Psycholinguistics : First Language Acquisition Theories _Connectionist Models

[Md. Mostafa Rashel]

First Language Acquisition Theories : Connectionist Models

Theoretician(s)
•   McClelland
•   Rumelhart


Development, Hypotheses and assumptions

Hypothesis:
Language is built through connections, but not rules. (Post-behaviorist theory)
•   meaning of words (bottle--> milk)
•   PDP (Parallel Distributed Processing)
•   Sufficient exposure
•   Connectionist theories model language acquisition at the neural level. (acquisition of inflectional system)

REFERENCES
Gleason and Ratner (1998). Psycholinguistics. Second Edition. Forth Worth: Harcourt Brace Collage Publishers.
Keenan and Comrie (1977). "Noun phrase accessibility and universal grammar." Linguistic inquiry.8 (1), 63-99.