THE PERIOD OF SINGLEWORD UTTERANCES

y Before acquiring implicit knowledge of regularities in

word structure infants must first have some basic idea of what a word in the language may be like. y The results from previous research suggest that infants have developed the capacity to identify words in the linguistic input, even when these words are embedded in a sentence context. y They also have acquired implicit knowledge about word structure, but it is not clear how infants have acquired this knowledge.

- Almost every human child succeeds

in learning language. As a result, people often tend to take the process of language learning for granted. - Language is the most complex skill that a human being will ever master. In a very real sense, language is the complete expression of what it means to be human

Pragmatic and grammatical development

y There is, at present, no evidence that word

boundaries are more or less reliably marked in infant-directed speech than in adultdirected speech. y There is, however, evidence that utterances in infant-directed speech are more clearly separated by pauses than those in adultdirected speech (e.g., Broen, 1972).

This study explores the role that gesture plays in the earliest stages of language learning. We describe how one-word speakers use gesture in combination with speech in their spontaneous communications, and interpret gesture presented in combination with speech in an experimental situation.

The child has a number of words

y Study that the child has a number of words

understood before the first word produced, possibly as many as 100. y Further, we know that the acquisition of the first 50 words in production can take some time. Most attempts to follow receptive vocabulary after the first 100 words are given up because acquisition is so rapid.

Estimated size of receptive vocabulary for Craig and Amy in Benedict (1979) at the time of the acquisition of the 50th word in production

By the end of the period of single-word utterances, the child has a relatively large receptive vocabulary. Benedict, for example, gives data on two subjects for the first 200 words in comprehension. Table 6.11 estimates the size of their receptive vocabulary at the time of the 50th word produced.

Method of testing comprehension

It cannot be overemphasized that testing comprehension, even of single words, in children around 1 year to 18 months is quite difficult. How do we know, for example, that the child understands 'dog' in the way we do? The typical procedure is to present the child with alternatives that are systematically varied. This was done in the study by Thomson & Chapman (1977). Even so, children at this age are often not obliging: they may not attend, crawl off, or start to cry. When they do attend, we still have problems of scoring a response. They may touch one object, then another, or only look at the object.

These problems are even greater when we investigate the understanding of sentences. For example, suppose we wish to test the childs understanding of the Possessor-Possessed structure as in Mommys shoe. How do we do this? If we say Give me Mommys shoe we are actually testing a greater comprehension, which includes the verb give. Just saying Mommys shoe does not direct the child to any scorable response. Suppose, however, that we teach the child a game, so that we name something, and the child hands it to us.

Studies on sentence comprehension

THERE HAS BEEN A SMALL NUMBER OF CREATIVE STUDIES IN RECENT YEARS ON THE RECEPTIVE ABILITY OF CHILDREN WHO ARE ONLY PRODUCING SINGLE-WORD UTTERANCES

SHIPLEY, SMITH & GLEITMAN (1969)

Was not directly a study of comprehension. Rather, it tested whether children would prefer to respond to language from their parents that was at the child s level of production, or in advance of it. That is, it was indirectly a study of the young child s notions of grammaticality or well-formedness.

Shipley, Smith & Gleitman studied two groups of children which they called the holophrastic group and the telegraphic group. Here we will look just at their data in regard to the holophrastic group. There were four subjects in the group:

Name Karen Mike Linus Jeremy

Age 1;8 1;6 2;o 2;o

MLU 1.10 1.o6 1.09 1.16

The children were tested individually in a room where they were allowed to play freely while the mother and an experimenter talked to each other. Then, periodically, the mother would turn and direct a command to her child.

There were three main types of commands directed to the child (where V = verb, N = noun, F = functors):
well-formed (VFN) telegraphic (VN) holophrastic (N) Throw me the ball! Throw ball! Ball

The object was to see if the children would prefer one of these three kinds of structures over another.

THE PERIOD OF SINGLE-WORD UTTERANCES

Percentage of times each of four children in Shipley, Smith & Gleitman (1 969) would touch an appropriate toy in response to each of three constructions Structures Subjects Mike Karen Linus Jeremy Mean N (%) 33 80 46 16 52 VN (%) 50 75 16 33 44 VFN (%) 16 83 42 0 35

These results indicate that Craig, at least, was able to recognize four lexical words in a sentence and carry out a command in an appropriate context

Huttenlocher (1974) Huttenlocher reported preliminary results on her longitudinal study of four children over a sixmonth period. The children were between 10 and 13 months of age when the study began. They were visited every few weeks and observed on their development of receptive and productive language.

Child speech perception The stimuli are meaningless in that the infant does not yet see these sounds as parts of words. Child speech perception, however, is operationalized here to refer to the child s ability to perceive speech sounds that are part of what the child identifies as a word.

There are two components to phonemic perception. One is the ability to discriminate speech sounds, that is, to hear them as distinct. The other is the ability to classify the sounds discriminated into phonological categories.

The onset of phonemic perception and production

The child has begun to develop a semantic system during the period, and by its end shows some evidence of comprehending multiword utterances, at least in terms of their major semantic categories. In this section we turn now to the child s emerging phonological system. The discussion will begin with a look at perceptual development, followed by a treatment of the phonological characteristics of the child s first 50 words or so in production.
,

The research with infants indicates that the first of these abilities is quite developed in the first year of life; the second, however, adds a great deal of complexity to the child s task

Principle of the Linguistic Sign in our discussion of Stern, is a unique genetic feature of humans, it appears to be dependent in part on earlier developments. Its operation becomes particularly noticeable in comprehension during this period, where the vocabulary grows to an impressive size before much productive vocabulary appears. That is, the child is beginning to identify and categorize the speech sounds in his words into linguistic categories.

THE ONSET OF PHONEMIC PERCEPTION AND PRODUCTION

. Day 1. Spend time with the child teaching a nonsense word, e.g. bak, until the child shows 2. Day 2. Teach the child a second word, e.g. zub, until the child shows evidence of learning worsd 3. Test for non-minimal opposition: Ask the child to respond to two nonsense words that have non-minimal oppositions, e.g. bak vs. zub. Do this until the child shows evidence of hearing a difference. 4. (Next day? Time unclear). Teach the child a third nonsense word that contains a minimal opposition to one of the earlier words, e.g. mak. 5. Tests for new non-minimal opposition: Ask the child to respond to the newest word taught with the second word taught, e.g. mak vs. zub. 6. Test for minimal opposition: Place the objects for all three nonsense words in front of the child.

Shvachkin s proposal is that we seek minimal pairs in the child s perception in order to be able to say with any confidence that a contrast exists. For example, suppose we determine that the child hears the difference between pig and cake. Since the words differ in all three segments, we do not know if the child processes all three segments, or focusses on only one.

Shvachkin was very aware that children may have contextually based knowledge, that is, ability to do something in one context but not in another. He used six methods, therefore, to test for the comprehension of a test pair. The child would only be given credit for the acquisition of an opposition if he succeeded in at least three of these methods.

Six methods used by Shvachkin (1948173: 101-2) to test phonemic perception of a minimal contrast
y Pointing to the object: The child would be asked to

point out the object among a selection of

y 2. Giving of the object: The child would be asked to

hand the object to the experimenter,

y 3. Placement of an object: The child would be

asked to place several objects in different place

4. Finding the object: The child would be asked to find one of the objects. 5. Operation of one object in relation to another object: The child would be asked to seek out the object to put one object upon the other. 6. Substitution of objects: The child would be asked to get an object in a particular place, but another object would be there instead. The child was observed to see if there was a reaction of disappointment