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Syntactic bootstrapping as a mechanism for language learning

  • Review Article
  • Published:

From Nature Reviews Psychology

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Abstract

Several mechanisms have been proposed to explain how young children solve the puzzle of mapping spoken words to their meanings. The influential syntactic bootstrapping theory postulates that children learn the meanings of words (particularly verbs) by paying attention to the syntactic structures in which they occur. In this Review, we first look at the scholarly climate and pivotal experimental findings that gave rise to syntactic bootstrapping theory, how the postulated word-learning mechanism has been investigated, and the role for this mechanism in current and future research. We discuss the prerequisites behind such a powerful learning and inference process and connect it to contemporary learning frameworks that examine how humans build and update their knowledge about the world. Syntactic bootstrapping theory has shaped the landscape of language-acquisition research, and this research has reshaped syntactic bootstrapping in turn — leading to ground-breaking insights into how children assign meanings to words and learn the complex network of language.

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Fig. 1: Syntactic bootstrapping in language acquisition.
Fig. 2: Classical syntactic bootstrapping paradigm.
Fig. 3: Bootstrapping with a semantic seed.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank G. Mamonova for helpful comments. This paper was written with support of the World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI), MEXT, Japan, as well as the Frontiers in Cognition programme (ANR-17-EURE-0017 FrontCog), France.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Mireille Babineau, Monica Barbir

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Mireille Babineau

  2. International Research Center for Neurointelligence (World Premier International Research Center Initiative), Institutes for Advanced Study, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Monica Barbir

  3. Laboratoire de Psychologie du Développement et de l’Éducation de l’Enfant, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université Paris Cité, Paris, France

    Alex de Carvalho

  4. School of Psychological Sciences, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

    Naomi Havron

  5. Center for the Study of Child Development, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

    Naomi Havron

  6. Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive, Aix-Marseille University, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Marseille, France

    Isabelle Dautriche

  7. Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, Département d’études cognitives - École Normale Supérieure / École des hautes études en sciences sociales/ Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, PSL University, Paris, France

    Anne Christophe

  8. Maternité Port-Royal, AP-HP, Faculté de Médecine Université Paris Cité, Paris, France

    Anne Christophe

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Contributions

M. Babineau wrote the abstract, the ‘A robust word-learning mechanism’ section and the ‘Learning syntactic–semantic links’ section, and designed the figures. M. Barbir wrote the introduction, ‘The premises of syntactic bootstrapping’ section, the ‘Contemporary word-learning theory’ section, the ‘Summary and future directions’ section, and the ‘Defining syntax’ box. A. Christophe oversaw conceptualization and writing. All authors contributed to revising the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Mireille Babineau, Monica Barbir or Anne Christophe.

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Babineau, M., Barbir, M., de Carvalho, A. et al. Syntactic bootstrapping as a mechanism for language learning. Nat Rev Psychol 3, 463–474 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-024-00317-w

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