Stages Of Language Development Research Articles

Metaphor, metonymy, and their interaction in the production of semantic approximations by monolingual children: A corpus analysis

The present study looks into the largely unexplored territory of the cognitive underpinnings of semantic approximations in child language. The analysis of a corpus of 233 semantic approximations produced by 101 monolingual French-speaking children from 1;8 to 4;2 years of age leads to a classification of a significant number of them as instances of a set of principle-governed cognitive operations, including metaphor and metonymy-based cognitive operations, and conceptual complexes, such as metaphtonymies and double metonymies. The results shed light on cognitive operation preferences and their level of conceptual complexity at this stage of language development. Additionally, it points to the need to expand the inventory of functions traditionally assigned to these cognitive operations.

Content words in Hebrew child-directed speech

The goal of the study was to examine whether the ‘noun-bias’ phenomenon, which exists in the lexicon of Hebrew-speaking children, also exists in Hebrew child-directed speech (CDS) as well as in Hebrew adult-directed speech (ADS). In addition, we aimed to describe the use of the different classes of content words in the speech of Hebrew-speaking parents to their children at different ages compared to the speech of parents to adults (ADS). Thirty infants (age range 8:5–33 months) were divided into three stages according to age: pre-lexical, single-word, and early grammar. The ADS corpus included 18 Hebrew-speaking parents of children at the same three stages of language development as in the CDS corpus. The CDS corpus was collected from parent–child dyads during naturalistic activities at home: mealtime, bathing, and play. The ADS corpus was collected from parent–experimenter interactions including the parent watching a video and then being interviewed by the experimenter. 200 utterances of each sample were transcribed, coded for types and tokens and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Results show that in CDS, when speaking to infants of all ages, parents’ use of types and tokens of verbs and nouns was similar and significantly higher than their use of adjectives or adverbs. In ADS, however, verbs were the main lexical category used by Hebrew-speaking parents in both types and tokens. It seems that both the properties of the input language (e.g. the pro-drop parameter) and the interactional styles of the caregivers are important factors that may influence the high presence of verbs in Hebrew-speaking parents’ ADS and CDS. The negative correlation between the widespread use of verbs in the speech of parents to their infants and the ‘noun-bias’ phenomenon in the Hebrew-child lexicon will be discussed in detail.

Children’s use of Bahasa Indonesia in Jakarta kindergartens

At a very young age children living in Jakarta use both Colloquial Jakarta Indonesia and Bahasa Indonesia. The children’s first and most used language is Colloquial Jakarta Indonesia. In the formal school setting Bahasa Indonesia is frequently used and stimulated on a daily basis, and the learning process of Bahasa Indonesia is accelerated. The question addressed in this article is: how do these children choose from their repertoire of language varieties at this stage of language development? In our study 63 children (aged three to five), were interviewed in a formal and an informal situation in three playgroups and kindergartens. This study shows that even in the preschool setting, young children are already developing their sociolinguistic competence, knowing when to choose which language variety.

Experimental approaches to the production and perception of prosody.

