From gagarina at zas.gwz-berlin.de Wed Aug 1 15:45:38 2007 From: gagarina at zas.gwz-berlin.de (Natalia Gagarina) Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2007 17:45:38 +0200 Subject: PhD student position - Centre for General Linguistics (ZAS) In-Reply-To: <20070720114529.A234A6DAF8@dmz02.zas.gwz-berlin.de> Message-ID: Please circulate: Centre for General Linguistics, Typology and Universals Research (Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft - ZAS) Berlin, Germany is the legal representative of six non-universitary research institutes in Berlin, funded by the Federal Republic of Germany and the community of the German Lands. ZAS invites applications for a PhD student position in the project "Language Acquisition as a Window to Social Integration among Russian Language Minority Children in Germany and Israel" in the Language Acquisition Research Group of the ZAS (Head Prof. Dr. M. Krifka) starting at September-October, 2007. Key areas of activity will be linguistic investigation of longitudinal and experimental data (topic areas: (a) linguistic: morpho-syntax, discourse and pragmatic; (b) sociolinguistic: identity and attitudes). A candidate should have basic knowledge of (depending on the person’s PhD research): - experimental methods in language acquisition research, - theoretical linguistics, - sociolinguistics - statistics (basic knowledge) A researcher must be fluent in German (and in Russian). Experience in working with children is preferable. Readiness to participate on multilingual team and in interdisciplinary research is expected. A university degree (BA/MA) in Linguistics or Developmental Psychology is required. Please direct your queries to Dr. N. Gagarina (gagarina at zas.gwz-berlin.de). The initial appointment is for two years. The half-time schedule is 20 hours per week, and the salary is according to the German TVoeD 1/2(East) scale. ZAS is an equal opportunity employer. As far as possible we ask to avoid sending application papers by e-mail. Applicants should send a curriculum vitae and photocopies of certificates, including a cover letter to: Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS) Dr. Natalia Gagarina Schuetzenstr. 18 10117 Berlin The post will begin on September 1, 2007 (or as soon as possible thereafter), and will continue until August 31, 2009. -- Dr. Natalia Gagarina Research Center for General Linguistics - ZAS Schutzenstr. 18 D-10117, Berlin Tel: +49-30-20192-503 Fax: +49-30-20192-402 Save a tree. Don't print this e-mail unless it's really necessary. From mfriend at sunstroke.sdsu.edu Mon Aug 6 22:55:43 2007 From: mfriend at sunstroke.sdsu.edu (Margaret Friend) Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2007 15:55:43 -0700 Subject: Position in Cognitive Development Message-ID: The DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY at SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY invites applications for tenure-track appointments to begin Fall, 2008. Three Assistant Professor positions are available: APPLIED RESEARCH FOCUS: AREA OPEN, INDUSTRIAL/ORGANIZATIONAL and COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT. The Psychology Department has a large and diverse population of undergraduate majors, an MA program, an MS program in Applied Psychology with emphases in I-O and Program Evaluation, and an APA-accredited doctoral program in Clinical Psychology offered jointly with the Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of California, San Diego. Additional information about SDSU and the Psychology Department can be found at http://www.sdsu.edu/ and http://www.psychology.sdsu.edu/index.html. Successful candidates will be committed to excellence in teaching and clearly demonstrate research productivity and the capacity to attract extramural support. Research that acknowledges and addresses multicultural perspectives is desirable. SDSU and the San Diego research community beyond our campus provide a very rich environment for interdisciplinary and collaborative work. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT: Candidates must hold a Ph.D. in a domain of Psychology that reflects expertise in Developmental Science. We seek an individual with expertise in Developmental Science and in Cognition. Such an individual might study memory, attention, executive function, problem-solving, categorization, or statistical learning, for example. The successful candidate would be expected to contribute to the undergraduate and graduate curriculum in Development and in Cognition. In particular, this individual would be expected to teach undergraduate courses in Development and in Cognition, an occasional graduate seminar in Development, and would have the opportunity to mentor students in the Psychology Master's Program and in the Mathematics and Science Education Doctoral program. Candidates should demonstrate strong potential for obtaining extramural funding and maintaining an active research program. The full text of this advertisement can be accessed at http://bfa.sdsu.edu/ps/Pyschology.htm Thank you for your interest and attention! Margaret Friend Margaret Friend, Ph.D. Child Language and Emotion Lab Department of Psychology and SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Language and Communicative Disorders San Diego State University 6363 Alvarado Court, Ste.103 San Diego, CA 92120 619-594-0273 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From romida-sihombing at telkom.net Fri Aug 10 01:01:21 2007 From: romida-sihombing at telkom.net (Romaida Sihombing) Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 08:01:21 +0700 Subject: searching info on gelason data In-Reply-To: <86082.49811@mail.talkbank.org> Message-ID: Dear all, Does anybody here any information 1. any research using gleason data in CHILDES? 2. what the research is about? Thanks, Dr. Romaida Sihombing University of North Sumatra ======================================================================================= Pengen Coba Music Mail GRATIS? Aktifkan Music Mail anda di mail telkom.net dan plasa.com dan kirim email dengan Music Mail ke seluruh rekan anda. Berlaku hingga 31 Agustus 2007 ======================================================================================= From gleason at bu.edu Fri Aug 10 06:33:20 2007 From: gleason at bu.edu (Jean Berko Gleason) Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 02:33:20 -0400 Subject: searching info on gelason data In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Romaida Sihombing, Those data were originally collected to get information about naturally occurring conversations in families at dinner, and to compare mothers' and fathers' interactions with boys and girls in several different situations--playing 'store', reading a book, playing with a toy. We've used the data over the years to examine gender differences, the use of routines in language, the development of color terminology, diminutives, various other lexical domains (e.g., animal terms, money words), baby talk, talk about talk, fathers' speech, prohibitives, politeness, and so on. I'll paste in a representative sample of publications that I hope will be of some use. cheers, Jean Berko Gleason ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Masur, E. & Gleason, J. Berko. (1980). Parent‑child interaction and the acquisition of lexical information during play/. Developmental Psychology, 16, /404‑409. Gleason, J. Berko. (1980). The acquisition of social speech and politeness formulae. In H. Giles, and W. P. Robinson, P.M. Smith, (Eds.), /Language: Social Psychological Perspectives/. Pergamon Press, Oxford and New York, 21-27.. Greif, E. B. & Gleason, J. Berko. (1980). Hi, thanks, and goodbye: More routine information. /Language in Society, 9, /159‑166. Bellinger, D. & Gleason, J. Berko. (1982). Sex differences in parental directives to young children. /Journal of Sex Roles, 8(11), /1123-1139. /Reprinted/ in C. N. Jacklin (Ed.), (1992). /Gender. /London: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. Gleason, J. Berko, & Greif, E. B. (1983). Men's speech to young children. In B. Thorne, C. Kramerae, and N. Henley (Eds.), /Language, Gender, and Society, /2nd edition. Rowley, MA: Newbury House, 140-150. Gleason, J. Berko, Perlmann, R. Y., & Greif, E. B.. (1984). What's the magic word: Learning language through routines. /Discourse Processes, 6(2), /493‑502. Menn, L. & Gleason, J. Berko. (1986). Babytalk as a stereotype and register: Adult reports of children's speech patterns. In J. A. Fishman et al. (Eds.) /The Fergusonian Impact. Vol I. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 111‑125. / Snow, C. E., Perlmann, R. Y. & Gleason, J. Berko. 