Pub Date : 2022-08-01DOI: 10.1177/01427237221100144
Louisa Reeves
This commentary focuses on the English Early Years Education context and how the Emergent Literacy and Language Early Childhood Checklist for Teachers (ELLECCT Weadman, 2022) could be used in this context to emphasise the centrality of oral language in emergent literacy development. The English Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum and initiatives such as the Early Reading guide, the English Hubs and the Education Endowment Fund all contain a focus on early language and literacy. There is the potential for the ELLECCT to bring these two elements together. Consideration is given to opportunities for using this tool in training, including Early Years Teachers, speech and language therapists and parents, to highlight everyone’s role in supporting early language and literacy. Finally, the ELLECCT’s potential for identifying and supporting children with Speech, Language and Communication Needs in Early Years classrooms, particularly in areas of disadvantage, is highlighted.
{"title":"The potential for ELLECCT to support language development in the early years: A commentary on Weadman, Serry and Snow (2022)","authors":"Louisa Reeves","doi":"10.1177/01427237221100144","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237221100144","url":null,"abstract":"This commentary focuses on the English Early Years Education context and how the Emergent Literacy and Language Early Childhood Checklist for Teachers (ELLECCT Weadman, 2022) could be used in this context to emphasise the centrality of oral language in emergent literacy development. The English Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum and initiatives such as the Early Reading guide, the English Hubs and the Education Endowment Fund all contain a focus on early language and literacy. There is the potential for the ELLECCT to bring these two elements together. Consideration is given to opportunities for using this tool in training, including Early Years Teachers, speech and language therapists and parents, to highlight everyone’s role in supporting early language and literacy. Finally, the ELLECCT’s potential for identifying and supporting children with Speech, Language and Communication Needs in Early Years classrooms, particularly in areas of disadvantage, is highlighted.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"42 1","pages":"579 - 583"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43032496","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-27DOI: 10.1177/01427237221112499
Molly E. Scott, Junko Kanero, Noburo Saji, Yu Chen, M. Imai, R. Golinkoff, K. Hirsh-Pasek
Previous research demonstrates that children delineate more nuanced color boundaries with increased exposure to their native language. As socioeconomic status (SES) is known to correlate with differences in the amount of language input children receive, this study attempts to extend previous research by asking how both age (age 3 vs 5) and SES (under-resourced vs advantaged) might impact color name acquisition of preschool children. The results confirm the findings of previous research, showing that older children labeled the color continuum more accurately than did younger participants. In addition, we found that while SES did not make a difference in how children labeled the continuum using basic color terms (e.g. blue), basic color terms with achromatic modifiers (e.g. light blue), and compound terms (e.g. blueish-green), 5-year-olds from more advantaged economic environments used significantly more non-basic color terms (e.g. turquoise) compared to their counterparts from under-resourced environments. We suggest that, as children hear more non-basic terms, these world-to-word mappings become solidified, and exposure to such labels may contribute to the timing of when children can map those terms to the color continuum.
{"title":"From green to turquoise: Exploring age and socioeconomic status in the acquisition of color terms","authors":"Molly E. Scott, Junko Kanero, Noburo Saji, Yu Chen, M. Imai, R. Golinkoff, K. Hirsh-Pasek","doi":"10.1177/01427237221112499","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237221112499","url":null,"abstract":"Previous research demonstrates that children delineate more nuanced color boundaries with increased exposure to their native language. As socioeconomic status (SES) is known to correlate with differences in the amount of language input children receive, this study attempts to extend previous research by asking how both age (age 3 vs 5) and SES (under-resourced vs advantaged) might impact color name acquisition of preschool children. The results confirm the findings of previous research, showing that older children labeled the color continuum more accurately than did younger participants. In addition, we found that while SES did not make a difference in how children labeled the continuum using basic color terms (e.g. blue), basic color terms with achromatic modifiers (e.g. light blue), and compound terms (e.g. blueish-green), 5-year-olds from more advantaged economic environments used significantly more non-basic color terms (e.g. turquoise) compared to their counterparts from under-resourced environments. We suggest that, as children hear more non-basic terms, these world-to-word mappings become solidified, and exposure to such labels may contribute to the timing of when children can map those terms to the color continuum.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"43 1","pages":"3 - 21"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42603641","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-14DOI: 10.1177/01427237221109342
Luchang Wang, R. Kager, P. Wong
The acoustic properties of infant-directed speech (IDS) have been widely studied, but whether and how young learners’ language development benefits from individual properties remains to be confirmed. This study investigated whether toddlers’ word processing was affected by tone hyperarticulation in the IDS of a tone language. Nineteen- and 23-month-old Cantonese-learning toddlers completed a familiar word recognition task and were tested (a) in the hyperarticulated-tone (HT) condition in which the tonal distances were exaggerated, and (b) in the non-hyperarticulated-tone (NT) condition with smaller tonal distances that resembled those in adult-directed speech. The 19-month-old toddlers performed significantly better in the HT condition than in the NT condition, while the 23-month-olds performed comparably well in both conditions. These findings suggest that tone language learners’ word recognition can be facilitated by tone hyperarticulation in IDS, in the middle of the second year of life; as their language development proceeds, this facilitatory effect appears to largely diminish by the end of the second year of life.
