2008.
Hoff, Erika and Shatz, Marilyn (eds.).
387-405.
[PDF]
[BACH]

Genesee, Fred and Nicoladis, Elena
Bilingual first language acquisition.
The Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics. 2009.
Gaskell, M. Gareth (ed.)
324-342.
[PDF]
[BACH]

Paradis, Johanne
Individual differences in child English second language acquisition:
Comparing child-internal and child-external factors.
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 1.3:213-237. 2011.
[PDF]

Cornips, Leonie
Socio-syntax and variation in acquisition: problematizing monolingual and
bidialectal acquisition.
Linguistic Variation, 14 (1), 1-22. 2014.
[PDF]

Rice, Mabel L.
Children with specific language impairment: Bridging the genetic and
evelopmental perspective.
Blackwell Handbook of Language Development. 2008.
Hoff, Erika and Shatz, Marilyn (eds.).
411-431.
[PDF]
[BACH]

Evans, J. and Saffran, J. R. and Robe-Torres, K.
Statistical learning in children with Specific Language Impairments.
Journal of Speech, Language, & Hearing Research, 52, 321-335. 2009.
[PDF]
[BACH]

Lederberg, Amy R., Schick, Brenda and Spencer, Patricia E.
Language and literacy development of deaf and hard-of-hearing
children: Successes and challenges.
Developmental Psychology 49.1: 15-30. 2013.
[PDF]


bm 3.5.2024