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
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Gender
Intelligence
Personality and learning style
Social background
 Experience of linguistic data
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Amount and type of conversation
Qualitative differences in adult-child interaction
Effect of situation
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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.)
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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
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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!
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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
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Social background
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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).
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Labov:
legitimising dialects
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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
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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
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 As
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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
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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
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 Vs.
concern to control behaviour
(= expressive, unidirectional!)
Conclusion
Variables mainly influence rate
 Controversial influence:
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Gender
Personality
Social class
Strongest influence:
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Quality and amount of caretaker talk
Interactive community is essential for FLA
 Rehabilitation potential limited in time
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