1990. Developmental perspectives on politeness: Sources of children's knowledge. /Journal of Pragmatics, 14, /289-305. Gleason, J. Berko, Perlmann, R. Y., Ely, D.,& Evans, D. (1994). The babytalk register: Parents' use of diminutives. In J. L. Sokolov & C. E. Snow (Eds.), /Handbook of Research in Language Development Using CHILDES. /Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Tingley, E., Gleason, J. Berko., & Hooshyar, N. (1994) Mothers= lexicon of internal state words in speech to children with Down syndrome and to nonhandicapped children at mealtime. /Journal of Communication Disorders, 27, /135-155. Ely, R., Gleason, J. Berko, Narasimhan, B., & McCabe, A. (1995). Family talk about talk: Mothers lead the way. /Discourse Processes , /19, 201‑218. Ely, R., Gleason, J. Berko & McCabe, A. (1996) "Why didn't you talk to your Mommy, Honey?": Parents' and children's talk about talk. /Research on Language and Social Interaction.29, 1/, 7-25. Gleason, J. Berko, Ely, R., Perlmann, R. Y., & Narasimhan, B. (1996). Patterns of prohibition in parent-child discourse. In D. I. Slobin, J. Gerhardt, A. Kyratzis, & J. Guo (Eds.), /Social interaction, social context, and language: Essays in honor of Susan Ervin-Tripp. /Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.. Leaper, C. & Gleason, J. Berko. (1996). The relationship of play activity and gender to parent and child sex-typed communication. /International Journal of Behavioral Development, 19/, 689-703. Gleason, J. Berko & Ely, R. (1997). Input and the acquisition of vocabulary: Examining the parental lexicon. In C. Mandell & A. McCabe (Eds.), The Problem of Meaning: Behavioral and Cognitive Perspectives. New York: Elsevier. Ely, R. & Gleason, J. Berko. (1998). What Color is the Cat? Color Words in Parent-Child Conversations. In A. Aksu-Ko, E. Erguvanli-Taylan, A. Sumru Ozsoy, & A. Kuntay (Eds.) /Perspectives on Language Acquisition: Selected Papers from the VIIth International Congress for the Study of Child Language./ Istanbul: Bogazici University. Ely, R., Gleason, J. Berko, * *MacGibbon, A., & * *Zaretsky, E. (2001). Attention to Language: Lessons Learned at the Dinner Table. /Social Development, 10, /3, 355-373. Gleason, J. Berko & Ely, R. (2005). Gender differences in language development: Interactional effects. In B. Bokus, (Ed.) /Studies in the Psychology of Child Language (in Honor of Grace Wales Shugar) /Warsaw: Matrix, 249-263. Gleason, J. Berko, Ely, R., Phillips, B., & Zaretsky, E. (In press). Alligators all around: The acquisition of animal terms in English and Russian. In D. Guo & E. Lieven (Eds.) /Crosslinguistic Approaches to the Psychology of Language: Research in the Tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin/. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Romaida Sihombing wrote: > Dear all, > > Does anybody here any information > 1. any research using gleason data in CHILDES? > 2. what the research is about? > > Thanks, > > Dr. Romaida Sihombing > University of North Sumatra > > ======================================================================================== > > Pengen Coba Music Mail GRATIS? Aktifkan Music Mail anda di mail > telkom.net dan plasa.com dan kirim email dengan Music Mail ke seluruh > rekan anda. Berlaku hingga 31 Agustus 2007 > ======================================================================================== > > From dservin at planeta.com.mx Fri Aug 10 18:05:47 2007 From: dservin at planeta.com.mx (dservin at planeta.com.mx) Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 13:05:47 -0500 Subject: searching info on gelason data Message-ID: Acuse de recibo Su searching info on gelason data document o: Ha sido Diana Servin/Planeta/mx recibido por: Con 10/08/2007 12:56:00 p.m. fecha: From emasst85 at yahoo.com Fri Aug 10 18:05:21 2007 From: emasst85 at yahoo.com (elham mahjub) Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 11:05:21 -0700 Subject: Cognitive Style Inventory Message-ID: Dear all ; I'm just wondering if anyone of you has any access to the Cognitive Style Index ( Allinson & Hayes 1996 ) , or can give me any clue how to gain it . The more i have searched the net the less i could get , since all i could get were just the studies used CSI as their questionnaire , not the questionnaire itself . Any guidelines on how to gain this actual questionnaire or any other standard index for measuring listening strategies would be appreciated . With Great Thanks Elham Mahjub M.A student Ilam University , Iran --------------------------------- Sick sense of humor? Visit Yahoo! TV's Comedy with an Edge to see what's on, when. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karla-mcgregor at uiowa.edu Fri Aug 10 19:47:23 2007 From: karla-mcgregor at uiowa.edu (McGregor, Karla K) Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 14:47:23 -0500 Subject: role of analogy in thought and learning Message-ID: The Iowa Center for Developmental and Learning Sciences (http://www.uiowa.edu/~icdls/) brings together researchers who seek to understand processes that underlie development and learning from neurons to neighborhoods, acknowledging that the brain, mind, body, physical environment, social relationships, and large-scale social systems are all intertwined. Toward this end, we are pleased to announce the first workshop of our 2007-08 series: The Role of Analogy in Thought and Learning September 28, 2007, 8:00am - 12:00pm Room 401, John Pappajohn Business Building 10 East Jefferson St., Iowa City, IA Program: What's special about humans? Dedre Gentner Professor, Psychology and School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University Analogical Apes and Paleological Monkeys Revisited: Does the "Profound Disparity" in analogical reasoning between apes and monkeys still stand? Roger Thompson Dr. E. Paul and Frances H. Reiff Professor of Psychology, Franklin and Marshall College Roots of analogy: Relational matching-to-sample behavior in pigeons, baboons and children Ed Wasserman Stuit Professor of Experimental Psychology, University of Iowa Moderator: Amanda Owen Assistant Professor, Speech Pathology and Audiology, University of Iowa To ensure adequate meeting space, please register by e-mail: john-spencer at uiowa.edu Funding was generously provided by the Perry A. and Helen Judy Bond Fund. Additional support was provided by the Psychology Department, the Speech Pathology and Audiology Department, and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Iowa. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From macw at cmu.edu Sat Aug 11 08:46:31 2007 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2007 10:46:31 +0200 Subject: professorships Message-ID: College of Education Chairs in Education - Four Positions University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand Vacancy Number: A167-07V Closing Date: 30 September 2007 The University of Canterbury College of Education was created on 1 January 2007 by the merger of the Christchurch College of Education (founded 1877) and the University of Canterbury (founded 1873). Both institutions have distinguished histories and a record of outstanding service both provincially, nationally and internationally. Their merger has created the opportunity to further enhance their joint reputations for excellence and leadership in educational studies, initial and postgraduate teacher education, coach education, professional development and educational research and consultancy. The appointment of four Professors in Education signals the University of Canterbury's commitment to support the College of Education's development as a centre of national and international excellence. The primary roles of the Professors will be to exercise outstanding academic leadership, to develop the research capacity of the College and to mentor staff as they grow their research agendas. Essential qualifications for appointment as a Professor in Education include a doctorate in a relevant field of study; a significant record of scholarly research and writing including publications in highly ranked internationally refereed journals; successful tertiary teaching and leadership experience including supervision of higher degree students and the ability to attract external research funding. The University of Canterbury welcomes applications from suitably qualifi ed people with an interest in the broad fields of educational research, teacher education, and special education, particularly those with strengths and expertise in one or more of the following areas: . Language and literacy development . Science education . Early childhood development . Child health and health education . Early intervention . Educational leadership . Childhood language disorders . Teaching and learning. For further information and to apply online visit http:// vacancies.canterbury.ac.nz or phone +64 3 343 7727 or email barbara.anderson at canterbury.ac.nz to request an application form. "Christchurch is a wonderful city to live and work in where you can enjoy a healthy, active lifestyle amidst a natural environment world-renowned for its beauty." See link for city details http://www.canterbury.ac.nz/liaison/christchurch.shtml From speakit02 at aol.com Tue Aug 14 02:47:18 2007 From: speakit02 at aol.com (speakit02 at aol.com) Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 22:47:18 -0400 Subject: Remove from list, please. In-Reply-To: <8C9AB5F4B5AA67C-4AC-119D@webmail-md06.