First Language最新文献

{"title":"How the characteristics of words in child-directed speech differ from adult-directed speech to influence children’s productive vocabularies","authors":"Gary Jones, F. Cabiddu, Douglas Barrett, A. Castro, Bethany J. Lee","doi":"10.1177/01427237221150070","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237221150070","url":null,"abstract":"Child-directed speech has long been known to influence children’s vocabulary learning. However, while we know that caregiver utterances differ from those directed at adults in various ways, little is known about any differences in the lexical properties of child-directed and adult-directed utterances. We compare over half a million word tokens from adult speech directed at children (from caregiver–child transcriptions) to the same quantity directed at adults. We show that child-directed speech contains greater numbers of words that are lower in phonemic length, higher in frequency, lower in phonotactic probability, and higher in neighborhood density than adult-directed speech; furthermore, child-directed speech explains over twice the variability of children’s productive noun vocabularies than adult-directed speech. These findings indicate that children’s word production is clearly influenced by the characteristics of the words spoken directly to them and that researchers need to be wary of using adult-directed language corpora when calculating lexical measures.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"43 1","pages":"253 - 282"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45723263","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}

{"title":"Morphological distance between spoken Palestinian dialect and standard Arabic and its implications for reading acquisition","authors":"Nancy Joubran-Awadie, Yasmin Shalhoub-Awwad","doi":"10.1177/01427237221145375","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237221145375","url":null,"abstract":"When the written language that children learn to read and write is distinct from the oral language they acquired as their mother tongue, they may encounter substantial challenges. The linguistic distance between two varieties of the same language could have an impact on the literacy acquisition journey. The present study focuses on Arabic, a prototypical case of diglossia, where the distance between the spoken and standard varieties has been intensively examined phonologically and lexically. However, a paucity of studies has addressed their morphological distance. This study takes one step in this direction by describing, analyzing, and quantifying the distance of morphemes in content words from spoken Palestinian dialect (SPD) to Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). It is the first to map this distance by form and function in the three predominant systems: derivation, inflection, and clitics in nouns and verbs. All morphemes were arranged on an axis targeting four main levels that varied in the extent of the morphological distance from SPD to MSA, beginning with ‘identical’ morphemes (same form, same function), followed by ‘strongly overlapping’ morphemes (morpho-phonological difference in form, same function), then ‘partially overlapping’ morphemes (different form, same function), and ending with ‘unique’ morphemes (unique form, same/different function). The mapping showed significant findings indicating that most morphemes are non-identical between SPD and MSA, comprising 81.4% of the total. Most of these non-identical morphemes (64.9%) were assembled to the ‘partially overlapping’ and ‘unique’ levels, appearing mainly in the verb inflection category. Implications for the possible impact of morphological distance on reading acquisition are discussed.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"43 1","pages":"200 - 230"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-01-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47246918","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}

{"title":"Book Review: William Forshaw, <i>The Acquisition of Complex Morphology: Insights from Murrinhpatha</i> (<i>Trends in Language Acquisition Research</i>, Volume 30)","authors":"Wolfgang Dressler","doi":"10.1177/01427237221147793","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237221147793","url":null,"abstract":"The development of morphological complexity in child language acquisition has so far been investigated in relatively few (and mostly European) languages, so the author is right to start this book by stressing the importance of studying new genetically unrelated and typologically different non-European languages. Therefore, this book on a polysynthetic North Australian language (about which this reviewer was completely ignorant before reading this work) is highly welcome. After this short motivation for writing his book, Forshaw immediately starts to briefly describe the peculiar and complex classifier stem system of Murrinhpatha. Details of the system are dealt with in chapter 2 (which is a comprehensive overview of the whole verb system) and in the later respective acquisition chapters. The data come from five monolingual Murrinhpatha-speaking children, aged between 1;9 and 6;1 years, living in the town of Wadeye (Port Keats) near the western coast of Australia’s Northern Territory, which is one of Australia’s largest Indigenous towns (ca. 3000 residents). According to Forshaw, there is a wide range of competency in English in the Wadeye indigenous population. The author states (p. 7) that ‘the majority of indigenous children in Wadeye today grow up with Murrinhpatha as their first language. They typically have only a limited exposure to English before they commence education at the local school’, which is information that appears to guarantee the reliability of his data. In the following review, I will focus on brief summaries of the topics and interesting results of the book and on critical comments. However, I should first applaud the book for its rigorous coverage of the data and methods used, for all its many findings, and for the knowledgeable, cautious and self-critical stance of the author. Chapter 3 is dedicated to a (basically cross-linguistic) overview of the state of research concerning acquisition of verbs and especially of verb morphology. However, Forshaw’s claim (p. 30) that ‘the study of language acquisition generally and the acquisition of verbs and verb morphology continues to be dominated by findings from a small number of typically isolating languages’ is only partially true. It holds for lexical acquisition in rather isolating languages (particularly English), but not for the acquisition of verb morphology, as the literature he cites demonstrates. 1147793 FLA0010.1177/01427237221147793First LanguageBook review book-review2023","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136211780","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}

{"title":"Signed languages - Unique and ordinary: A commentary on.","authors":"Diane Lillo-Martin,&nbsp;Julie A Hochgesang","doi":"10.1177/01427237221098858","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237221098858","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In this commentary on the article by Kidd and Garcia, we point out that research on natural signed languages is an important component of the goal of broadening the database of knowledge about how languages are acquired. While signed languages do display some modality effects, they also have many similarities to spoken languages, both in function and in form. Thus, research on signed languages and their acquisition is important for a fuller understanding of the diversity of languages. Since signed languages are often learned in contexts other than those of typical input, it is also important to document the effects of input variation; we also see it as critical that input be provided as early as possible from models as fluent as possible. Finally, we call for removing existing barriers to training and education for would-be researchers, especially those interested in working on signed languages. Importantly, we advocate for the recognition of signed languages, for signed language research, and for the empowerment of community members to lead this research.</p>","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"42 6","pages":"789-793"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10327810/pdf/nihms-1907088.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9812507","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Associations between early pre-reading and phonological skills in the light of auditory word recognition and lexical ability","authors":"Eija Aalto, Katri Saaristo-Helin, Suvi Stolt","doi":"10.1177/01427237221135844","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237221135844","url":null,"abstract":"The association between pre-reading skills and phonological production skills has been shown at school age, but less is known about how these skills interact at an earlier age when they are just developing. The focus was to investigate whether a connection between pre-reading skills (letter naming, rapid automatised naming; RAN) and phonological production skills of children at 3;6 could be found. In addition, the possible effects of the following skills were considered in the analysis: auditory word recognition and lexical ability at 3;6; and early expressive lexicon size at 2;0, adding a longitudinal aspect to the study. The participants were Finnish-speaking children (n = 66). The results show a significant connection between letter naming skills and phonological measures (paradigmatic and phonotactic skills) at 3;6, whereas no association was found between RAN and phonological production skills. Phonological production skills were significantly correlated with all the variables: pre-reading, lexical and auditory word recognition. The pre-reading measure correlated only with phonological production skills and lexical ability that was measured concurrently at 3;6. The findings propose a central role for the phonological production skill in terms of pre-reading skills, auditory word recognition and previous and concurrent lexical ability.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"43 1","pages":"237 - 252"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46676226","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}

{"title":"Associations of paternal factors and child’s sex with early vocabulary development – The STEPS study","authors":"Annette Nylund, P. Korpilahti, A. Kaljonen, Pirkko Rautakoski","doi":"10.1177/01427237221133623","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237221133623","url":null,"abstract":"In a changing society where the roles of fathers and mothers in caregiving are becoming more equal, the role of the father in early language development has also changed. We aimed to study associations between paternal factors and early vocabulary development in boys and girls. In a longitudinal cohort study, we examined the growth of expressive vocabulary in 354 boys and 331 girls between 13 and 24 months of age using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory. The results show that boys who had fathers not working full time, who had mothers with higher occupational status, and who had a larger vocabulary size at 13 months of age had larger gains in vocabulary. Girls with fathers working as professionals (high occupational status) had larger vocabulary growth compared to girls with fathers of lower occupational status. The results demonstrate that vocabulary growth in boys and girls relates differently to environmental factors. The results highlight the importance of further studies on fathers’ role in children’s early vocabulary development and the need to analyse the influence of environmental factors on early language development as a function of the child’s sex.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"43 1","pages":"178 - 199"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45052393","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}

