The Emergence of Language
(from Brain, Body, and Discourse)
Brian MacWhinney- CMU
EmergentismE
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The Special Gift Paradigm
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5.
6.
7.
Grammar Gene
Speech is Special
Modularity
Critical Period*
Poverty of the Stimulus*
Sudden Evolution of Language*
Centrality of Recursion*
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Emergentism
Genetic Locus?
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Emergentism
Cortical Module?
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Emergentism
Hard-wired modules?
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Emergentism
Speech is Special?
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Emergentism
Sudden evolution?
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7 MYA bipedalism
4 MYA tools, opposing thumb
3 MYA parietal expansion, TOM
1.5 MYA general cortical expansion
.3 MYA expanding pulmonic support
.1 MYA glottal control
30,000 creativity explosion
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Emergentism
Expiration of the Special Gift
• Wild children are neurologically impaired
• Newport and Johnson show no point of
sudden loss
• Recovery of language at 13 after
hemispherectomy -- Vargha-Khadem
• L2 age effects not unique to language
learning-- ballet, golf, even math
• Entrenchment account of L2
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Emergentism
Logical Problem?
• Mothers speak grammatically - Newport
• Degree-0 learnability - Lightfoot
• Competition provides the negative
evidence - MacWhinney
• Error-free learning doesn’t occur - Pullum
• The Stimulus isn’t impoverished after all
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Emergentism
Stipulation and the Gift
• Rules have been the backbone of
descriptive linguistics
• Rules can be stipulated
• Children learn rules - Brown, Marcus,
Pinker
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Emergentism
Big Mean Rules
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Emergentism
Big Mean Flowcharts
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Emergentism
Changing theories …
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•
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Rules are softening
Evolution is stretching out
Modularity is getting plastic
Genome is becoming exaptive
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Emergentism
Kinder, gentler rules
• Pinker (1984)
 add -ed
• Aslin, Newport, Saffran (1999)
 golabu, pitaku
• Marcus’s (2000) baby rules
 S -> A + B +A
ga-ti-ga
ga-na-ga
ga-gi-ga
ga-la-ga
li-na-li
li-ti-li
li-gi-li
li-la-li
ni-gi-ni
ni-ti-ni
ni-na-ni
ni-la-ni
ta-la-ta
ta-ti-ta
ta-na-ta
ta-gi-ta
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Emergentism
But …
Lexicon, dialect, collocation, pragmatics, function, ….
Core: X-bar,
Merge,
recursion
Periphery
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Emergentism
Emergentism
• Not:
 empiricism vs. nativism
• Instead:
 emergentism vs. stipulationism
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Emergentism
Emergence vs stipulation
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Emergentism
Emergent structure in Honeycombs
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Emergentism
Emergent Columns
Emergence of Oriented On-Off Neurons
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Emergentism
Emergent Computation
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Emergentism
Physical emergence
Closures inhibit voicing
Many languages lack /b/, few lack /p/
time 0
time 1
time 2
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Emergentism
Entrainment - Huygens
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Emergentism
Jaw entrains the glottis
Lip-smacking rhythms (Macneilage
& Davis, 2001)
Thelen & Iverson, 1998 - jaw
entrains glottis
Hippocampal timers (Buzsáki
2004)
Conversational synchrony (Wilson
& Wilson 2005)
23
Emergentism
Babbling entrains gesture
• Iverson, Thelen
• Central role of rhythm
• Babbling and gesture both arise from
Broca’s area
• McNeill’s theory of growing points with
gesture at the root of thought
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Emergentism
Dissipative Systems
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Emergentism
Catalysis
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Emergentism
Deformation
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Emergentism
Emergentist theory asks:
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How did a structure emerge?
Under what time-frame did it emerge?
What dynamic processes are involved?
How stable is the structure?
How does removal of supports alter the
emergence?
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Emergentism
Mechanisms of Emergence
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Entrainment, physical and social
Adaptation, selection
Competition, strength
Hebbian learning, reinforcement
Topology, short connections
Self-organized criticality, catalysis
Resonance
Deformation, induction, regulation
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Emergentism
Why now?
Without advanced methods, emergentist
cognitive science was not possible
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We didn’t have CHILDES, TalkBank
Audio, video analysis was primitive - TalkBank
We couldn’t simulate - PDP, SOM, ART
We couldn’t image the brain - ERP, fMRI
We couldn’t study learning in vivo - PSLC.
With these advances, emergentism is
becoming the default stance.
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Emergentism
Sources of emergence
• Brain: Neural networks, short connections,
area histology, spike propagation
• Body: Embodied cognition, the vocal
apparatus
• Society: Discourse, roles, theory of mind
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Emergentism
Time-frames of Emergence
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Archaeogenetic
Phylogenetic
Embryological
Developmental
Online
Diachronic
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Emergentism
Books
The Emergence of
Language
Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, 1999
Elman, J. et al
(1996)
Rethinking
Innateness
MIT Press
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Emergentism
Examples
1. Morphological paradigms
2. From lexicon to syntax
3. Mutual exclusivity
4. Perspective flow
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Emergentism
1. Neural Networks for Morphology
unit s
conn ec tio ns
activ ations
we ig hts
lea rni ng rul e
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Emergentism
Summing activation
z1
z2
y1
z3
y2
.54
.22
x1
x2
x3
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Emergentism
Neurons don’t send Morse code
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Emergentism
Memory molecules?
