Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c47g7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T09:41:55.360Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Discourse and the acquisition of grammatical morphemes*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Michael Jeffrey Farrar
Michael Jeffrey Farrar*
Affiliation:
University of Florida
*
Department of Psychology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 32611, USA.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Adult recasts of child utterances have been shown to be related in a general way to the child's acquisition of syntactic structures. The current study had two aims. The first aim was to determine which feature(s) of recasts (i.e. reformulation, expansion, topic continuation, or reply) was responsible for facilitating language acquisition by comparing them to other maternal discourse models that were systematically defined by these properties. The second aim was to investigate this relation more specifically by relating adult discourse models of specific grammatical morphemes to the child's acquisition of those same morphemes. Again, recasts were of particular interest. Twelve mother-child dyads were videorecorded during one hour of naturalistic interaction when the children were 1;10 and 2;4. Results indicated that maternal recasts of specific morphemes were related to the acquisition of those same grammatical morphemes during certain developmental periods, whereas other grammatical morphemes were facilitated by expansions and topic continuations. These results are discussed in terms of the processes responsible for these effects.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , October 1990 , pp. 607 - 624
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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.)

Footnotes

*

Portions of this article were part of a dissertation submitted to Emory University. This research was presented to the Eleventh Annual Boston Child Language Conference in October, 1986. Appreciation is expressed to Michael Tomasello and several anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier versions of this article.

References

REFERENCES

Anderson, J. (1983). The architecture of cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Baker, N. & Nelson, K. E. (1984). Recasting and related conversational devices for triggering syntactic development in children. First Language 5. 3–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bates, E. & MacWhinney, B. (1987). Competition, variation and language learning. In MacWhinney, B. (ed.), Mechanisms of language acquisition. Hillsdale: NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Bohannon, J. & Stanowicz, L. (1988). The issue of negative evidence: adult responses to children's language errors. Developmental Psychology 24. 684–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, R. (1973). A first language: the early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Villiers, J. & de Villiers, P. (1973). Across-sectional study of the acquisition of grammatical morphemes. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 2. 331–441.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Furrow, D. & Nelson, K. (1986). A further look at the motherese hypothesis: a reply to Gleitman, Newport & Gleitman. Journal of Child Language 13. 163–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Furrow, D., Nelson, K. & Benedict, H. (1979). Mothers' speech to children and syntactic development: some simple relationships. Journal of Child Language 6. 423–42.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gleitman, L., Newport, E. & Gleitman, L. (1984). The current status of the motherese hypothesis. Journal of Child Language 11. 43–79.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goldin-Meadow, S. (1982). The resilience of recursion: a study of a communication system developed without a conventional language model. In Wanner, E. & Gleitman, L. (eds), Language acquisition: state of the art. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Hoff-Ginsberg, E. (1985). Some contributions of mothers' speech to their children's syntax growth. Journal of Child Language 12. 367–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoff-Ginsberg, E. (1986). Function and structure in maternal speech: their relation to the child's development of syntax. Developmental Psychology 22. 153–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoff-Ginsberg, E. (1987). Topic relations in mother-child conversation. First Language 7. 145–158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoff-Ginsberg, E. & Shatz, M. (1982). Linguistic input and the child's acquisition of language. Psychological Bulletin 92. 3–26.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Howe, C. (1980). Learning language from mothers' replies. First Language 1. 83–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macnamara, J. (1972). Cognitive bases of language learning in infants. Psychological Review 79 1–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moerk, E. L. (1980). Relationships between parental input frequencies and children's language acquisition: a reanalysis of Brown's data. Journal of Child Language 7. 105–18.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nelson, K. E. (1977). Facilitating children's syntax acquisition. Developmental Psychology 13. 101–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, K. E. (1980). Theories of the child's acquisition of syntax: a look at rare events and at necessary, catalytic, and irrelevant components of mother conversation. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 345. 45–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, K. E. (1981). Toward a rare event cognitive comparison model of syntax acquisition. In Dale, P. S. & Ingram, D. (eds), Child language: an international perspective. Baltimore: University Park Press.Google Scholar
Nelson, K. E. (1987). Some observations from the perspective of the Rare Event Cognitive Comparison Theory of language acquisition. In Nelson, K. E. & Van Kleek, A. (eds), Children's language. Vol. 6. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Nelson, K. E., Carskaddon, G. & Bonvillian, J. D. (1973). Syntax acquisition: Impact of experimental variation in adult verbal interaction with the child. Child Development 44. 497–504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, K. E., Denninger, M. M., Bonvillian, J. D., Kaplan, B. J. & Baker, N. (1984). Maternal input adjustments and non-adjustments as related to children's linguistic advances and to language acquisition theories. In Pellegrini, A. D. & Yawkey, T. D. (eds), The development of oral and written languages: readings in developmental and applied linguistics. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Newport, E. L., Gleitman, H. & Gleitman, L. R. (1977). Mother, I'd rather do it myself: some effects and non-effects of maternal speech style. In Snow, C. & Ferguson, C. A. (eds), Talking to children: language input and acquisition. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Peters, A. (1983). The units of language acquisition. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Pinker, S. (1984). Language learnability and language development. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.Google Scholar
Rumelhart, D. & McClelland, J. (1987). Learning the past tenses of English verbs: implicit rules or parallel distributed processing. In MacWhinney, B. (ed.), Mechanisms of language acquisition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Scarborough, H. & Wycoff, J. (1986). Mother, I'd still rather do it myself: some further non-effects of ‘motherese’. Journal of Child Language 13. 431–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwartz, R. & Camarata, S. (1985). Examining relationships between input and language development: some statistical issues. Journal of Child Language 12. 199–207.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shatz, M. (1982). On mechanisms of language acquisition. In Wanner, E. & Gleitman, L. (eds), Language acquisition: the state of the art. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Snow, C. (1977). Mothers' speech research: from input to interaction. In Snow, C. & Ferguson, C. A. (eds), Talking to children: language input and acquisition. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Snow, C. (1985). Conversations with children. In Fletcher, P. & Garman, M. (eds), Language acquisition. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Snow, C. & Gilbreath, B. (1983). Explaining transitions. In Golinkoff, R. (ed.), The transition from prelinguistic to linguistic communication. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Wells, G. (1980). Adjustments in adult conversation: some effects of interaction. In Giles, H., Robinson, W. P. & Smith, P. (eds), Language: social psychological perspectives. Oxford: Pergamon.Google Scholar
Wexler, K. (1982). A principle theory for language acquisition. In Wanner, E. & Gleitman, L. (eds), Language acquisition: the state of the art. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar