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Reanalysing rote-learned phrases: individual differences in the transition to multi-word speech

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Julian M. Fine  and
Elena V. M. Lieven
Julian M. Fine*
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham
Elena V. M. Lieven
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
*
[*] Address for correspondence: Department of Psychology, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK.
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Abstract

The present study investigates the possibility that the previously documented relationship between referential–expressive and nominal–pronominal styles (Nelson, 1975) may be best explained not so much in terms of ‘object-orientation’ or ‘noun-preference’, as in terms of the direction from which different children break into structure, with some children tending to construct patterns by combining two or more items from their single-word vocabularies and others tending to develop patterns by gaining productive control over ‘slots’ in previously unanalysed phrases. In order to do so it makes use of a methodology for distinguishing between productive and unanalysed multi-word speech proposed in Lieven, Pine & Dresner-Barnes (1992) which is applied to observational and maternal-report data from a longitudinal study of seven children between the ages of 0; 11 and 1; 8. The results suggest not only that variation in children's early word combinations can indeed be explained in terms of different routes to multi-word speech, but also that, far from being atypical, a strategy involving the breaking down of originally unanalysed phrases may be used by all children, though to varying degrees.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , October 1993 , pp. 551 - 571
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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