First LanguagePub Date : 2022-07-07DOI: 10.1177/01427237221106415
Aoju Chen, B. Narasimhan
{"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}
First LanguagePub Date : 2022-06-28DOI: 10.1177/01427237221105184
Sanako Mitsugi, Haruka Fukuda
{"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}
First LanguagePub Date : 2022-06-14DOI: 10.1177/01427237221102036
R. Berman
{"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}
First LanguagePub Date : 2022-06-14DOI: 10.1177/01427237221104049
M. Edward
{"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}
First LanguagePub Date : 2022-06-06DOI: 10.1177/01427237221096084
M. Vihman
{"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}
{"title":"Prosodic features of maternal input to children with sex chromosome trisomies","authors":"Alessandra Provera, Paola Zanchi, Gaia Silibello, Francesca Dall’Ara, Claudia Rigamonti, Federico Monti, Paola Francesca Ajmone, Faustina Lalatta, Maria Antonella Costantino, Paola Giovanna Vizziello, Laura Zampini","doi":"10.1177/01427237221098553","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237221098553","url":null,"abstract":"The neuropsychological profile associated with sex chromosome trisomies (SCT) is frequently characterised by delays or deficits in linguistic development. Although maternal input could have an important role in influencing and shaping the linguistic development of children with SCT, there is a lack of studies in the literature that have investigated its prosodic characteristics. The study aims to analyse the prosodic features of the maternal input addressed to a group of 8-month-old children with SCT and a group of typically developing (TD) peers. Nineteen mother–child dyads with children with SCT and 19 mother–child dyads with TD children participated in the study. Maternal utterances were collected during video-recorded play sessions, and for each dyad, 50 maternal utterances were selected and analysed using the software Praat. The results showed that the maternal input produced by the mothers in the SCT group was characterised by a significantly lower pitch, less marked and modulated melodic contours, and a shorter final syllable duration than the input addressed to TD children. The prosodic features found in the maternal input addressed to children with SCT were not those expected in the maternal input addressed to children at this developmental stage and could create a non-optimal linguistic environment.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138540513","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}
First LanguagePub Date : 2022-06-04DOI: 10.1177/01427237221098551
T. Tulviste, Anne Tamm
{"title":"A longitudinal study of Estonian mothers’ self-reported language teaching practices and children’s language skills","authors":"T. Tulviste, Anne Tamm","doi":"10.1177/01427237221098551","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237221098551","url":null,"abstract":"This study explored associations between mothers’ language teaching practices and children’s language skills concurrently and longitudinally, while also taking into account the children’s sex and mothers’ education. Estonian mothers of 76 children reported their language teaching practices at child ages 3;0 and 4;0. Children’s language comprehension and production were measured via the examiner-administered New Reynell Developmental Language Scales (NRDLS). The results indicated that at Wave 1, girls scored higher on language comprehension and production than boys. Mothers’ higher education predicted higher scores on language production. Maternal corrective feedback was a negative predictor of children’s concurrent language comprehension. At Wave 2, neither maternal teaching practices, maternal education nor child’s sex predicted the language measures of interest. The longitudinal results showed that later language production scores were negatively predicted by mothers’ corrective feedback. Yet, the strongest predictors of both language scores were the scores of language comprehension and production measured 1 year earlier. Moreover, maternal language teaching practices at Wave 2 were predicted by mothers’ early language teaching practices, but not by children’s earlier language skills.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"42 1","pages":"599 - 612"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41647801","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}
First LanguagePub Date : 2022-06-04DOI: 10.1177/01427237221097581
Virginia Yip, S. Matthews
{"title":"Language diversity and bilingual first language acquisition: A commentary on Kidd and Garcia (2022)","authors":"Virginia Yip, S. Matthews","doi":"10.1177/01427237221097581","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237221097581","url":null,"abstract":"Discussing the issue of representativeness from a bilingual perspective, we address how the problem is multiplied in the case of bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA). Given 7,000 languages, there are over 24 million possible language pairs that bilingual children might acquire. In current research and databases including CHILDES, English and Indo-European languages dominate: even non-Indo-European languages are typically paired with an Indo-European language. Referring to studies involving East Asian languages, we outline how genetic, contact, and typological relationships between language pairs may influence the course of BFLA.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"42 1","pages":"832 - 836"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43998173","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}
First LanguagePub Date : 2022-06-03DOI: 10.1177/01427237221094438
Lourdes de León
{"title":"Learning from Mayan Tzotzil: A commentary on Kidd and Garcia (2022)","authors":"Lourdes de León","doi":"10.1177/01427237221094438","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237221094438","url":null,"abstract":"In response to Kidd and Garcia’s survey that shows the paucity of authors and languages from the Global South in four leading journals of language acquisition, I argue that Mayan language acquisition has contributed in important ways to test theories in the field at large. I specifically outline major contributions from Mayan Tzotzil acquisition to topics of input, lexical, semantic and morphological development. Research on Mesoamerican languages is invaluable in understanding the implications of linguistic typology in language acquisition.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"42 1","pages":"784 - 788"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43794321","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}
First LanguagePub Date : 2022-05-24DOI: 10.1177/01427237221096512
Sandra J. Mathers
{"title":"Considerations when using rating scales to support teacher professional development: A commentary on Weadman, Serry and Snow (2022)","authors":"Sandra J. Mathers","doi":"10.1177/01427237221096512","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237221096512","url":null,"abstract":"While observational rating scales such as the Emergent Literacy and Language Early Childhood Checklist for Teachers (ELLECCT) have potential to support Early Childhood Teachers in improving their practice, the existence of a valid and reliable tool is no guarantee of success. A carefully constructed model of teacher professional development will be required to ensure benefits for instructional practice and child language outcomes. This commentary considers the evidence available to guide intelligent design of such a model.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"42 1","pages":"588 - 591"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-05-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43141769","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}