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: Wouldn't it be nice to get caught committing random acts of kindness. -----Original Message----- From: mero1 at aol.com To: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org Sent: Sun, 12 Aug 2007 9:20 pm Subject: remove remove AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at AOL.com. ________________________________________________________________________ AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at AOL.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sigaluk at gmail.com Tue Aug 14 09:02:21 2007 From: sigaluk at gmail.com (Sigal Uziel-Karl) Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 12:02:21 +0300 Subject: references to work on the acquisition of adverbs Message-ID: Dear list members, I am looking for references to work on the acquisition of adverbs (manner, time, location, etc.) and adverbial clauses by children acquiring their L1. I am particularly interested in work that relates to early acquisition - types of adverbs, order of adverb acquisition, constructions in which adverbs are used early on etc. Any input on this topic would be appreciated! Best, Sigal Uziel-Karl. sigal at alum.mit.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From susan.foster-cohen at canterbury.ac.nz Tue Aug 14 20:51:57 2007 From: susan.foster-cohen at canterbury.ac.nz (Susan Foster-Cohen) Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 08:51:57 +1200 Subject: Youtube Message-ID: Hi, all. Just wanted to say that I've been delighted at the hugely useful little clips I've found on Youtube for my undergraduate language acquisition course. If others have not thought of looking there, they may be surprised at what is on offer. And they can be easily downloaded by using one of the 'download from Youtube' programmes freely available on the web. If people want me to suggest some clips, I'll be happy to share the links for the ones I'm using at the moment. However, if you just search 'child language' or 'language acquisition' you'll find them. Cheers, Susan Foster-Cohen From cbowen at ihug.com.au Tue Aug 14 23:17:41 2007 From: cbowen at ihug.com.au (Caroline Bowen) Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 09:17:41 +1000 Subject: Youtube In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Thank you Susan! I followed your suggestion and found illumination here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFD01r6ersw&mode=related&search= Best wishes, Caroline ========================= Caroline Bowen PhD CPSP Speech Language Pathologist 9 Hillcrest Road Wentworth Falls NSW 2782 Australia e: cbowen at ihug.com.au i: http://speech-language-therapy.com/ t: 61 2 4757 1136 ========================= -----Original Message----- From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org [mailto:info-childes at mail.talkbank.org] On Behalf Of Susan Foster-Cohen Sent: Wednesday, 15 August 2007 6:52 AM To: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org Subject: RE: Youtube If people want me to suggest some clips, I'll be happy to share the links for the ones I'm using at the moment. However, if you just search 'child language' or 'language acquisition' you'll find them. Susan Foster-Cohen From fbinder at eva.mpg.de Wed Aug 15 07:53:51 2007 From: fbinder at eva.mpg.de (Frank Binder) Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 09:53:51 +0200 Subject: Youtube In-Reply-To: Message-ID: "prohibited - but not under all circumstances" =o) Dear Susan, Dear all, my sincere apologies if I may interrupt some joyful sessions, but I feel it is important to let you know that youtube's Terms of Use (http://youtube.com/t/terms) specifically prohibit any downloading (and probably editing) of videos (or other user submissions). Presumably (and besides other reasons) this is to protect their users, esp. those who submit videos there, from being used (or viewed) "improperly". I think, as scientists working with data provided by other people, we can respect that. Now, their videos might still be used, afaik. They seem to offer an "Embeddable player" which should allow to play videos from youtube. However, I could not find information on whether this works within anything else than "other websites". Did anyone ask them? Best, and least troublesome (?), may be to let youtube know, exactly which videos you would like to use in which contexts and for which purpose, and ask for written consent to do so. Does anyone have experience in that direction? This has been an issue at our institute as well. Thanks to our IT-admin, who informed us about youtube's terms of use some months ago =o) Best, Frank Susan Foster-Cohen wrote: > > Hi, all. > > Just wanted to say that I've been delighted at the hugely useful little > clips I've found on Youtube for my undergraduate language acquisition > course. If others have not thought of looking there, they may be > surprised at what is on offer. And they can be easily downloaded by > using one of the 'download from Youtube' programmes freely available on > the web. > > If people want me to suggest some clips, I'll be happy to share the > links for the ones I'm using at the moment. However, if you just search > 'child language' or 'language acquisition' you'll find them. > > Cheers, > > Susan Foster-Cohen > > > > > From susan.foster-cohen at canterbury.ac.nz Wed Aug 15 12:23:23 2007 From: susan.foster-cohen at canterbury.ac.nz (Susan Foster-Cohen) Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2007 00:23:23 +1200 Subject: Youtube Message-ID: Dear All: O.K., well I don't want to get myself or anyone else in trouble, so here are descriptions of some things I have been happy to find: 1) There is a set of four videos of Neil Smith working with Christopher. Seriously cool stuff. 2) There is a Simpsons cartoon in which Millhouse talks about his learning of Italian. It raises the issue of the affective dimension of second language acquisition. 3) There is a lovely clip of a boy called Ernie (Ernie Goo Goo) in which a child obligingly demonstrates several phonological processes. 4) There is an excellent chunk out of a Nova programme with the inimitable Robert Krolwich explaining mirror neurons. Possibly too long to show in class, but I gave my students the link, and asked them to watch it for homework. Allows one to bring in new stuff about innate human sociability and motor theories of speech perception. 5) There is a charming wee trilingual who speaks Greek then Italian then German. You could hear my monolingual NZ students gasp as he switches. 6) There is a wee girl whose mother is trying to elicit metalinguistic capacities from an infant who is clearly learning to speak both Mandarin and English, but who is not yet ready to translate. "What's your name in Mandarin?" 7) And there is a wonderful parody of the pompous linguist played by Stpehen Fry and Hugh Laurie in which he gets it remarkably right, including a wonderful 'betcha never heard this sentence before' sentence. There are other bits and bobs I've found, too, but it seems you'll just have to go fishing for yourselves. With the ones above, I think I've given you enough key words to help you find them all. Cheers, Susan -----Original Message----- From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org on behalf of Frank Binder Sent: Wed 8/15/2007 7:53 PM To: Susan Foster-Cohen Cc: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org; Petra Jahn Subject: Re: Youtube "prohibited - but not under all circumstances" =o) Dear Susan, Dear all, my sincere apologies if I may interrupt some joyful sessions, but I feel it is important to let you know that youtube's Terms of Use (http://youtube.com/t/terms) specifically prohibit any downloading (and probably editing) of videos (or other user submissions). Presumably (and besides other reasons) this is to protect their users, esp. those who submit videos there, from being used (or viewed) "improperly". I think, as scientists working with data provided by other people, we can respect that. Now, their videos might still be used, afaik. They seem to offer an "Embeddable player" which should allow to play videos from youtube. However, I could not find information on whether this works within anything else than "other websites". Did anyone ask them? Best, and least troublesome (?), may be to let youtube know, exactly which videos you would like to use in which contexts and for which purpose, and ask for written consent to do so. Does anyone have experience in that direction? This has been an issue at our institute as well. Thanks to our IT-admin, who informed us about youtube's terms of use some months ago =o) Best, Frank Susan Foster-Cohen wrote: > > Hi, all. > > Just wanted to say that I've been delighted at the hugely useful little > clips I've found on Youtube for my undergraduate language acquisition > course. If others have not thought of looking there, they may be > surprised at what is on offer. And they can be easily downloaded by > using one of the 'download from Youtube' programmes freely available on > the web. > > If people want me to suggest some clips, I'll be happy to share the > links for the ones I'm using at the moment. However, if you just search > 'child language' or 'language acquisition' you'll find them. > > Cheers, > > Susan Foster-Cohen > > > > > From hbortfeld at psych.tamu.edu Wed Aug 15 13:52:35 2007 From: hbortfeld at psych.tamu.edu (Bortfeld, Heather) Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 08:52:35 -0500 Subject: Youtube Message-ID: These sound great! Any chance you might list the YouTube names of these clips, to make for easier localization? Presumably this won't violate any copyright or user rules. Thanks, Heather Bortfeld -----Original Message----- From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org on behalf of Susan Foster-Cohen Sent: Wed 8/15/2007 7:23 AM To: Frank Binder Cc: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org; Petra Jahn Subject: RE: Youtube Dear All: O.K., well I don't want to get myself or anyone else in trouble, so here are descriptions of some things I have been happy to find: 1) There is a set of four videos of Neil Smith working with Christopher. Seriously cool stuff. 2) There is a Simpsons cartoon in which Millhouse talks about his learning of Italian. It raises the issue of the affective dimension of second language acquisition. 3) There is a lovely clip of a boy called Ernie (Ernie Goo Goo) in which a child obligingly demonstrates several phonological processes. 4) There is an excellent chunk out of a Nova programme with the inimitable Robert Krolwich explaining mirror neurons. Possibly too long to show in class, but I gave my students the link, and asked them to watch it for homework. Allows one to bring in new stuff about innate human sociability and motor theories of speech perception. 5) There is a charming wee trilingual who speaks Greek then Italian then German. You could hear my monolingual NZ students gasp as he switches. 6) There is a wee girl whose mother is trying to elicit metalinguistic capacities from an infant who is clearly learning to speak both Mandarin and English, but who is not yet ready to translate. "What's your name in Mandarin?" 7) And there is a wonderful parody of the pompous linguist played by Stpehen Fry and Hugh Laurie in which he gets it remarkably right, including a wonderful 'betcha never heard this sentence before' sentence. There are other bits and bobs I've found, too, but it seems you'll just have to go fishing for yourselves. With the ones above, I think I've given you enough key words to help you find them all. Cheers, Susan -----Original Message----- From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org on behalf of Frank Binder Sent: Wed 8/15/2007 7:53 PM To: Susan Foster-Cohen Cc: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org; Petra Jahn Subject: Re: Youtube "prohibited - but not under all circumstances" =o) Dear Susan, Dear all, my sincere apologies if I may interrupt some joyful sessions, but I feel it is important to let you know that youtube's Terms of Use (http://youtube.com/t/terms) specifically prohibit any downloading (and probably editing) of videos (or other user submissions). Presumably (and besides other reasons) this is to protect their users, esp. those who submit videos there, from being used (or viewed) "improperly". I think, as scientists working with data provided by other people, we can respect that. Now, their videos might still be used, afaik. They seem to offer an "Embeddable player" which should allow to play videos from youtube. However, I could not find information on whether this works within anything else than "other websites". Did anyone ask them? Best, and least troublesome (?), may be to let youtube know, exactly which videos you would like to use in which contexts and for which purpose, and ask for written consent to do so. Does anyone have experience in that direction? This has been an issue at our institute as well. Thanks to our IT-admin, who informed us about youtube's terms of use some months ago =o) Best, Frank Susan Foster-Cohen wrote: > > Hi, all. > > Just wanted to say that I've been delighted at the hugely useful little > clips I've found on Youtube for my undergraduate language acquisition > course. If others have not thought of looking there, they may be > surprised at what is on offer. And they can be easily downloaded by > using one of the 'download from Youtube' programmes freely available on > the web. > > If people want me to suggest some clips, I'll be happy to share the > links for the ones I'm using at the moment. However, if you just search > 'child language' or 'language acquisition' you'll find them. > > Cheers, > > Susan Foster-Cohen > > > > > From macw at cmu.edu Wed Aug 15 18:42:28 2007 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 20:42:28 +0200 Subject: New French and English Comparable Corpora Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, I am happy to announce the addition to CHILDES of two new corpora designed to provide a direct comparison between French and English, while also providing excellent material for the study of the learning of each language separately. The two corpora each include six children (3 male, 3 female) studied intensively between the ages of one and three. The English data are from Katherine Demuth's group at Brown University in Providence RI and the French data are from Harriet Jisa's group at the University of Lyon 2. The files are all linked to video and the video for 10 of the children is available from the web. For easier web playback, we will eventually extract MP3 and Wave files from the video. A few of the segments of the French data are not yet in place, but will be configured shortly. All of the data are also transcribed throughout in IPA on the %pho line, making this now the largest database available for the study of child phonology. The English corpus can be found under /Eng-USA/Providence and the French corpus can be found under /Romance/French/Lyon. Fuller documentation can be found in the database manuals. Many thanks to Katherine, Harriet, and their coworkers for this enormously impressive contribution. I believe this corpus will have a major impact on a wide variety of issues in the study of language development. --Brian MacWhinney From fwouk at comcast.net Wed Aug 22 04:18:30 2007 From: fwouk at comcast.net (Fay Wouk) Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2007 16:18:30 +1200 Subject: Need data set for student analysis Message-ID: Hi. I'd appreciate some advice as to what out of the vast amount of data in Childes would be good data sets to use for the term paper I want to assign my students. What I want is a longitudinal study of a single child, covering a period of several months, going from the two-word stage well into multiword (say an MLU of about 3), that comes with sound files and ideally also with video. It could be any variety of English (the students are mostly New Zealanders or second language speakers of English). Can anyone recommend a good set of files to use? thanks, Fay From mariehojholt at stofanet.dk Wed Aug 29 10:05:15 2007 From: mariehojholt at stofanet.dk (mariehojholt) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:05:15 +0200 Subject: an onomatopoeic toddler Message-ID: Dear all! Being new at this network I wish to thank you all for a fantastic opportunity to correspond with equals, or, kind of. I am graduate student of linguistics in Aarhus, Denmark. Here is my question: I am looking for relevant studies of children who do not seem to acquire actual words as much as onomatopoeic sounds. My two-year-old son Harald, is developing "according to plan" but doesn't care for the "linguistic symbols that the surrounding environment has as consensus": words. Here is a short list of his sounds and utterances: "Mor (mummy) aa-aj (~not) bzzz (sound of fly) krqr (sound of breaking which means "egg") - pip-pip (sound of bird) krqr (sound of breaking"  - so: Mummy, flies don't have eggs, BIRDS have eggs!" "words": water: "aah!" (sound you make after drinking) food: "mtl-mtl" (chewing-sound) sleeping/bed: "hhhrr-pfffff" (sleeping sound) toothbrush: "hrhr-hrhr" Cracker/"broken"/egg: "krqr"  Pooridge: "ph-ph-ph" (sound of boiling) Apart from this he