Bootstrapping is a term used in language acquisition in the field of linguistics. It refers to the idea that humans are born innately equipped with a mental faculty that forms the basis of language. It is this language faculty that allows children to effortlessly acquire language. As a process, bootstrapping can be divided into different domains, according to whether it involves semantic bootstrapping, syntactic bootstrapping, prosodic bootstrapping, or pragmatic bootstrapping.
Background
Etymology In literal terms, a bootstrap is the small strap on a boot that is used to help pull on the entire boot. Similarly in computer science, booting refers to the startup of an operation system by means of first initiating a smaller program. Therefore, bootstrapping refers to the leveraging of a small action into a more powerful and significant operation.
Bootstrapping in linguistics was first introduced by Steven Pinker as a metaphor for the idea that children are innately equipped with mental processes that help initiate language acquisition. Bootstrapping attempts to identify the language learning processes that enable children to learn about the structure of the target language.
Connectionism Bootstrapping has a strong link to connectionist theories which model human cognition as a system of simple, interconnected networks. In this respect, connectionist approaches view human cognition as a computational algorithm. On this view, in terms of learning, humans have statistical learning capabilities that allow them to problem solve. Proponents of statistical learning believe that it is the basis for higher level learning, and that humans use the statistical information to create a database which allows them to learn higher-order generalizations and concepts.
For a child acquiring language, the challenge is to parse out discrete segments from a continuous speech stream. Research demonstrates that, when exposed to streams of nonsense speech, children use statistical learning to determine word boundaries. In every human language, there are certain sounds that are more likely to occur with each other: for example, in English, the sequence [st] is attested word-initially (stop), but the sequence *[gb] occurs only across a syllable break.
It appears that children can detect the statistical probability of certain sounds occurring with one another, and use this to parse out word boundaries. Utilizing these statistical abilities, children appear to be able to form mental representations, or neural networks, of relevant pieces of information. Pieces of relevant information include word classes, which in connectionist theory, are seen as each having an internal representation and transitional links between concepts. Neighbouring words provide concepts and links for children to bootstrap new representations on the basis of their previous knowledge.
Innateness
The innateness hypothesis was originally coined by Noam Chomsky as a means to explain the universality in language acquisition. All typically-developing children with adequate exposure to a language will learn to speak and comprehend the language fluently. It is also proposed that despite the supposed variation in languages, they all fall into a very restricted subset of the potential grammars that could be infinitely conceived. Chomsky argued that since all grammars universally deviate very little from the same general structure and children seamlessly acquire language, humans must have some intrinsic language learning capability that allows us to learn language. This intrinsic capability was hypothesized to be embedded in the brain, earning the title of language acquisition device (LAD). According to this hypothesis, the child is equipped with knowledge of grammatical and ungrammatical types, which they then apply to the stream of speech they hear in order to determine the grammar this stream is compatible with. The processes underlying this LAD relates to bootstrapping in that once a child has identified the subset of the grammar they are learning, they can then apply their knowledge of grammatical types in order to learn the language-specific aspects of the word. This relates to the Principles and Parameters theory of linguistics, in that languages universally consist of basic, unbroken principles and vary by specific parameters.
Semantic bootstrapping Semantic bootstrapping is a linguistic theory of language acquisition which proposes that children can acquire the syntax of a language by first learning and recognizing semantic elements and building upon, or bootstrapping from, that knowledge.
According to Pinker,Pinker, Steven (1984). The Semantic Bootstrapping Hypothesis. semantic bootstrapping requires two critical assumptions to hold true: A child must be able to perceive meaning from utterances. That is, the child must associate utterances with, for example, objects and actions in the real world. A child must also be able to realize that there are strong correspondences between semantic and syntactic categories. The child can then use the knowledge of these correspondences to create, test, and internalize grammar rules iteratively as the child gains more knowledge of their language.