{"title":"Acquiring Polish noun inflection: Two children’s productivity and error patterns in relation to parental input","authors":"D. Price-Williams, Matt Davies","doi":"10.1177/01427237221123695","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237221123695","url":null,"abstract":"Complex systems of inflectional morphology provide a useful testing ground for input-based language acquisition theories. Two analyses were performed on a high-density (12%) naturalistic sample of two Polish-English children’s (2;0 and 3;11) and their parents’ use of Polish noun inflection: first, each child’s use of inflectional affixes and their lexical restrictedness was compared with their father’s equalised sample. Second, the children’s spontaneous case-marking errors were analysed in context and measured against type and token frequencies in both parents’ data and the child-directed speech (CDS) corpus. Findings in both analyses accord with constructivist theory: near adult-like knowledge of Polish inflections hiding a range of use that is more lexically restricted than in their caregivers’ speech; low error rates hiding much higher ‘pockets of ignorance’ for specific inflectional contexts; and patterns of error that correspond closely to token/type frequencies in the CDS, though with the older sibling making some errors that were not frequency-based. Potential effects of syncretism, case ambiguity and semantics are also discussed.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"43 1","pages":"112 - 134"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48543544","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}

{"title":"Mothers’ and fathers’ bimodal communication in dyadic and triadic interaction with their infants","authors":"Mara Morelli, R. Baiocco, E. Cattelino, E. Longobardi","doi":"10.1177/01427237221126260","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237221126260","url":null,"abstract":"Parents play an important role in children’s language development. To our knowledge, no studies have compared fathers’ and mothers’ use of gestural and verbal communication in dyadic versus triadic contexts. This study aimed at analyzing similarities and differences in the bimodal communication of parents when they play alone with their infant and when all three play together. Twelve Italian-speaking families with infants aged 16 months took part in the study. Dyadic and triadic free-play interactions of mothers and fathers with their infants were videotaped. Mothers’ and fathers’ communicative acts (i.e., ‘only speech’, ‘only gesture’, ‘speech + gesture’), and types of gestures (i.e., deictic, representational, and emphatic) were coded. Results showed that infants experience mothers’ and fathers’ bimodal communication when interacting with both parents. In the dyadic context, mothers produced more communicative acts and more verbal communication than fathers who in turn used more gestures and ‘speech + gesture’ communicative acts than mothers. Both parents used gestures to clarify and reinforce their verbal communication in dyadic and triadic contexts. With respect to the triadic context, no differences between mothers’ and fathers’ verbal and non-verbal communication emerged. Comparing each parent across the two contexts, findings showed that in the triadic context, mothers increased their use of gestural communicative acts and decreased their use of mixed acts, whereas fathers increased their verbal component while decreasing their ‘speech + gesture’ communicative acts. It seems that in the triadic context there is a coordination between parents that leads them to align with the kind of communication provided to the infant. Thus, the input experienced by infants in the triadic context is still equally composed of both verbal and non-verbal communication. Results are discussed considering the role of parents’ bimodal communication within several daily interactional contexts.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"43 1","pages":"158 - 177"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45557944","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}

{"title":"Prompting heritage-language engagement in English-speaking Maltese families, via a family language programme intervention","authors":"Jennifer Formosa, S. Little","doi":"10.1177/01427237221116982","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237221116982","url":null,"abstract":"This qualitative, exploratory research study is positioned within the field of Family Language Policy (FLP). Contextualised in bilingual Malta, where Maltese is the majority language, the study inquires into the effects of a plurilingual family language programme on the language ideologies within English-speaking Maltese families. The programme was followed by four such families over a four-week period, during which data were collected via the participants’ weekly entries into semi-structured family language journals. Upon the programme’s completion, a second set of data was collected via one-off, semi-structured, family focus group interviews, for the purpose of triangulation. The findings highlight interrelated issues across the macro, meso and micro levels of language ideology, contributing to existing research by postulating the potential of a family language programme to prompt ideological shifts in support of heritage-language engagement, transmission and maintenance.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"43 1","pages":"137 - 157"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47265971","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}

{"title":"Where to from here? Increasing language coverage while building a more diverse discipline","authors":"E. Kidd, Rowena Garcia","doi":"10.1177/01427237221121190","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237221121190","url":null,"abstract":"Our original target article highlighted some significant shortcomings in the current state of child language research: a large skew in our evidential base towards English and a handful of other Indo-European languages that partly has its origins in a lack of researcher diversity. In this article, we respond to the 21 commentaries on our original article. The commentaries highlighted both the importance of attention to typological features of languages and the environments and contexts in which languages are acquired, with many commentators providing concrete suggestions on how we address the data skew. In this response, we synthesise the main themes of the commentaries and make suggestions for how the field can move towards both improving data coverage and opening up to traditionally under-represented researchers.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"42 1","pages":"837 - 851"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44103560","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}