uses all the usual onomatopoeic sounds typical for children: animal sounds, vehicle sounds... He does have some actual words: Mom, dad, diper, blue, Gorm (brother), home, now, more, shoe, in, ...but not too many verbs. I hope some of you have comments on this, or links, references or anything. I am not worried about him, since he is a happy, clever boy who communicates adequately and relevantly, and - to me - intelligably. Though, I am hyperinterested in understanding his procedures and apparently somewhat onomatopoeic-ICONIC language behaviour. He is not interested in us telling him what the real words are, and if we try to push him, he ignores us or get angry. All my best, Marie Hoejholt -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From macw at cmu.edu Wed Aug 29 13:47:56 2007 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:47:56 -0400 Subject: an onomatopoeic toddler In-Reply-To: <19c2d8f6cef7504fc2a54ec317182ce4@webmail.stofa.dk> Message-ID: Dear Marie, All children do this to some degree. What is remarkable is that some chidlren only do a little bit of this and others much more. It would be very helpful if you could tabulate his complete vocabulary and compute the percentage of words that are conventional from the total. It would also be helpful if you could track this over the next 10 months. If you had just this basic information on a case of this type, you would perhaps have more than I can think of in the current literature. Possibly other info-childes readers will know of something I have missed. There is, of course, the famous case of the lady in Iceland who invented her own language and forced everyone to learn that. If you couldn't speak her language, you couldn't really interact with her at all. I wonder what experiences your son has when trying to communicate with people outside your family who have not yet learned his language. --Brian MacWhinney On 8/29/07 6:05 AM, "mariehojholt" wrote: > > Dear all! > Being new at this network I wish to thank you all for a fantastic opportunity > to correspond with equals, or, kind of. I am graduate student of linguistics > in Aarhus, Denmark. > Here is my question: > I am looking for relevant studies of children who do not seem to acquire > actual words as much as onomatopoeic sounds. > My two-year-old son Harald, is developing "according to plan" but doesn't care > for the "linguistic symbols that the surrounding environment has as > consensus": words. > > Here is a short list of his sounds and utterances: > "Mor (mummy) aa-aj (~not) bzzz (sound of fly) krqr (sound of > breaking which means "egg") - pip-pip (sound of bird) krqr > (sound of breaking"  > - so: Mummy, flies don't have eggs, BIRDS have eggs!" > > "words": > water: "aah!" (sound you make after drinking) > food: "mtl-mtl" (chewing-sound) > sleeping/bed: "hhhrr-pfffff" (sleeping sound) > toothbrush: "hrhr-hrhr" > Cracker/"broken"/egg: "krqr"  > Pooridge: "ph-ph-ph" (sound of boiling) > > > Apart from this he uses all the usual onomatopoeic sounds typical for > children: animal sounds, vehicle sounds... > He does have some actual words: Mom, dad, diper, blue, Gorm (brother), home, > now, more, shoe, in, ...but not too many verbs. > I hope some of you have comments on this, or links, references or anything. > I am not worried about him, since he is a happy, clever boy who communicates > adequately and relevantly, and - to me - intelligably. > Though, I am hyperinterested in understanding his procedures and apparently > somewhat onomatopoeic-ICONIC language behaviour. > He is not interested in us telling him what the real words are, and if we try > to push him, he ignores us or get angry. > All my best, > Marie Hoejholt > From cslater at alma.edu Wed Aug 29 14:57:51 2007 From: cslater at alma.edu (Carol Slater) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 10:57:51 -0400 Subject: an onomatopoeic toddler Message-ID: Hi, Marie-- I don't know of any relevant studies, but if you are not already familiar with Heinz Werner's Comparative Psychology of Mental Development, you might be interested in his proposal that early symbol formation quite generally makes use of parts/aspects of the things/events symbolized and only gradually become differentiated from them. With regard to children inventing their own language, let me add to Brian McWhinney's mention of the lady from Iceland Ludwig Bemelmans's (undoubtedly apocryphal) anecdote that as a child in Austrian Tyrol his parents arranged for each of several adults to speak a different language to him, with the consequence that he did not talk until he was three, assuming that everyone had their own language and waiting patiently for his own to come along. Do take good notes and make videotapes! Cheers, Carol Slater Psychology Alma College Alma MI 48801 cslater at alma.edu From slobin at berkeley.edu Wed Aug 29 15:14:28 2007 From: slobin at berkeley.edu (Dan I. Slobin) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 08:14:28 -0700 Subject: an onomatopoeic toddler In-Reply-To: Message-ID: footnote on the Icelandic case: This was not an instance of onomatopoeia, but of twin language. A boy and girl twin in the late 18th century, as reported by a 19th century Danish linguist, created a private language, as is sometimes documented for twins. Because they weren't readily acquiring standard Icelandic, the parents separated the twins, sending the boy to a distant farm, where he died. After that, the girl continued to speak their shared language, and the community learned it in order to communicate with her and to insure that she learned enough religion for the salvation of her soul. There is almost no documentation of the language, so we can't know how close it was to Icelandic. The few other documented twin languages that I know of turn out to be quite clearly based on the surrounding language, with some phonological alterations and some innovations. Has anyone documented the extent to which such innovations are creative sound icons like those reported by Marie? another footnote: Marie's examples seem to be attempts at iconic representation in the acoustic modality, like visual icons in the motor modality shown in early gesture in both hearing and deaf children. Dan Slobin At 06:47 AM 8/29/2007, Brian MacWhinney wrote: >Dear Marie, > All children do this to some degree. What is remarkable is that some >chidlren only do a little bit of this and others much more. It would be >very helpful if you could tabulate his complete vocabulary and compute the >percentage of words that are conventional from the total. It would also be >helpful if you could track this over the next 10 months. If you had just >this basic information on a case of this type, you would perhaps have more >than I can think of in the current literature. Possibly other info-childes >readers will know of something I have missed. > There is, of course, the famous case of the lady in Iceland who invented >her own language and forced everyone to learn that. If you couldn't speak >her language, you couldn't really interact with her at all. I wonder what >experiences your son has when trying to communicate with people outside your >family who have not yet learned his language. > >--Brian MacWhinney > > >On 8/29/07 6:05 AM, "mariehojholt" wrote: > > > > > Dear all! > > Being new at this network I wish to thank you all for a fantastic > opportunity > > to correspond with equals, or, kind of. I am graduate student of > linguistics > > in Aarhus, Denmark. > > Here is my question: > > I am looking for relevant studies of children who do not seem to acquire > > actual words as much as onomatopoeic sounds. > > My two-year-old son Harald, is developing "according to plan" but > doesn't care > > for the "linguistic symbols that the surrounding environment has as > > consensus": words. > > > > Here is a short list of his sounds and utterances: > > "Mor (mummy) aa-aj (~not) bzzz (sound of fly) krqr (sound of > > breaking which means "egg") - pip-pip (sound of bird) krqr > > (sound of breaking"  > > - so: Mummy, flies don't have eggs, BIRDS have eggs!" > > > > "words": > > water: "aah!" (sound you make after drinking) > > food: "mtl-mtl" (chewing-sound) > > sleeping/bed: "hhhrr-pfffff" (sleeping sound) > > toothbrush: "hrhr-hrhr" > > Cracker/"broken"/egg: "krqr"  > > Pooridge: "ph-ph-ph" (sound of boiling) > > > > > > Apart from this he uses all the usual onomatopoeic sounds typical for > > children: animal sounds, vehicle sounds... > > He does have some actual words: Mom, dad, diper, blue, Gorm > (brother), home, > > now, more, shoe, in, ...but not too many verbs. > > I hope some of you have comments on this, or links, references or anything. > > I am not worried about him, since he is a happy, clever boy who > communicates > > adequately and relevantly, and - to me - intelligably. > > Though, I am hyperinterested