Speaker: Dr Alayo Tripp

The Role of Metalinguistic Knowledge in Developmental Psycholinguistics: Connecting Knowledge of Linguistic and Social Structure

Abstract:

Individuals language in unique ways, yet we can recognize variable productions as instances of “the same words.” This suggests that linguistic information is a special kind of shared knowledge. However, there is also a lot of information we get from language use that isn’t necessarily linguistic. For example, we can get impressions of how a person is feeling, or how they might be gendered. The availability of this “non-linguistic” information impacts linguistic processing at every level of analysis and is implicated in processes of sociolinguistic learning and linguistic discrimination (Tripp & Munson, 2021). Determining when information is linguistic is a socially situated enterprise, for scientists and babies alike.

However, computational models of language have largely excluded non-linguistic information and processes of social differentiation from their characterizations of linguistic structure (Tripp, Feldman & Idsardi, 2021). I discuss the inherent tension in formal models, which attempt to both accurately represent and simplify complex systems. I then present a computational model of language learning (Tripp, 2019), which situates linguistic behavior within a framework of meta-linguistic awareness and social desire, connecting the knowledge of formal structure described in generativist theory, with the functional and cognitive abilities deployed by language learners in real world situations. Drawing on data from studies of speech perception and learning in infants, children and adults, I argue that accurately characterizing the language acquisition task requires attention to the role of social affiliation in defining learning outcomes as more or less acceptable.