This Special Issue brings together a selection of papers orally presented at the conference Phonetics and Phonology in Iberia (PaPI), held in Lisbon in 2013 (labfon.letras.ulisboa.pt/papi2013). For 10 years the PaPI conferences have been a highly productive setting for the sharing and discussion of investigation within phonology and phonetics and their interactions, and have undoubtedly played their part in the development of experimental work in the field of prosody (see in particular Frota, Vigario, & Freitas, 2005; Prieto, Mascaro, & Sole, 2007; Romero & Riera, in press; Vigario, Frota, & Freitas, 2009).Prosodic research has witnessed remarkable progress in the last few decades. The limits of the field are pushed farther constantly as new investigations appear, powered by more elaborate experimental methods, new technology and resources, innovative bridges promoting knowledge transfer across disciplines, increasingly sophisticated theoretical models and a continuously evolving set of questions.This volume also reflects the productivity of experimental approaches to prosody. It compiles work addressing a range of questions that are of current interest in prosody, exploring topics such as the phonetic exponents of rhythm and information structure in language development, languageparticular factors in the perception of word stress, social and situational factors underlying speakers' pitch accent selection and the phonology of fine grain phonetic variation in accent realization. All of the papers follow a laboratory-based approach to phonology and a variety of experimental methods are employed to elicit controlled production data as well as to investigate perception, including tasks involving picture-matching and other types of interactive games, discourse completion, ABX discrimination, sequence recall and context matching acceptability judgements.Two papers investigate prosodic development, one contrasting child and adult Dutch monolinguals and the other comparing English and Spanish monolingual and simultaneous English- Spanish bilingual children.In the paper 'Quiet is the New Loud: Pausing and Focus in Child and Adult Dutch', Romoren and Chen report on an experiment that tested the use of pauses to signal focused material in Dutch, both in adults and in 4 to 5 year-olds. Adults tend to use accent and post-focal deaccentuation to mark focus. However, previous research has shown that adult speakers of Dutch also use pauses before focus and that children at this age do not fully master adult focus prosody (Chen, 2007, 2011). The experiment elicited sentences with focus structure by means of a picture-matching game and combining controlled speech contexts with wh-questions. Results showed a significant difference in pause durations before focal and non-focal targets, the pause being longer in the former, both in adults and in children's productions. Nevertheless, the use of pauses was found to be more systematic in children. The authors interpret this difference as a consequence of the child's stage in language development. Research on the development of information structure signalling, using controlled and efficient elicitation methods, is fairly rare, and to our knowledge this is the first investigation on pausing as a means to cue focus in child speech.In the paper by Schmidt and Post ('The Development of Prosodic Features and their Contribution to Rhythm Production in Simultaneous Bilinguals'), the impact of bilingualism in terms of facilitory and inhibitory effects are investigated in relation to the acquisition of prosodic features. Focusing on phrase-final lengthening and accentuation in English and Spanish, two areas where the rhythmic differences between the two languages manifest, the authors demonstrate that the two languages can be rhythmically separated at 4 years, and clearly separable by 6 years of age, and that bilinguals have an advantage over monolinguals in the prosodic acquisition of the structurally more complex language (English). …

A Reflection on Language Acquisition Theory Dealing with the Critical Period Issues and Its Implication for English Study in Indonesia

Language acquisition be it as a first or a second language is still an up to date topic in language education. This can be seen from the numerous researches carried out by specialists in the field. In view of first language acquisition, their investigation usually goes to the stages of language development of children in connection to age till language maturity is acquired. Almost similar to the area of quest in first language, in second language, researchers’ curiosity is aimed at uncovering the period of successful language acquisition whether it is similar in process to that in first language learning. Also, they search for answers to questions like “Is language acquisition faster at younger age than at older age? Is there a period where language learning progress will be slower? If there is, at what age is it? What is the impact of learning a second language before and after puberty? What problems are faced by adult learners of second language?”. And one most challenging source of keeping the spirit of research on issue is the hypothetical statement, the so called Critical Period Hypothesis. This article presents a discussion on language acquisition, particularly on second language as an attempt to make all parties involved in language education, especially English education in Indonesia, see what the proponents and opponents say about the unsolved issue of language acquisition and be more aware of implication of the existing theories for English language study in the country. It is concluded that from all the pro and contra arguments a uniformity of view cannot be reached yet. Accent has been proven as a refutation to the hypothesis. But this is not considered to be a significant finding because accent is regarded as the least important aspect of SLA proficiency, Key words: language acquisition, Critical Period Hypothesis, accent, English, implication

Inviting Small Children to Dialogue – Scaffolding and Challenging Conversational Skills

The purpose of this study was to learn about how to scaffold and challenge conversational skills in children at an early stage in language development. Language production most often mirrors verbal comprehension, and moreover gives cues to the conversational partner to relate to and further expand upon. The presented results come from dialogues between speech and language therapists and children aged five to six whose language development has been found to be delayed for their age. However, the results are highly applicable to all children, particularly in small children during their most intensive language developing phases. The theoretical framework highlights the importance of being an active language learner, i.e. language skills are mastered by being used in social interaction. Twenty-two dialogues were video-, and audio recorded, transcribed and coded with respect to language structure and interaction. The mean number of words per turn in the children’s contributions was quantified and a qualitative analysis of the preceding turn of the elicitation strategies was performed. The results underline the importance of relating to the child’s focus without being soliciting, i.e. to comment and give feedback, rather than using many questions and imperatives.

