The linguistic advantage of the intellectually gifted child: An empirical study of spontaneous speech

Abstract

This study compares the linguistic development of a gifted bilingual child from birth to 7 with that of subjects in first language acquisition research. The aspects analyzed are phonology, morphology (word formation), lexicon, modality (encoding of speaker's attitude towards the truthfulness of a proposition), syntax (sentence construction), semantic and syntactic logic, metaphoric use, ambiguity, humor, and social competence. The comparison shows not only the gifted child's acceleration through the normal course of development, but also subversion of that path. This article, in presenting linguistic evidence that offers insight on cognitive and psychosocial development, raises questions about the established idea of domain specificity and the intelligence/creativity dichotomy. As a first project of its kind ‐ a longitudinal study of spontaneous speech ‐the findings here suggest that investigation of performance in real time can help provide a fuller picture of how the gifted mind is truly exceptional.