Worm Runners Digest
Training, grinding, feeding planaria
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Emergentism
The architecture
OUTPUT UNITS
der die das des dem den
• • • • • •
hidden
7 units
200
gender
20hidden
200
10 case units
number units
INPUT UNITS
143 phonological 5 semantic
168 Left-justified
17 case cues 11 phono
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Emergentism
Networks work
• It worked -- it learned the input
• It generalized as in German and
English
• It matched the developmental data
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Emergentism
With Limitations
The homophony problem
ringed -- rang -- wrung
The masquerading morpheme problem
-chen
-en in Nacken, Hafen vs -en in Wissen
The “underwent” problem
Mutter should guarantee die Grossmutter
The zero derivation problem
schlagen should predict der Schlag
The early “went” problem
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Emergentism
2. The answer
• Morphological learning must emerge from
a lexical base
• Therefore, we first have to simulate the
learning of the lexicon
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Emergentism
Self-organizing lexical maps
Li, Farkas, MacWhinney
- Neural network
- computer simulation
- L1 lexical learning
- CHILDES input
- no initial organization
- short connections
Gradual Emergence
50, 150, 250, 500 words
DevLex Model
Bilingual self-organization
Word
Form
Phonological Map
Phonological
ENGLISH PHONOLOGY
Self-organization
CHINESE PHONOLOGY
Chinese Phonology
ASSOCIATIVE
CONNECTIONS (Hebbian learning)
Word
Meaning
Co-occurrence-based representation
(derived from separate component exposed to
bilingual corpus)
Self-organization
CHCHINESE SEMANTICS
Chinese
Semantics
ENGLISH SEMANTICS
Semantic Map
Refining competition
Maps implement entrenchment
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Strong items dominate over weak.
Late L2 items are parasitic on pre-existing
L1 forms and maps
Module Entrenchment
Simultaneous Bilingualism
LX
LY
balanced
Successive Bilingualism
L1
L2
dominates
Parasitism and Transfer
C
L1
turtle
L2
tortuga
Entrenchment vs. Critical Periods
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Critical Periods are linked to infancy.
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Observed drop is not precipitous.
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Lateralization is not linked to CP.
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Language is not a unitary ability.
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Golf, ballet are also age-related.
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No mechanism has been discovered.
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UG-related syntactic patterns are not strongly
fossilized - Birdsong
Entrenchment vs. Critical Periods
•
Critical Periods are linked to infancy.
•
Observed drop is not precipitous.
•
Lateralization is not linked to CP.
•
Language is not a unitary ability.
•
Golf, ballet are also age-related.
•
No mechanism has been discovered.
•
UG-related syntactic patterns are not strongly
fossilized - Birdsong
5. Emergence from Resonance
• Graduated interval recall
• Multimodal consolidation
• Self-organized criticality
Graduated interval recall
Pimsleur 67
Neural Basis
Wittenburg et al. 2002
Optimization really helps
Chinese Resonance
Consolidation Circuits
Dynamic
Meaning
Sound
Consolidation
Hippo
campus
Basal
Ganglia
Scaffold
Consolidation and Time
•
Bones, muscles, cell walls, mitochondria, and immune system becomes
stronger after periods of use and breakage.
•
These systems respond to pressures across time frames. (slow muscles, fast
muscles)
•
Neurons work the same way.
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They are sensitive to:




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one-trial learning (amygdalal input)
local episodic learning (hippocampal input)
embodied learning (self-motion)
statistical learning (basal ganglia, circuits)
strategic resonant learning (frontal input)
Example 4: Perspective and grammar
• Animal cognition is modular (bees)
• Perspective integrates across modules
• Language expresses perspective and
changes in perspective
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Emergentism
Perspective
unified image
language as a functional neural circuit
perspective
direct
experience
perspective
perspective
deixis
plans
EmergentismE
perspective
roles
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The dorsal and the ventral
paths
enactive
depictive
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Emergentism
Mirror neurons -- Rizzolatti
E grabs M grabs
E with pliers
M grabs
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Emergentism
Monkey grabbing in the
dark
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Emergentism
Perspective shift
(MacWhinney y Pléh (1987)
SS:
The dog that chased the cat bit the horse.
# cambio
0
OS:
The dog chased the cat that bit the horse.
1-
OO:
The dog chased the cat the horse bit.
1+
SO:
The dog the cat chased bit the horse.
2
SS > OS = OO > SO
The dog the cat the boy liked chased snarled.
(dog -> cat -> boy -> cat -> dog)
4+
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Emergentism
Ambiguity and perspective flow
• John saw the Grand Canyon flying to New York.
• The women discussed the dogs on the beach.
• Although John always runs, a mile seems like a long distance to
him.
• I ordered her pancakes.
• Visiting relatives can be a nuisance.
• The horse raced past the barn fell.
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Emergentism
Constructions that mark perspective
shift
Passive
Double Object
Inverse
Obviative
Fictive agent
Conflation
Comparative
Complementation
Adverbalization
Binding
Dislocation
Clefting
Topicalización
Possessive
Ellipsis
Coordination ….
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Emergentism
Other sample topics:
the emergence of X from Y
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•
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CV syllable from lip-smacking
Final devoicing from syllable structure
Ergativity from subject omission
Locatives from body parts
Superordinates from most frequent
subordinates
• Use of Broca’s for ASL
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Emergentism
Getting it wrong
QuickTime™ and a
Motion JPEG A decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
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Emergentism
Falsifiability of Emergentism?
• Core claim : all processes arise from
dynamic interactions
• Core claim: Language arises from external
pressures
• Conceptualization cannot be falsified, but
specific implementations can.
• Specific implementations must be
described mechanistically. This is really
difficult.
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Emergentism
Summary
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•
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Emergentism vs. Stipulationism
Emergence on five time-frames
Emergence from Brain, Body, and Society
Four examples: morphology, syntax, ME,
perspective
• Emergentist accounts can be wrong.
• But emergentism cannot be falsified, it can only
be implemented. This is really difficult.
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Emergentism
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