Bootstrapping (linguistics)

Bootstrapping is a term used in language acquisition in the field of linguistics. It refers to the idea that human beings are born innately equipped with a mental faculty that forms the basis of language, and 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.

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.

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 (stop), but the sequence *[gb] is not.

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