VARIATION IN CHILD FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
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Transcript VARIATION IN CHILD FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
VARIATION IN CHILD
FIRST LANGUAGE
ACQUISITION
The issue of variation in FLA and
SLA/SLL
Variables influence
IN SLL/SLA
rate
final attainment
IN FLA
rate
Variables in FLA
Effect of situation
Inherited attributes
Gender
Intelligence
Personality and learning style
Social background
Experience of linguistic data
Amount and type of conversation
Qualitative differences in adult-child interaction
Effect of situation
Amount and type of motherese
But
not all communities use motherese!
Activities, scenes of language use –
functionalism!!
Interaction with adults vs. children
Roles of caretakers (carer, playmate,
controller, etc.)
Gósy (1999): detrimental noise
Inherited attributes:
Gender
Girls: advantage in rate (Gósy: at early
childhood and at 6-7 years)
Reason:
different expectations
of and communication
with them
Strengthens by adulthood:
cooperation
initiation
Intelligence
Studies relating to
- size of vocabulary
- rate of acquisition of syntactic structures
- acquiring spatial/temporal sequences
No significant result
- difficult to define intelligence
- many types: IQ vs. EQ!
Personality and learning style
Extroversion/introversion:
initiation
speed and ease
Sociability:
„join and communicate”
„Referential” and
„noun lover” kids
learn vocab. faster
than „expressive” ones
Two-element combinations of SVO
Social background
Points of disagreement:
Nature
and size of variation
Resources or use of resources?
Parameters to distinguish social grouping
Mechanism responsible for the relationship
betw. group membership and linguistic
variation
Early studies
Berstein: clear advantage of middle-class
children in
rate
of learning,
linguistic proficiency,
style (exploratory, explicit language use).
Labov:
legitimising dialects
Bristol study:
Full
range of family backgrounds
Naturally occurring speech samples
No researcher present when recording
Legitimising local dialects
No significant difference in
- the amount of speech
- types of contexts
- range of pragmatic functions
- rate: controversial
Tough (1977) on parental status
Aspects:
Self-maintaining
Directives
Interpretatives
Projectives
High FB children did better
Experience of linguistic interaction:
Amount and type of conversation
Significant relation betw. amount of
speech and rate of progress
Rate of development and joint enterprise
As
opposed to mothering and independent
Family status
First-borns
and kids with no siblings close in
age progress faster
Significance of parental attention
Qualitative differences in adult and
child interaction
Motherese – modification in
Length
Complexity
Intonation
Range
of sentence
meaning relations
Vocabulary
Interpersonal functions
Discourse functions
Rate of development correlates with
More finely-tuned talk (sensitive and
responsive to kids’ reaction)
Matching – referential - accepting parental
behaviour
Contingent speech
Concern to facilitate conversation
Vs.
concern to control behaviour
(= expressive, unidirectional!)
Conclusion
Variables mainly influence rate
Controversial influence:
Gender
Personality
Social class
Strongest influence:
Quality and amount of caretaker talk
Interactive community is essential for FLA
Rehabilitation potential limited in time