{"title":"The effect of tone hyperarticulation in Cantonese infant-directed speech on toddlers’ word recognition in the second year of life","authors":"Luchang Wang, R. Kager, P. Wong","doi":"10.1177/01427237221109342","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237221109342","url":null,"abstract":"The acoustic properties of infant-directed speech (IDS) have been widely studied, but whether and how young learners’ language development benefits from individual properties remains to be confirmed. This study investigated whether toddlers’ word processing was affected by tone hyperarticulation in the IDS of a tone language. Nineteen- and 23-month-old Cantonese-learning toddlers completed a familiar word recognition task and were tested (a) in the hyperarticulated-tone (HT) condition in which the tonal distances were exaggerated, and (b) in the non-hyperarticulated-tone (NT) condition with smaller tonal distances that resembled those in adult-directed speech. The 19-month-old toddlers performed significantly better in the HT condition than in the NT condition, while the 23-month-olds performed comparably well in both conditions. These findings suggest that tone language learners’ word recognition can be facilitated by tone hyperarticulation in IDS, in the middle of the second year of life; as their language development proceeds, this facilitatory effect appears to largely diminish by the end of the second year of life.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"42 1","pages":"670 - 692"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45423381","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-13DOI: 10.1177/01427237221100913
Fraibet Aveledo, S. Sanchez-Alonso, M. Piñango
The delayed acquisition of Spanish ser and estar is generally understood as rooted in the cognitive demands imposed by the integration of semantic-pragmatic and world-knowledge factors associated with their lexical meanings. Here we ask (1) what is the nature of this language world-knowledge integration? and (2) what is the developmental trajectory including its age distribution? We examine Spanish copula production and comprehension in 142 children (age range: 4–12 years) and 26 adults. Using two tasks, sentence-choice (comprehension) and cued-production (production), we test the hypothesis that estar use is constrained by an ability to construe an alternative to the copula predication; an ability that develops with life experience. We test estar/ser use in two contexts: alternative-supporting, favoring estar use; and alternative-neutral, neutral regarding estar use, and possibly favoring ser use. The results show that for comprehension, children do not reveal adult-level sensitivity to context, exhibiting instead over-selection of estar sentences. For production, all children over-produce the estar sentence, even after having just chosen the ser counterpart. However, in this task, the 10- to 12-year-olds do behave similarly to adults and differently from 4- to 6-year-olds, consistent with our hypothesis. Alternative construal requires exposure to entities and properties in a variety of situations; exposure that older children are more likely to exhibit. Collectively, these results (1) support the properties of estar use hypothesized to underlie the language-world-knowledge integration, and (2) delineate a potential developmental trajectory whereby mastery of the copula may not begin to manifest until 10–12 years of age, not because of any one linguistic factor but rather due to specific world-knowledge exposure constraints.
