Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-4rdrl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-26T23:36:51.717Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Collecting language acquisition data from understudied urban communities: A reply to Cristia et al.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2023

Rowena GARCIA Open the ORCID record for Rowena GARCIA [Opens in a new window] ,
Hannah Maria D. ALBERT Open the ORCID record for Hannah Maria D. ALBERT [Opens in a new window] ,
Ivan Paul BONDOC Open the ORCID record for Ivan Paul BONDOC [Opens in a new window]  and
Jocelyn Christina B. MARZAN Open the ORCID record for Jocelyn Christina B. MARZAN [Opens in a new window]
Rowena GARCIA*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Potsdam, Germany Language Development Department, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Hannah Maria D. ALBERT
Affiliation:
Department of Speech Pathology, University of the Philippines Manila
Ivan Paul BONDOC
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Toronto, Canada
Jocelyn Christina B. MARZAN
Affiliation:
Department of Speech Pathology, University of the Philippines Manila
*
*Corresponding author: Department of Linguistics, University of Potsdam, Haus 14, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 24-25, 14476 Potsdam, Germany. Email: garcia1@uni-potsdam.de
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the target article, Cristia, Foushee, Aravena-Bravo, Cychosz, Scaff, and Casillas (2023) convincingly show the need to broaden the current language acquisition research base, not only in linguistic diversity, but also in terms of regions and cultural groups studied. In conducting acquisition research in understudied populations, such as in rural settings, the authors highlight the importance of using a multi-method approach. They present the challenges in adapting these methods to new settings and offer possible ways to promote this type of research. In this commentary, we extend the discussion to understudied urban communities, as we encounter several of the concerns raised in Cristia et al. when collecting observational and experimental language acquisition data from Metro Manila, Philippines. We first describe the community we study, the challenges and modifications needed for conducting research in this setting, and end with a discussion of possible strategies to promote research in communities with understudied populations.

Keywords

TagalogPhilippinesurban
Type
Invited Commentary
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 50 , Issue 3: Special issue on Cross-cultural language development , May 2023 , pp. 522 - 526
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alampay, L. P. (2014). Parenting in the Philippines. In Selin, H. and Schvaneveldt, P. (Eds.), Parenting across cultures: Childrearing, motherhood and fatherhood in non-Western cultures (pp. 105–121). The Netherlands: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Albert, H. M. D. (2022). Tagalog sentence repetition test for Tagalog speakers: Content validation and pilot testing [Unpublished master’s thesis]. University of the Philippines Manila.Google Scholar
Amora, K. K., Garcia, R., & Gagarina, N. (2020). Tagalog adaptation of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives: History, process and preliminary results. ZAS Papers in Linguistics, 64, 221–233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bondoc, I. P., O’Grady, W., Deen, K., & Tanaka, N. (2018a). Effects of pronoun case on sentence comprehension among Tagalog children [Poster presentation]. The 25th Meeting of the Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association, Taipei, Taiwan.Google Scholar
Bondoc, I. P., O’Grady, W., Deen, K., Tanaka, N., Chua, E. C., De Leon, A. C., & Siscar, J. A. (2018b). More relativization asymmetries: Children find locative and benefactive clauses difficult. In Bertolini, A. B. & Kaplan, M. J., The Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 72–85). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Bondoc, I. P., Deen, K., Or, E. M., & Hemedes, M. C. (2019). Reflexives in adult and child Tagalog. In Brown, M. M. & Dailey, B. (Eds.), The Proceedings of the 43nd Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 82–93). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Cristia, A., Foushee, R., Aravena-Bravo, P., Cychosz, M., Scaff, C., & Casillas, M. (2023). Combining observational and experimental approaches to the development of language and communication in rural samples: Opportunities and challenges. Journal of Child Language, 50, 495–517, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000922000617CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eberhard, D. M., Simons, G. F., & Fennig, C. D. (Eds.) (2022). Ethnologue: Languages of the World (25th edition). Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.comGoogle Scholar
Garcia, R., Garrido Rodriguez, G., & Kidd, E. (2021). Developmental effects in the online use of morphosyntactic cues in sentence processing: Evidence from Tagalog. Cognition, 216: 104859.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Garcia, R., & Kidd, E. (2020). The acquisition of the Tagalog symmetrical voice system: Evidence from structural priming. Language Learning and Development, 16(4), 399–425.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garcia, R., & Kidd, E. (2022). Acquiring verb-argument structure in Tagalog: A multivariate corpus analysis of caregiver and child speech. Linguistics, 60(6), 1855–1906.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garcia, R., Roeser, J., & Höhle, B. (2020). Children’s online use of word order and morphosyntactic markers in Tagalog thematic role assignment: An eye-tracking study. Journal of Child Language, 47(3), 533–555.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Himmelmann, N. P. (2005). Tagalog. In Adelaar, K. A., & Himmelmann, N. P. (Eds.), The Austronesian languages of Asia and Madagascar (pp. 350–376). London, England: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kidd, E., & Garcia, R. (2022). Where to from here? Increasing language coverage while building a more diverse discipline. First Language. Advance online publication.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marzan, J. B. (2009). Bilingual language development in the Philippine context [Unpublished manuscript]. University of the Philippines Diliman.Google Scholar
Marzan, J. B. (2013). Spoken language patterns of selected Filipino toddlers and pre-school children [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of the Philippines Diliman.Google Scholar
Marzan, J. B., Cabrera, L. S., Cunanan, D. R., Deleña, M. O., Javier, Y. L., & Narcida, K. C. (2017). Content-form interactions of selected Filipino children aged 14-to-60 months [Unpublished manuscript]. University of the Philippines Manila.Google Scholar
Tanaka, N., O’Grady, W., Deen, K., & Bondoc, I. P. (2019). An asymmetry in the acquisition of relative clauses: Evidence from Tagalog. First Language, 39(6), 618–632.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tanaka, N., Bondoc, I. P., & Deen, K. (2022). Examining main clause similarity and frequency effects in the production of Tagalog relative clauses. Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, 15(2), 70–86.Google Scholar