in understanding his procedures and apparently > > somewhat onomatopoeic-ICONIC language behaviour. > > He is not interested in us telling him what the real words are, > and if we try > > to push him, he ignores us or get angry. > > All my best, > > Marie Hoejholt > > >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Dan I. Slobin, Professor of the Graduate School Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics Department of Psychology email: slobin at berkeley.edu 3210 Tolman #1650 phone (Dept): 1-510-642-5292 University of California phone (home): 1-510-848-1769 Berkeley, CA 94720-1650 fax: 1-510-642-5293 USA http://ihd.berkeley.edu/slobin.htm >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From slobin at berkeley.edu Wed Aug 29 15:41:01 2007 From: slobin at berkeley.edu (Dan I. Slobin) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 08:41:01 -0700 Subject: an onomatopoeic toddler In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070829080752.03d7be98@berkeley.edu> Message-ID: I've found references to the Icelandic twin study in the CHILDES bibliography. Maybe Marie or another Scandinavian user of CHILDES can track these down and give us a fuller report. (My summary is based on my recall of a German report; I'll try to find it.) Here are the Danish references: @article{ Author = {Eschricht, D. F.}, Title = {Om den islandske sproglaverske saeunn}, Journal = {Danske Maanedsskrift}, Volume = {8}, Pages = {379-402}, Note = {DANISH}, Keywords = {ICELANDIC ; METHODOLOGY-LONGITUDINAL STUDY ; IDIOGLOSSIA ; MULTIPLE BIRTHS}, Year = {1858} } @article{ Author = {Jonasson, S.}, Title = {Om en sproglaverske}, Journal = {Danske Maanedsskrift}, Volume = {8}, Pages = {158-164}, Note = {DANISH}, Keywords = {ICELANDIC ; METHODOLOGY-LONGITUDINAL STUDY ; IDIOGLOSSIA ; MULTIPLE BIRTHS}, Year = {1858} } And here's an Icelandic report: @article{ Author = {Mal, Saeunnar}, Title = {Islenzkar sogur, Sogusafn isafoldar iv}, Note = {ICELANDIC}, Keywords = {ICELANDIC ; METHODOLOGY-LONGITUDINAL STUDY ; IDIOGLOSSIA ; MULTIPLE BIRTHS}, Year = {1891} } -Dan At 08:14 AM 8/29/2007, Dan I. Slobin wrote: >footnote on the Icelandic case: >This was not an instance of onomatopoeia, but of twin language. A >boy and girl twin in the late 18th century, as reported by a 19th >century Danish linguist, created a private language, as is sometimes >documented for twins. Because they weren't readily acquiring >standard Icelandic, the parents separated the twins, sending the boy >to a distant farm, where he died. After that, the girl continued to >speak their shared language, and the community learned it in order >to communicate with her and to insure that she learned enough >religion for the salvation of her soul. There is almost no >documentation of the language, so we can't know how close it was to >Icelandic. The few other documented twin languages that I know of >turn out to be quite clearly based on the surrounding language, with >some phonological alterations and some innovations. Has anyone >documented the extent to which such innovations are creative sound >icons like those reported by Marie? > >another footnote: >Marie's examples seem to be attempts at iconic representation in the >acoustic modality, like visual icons in the motor modality shown in >early gesture in both hearing and deaf children. > >Dan Slobin > > >At 06:47 AM 8/29/2007, Brian MacWhinney wrote: >>Dear Marie, >> All children do this to some degree. What is remarkable is that some >>chidlren only do a little bit of this and others much more. It would be >>very helpful if you could tabulate his complete vocabulary and compute the >>percentage of words that are conventional from the total. It would also be >>helpful if you could track this over the next 10 months. If you had just >>this basic information on a case of this type, you would perhaps have more >>than I can think of in the current literature. Possibly other info-childes >>readers will know of something I have missed. >> There is, of course, the famous case of the lady in Iceland who invented >>her own language and forced everyone to learn that. If you couldn't speak >>her language, you couldn't really interact with her at all. I wonder what >>experiences your son has when trying to communicate with people outside your >>family who have not yet learned his language. >> >>--Brian MacWhinney >> >> >>On 8/29/07 6:05 AM, "mariehojholt" wrote: >> >> > >> > Dear all! >> > Being new at this network I wish to thank you all for a >> fantastic opportunity >> > to correspond with equals, or, kind of. I am graduate student of >> linguistics >> > in Aarhus, Denmark. >> > Here is my question: >> > I am looking for relevant studies of children who do not seem to acquire >> > actual words as much as onomatopoeic sounds. >> > My two-year-old son Harald, is developing "according to plan" >> but doesn't care >> > for the "linguistic symbols that the surrounding environment has as >> > consensus": words. >> > >> > Here is a short list of his sounds and utterances: >> > "Mor (mummy) aa-aj (~not) bzzz (sound of fly) krqr (sound of >> > breaking which means "egg") - pip-pip (sound of bird) krqr >> > (sound of breaking"  >> > - so: Mummy, flies don't have eggs, BIRDS have eggs!" >> > >> > "words": >> > water: "aah!" (sound you make after drinking) >> > food: "mtl-mtl" (chewing-sound) >> > sleeping/bed: "hhhrr-pfffff" (sleeping sound) >> > toothbrush: "hrhr-hrhr" >> > Cracker/"broken"/egg: "krqr"  >> > Pooridge: "ph-ph-ph" (sound of boiling) >> > >> > >> > Apart from this he uses all the usual onomatopoeic sounds typical for >> > children: animal sounds, vehicle sounds... >> > He does have some actual words: Mom, dad, diper, blue, Gorm >> (brother), home, >> > now, more, shoe, in, ...but not too many verbs. >> > I hope some of you have comments on this, or links, references >> or anything. >> > I am not worried about him, since he is a happy, clever boy who >> communicates >> > adequately and relevantly, and - to me - intelligably. >> > Though, I am hyperinterested in understanding his procedures and >> apparently >> > somewhat onomatopoeic-ICONIC language behaviour. >> > He is not interested in us telling him what the real words are, >> and if we try >> > to push him, he ignores us or get angry. >> > All my best, >> > Marie Hoejholt >> > > > >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >Dan I. Slobin, Professor of the Graduate School >Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics > >Department of Psychology email: slobin at berkeley.edu >3210 Tolman #1650 phone (Dept): 1-510-642-5292 >University of California phone (home): 1-510-848-1769 >Berkeley, CA 94720-1650 fax: 1-510-642-5293 >USA http://ihd.berkeley.edu/slobin.htm > >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Dan I. Slobin, Professor of the Graduate School Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics Department of Psychology email: slobin at berkeley.edu 3210 Tolman #1650 phone (Dept): 1-510-642-5292 University of California phone (home): 1-510-848-1769 Berkeley, CA 94720-1650 fax: 1-510-642-5293 USA http://ihd.berkeley.edu/slobin.htm >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From velleman at comdis.umass.edu Wed Aug 29 16:01:27 2007 From: velleman at comdis.umass.edu (Shelley Velleman) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:01:27 -0400 Subject: an onomatopoeic toddler In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070829080752.03d7be98@berkeley.edu> Message-ID: In some cases, "twin languages" turn out to be phonologically impaired children who share certain patterns. In the Icelandic case, given that the girl did not ever learn the standard language, I would suspect that there was some kind of disorder there. Shelley Velleman "If someone tells you your ideas are half-assed, turn the other cheek" -- Alice Callum Shelley Velleman Communication Disorders Univ. of Mass. - Amherst velleman at comdis.umass.edu On Aug 29, 2007, at 11:14 AM, Dan I. Slobin wrote: > footnote on the Icelandic case: > This was not an instance of onomatopoeia, but of twin language. A > boy and girl twin in the late 18th century, as reported by a 19th > century Danish linguist, created a private language, as is > sometimes documented for twins. Because they weren't readily > acquiring standard Icelandic, the parents separated the twins, > sending the boy to a distant farm, where he died. After that, the > girl continued to speak their shared language, and the community > learned it in order to communicate with her and to insure that she > learned enough religion for the salvation of her soul. There is > almost no documentation of the language, so we can't know how close > it was to Icelandic. The few other documented twin languages that > I know of turn out to be quite clearly based on the surrounding > language, with some phonological