Word association patterns in a second/foreign language – what do they tell us about the L2 mental lexicon?

The aim of the article is to review the findings of research into patterns of word associations in both first and second language and discuss its relevance for the understanding of L2 lexical processes. Word association studies have been used widely in areas such as psychology and first language acquisition and have resulted in detailed descriptions of word association behaviour of speakers at different ages and stages of language development. As far as research into L2 word associations is concerned, it concentrated predominantly on the differences between native and non-native association patterns, types of links between words in the L2 mental lexicon as well as the influence of general language proficiency on word association behaviour.

Reading without Words: Using The Arrival to Teach Visual Literacy with English Language Learners

This article highlights the use of Shaun Tan's The Arrival to teach literacy to English Language Learners in social studies classrooms. The featured text is a book that displays the complexity of migration within a text that does not feature a single written word. The author describes a variety of mini-lessons geared towards supporting ELLs at all stages of language development, reinforcing geography and history content, and promoting literacy skills outlined in the Common Core State Standards.

Sprachentwicklung von der U7 bis zur U7a bei Kindern mit und ohne Sprachentwicklungsverzögerungen

At the beginning the course of language acquisition has a high degree of variability and it is unclear so far, at what age language delay is of clinical relevance. The present study addresses the question whether language skills at the age of 2 years allow prognostic statements and whether children with language delay at this age, are to be considered as children of risk.Starting from birth announcements children of average (n=42), borderline (n=28) and below-average stage of language development (n=50) were recruited. The language skills were assessed at the age of 2 (25+0.6 months) and 3 years (37+0.6 months) using standardized language tests.The correlation between the global stage of language development at the age of 2 and 3 years was strong (rsp=0.78, p<0.001). At 3 years of age one third of the former late talkers reached language abilities within the normal range (late bloomers), one third showed language difficulties and the last third met the criteria of specific language impairment. The risk for language difficulties was increased in these children to the 13-fold. Even the late bloomers scored significantly lower in the language test compared to the control children.From the third year of live language development is relatively stable, and language skills at the age of 2 allow a prediction of the stage of language development one year later. Late talkers are at high risk for persistent language difficulties. A general language screening at the age of 2 years would enable an early identification of children at risk and an early parent-based intervention.

The etiology of variation in language skills changes with development: a longitudinal twin study of language from 2 to 12 years

The present study is the first long-term longitudinal examination of the etiology of individual differences in language from early childhood through to adolescence. We applied a multivariate latent factor genetic model to longitudinal data from the Twins Early Development Study in order to (a) compare the magnitude of genetic and environmental influences on language skills in early childhood (2, 3 and 4 years), middle childhood (7, 9 and 10 years), and early adolescence (12 years); and (b) determine to what extent the same genetic and environmental factors underlie variation in language skills at these three stages of language development. We found that while shared environmental influences appear to be dominant (latent factor c² = .74) in early language, with a smaller though significant role for genetic factors (latent factor a² = .24), the pattern is reversed by middle childhood such that genetic influences are substantially more important (latent factor a² = .57-.63 at 7, 9 and 10 years and .47-.57 at 12 years) and shared environmental influences less so (latent factor c² = .31-.37 at 7, 9 and 10 years and .31-.32 at 12 years). The increase in the heritability of language skills between early and middle childhood appears to be due to new genetic factors that come into play at that transition. In contrast, genetic factors remain stable from middle childhood through to early adolescence, and account for the phenotypic continuity in language skills across these two stages.

Keep talking about books

Enabling statements and the story prompts, used to support talk, will be very different for differing groups of children and will vary according to the child's stage of language development and age.

Genetic predisposition and sensory experience in language development: Evidence from cochlear-implanted children

Recent neurobiological studies have advanced the hypothesis that language development is not continuously plastic but is governed by biological constraints that may be modified by experience within a particular time window. This hypothesis is tested based on spontaneous speech data from deaf cochlear-implanted (CI) children with access to linguistic stimuli at different developmental times. Language samples of nine children who received a CI between 5 and 19 months are analysed for linguistic measures representing different stages of language development. These include canonical babbling ratios, vocabulary diversity, and functional elements such as determiners. The results show that language development is positively related to the age at which children get first access to linguistic input and that later access to language is associated with a slower-than-normal language-learning rate. As such, the positive effect of early experience on the functional organisation of the brain in language processes is confirmed by behavioural performance.

