GALANA 6: Learning in Generative Grammar - Evaluation Measures 50 Years Later

University Of Maryland, College Park, College Park MD

Investigators

Abstract

Language acquisition stands as the signature intellectual achievement of the human species. The scientific study of language acquisition relates patterns of first and second language acquisition to detailed hypotheses about developing grammatical representations, the mechanisms by which these representations are acquired, and the information processing mechanisms through which these representations are engaged in real time language use by first and second language learners. The 6th Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition -- North America conference, to be held February 19-21, 2015, will bring together researchers examining all aspects of first and second language acquisition. The conference will host a special session focusing on the computational mechanisms through which learners use the language they are exposed to to build a particular grammar. This special session will both introduce cutting edge computational methods to the broader developmental linguistics community and spur new links between empirical research on children's language development with explicit computational models of language learning. The special theme of the conference will encourage collaboration and further research in this area, extending the range of data that computational linguists see as relevant to modeling acquisition and highlighting the importance for developmental linguists of thinking about the role of input and the mechanisms that use it in shaping language acquisition. The core of the conference is a series of invited talks by six prominent researchers with relevant expertise. Together, the speakers address key issues in language learning spanning syntax, phonology, morphology, bilingualism and heritage language acquisition, and bring together a diverse range of theoretical and methodological approaches. In addition, the conference encourages broad participation. Four of the six invited speakers are women and the conference provides travel awards to graduate student presenters. The papers of the invited speakers will be published in Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics.