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Your Brain Needs 1.5 MB of Storage to Master Your Native Language
Now, a new study suggests that learning a language between birth and age 18 is not as effortless as it may seem. An average English-speaking adult will likely have learned about 12.5 million bits of information related to language, a group of researchers reported March 27 in the journal Royal Society Open Science.
Much of this 12.5 million bits of language information stored in the brain is not related to grammar and syntax, but rather is about word meaning, according to the study.
"A lot of research on language learning focuses on syntax, like word order," co-author Steven Piantadosi, an assistant professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, said in a statement. "But our study shows that syntax represents just a tiny piece of language learning, and that the main difficulty has got to be in learning what so many words mean."
This is also what differentiates human learners from robot learners, he added. "Machines know what words go together and where they go in sentences, but know very little about the meaning of words."
Now, a new study suggests that learning a language between birth and age 18 is not as effortless as it may seem. An average English-speaking adult will likely have learned about 12.5 million bits of information related to language, a group of researchers reported March 27 in the journal Royal Society Open Science.
Much of this 12.5 million bits of language information stored in the brain is not related to grammar and syntax, but rather is about word meaning, according to the study.
"A lot of research on language learning focuses on syntax, like word order," co-author Steven Piantadosi, an assistant professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, said in a statement. "But our study shows that syntax represents just a tiny piece of language learning, and that the main difficulty has got to be in learning what so many words mean."
This is also what differentiates human learners from robot learners, he added. "Machines know what words go together and where they go in sentences, but know very little about the meaning of words."
