HESP Research Sheds Light on Grammar Acquisition in Children
The question of how we learn the grammar of our language has long been a puzzle in the field of language acquisition, as parents don’t explicitly label “nouns” and “verbs” for their young children. But in order to produce and understand new sentences, we rely on implicit knowledge of these categories.
In a new study published in Cognition, UMD researchers apply lab-based language acquisition testing to the real-world task of religious text memorization. Unlike traditional lab testing, this unique input provides Qur’an memorizers with extended exposure to the statistical complexity of Arabic. The resulting grammatical judgments were more accurate in memorizers compared to classroom learners.
These results demonstrate that real-world exposure to the statistical properties of a natural language facilitates the acquisition of grammatical categories.
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"2305","attributes":{"alt":"Huang","class":"media-image","style":"font-size: 1rem; line-height: 1.6; width: 200px; height: 246px; margin: 5px; float: left;"}}]]The paper, “Effects of statistical learning on the acquisition of grammatical categories through Qur’anic memorization: A natural experiment,” is coauthored by Assistant Professor of Hearing and Speech Sciences Yi Ting Huang (pictured) and department alumna F. Manaar Zuhurudeen.
Researchers have long believed one possible way children learn grammatical categories is by tracking the co-occurrence patterns of words in the language that they hear. For example, a child who hears phrases such as “her cat,” “her bike,” and “her train” can use statistical cues to infer that words which follow possessive pronouns form a category of nouns. Critically, the evidence to date for this kind of mechanism comes primarily from studies of artificial languages done in the lab.
When children are presented with a “fake language” in the lab, they can use statistical cues to form language-like categories. But there remains a disconnect between what children are doing in the lab–such as reacting to 15 minutes of exposure to a highly simplified language—and the challenges they face in the real world. Real-world languages are far more complex since they involve far more words and grammatical categories as well as possible interference from knowledge of meanings. Also real-world learning occurs over several years, not minutes.
In this new study, researchers investigated a real-world test case of statistical learning that occurs among memorizers of the Qur'an, the primary religious text of Islam. Many Muslims living in the United States are native English-speakers. Moreover, their families often emigrate from countries outside of the Middle East, thus, they aren’t members of an Arabic-speaking community. Nevertheless, they encounter the statistical regularities of Arabic through their memorization of the Qur’an. This practice starts as early as four years of age, occurs for several hours a day, and continues for many years.
“Much like artificial language tasks, input of this kind rarely provides direct translations,” Professor Huang said. “Thus, these contexts allow us to isolate whether learners are using statistical cues, when no meaning information is available. They also offer unique opportunities to assess long-term impacts of statistical learning within a natural language.”
In the study, memorizers were asked to distinguish unfamiliar nouns and verbs based on their co-occurrence with familiar pronouns in a short Arabic language sample. Their performance was compared to that of second-language classroom learners of Arabic who had explicit knowledge of the pronoun meanings and their grammatical functions.
Surprisingly, grammatical judgments were more accurate in memorizers compared to non-memorizers. No effects of classroom experience were found.
“What we’ve learned is that language memorization has value beyond the familiarity and performance of, say, a religious text; this type of activity can promote learning of highly abstract aspects of language that are notoriously difficult to master in traditional classroom settings,” Professor Huang said. “With this knowledge, parents can make informed choices about the value of similar activities, such as memorizing foreign-language poetry, or learning and performing Hebrew passages in preparation for a bat or bar mitzvah.”
Published on Thu, Apr 21, 2016 - 1:06PM