Computational models of language acquisition:
Why, how, and what we can learn
First Annual Cognitive Science Program Workshop
Keynote Address
Simon Fraser University
June 3, 2017
Lisa Pearl
Computational modeling is an excellent tool for understanding the astonishing process of language acquisition (and why it typically works so well). In this talk, I'll highlight how we can use computational modeling to investigate theories of language acquisition and formalize explanations at different levels. I'll also review the highlights from several recent computational modeling studies that demonstrate what we can learn about the acquisition of all kinds of linguistic knowledge. This includes very foundational knowledge, such as the form of early words and grammatical categories, all the way up to highly sophisticated knowledge, such as restrictions on the form of the questions we can ask and the constraints on our interpretations when we encounter ambiguous utterances.
