We have ways of making them talk

[Matthew Saxton]

Dear Fatima,

 

>Does anyone know of some good ideas to  make them talk?

 

I think most children are covered by the United Nations Convention on
Human Rights, so it may not be politic to encourage your participants
with excessive zeal.

 

However, I do think you put your finger on a fundamental problem in
child language research. I wonder if you have the wherewithal to
increase the range of contexts in which you elicit language? Bath-time,
shopping, in the park, at the movies, getting dressed, visiting friends
and so on. If you obtained data in this way, future generations would
regard you as a pioneer (says he, just begging for counter-examples).

 

But even if you (or others) did all this, you might still find some of
the desired morphemes missing from your dataset. And then you might
consider going back to try those contexts again at different times. Or
extending the range of contexts even further. But even then, you may
well face the conundrum of simply not being able to elicit all the
knowledge in the child's head at a given time versus the (very real)
possibility that some of that knowledge is not there yet. Sorry not to
be more optimistic, but there are very real methodological limits placed
on us which go beyond the temptation to make children speak........

 

Regards,

 

Matthew Saxton.

 

 

*********************************************************************

 

Matthew Saxton MA, MSc, DPhil

School of Psychology and Human Development,

Institute of Education,

25 Woburn Square,

London,

WC1H 0AA.

U.K.

 

Tel: +44 (0) 20 7612 6509

Fax: +44 (0) 20 7612 6304

 

http://ioewebserver.ioe.ac.uk/ioe/cms/get.asp?cid=4578&4578_0=10248

www.ioe.ac.uk <http://www.ioe.ac.uk> 

________________________________

From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org
[mailto:info-childes at mail.talkbank.org] On Behalf Of Fatima Basaffar
Sent: 27 November 2006 05:07
To: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org
Subject: Verb Inflections and 2 years old

 

Hello Everybody,

I'm working on the acquisition of verb inflections in Arabic by 2-4
years
old children. I'm at the data collection stage. 

Since Arabic is a highly inflected language, it didn't prove to be an
easy
task to elicit all verb inflections required. I'm using both
naturalistic
and experimental methods in which I have  pair of pictures, a picture
story, a 3 minutes video-clip presenting cartoon figures performing
actions and puppets.
The problem I'm facing  is in  dealing with 2 years old children.

Does anyone know of some good ideas to  make them talk?
Thanks, 
Fatima 







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