Acquiring the state/event contrast
When discussing the acquisition of temporal contrasts, the child must first have a concept of time outside of semantics. In other words, the child must be able to have some mental grasp on the concept of events, memory, and general progression of time before attempting to conceive it semantically. Semantics, especially with regard to events and memory concepts, appears to be far more language-general, with meanings being more universal concepts rather than the individual segments being used to represent them. For this reason, semantics requires far more cognition than external stimuli in acquiring it, and relies much on the innate capability of the child to develop such abstraction; the child must first have a mental representation of the concept, before attempting to link a word to that meaning. In order to actually learn time events, several processes must occur: The child must have a grasp on temporal concepts They must learn which concepts are represented in their own language They must learn how their experiences are representative of certain event types that are present in the language They must learn the different morphological and syntactic representations of these events (Data in list cited from )
Using these basic stepping stones, the child is able to map their internal concept of the meaning of time onto explicit linguistic segments. This bootstrapping allows them to have hierarchical, segmental steps, in which they are able to build upon their previous knowledge to aid future learning.
Tomasello argues that in learning linguistic symbols, the child does not need to have explicit external linguistic contrasts, and rather, will learn about these concepts via social context and their surroundings. This can be demonstrated with semantic bootstrapping in that the child does not explicitly receive information on the semantic meaning of temporal events, but learns to apply their internal knowledge of time to the linguistic segments that they are being exposed to.
Acquiring the count/mass contrast
With regard to mapping the semantic relationships for count, it follows previous bootstrapping methods. Since the context in which children are presented with number quantities usually have visual aid to accompany them, the child has a relatively easy way to map these number concepts. 1. Look at the three boys! Count nouns are nouns which are viewed as being discrete entities or individuals. For nouns which denote discrete entities, granted that the child already has the mental concept for BOY and THREE in place, they will see the set of animate, young, human males (i.e. boys) and confirm that the set has a cardinality of three.
For mass nouns which denote non-discrete substances, in order to count, they act to demonstrate the relationship between atoms of the word and substance. However, mass nouns can vary with regard to the sharpness or narrowness that they refer to an entity. For example, a grain of rice has a much narrower quantity definition than a bag of rice.
"Of" is a word that children are thought to learn the definition of as being something that transforms a substance into a set of atoms. For example, when one says:
2. I have three gallons for sale.
3. I have three gallons of water.
The word of is used in (3) to mark the mass noun water is partitioned into gallons. The initial substance now denotes a set. The child again uses visual cues to grasp what this relationship is.
Syntactic bootstrapping Syntactic bootstrapping is a theory about the process of how children identify word meanings based on their syntactic categories. In other words, how knowledge of grammatical structure, including how syntactic categories (adjectives, nouns, verbs, etc.) combine into phrases and constituents in order to form sentences, "bootstraps" the acquisition of word meaning. The main challenge this theory tackles is the lack of specific information extralinguistic-information context provides on mapping word meaning and making inferences. It accounts for this problem by suggesting that children do not need to rely solely on environmental context to understand meaning or have the words explained to them. Instead, the children infer word meanings from their observations about syntax, and use these observations to infer word meaning and comprehend future utterances they hear.
This in-depth analysis of Syntactic bootstrapping provides background on the research and evidence; describing how children acquire lexical and functional categories, challenges to the theory as well as cross-linguistic applications.
Prosodic bootstrapping
Even before infants can comprehend word meaning, prosodic details assist them in discovering syntactic boundaries. Prosodic bootstrapping or phonological bootstrapping investigates how prosodic information—which includes stress, rhythm, intonation, pitch, pausing, as well as dialectal features—can assist a child in discovering the grammatical structure of the language that they are acquiring.
In general, prosody introduces features that reflect either attributes of the speaker or the utterance type. Speaker attributes include emotional state, as well as the presence of irony or sarcasm. Utterance-level attributes are used to mark questions, statements and commands, and they can also be used to mark contrast.
Prosodic features associated with the speaker: emotional state, irony, sarcasm Prosodic features associate with utterance type: question, statement, command, contrast
Similarly, in sign language, prosody includes facial expression, mouthing, and the rhythm, length and tension of gestures and signs.
In language, words are not only categorized into phrases, clauses, and sentences. Words are also organized into prosodic envelopes. The idea of a prosodic envelope is that words that go together syntactically also form a similar intonation pattern. This explains how children discover syllable and word boundaries through prosodic cues. Overall, prosodic bootstrapping explores determining grammatical groupings in a speech stream rather than learning word meaning.
One of the key components of the prosodic bootstrapping hypothesis is that prosodic cues may aid infants in identifying lexical and syntactical properties. From this, three key elements of prosodic bootstrapping can be proposed: The syntax of language is correlated with acoustic properties. Infants can detect and are sensitive to these acoustic properties. These acoustic properties can be used by infants when processing speech.