Darwin's Contribution to the Study of Child Development and Language Acquisition

In 1877, Charles Darwin responded to an article by Taine in the journal Mind on early language acquisition by 'look[ing] over a diary' he had kept thirty-seven years before on his own son's development. The result, 'A Biographical Sketch of an Infant', was one of the first English infant psychology studies and a methodological innovation, being based on regular recordings of observations over a period of years. Darwin's article motivated others in England to carry out research on child development, an area that had previously received little attention in that country. The diary and related article reveal Darwin's reflections on child language acquisition as a key to understanding the mental development of the child, as well as the development of language in mankind, which was of vital importance to evolutionary theory. In The Descent of Man (1871), Darwin had argued that language is not an 'impossible barrier' between animals and man. He thought that infants between the ages of ten and twelve months were at the same stage of language development as dogs with their well-attested ability to understand certain words. The difference, he insisted, lay in man's 'infinitely larger power' of associating sounds and concepts — the result of the coevolution of language and mind. Darwin's expressed hope that others would follow his lead in the study of child development was swiftly realized in numerous publications that followed in the journal Mind and in the subsequent development of the study of childhood as an area for scientific research in Britain.

Communicative gestures and vocabulary development in 36‐month‐old children with Down's syndrome

Children with Down's syndrome seem to show a preference for the use of gestural rather than vocal productions during the first stages of language development. This 'gestural advantage' could actually be due to a developmental strategy used to compensate the difficulties in verbal production that are typical of language development in this population. The principal aim of the present study is to analyse the relationships between gesture production and vocabulary development in children with Down's syndrome, verifying the existence of any similarities with the processes that characterize typical development. Twenty 36-month-old Italian children with Down's syndrome participated in the study. Each child's spontaneous gestural and vocal production was assessed during a mother-and-child play session. Their psychomotor development was evaluated using the Brunet-Lézine Scale of Infant Development; and their vocabulary size, with regards both production and comprehension, was assessed using the Italian version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory (CDI). Following a longitudinal perspective, parents were requested to complete the inventory at 6 months after the first evaluation (i.e., at 42 months). Data analyses focused both on the concurrent relations of gesture production, vocabulary size and psychomotor development, and on the longitudinal relations between gesture production and subsequent vocabulary development. As regards concurrent relationships, gesture production appeared to be related both to psychomotor development and to word comprehension, but not to word production. Nevertheless, as regards longitudinal relationships, gesture production at 36 months was significantly correlated to the subsequent vocabulary production, assessed at 42 months using the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory (CDI), though this relationship appeared to be mediated by word comprehension. Two processes in the gesture production of children with Down's syndrome appear to be similar to those previously identified in typically developing children: (1) the role of gestures as a 'bridge' between word comprehension and word production; and (2) the predictive role of gestures, in association with comprehension, on vocabulary development.

The Role of the SLP in Autism Spectrum Disorder Screening and Assessment

AbstractRecent prevalence estimates for autism have been alarming as a function of the notable increase. Speech-language pathologists play a critical role in screening, assessment and intervention for children with autism. This article reviews signs that may be indicative of autism at different stages of language development, and discusses the importance of several psychometric properties—sensitivity and specificity—in utilizing screening measures for children with autism. Critical components of assessment for children with autism are reviewed. This article concludes with examples of intervention targets for children with ASD at various levels of language development.

Communication in the early stage of language development in children with CHARGE syndrome

CHARGE syndrome is characterized by multiple physical abnormalities, and impaired vision and hearing. In this pilot study, communication in the early stage of language development in three one- to eight-year-old children with CHARGE syndrome was explored using video recorded free-play interaction sessions and a parental questionnaire. The children mainly used gestures, but also vocalization and some signs. According to methods based on the Tait Video Analysis (2003) and the Communicative Intention Inventory (Coggins and Carpenter, 1981), the children used shared attention with their mothers most of the time, with initiations comprising almost half of all their communicative expressions. Intentional communication covered 15 to 18 per cent of the communicative acts. Suggestions for how individual characteristics of communication can be used in parental guidance are presented in the discussion.

