Competition model

The competition model is a psycholinguistic theory of language acquisition and sentence processing, developed by Elizabeth Bates and Brian MacWhinney (1982). The claim in MacWhinney, Bates, and Kliegl (1984) is that "the forms of natural languages are created, governed, constrained, acquired, and used in the service of communicative functions." Furthermore, the model holds that processing is based on an online competition between these communicative functions or motives. The model focuses on competition during sentence processing, crosslinguistic competition in bilingualism, and the role of competition in language acquisition. It is an emergentist theory of language acquisition and processing, serving as an alternative to strict innatist and empiricist theories. According to the Competition Model, patterns in language arise from Darwinian competition and selection on a variety of time/process scales including phylogenetic, ontogenetic, social diffusion, and synchronic scales.

The classic competition model

The classic version of the model focused on competition during sentence processing, crosslinguistic competition in bilingualism, and the role of competition in language acquisition.

Sentence processing

The competition model was initially proposed as a theory of cross-linguistic sentence processing. The model suggests that people interpret the meaning of a sentence by taking into account various linguistic cues contained in the sentence context, such as word order, morphology, and semantic characteristics (e.g., animacy), to compute a probabilistic value for each interpretation, eventually choosing the interpretation with the highest likelihood. According to the model, cue weights are learned inductively on the basis of the extent to which the cues are available and reliable guides to meanings in comprehension and to forms in production. Because different languages use different cues to signal meanings, the competition model maintains that cue weights will differ between languages, and users of a given language will use the cue weights associated with that language, to guide their interpretation of sentences. Thus, when people learn other languages, they must learn which cues are important in which languages, in order to successfully interpret sentences in any language. The model defines a cue as an information source present in the surface structure of utterances that allows the language user to link linguistic form with meaning or function. Cues vary in their type (morphological, syntactic, prosodic, semantic, and pragmatic), availability (how often they are present), and reliability (how often they lead to the correct interpretation). Each cue has a certain level of cue validity, the joint product of availability and reliability. Cues of the same basic type, such as case-marking, animacy, or word order may have markedly different levels of validity in different languages. For example, the cue of animacy plays a minimal role in English, but a major role in Italian. The model holds that cues both compete and cooperate during processing. Sometimes cues cooperate or converge by pointing to the same interpretation or production. Sometimes, cues compete by pointing to conflicting interpretations or productions.

Language acquisition

The application of the model to child language acquisition focuses on the role that cue availability and reliability play in determining the order of acquisition of grammatical structures. The basic finding is that children first learn the most available cue(s) in their language. If the most available cue is not also the most reliable, then children slowly shift from depending on the available cue to depending on the more reliable cue.

Time/process scales

The third component of emergentist analysis (after competition and structural levels) is the theory of time/process scales. Emergentist theory holds that structures emerge from the constraints arising within time/process frames. The operation of time/process frames and their constraints can be illustrated by looking at how a set of four structural levels determine the shape of proteins (Campbell, Reece, & Mitchell, 1999). During protein folding, the primary structure of the protein is constrained by the sequence of amino acids in the chain of RNA used by the ribosome as the template for protein synthesis. This sequence conveys a code shaped by evolution; but the physical shape of a specific protein is determined by processes operating after initial RNA transcription. The first partially folded structure to emerge is the secondary structure of coils and folds created by the imposition of constraints from hydrogen bonding across the amino acid chain. These forces can only impact the geometry of the protein once the primary structure emerges from the ribosome and begins to contract. After these second structures have formed, a tertiary structure arises from constraints imposed by hydrophobic reactions and disulfide bridges across the folds and coils of the secondary structures. Finally, the quaternary structure derives from the aggregation of polypeptide subunits based on the ternary structures. It is this final structure that allows each protein to serve its unique role, be it oxygen transport for hemoglobin or antigen detection for antibodies. In this partially decomposable emergent system, each level involves a configuration of components from lower levels, but the biochemical constraints operative on each level are unique to that level and only operate once that level has emerged during the process of folding. The fully emergentist version of the UCM emphasizes the ways in which language learning and processing is constrained by processes operating at divergent structural levels in divergent time/process frames (MacWhinney, 2015a). To account for patterns of disfluency, stuttering, code-switching, and conversational sequencing, we look at the constraints imposed by online lexical access, patterns of cortical activation, and social affiliation. Some of these constraints operate across a timeframe of milliseconds and others, like social affiliation, extend across decades. The UCM distinguishes five major groups of time/process frames: phylogenetic drift in the species, diachronic change through social diffusion in the language, developmental change across the lifespan, memory consolidation across days, and frames for online processing and conversation in the moment. Within each of these five major time/process frame groups there are dozens of component processes working to constrain the shape of language. The importance of timeframes is illustrated by a particularly puzzling aspect of language learning, which is the way in which young immigrant children can completely forget their first language (Ventureyra, Pallier, & Yoo, 2004). These cases of complete language attrition contrasts with the minimal level of language attrition experienced by older immigrants (MacWhinney, 2018). It is difficult to account for this in terms of entrenchment alone, because the young learners have used their L1 continually for as much as 6 years. Instead one needs to look at the role of social support for young immigrants, pressures to adopt L2, and the role of literacy in helping older learners consolidate their access to L1 forms. Understanding the interactions of these processes requires a model that can bring all of these forces and timeframes together in terms of competition, motivation, and consolidation. Elaborating these effects is now a major emphasis for ongoing UCM research.

References

External links

Brian MacWhinney's homepage (Contains bibliography on the competition model) Peer-reviewed articles on research concerning the competition model Presentation on the competition model & emergentist theory of language acquisition Simplified outline of competition model Elizabeth Bates' publications

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1375022610 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.

Names in other languages