Investigating Language Acquisition in Children: The Role of Input Frequency and Language Complexity

Abstract

Among the most remarkable developmental milestones in children is language acquisition, a process that has mystified scientists for decades. Although correlational, this study sheds light on the complex interplay of input frequency and language complexity in the service of stimulating language acquisition among young learners. This paper employs a longitudinal, computational approach to observe longitudinal children language development, quantify these stimulus space constraints, and identify plausible candidate computational mechanisms governing linguistic forms learned by children.

The current study is designed as a multiple-strand, converging methods analysis, using naturally occurring observations of language input addressed to children and peer-child language with probabilistic analysis (on the premise that all of the tokens of psychological know are in the corpora of language), (Crossley & Sokal 1997), child-directed speech. Simulations will allow to reproduce the general patterns observed and test the robustness of these findings under varying scenarios. It is wise to consider these broader insights when thinking about how input from research and practical experience can feed into IPCC output.