Vowel normalization for accent: An investigation of perceptual plasticity in young adults

Previous work has emphasized the role of early experience in the ability to accurately perceive and produce foreign or foreign-accented speech. This study examines how listeners at a much later stage in language development—early adulthood—adapt to a non-native accent within the same language. A longitudinal study investigated whether listeners who had had no previous experience of living in multidialectal environments adapted their speech perception and production when attending university. Participants were tested before beginning university and then again 3 months later. An acoustic analysis of production was carried out and perceptual tests were used to investigate changes in word intelligibility and vowel categorization. Preliminary results suggest that listeners are able to adjust their phonetic representations and that these patterns of adjustment are linked to the changes in production that speakers typically make due to sociolinguistic factors when living in multidialectal environments.

Síntesis y análisis en las lenguas: crítica de la tipología morfológica clásica y de algunas de sus aplicaciones sincrónicas y diacrónicas

The classical morphological classification of languages into three types (isolating, agglutinating and inflectional) was interpreted in the nineteenth century as indicative of three stages of language evolution. It was assumed that the inflectional type was the more evolved stage in language development. Although this classification is still in use in the current linguistic literature, no linguist appears to maintain explicitly that interpretation. Nonetheless, there are some recent proposals in which some version of that interpretation is assumed. In this paper two of these proposals are critically analized. The first consists in McWhorter's (2001) statement that the grammar of creoles are the simplest grammars. The second is Alinei's (1996) contention that the three language types correlate with the prehistoric development of tool-making. It is shown that the points made by both McWhorter and Alinei are ethnocentrically biased and lack a sound linguistic basis.

The Profile of Multiple Language Proficiencies: A Measure for Evaluating Language Samples of Deaf Children.

This article reports the process of creating a developmental measure that assesses the multilingual capabilities of deaf children and the problems that were encountered. Because deaf children may be using more than one method of communication (e.g., sign language skills and spoken language skills), it is important to evaluate their skills as completely as possible. In a pilot study, we used a nominal scale that assessed language skills based on a single continuum, with good English and good American Sign Language (ASL) skills as its two extremes and approximately equal skills in both as the midpoint. In the main study, a more complete measure was created, the Profile of Multiple Language Proficiencies (PMLP). The PMLP uses a single scale that represents the different stages of language development that can be observed in both English and ASL. The PMLP showed reasonable initial reliability and has good promise as an easy-to-use measure of developing language skills in children who use multiple modalities of communication. Using the PMLP as a prototype, we discuss some of the issues that influence the reliability and validity in evaluating such a scale and how these can be overcome or avoided.

International Early Childhood Resources from Educational Research Abstracts (ERA)

The aim was to examine cross-cultural variation in linguistic responsiveness to young children in 10 English-speaking mother–child dyads and 10 Italian-speaking mother– child dyads. All 20 children were late talkers who possessed delays in expressive vocabulary development but age-appropriate cognitive and receptive language skills. Dyads were filmed in 15 minute free play contexts, which were transcribed and coded for measures of maternal linguistic input (e.g. rate, MLU, labels, expansions) and child language productivity (e.g. utterances, different words used). The results revealed that the Italian mothers used more utterances, spoke more quickly and used a more diverse vocabulary than the Canadian mothers. The Italian children mirrored their mothers and also used more utterances and a more diverse vocabulary than the Canadian children. Mothers in both groups used similar percentages of responsive labels and expansions. However, Italian mothers responded to fewer of their children's vocalisations, using a smaller percentage of imitations and interpretations than the Canadian mothers. Correlations between maternal input and children's language productivity revealed that contingent language measures (e.g. imitations, interpretations, expansions) were related to high levels of productivity in children in both cultural groups. The results support the use of language interventions based on increasing maternal responsiveness for these children at the one-word stage of language development. They also point to differences that may be culturally based. For example, Italian mothers use faster rates of interaction and appear to have higher expectations for their children's verbal participation in interaction. This is reflected in higher rates of language production from their children, even though children in both cultural groups have similar vocabulary sizes.