here - Linguistic Society of America

TutorialFriday, 4 JanuaryAAC users; and the range of approaches currently taken towards giving persons access to language. A quick comparativeoverview of AAC systems will be presented.Existing research at the intersection of AAC and linguistics is scant, but there has been some research into speech errors by AACusers,and some data on language acquisition by child users of AAC has also emerged. We will give an overview of this existingresearch, and conclude by suggesting issues and questions that research with non-aphasic AAC speakers might be able toilluminate. We welcome further suggestions from the audience.Eric Nyberg (Carnegie Mellon University)On the computational-linguistic and engineering aspects of AAC language representation systemsThe implications of AAC for a theory of human language cannot be understood without understanding the type of languagerepresentation systems used in AAC. These are the systems by which AAC-speakers access their language on a keyboard.Spelling is a time-consuming technique for language production, and time is of the essence in trying to produce one’s thoughts inlanguage. It is not a trivial matter to put language on a keyboard in an efficiently accessible way. Words on a keyboard may beaccessed through hierarchical menu approaches, or through systems providing access to morphological variations of word-forms.A typology of language representation systems used in AAC will be described. Differences between systems can be comparedcomputationally in several ways.This information underlies the essential question to be addressed, “What can different types of language representation systemsused by AAC speakers to output their language, tell us about human language ability?”Chris Klein (Representative of AAC-speakers community)DiscussantChris Klein will speak as a representative of the AAC-speakers community, giving his unique perspective on language. Thissession will allow discussion and questions as suits the needs or interests of the audience.Katya Hill (University of Pittsburgh)Metrics and measurement parameters for AAC dataThis presentation will illustrate the methods and tools used to collect language samples from AAC speakers, focusing on thelanguage activity monitor (LAM).Quantitative measurement using language activity monitoring (LAM) tools to support the collection of AAC performance datahave been used in AAC research and clinical practice for over a decade. The LAM logfile format provides a timestamp,mnemonic of how an event was selected, and the language event. This allows for reporting a variety of measures to evaluate thelinguistic competence of an AAC speaker or a specific AAC cohort. Current AAC systems provide for three basic methods torepresent and generate utterances: 1) alphabet-based methods; 2) single-meaning symbols; 3) multi-meaning icons. Logfiletranscripts can be analyzed to report various measures of linguistic competence, and the time stamp data can monitor thespeaker’s rate of communication.Helen Stickney (University of Pittsburgh)L1 acquisition and AAC use: What is known and what questions arise?In the linguistics literature there exist very few studies of children acquiring their first language while using an AAC device. Thistalk presents data from two studies of L1 acquisition by AAC speakers, one on morphological acquisition (Ortloff 2010) and oneon the acquisition of subject-AUX inversion (Kovacs 2011). Both studies show that language acquisition for these subjects,overall, follows a normal developmental trajectory. However, it has been noted that the “grammar” of the production system (theAAC device) and the grammar of the target language often contain mismatches (Stickney 2011). Do mismatches such as thisaffect the acquisition process? An overview of the mismatches between the grammar of English and the grammar of the MinspeakUnity128® software is then presented, followed by questions regarding the affect these mismatches may (or may not) have on thegrammar of the language learner.101