{"title":"Contextual dependency and overuse of estar in the acquisition of Spanish copula verbs","authors":"Fraibet Aveledo, S. Sanchez-Alonso, M. Piñango","doi":"10.1177/01427237221100913","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237221100913","url":null,"abstract":"The delayed acquisition of Spanish ser and estar is generally understood as rooted in the cognitive demands imposed by the integration of semantic-pragmatic and world-knowledge factors associated with their lexical meanings. Here we ask (1) what is the nature of this language world-knowledge integration? and (2) what is the developmental trajectory including its age distribution? We examine Spanish copula production and comprehension in 142 children (age range: 4–12 years) and 26 adults. Using two tasks, sentence-choice (comprehension) and cued-production (production), we test the hypothesis that estar use is constrained by an ability to construe an alternative to the copula predication; an ability that develops with life experience. We test estar/ser use in two contexts: alternative-supporting, favoring estar use; and alternative-neutral, neutral regarding estar use, and possibly favoring ser use. The results show that for comprehension, children do not reveal adult-level sensitivity to context, exhibiting instead over-selection of estar sentences. For production, all children over-produce the estar sentence, even after having just chosen the ser counterpart. However, in this task, the 10- to 12-year-olds do behave similarly to adults and differently from 4- to 6-year-olds, consistent with our hypothesis. Alternative construal requires exposure to entities and properties in a variety of situations; exposure that older children are more likely to exhibit. Collectively, these results (1) support the properties of estar use hypothesized to underlie the language-world-knowledge integration, and (2) delineate a potential developmental trajectory whereby mastery of the copula may not begin to manifest until 10–12 years of age, not because of any one linguistic factor but rather due to specific world-knowledge exposure constraints.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"42 1","pages":"649 - 669"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-07-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48456134","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-13DOI: 10.1177/01427237221107423
Ruthe Foushee, M. Casillas
Having recognized the need for diversity spotlighted by Kidd and Garcia – but given that sampling all the world’s languages is infeasible – we focus on which dimensions of variability researchers should prioritize. We consider three major approaches to the study of child language learning, namely, language as a (1) cognitive puzzle, (2) clinical/educational object, and (3) window onto socialization. We discuss how what is important about ‘diversity’ from each of these perspectives dictates the sociolinguistic communities from which researchers should sample.
{"title":"What ‘diversity’ means depends on your perspective: A commentary on Kidd and Garcia (2022)","authors":"Ruthe Foushee, M. Casillas","doi":"10.1177/01427237221107423","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237221107423","url":null,"abstract":"Having recognized the need for diversity spotlighted by Kidd and Garcia – but given that sampling all the world’s languages is infeasible – we focus on which dimensions of variability researchers should prioritize. We consider three major approaches to the study of child language learning, namely, language as a (1) cognitive puzzle, (2) clinical/educational object, and (3) window onto socialization. We discuss how what is important about ‘diversity’ from each of these perspectives dictates the sociolinguistic communities from which researchers should sample.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"42 1","pages":"760 - 764"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-07-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49203457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-07DOI: 10.1177/01427237221106415
Aoju Chen, B. Narasimhan
Kidd and Garcia demonstrate a dire lack of diversity in language acquisition research. We present a concrete proposal to improve language and area coverage in the field. Our approach outlines key questions in an understudied area, that is, prosody, methods for collecting and analyzing data, resources for training and tools, and a means to foster research collaboration and publication of crosslinguistic findings. The proposal, if implemented on a publicly accessible website, will facilitate crosslinguistic research on prosody acquisition.
{"title":"A proposal for research on the acquisition of prosodic focus marking in diverse languages: A response to Kidd and Garcia (2022)","authors":"Aoju Chen, B. Narasimhan","doi":"10.1177/01427237221106415","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237221106415","url":null,"abstract":"Kidd and Garcia demonstrate a dire lack of diversity in language acquisition research. We present a concrete proposal to improve language and area coverage in the field. Our approach outlines key questions in an understudied area, that is, prosody, methods for collecting and analyzing data, resources for training and tools, and a means to foster research collaboration and publication of crosslinguistic findings. The proposal, if implemented on a publicly accessible website, will facilitate crosslinguistic research on prosody acquisition.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"42 1","pages":"745 - 750"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48973769","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-28DOI: 10.1177/01427237221105184
Sanako Mitsugi, Haruka Fukuda
This study examined Japanese-speaking mothers’ passives in the child-directed speech from the CHILDES database. We selected five parent–child corpora and analyzed the overall distribution of the mothers’ passives and further investigated the contribution of the construction and the passivized verbs to sentence meaning. The findings were as follows: (1) There are only a few verbs that accounted for much of the mothers’ passives; (2) mothers’ passives can be categorized into broad classes based on the verb–patient relation; and (3) most of the passives, both direct and indirect, were used to denote adversative meaning and these negative passives collocated with the verbal auxiliary -shimau. We suggest that analyses of child-directed speech should take into account lexical repetition and the semantic redundancy of language as part of a process designed to support language development. Furthermore, highly frequent exemplar passives and their discrete reference in the events and contexts may be facilitative for children’s learning of Japanese passives. The results are evaluated in light of the usage-based proposal of learning.
