Language and the Learning Curve

Anat Ninio was born in Budapest, Hungary and immigrated to Israel in 1957 as a child. Attended Hadassim Youth Village until graduating from high school. In 1965 received a B.A. in Statistics and English Linguistics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1969 received another B.A. in Psychology, followed by an M.A. in 1970 and a Ph.D. in 1974 from the same university, the latter two under the supervision of Professor Daniel Kahneman, specializing in Cognitive Psychology. Spent a year of post-doctoral studies with Professor Jerome Bruner at Oxford, studying early language development. Since 1970 she has been on the faculty of the Hebrew University, first as junior faculty, then as a Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Associate Professor and Professor. Has spent sabbatical years as a Visiting Scholar or Visiting Professor at Duke University, Durham, at the New School for Social Research in New York, at New York University, New York, at the University of Quebec at Montreal, at Harvard University, Cambridge, at Macquarie University, Sydney, and at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Has served as the Chair of the Graduate Developmental Program, and as the Chair of the Department of Psychology at Hebrew University. Served as the Chair of the Sturman Human Development Center and is currently serving as the Chair of the Martin and Vivian Levin Center for the Normal and Psychopathological Development of the Child and Adolescent at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. An Associate of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, and a member of the Unesco Institute for Education Exchange Network on Functional Literacy in Industrialized Countries. Served on the editorial board of Applied Psycholinguistics and of the Merrill-Palmer Quarterly. A member of professional societies such as the Society for Research in Child Development and of the International Association for the Study of Child Language.

1. Valency ; 1.1 Linguistic approaches to valency and syntactic structure ; 1.2 Implication for acquisition: syntax is simple ; 1.3 Developmental evidence: the earliest word combinations are syntactic mergers ; 1.4 Conclusions: children learn to merge two words according to their valency ; 2. The learning curve ; 2.1 The learning curve in cognitive psychology ; 2.2 Implication for acquisition: syntax should transfer right away ; 2.3 Developmental evidence: learning curves and generalizations in early syntax ; 2.4 Conclusions: lexical-specific syntactic frames facilitate others ; 3. Lexicalism ; 3.1 The linguistic basis to lexicalism ; 3.2 Implication for acquisition: no abstract schema formation ; 3.3 Developmental evidence: no change in the form of syntactic schemas ; 3.4 Conclusions: children learn a lexicalist syntax ; 4. Similarity ; 4.1 Similarity for transfer and generalization ; 4.2 Implication for acquisition: no role for semantic linking in learning syntax ; 4.3 Developmental evidence: no semantic effects in generalization and transfer ; 4.4 Conclusions: children utilize similarity of form to organize the process of acquisition ; 5. The growth of syntax ; 5.1 The language web ; 5.2 Implication for acquisition: learning means linking to the network ; 5.3 Developmental evidence: children recreate the global features of the maternal network ; 5.4 Conclusions: children join the language network