{"pk":28725,"title":"Privileged Computations for Closed-Class Items in Language Acquisition","subtitle":null,"abstract":"In natural languages, closed-class items predict open-classitems but not the other way around. For example, in English, ifthere is a determiner there will be a noun, but nouns can occurwith or without determiners. Here, we asked whether languagelearners’ computations are also asymmetrical. In threeexperiments we exposed adults to a miniature language withthe one-way dependency “if X then Y”: if X was present, Ywas also present, but X could occur without Y. We createddifferent versions of the language in order to ask whetherlearning depended on which of these categories was an open orclosed class. In one condition, X was a closed class and Y wasan open class; in a contrasting condition, X was an open classand Y was a closed class. Learning was significantly betterwith closed-class X, even though learners’ exposure wasotherwise identical. Additional experiments demonstrated thatthe perceptual distinctiveness of closed-class items driveslearners to analyze them differently; and, crucially, that theprimary determinant of learning is the mathematicalrelationship between closed- and open-class items and not theirlinear order. These results suggest that learners privilegecomputations in which closed-class items are predictive of,rather than predicted by, open-class items. We suggest that thedistributional asymmetries of closed-class items in naturallanguages may arise in part from this learning bias.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"language acquisition; statistical learning;computational mechanisms; morphosyntax; function words;closed-class items"}],"section":"Papers with Poster Presentations","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5712299p","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Heidi","middle_name":"R.","last_name":"Getz","name_suffix":"","institution":"Georgetown University Medical Center","department":""},{"first_name":"Elissa","middle_name":"L.","last_name":"Newport","name_suffix":"","institution":"Georgetown University Medical Center","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2019-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/28725/galley/18596/download/"}]}