{"title":"Maternal passives addressed to Japanese-speaking children: A usage-based approach","authors":"Sanako Mitsugi, Haruka Fukuda","doi":"10.1177/01427237221105184","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237221105184","url":null,"abstract":"This study examined Japanese-speaking mothers’ passives in the child-directed speech from the CHILDES database. We selected five parent–child corpora and analyzed the overall distribution of the mothers’ passives and further investigated the contribution of the construction and the passivized verbs to sentence meaning. The findings were as follows: (1) There are only a few verbs that accounted for much of the mothers’ passives; (2) mothers’ passives can be categorized into broad classes based on the verb–patient relation; and (3) most of the passives, both direct and indirect, were used to denote adversative meaning and these negative passives collocated with the verbal auxiliary -shimau. We suggest that analyses of child-directed speech should take into account lexical repetition and the semantic redundancy of language as part of a process designed to support language development. Furthermore, highly frequent exemplar passives and their discrete reference in the events and contexts may be facilitative for children’s learning of Japanese passives. The results are evaluated in light of the usage-based proposal of learning.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"42 1","pages":"628 - 648"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47711923","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-14DOI: 10.1177/01427237221102036
R. Berman
The commentary opens by pointing out why Kidd and Garcia’s study is an important milestone in research on child language. The commentary goes on to survey insights from crosslinguistic research in the domain, focusing on the author’s work in acquisition and development of Israeli Hebrew as a first language, from toddlers via schoolchildren to adolescents. And it calls for further research to enhance our understanding of what is universally shared by children across the world compared with developmental factors filtered by the impact of a particular target language.
{"title":"The view from Hebrew: A commentary on Kidd and Garcia (2022)","authors":"R. Berman","doi":"10.1177/01427237221102036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237221102036","url":null,"abstract":"The commentary opens by pointing out why Kidd and Garcia’s study is an important milestone in research on child language. The commentary goes on to survey insights from crosslinguistic research in the domain, focusing on the author’s work in acquisition and development of Israeli Hebrew as a first language, from toddlers via schoolchildren to adolescents. And it calls for further research to enhance our understanding of what is universally shared by children across the world compared with developmental factors filtered by the impact of a particular target language.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"42 1","pages":"740 - 744"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48494491","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-14DOI: 10.1177/01427237221104049
M. Edward
It is not always the case that an endangered language goes through a revitalisation programme. For most endangered languages, there are no attempts for revitalisation, and we may never hear of them, nor understand their child language acquisition process. Currently, our understanding of sign language acquisition by children is framed by the research on the few sign languages that have child language acquisition research projects. There is a dearth of research on child language acquisition of indigenous African sign languages.
{"title":"Child language acquisition research on indigenous African sign languages: A commentary on Kidd and Garcia (2022)","authors":"M. Edward","doi":"10.1177/01427237221104049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237221104049","url":null,"abstract":"It is not always the case that an endangered language goes through a revitalisation programme. For most endangered languages, there are no attempts for revitalisation, and we may never hear of them, nor understand their child language acquisition process. Currently, our understanding of sign language acquisition by children is framed by the research on the few sign languages that have child language acquisition research projects. There is a dearth of research on child language acquisition of indigenous African sign languages.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"42 1","pages":"756 - 759"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41435250","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-06DOI: 10.1177/01427237221096084
M. Vihman
Kidd and Garcia demonstrate that the field of language acquisition must consider a more diverse range of languages. This is certainly needed, to gain a deeper understanding of the basic mechanisms of language acquisition; to achieve that, we need more longitudinal studies of several children per language, with (trained) fluent-user transcription and analysis. This could, for example, help to establish the size of the unit from which the child extracts generalizations and builds categories and networks in phonological development.
{"title":"How to learn more about how children learn languages: A commentary on Kidd and García (2022)","authors":"M. Vihman","doi":"10.1177/01427237221096084","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237221096084","url":null,"abstract":"Kidd and Garcia demonstrate that the field of language acquisition must consider a more diverse range of languages. This is certainly needed, to gain a deeper understanding of the basic mechanisms of language acquisition; to achieve that, we need more longitudinal studies of several children per language, with (trained) fluent-user transcription and analysis. This could, for example, help to establish the size of the unit from which the child extracts generalizations and builds categories and networks in phonological development.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"42 1","pages":"827 - 831"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48354097","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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