alterations and some innovations. > Has anyone documented the extent to which such innovations are > creative sound icons like those reported by Marie? > > another footnote: > Marie's examples seem to be attempts at iconic representation in > the acoustic modality, like visual icons in the motor modality > shown in early gesture in both hearing and deaf children. > > Dan Slobin > > > At 06:47 AM 8/29/2007, Brian MacWhinney wrote: >> Dear Marie, >> All children do this to some degree. What is remarkable is >> that some >> chidlren only do a little bit of this and others much more. It >> would be >> very helpful if you could tabulate his complete vocabulary and >> compute the >> percentage of words that are conventional from the total. It >> would also be >> helpful if you could track this over the next 10 months. If you >> had just >> this basic information on a case of this type, you would perhaps >> have more >> than I can think of in the current literature. Possibly other >> info-childes >> readers will know of something I have missed. >> There is, of course, the famous case of the lady in Iceland >> who invented >> her own language and forced everyone to learn that. If you >> couldn't speak >> her language, you couldn't really interact with her at all. I >> wonder what >> experiences your son has when trying to communicate with people >> outside your >> family who have not yet learned his language. >> >> --Brian MacWhinney >> >> >> On 8/29/07 6:05 AM, "mariehojholt" wrote: >> >> > >> > Dear all! >> > Being new at this network I wish to thank you all for a >> fantastic opportunity >> > to correspond with equals, or, kind of. I am graduate student of >> linguistics >> > in Aarhus, Denmark. >> > Here is my question: >> > I am looking for relevant studies of children who do not seem to >> acquire >> > actual words as much as onomatopoeic sounds. >> > My two-year-old son Harald, is developing "according to plan" >> but doesn't care >> > for the "linguistic symbols that the surrounding environment has as >> > consensus": words. >> > >> > Here is a short list of his sounds and utterances: >> > "Mor (mummy) aa-aj (~not) bzzz (sound of fly) krqr >> (sound of >> > breaking which means "egg") - pip-pip (sound of bird) >>  krqr >> > (sound of breaking"  >> > - so: Mummy, flies don't have eggs, BIRDS have eggs!" >> > >> > "words": >> > water: "aah!" (sound you make after drinking) >> > food: "mtl-mtl" (chewing-sound) >> > sleeping/bed: "hhhrr-pfffff" (sleeping sound) >> > toothbrush: "hrhr-hrhr" >> > Cracker/"broken"/egg: "krqr"  >> > Pooridge: "ph-ph-ph" (sound of boiling) >> > >> > >> > Apart from this he uses all the usual onomatopoeic sounds >> typical for >> > children: animal sounds, vehicle sounds... >> > He does have some actual words: Mom, dad, diper, blue, Gorm >> (brother), home, >> > now, more, shoe, in, ...but not too many verbs. >> > I hope some of you have comments on this, or links, references >> or anything. >> > I am not worried about him, since he is a happy, clever boy who >> communicates >> > adequately and relevantly, and - to me - intelligably. >> > Though, I am hyperinterested in understanding his procedures and >> apparently >> > somewhat onomatopoeic-ICONIC language behaviour. >> > He is not interested in us telling him what the real words are, >> and if we try >> > to push him, he ignores us or get angry. >> > All my best, >> > Marie Hoejholt >> > > >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> > Dan I. Slobin, Professor of the Graduate School > Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics > > Department of Psychology email: slobin at berkeley.edu > 3210 Tolman #1650 phone (Dept): 1-510-642-5292 > University of California phone (home): 1-510-848-1769 > Berkeley, CA 94720-1650 fax: 1-510-642-5293 > USA http://ihd.berkeley.edu/ > slobin.htm > >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kenny at UDel.Edu Wed Aug 29 16:33:57 2007 From: kenny at UDel.Edu (Kenneth Hyde) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:33:57 -0400 Subject: an onomatopoeic toddler In-Reply-To: <19c2d8f6cef7504fc2a54ec317182ce4@webmail.stofa.dk> Message-ID: Marie, Your son is definitely not an isolated case. My oldest nephew went through a similar "stage." My sister reported (and video-documented) that he had an extensive vocabulary of onomatopoeic words that he created on his own (they weren't based on anything that other people were doing in his environment). Among others, he had a "plp-plp" sort of semi-click (it sounded exactly like bubbles in water) that was his word for "fish." What I found particularly striking is that many of the phenomena we are used to seeing with normal words also showed up with these O-words: over-generalization, under-extensions, etc. For example, "plp-plp" was used, not only to represent fish, but also to refer to Pepperidge Farms Goldfish crackers (a type of cheese cracker snack in the US, shaped like a fish). He also had a word "vrrm" (which was not the standard English 'vroom") which was used to refer only to his father's pickup truck and no other vehicles. And then was used to announce when his father arrived home, an interesting bit of semantic broadening. Unfortunately, Robbie had shed almost all of his O-words before I was able to visit him, but I did get to hear "plp-plp' in use. As I said, my sister video-documented all of the words she could (as a non- linguist and non-research professional, her method was a bit obtrusive, consisting mostly of "Robbie, what's that?" and "Robbie, say "fish" etc.) She recently converted some of the videos to DVD format and sent them to me, but I haven't had a chance to look through them. I'm hoping they will be some-what usable. Oh, and a related but different phenomena. A Chinese-American friend of mine contacted me about her daughter, when her daughter was just starting to acquire "words." Her concern was that her daughter was making a popping noise and using it as a word. In this case, I actually got to do some observations and the popping noise was a bi- labial egressive click. While it clearly wasn't a "non-speech" sound, it was interesting nevertheless as a sound that was not part of the phonological environment. And yes, it clearly was a "word" for the little girl, meaning "pretty." Ken Kenneth Hyde ELI & Dept of Linguistics University of Delaware kenny at udel.edu "No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulders will seriously cramp his style.—K. Z. Steven Brust -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From KNelson at gc.cuny.edu Wed Aug 29 17:22:44 2007 From: KNelson at gc.cuny.edu (Nelson, Katherine) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 13:22:44 -0400 Subject: FW: an onomatopoeic toddler Message-ID: I'm sending on this comment that I originally sent to Marie and neglected to send to Info-childes because the discussion has gotten so interesting, especially with respect to the cases of children who seem to make a distinction between their own language and that of their parents' or other speakers. A further note: both my daughters had idiosyncratic "words" as many others do, and we did our best to use their words (e.g."enky" for bottle) until they were ready to use ours. Katherine ________________________________ From: Nelson, Katherine Sent: Wed 8/29/2007 9:19 AM To: mariehojholt Subject: RE: an onomatopoeic toddler Dear Marie, As you probably know, it is usual for toddlers to have some onomatopoeic "words" although I've rarely heard of a child who combined them in sentences in the way you quote. However, individual differences and idiosyncratic approaches to learning to talk are far more prevalent than the current literature would lead you to believe, and most children settle on conventional sounds as well as meanings during the third year. It is my belief (based on tracking a daughter and granddaughter during virtually wordless second years) that some children believe that understanding the language used by parents is fine, but that that language is theirs, and there is no persuasive reason for me (the child) to learn to use it, as it doesn't express what I have to say. Or something like that. In these cases, the dam was broken at around 2 years and language flowed. It could be that your child is working on a similar "theory." My studies of word learning in natural environments, and those of other scholars, indicate very different patterns of acquisition, in terms of both numbers and kinds of words during the second year of life. For reference to this literature see my 2007 book "Young Minds in Social Worlds" Harvard University Press. And of course there are many who speculate that human languages arose using onomatopoetic sound patterns. Harald may just be following this ancient strategy, despite the availability of a more conventional symbolic system. Katherine Nelson ________________________________ From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org on behalf of mariehojholt Sent: Wed 8/29/2007 6:05 AM To: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org Subject: an onomatopoeic toddler Dear all! Being new at this network I wish to thank you all for a fantastic opportunity to correspond with equals, or, kind of. I am graduate student of linguistics in Aarhus, Denmark. Here is my question: I am looking for relevant studies of children who do not seem to acquire actual words as much as onomatopoeic sounds. My two-year-old son Harald, is developing "according to plan" but doesn't care for the "linguistic symbols that the surrounding environment has as consensus": words. Here is a short list of his sounds and utterances: "Mor (mummy) aa-aj (~not) bzzz (sound of fly) krqr (sound of breaking which means "egg") - pip-pip (sound of bird) krqr (sound of breaking" - so: Mummy, flies don't have eggs, BIRDS have eggs!" "words": water: "aah!" (sound you make after drinking) food: "mtl-mtl" (chewing-sound) sleeping/bed: "hhhrr-pfffff" (sleeping sound) toothbrush: "hrhr-hrhr" Cracker/"broken"/egg: "krqr" Pooridge: "ph-ph-ph" (sound of boiling) Apart from this he uses all the usual onomatopoeic sounds typical for children: animal sounds, vehicle sounds... He does have some actual words: Mom, dad, diper, blue, Gorm (brother), home, now, more, shoe, in, ...but not too many verbs. I hope some of you have comments on this, or links, references or anything. I am not worried about him, since he is a happy, clever boy who communicates adequately and relevantly, and - to me - intelligably. Though, I am hyperinterested in understanding his procedures and apparently somewhat onomatopoeic-ICONIC language behaviour. He is not interested in us telling him what the real words are, and if we try to push him, he ignores us or get angry. All my best, Marie Hoejholt -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mfleck at cs.uiuc.edu Wed Aug 29 19:15:23 2007 From: mfleck at cs.uiuc.edu (Margaret M. Fleck) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 14:15:23 -0500 Subject: FW: an onomatopoeic toddler In-Reply-To: <63B7BFD15E49DF42BF14DAC6E55ABC511EFE43@MAILBE.acad.gc.cuny.edu> Message-ID: Nelson, Katherine wrote: > .... However, individual differences and idiosyncratic approaches > to learning to talk are far more prevalent than the current literature > would lead you to believe, and most children settle on conventional > sounds as well as meanings during the third year. On the one hand, I'm not sure anyone really believes stories about the extent of the differences until they actually have personal experience of a kid talking in full sentences at two years and a comparable kid who is nearly mute at the same age. To put this in perspective, however, there's about a 6-month spread in when fairly normal kids learn to walk. Probably a wider spread in when they learn how to come down a ladder. And a multi-year spread in potty training and learning standard preschool manual coordination tasks, e.g. holding a pencil effectively, cutting food with a knife and fork. For the non-language tasks, there seem to be differences in inherent ability and also differences in what the kid feels inclined to put effort into. Perhaps we shouldn't be all that surprised by similar variation in language learning. As a parent, I think there's a disconnect between printed discussions of skill timing and the information that's passed around the mommy and teacher network, with the manuals tending to understate the extent of the variation. In fact, it's a common topic of discussion among parents, because they all want to reassure themselves that their kid isn't the only one who is mute at 2, not toilet trained at 3, can't hold a pencil properly at 5, or whatever. Margaret From mccune at rci.rutgers.edu Wed Aug 29 19:50:32 2007 From: mccune at rci.rutgers.edu (Lorraine McCune) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 15:50:32 -0400 Subject: FW: an onomatopoeic toddler In-Reply-To: <46D5C5CB.5040901@cs.uiuc.edu> Message-ID: I agree. In a prospective study of 20 children beginning at 8 months of age only about 2/3 were using referential words by 16 months. Following 10 until they were using "sentences", one made this transition at 19 months, one at 31 months with the rest strung out in between. Lorraine McCune At 03:15 PM 8/29/2007, Margaret M. Fleck wrote: >Nelson, Katherine wrote: >> .... However, individual differences and idiosyncratic >> approaches to learning to talk are far more prevalent than the >> current literature would lead you to believe, and most children >> settle on conventional sounds as well as meanings during the third year. >On the one hand, I'm not sure anyone really believes stories about >the extent of the differences until they >actually have personal experience of a kid talking in full sentences >at two years and a comparable kid who is nearly mute at the same age. > >To put this in perspective, however, there's about a 6-month spread >in when fairly normal kids learn to walk. >Probably a wider spread in when they learn how to come down a ladder. >And a multi-year spread in potty training >and learning standard preschool manual coordination tasks, e.g. >holding a pencil effectively, cutting food with a >knife and fork. For the non-language tasks, there seem to be >differences in inherent ability and also differences >in what the kid feels inclined to put effort into. > >Perhaps we shouldn't be all that surprised by similar variation in >language learning. > >As a parent, I think there's a disconnect between printed >discussions of skill timing and the information that's >passed around the mommy and teacher network, with the manuals >tending to understate the extent of the variation. >In fact, it's a common topic of discussion among parents, because >they all want to reassure themselves that >their kid isn't the only one who is mute at 2, not toilet trained at >3, can't hold a pencil properly at 5, or whatever. > >Margaret > > From aananda at stanford.edu Wed Aug 29 21:56:58 2007 From: aananda at stanford.edu (Bruno Estigarribia) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 17:56:58 -0400 Subject: an onomatopoeic toddler and individual differences In-Reply-To: <46D5C5CB.5040901@cs.uiuc.edu> Message-ID: Margaret M. Fleck wrote: > Nelson, Katherine wrote: >> .... However, individual differences and idiosyncratic approaches >> to learning to talk are far more prevalent than the current >> literature would lead you to believe, and most children settle on >> conventional sounds as well as meanings during the third year. > On the one hand, I'm not sure anyone really believes stories about the > extent of the differences until they > actually have personal experience of a kid talking in full sentences > at two years and a comparable kid who is nearly mute at the same age. > To put this in perspective, however, there's about a 6-month spread in > when fairly normal kids learn to walk. Probably a wider spread in > when they learn how to come down a ladder. And a multi-year spread > in potty training > and learning standard preschool manual coordination tasks, e.g. > holding a pencil effectively, cutting food with a > knife and fork. For the non-language tasks, there seem to be > differences in inherent ability and also differences > in what the kid feels inclined to put effort into. And the difference is not only regarding timing. Paths of acquisition vary enormously as well as soon as you get away from simple measures of language skill (witness the holistic vs. analytic continuum and its many different incarnations, plus my own work on yes/no questions). > > Perhaps we shouldn't be all that surprised by similar variation in > language learning. Well, but you would be surprised, (or annoyed maybe ;-)) if you were convinced language and cognition are radically different. A lot of language acquisition researchers believe that. To me, that is a completely open question. We're back to "not every typical human uses knives and forks, but every typically developing child speaks", "oh but every human uses tools", kind of discussion. Granted, walking is rather universal... > > As a parent, I think there's a disconnect between printed discussions > of skill timing and the information that's > passed around the mommy and teacher network, with the manuals tending > to understate the extent of the variation. Which information is clearly anecdotal and elicited in very uncontrolled environments, prone to all sorts of biases. Said as a parent of a 2 1/2 year old who thinks his kid is way ahead of the curve... but what do I know? Bruno Estigarribia FPG-NDRC-UNC From imoreno at uma.es Thu Aug 30 12:29:57 2007 From: imoreno at uma.es (imoreno at uma.es) Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2007 14:29:57 +0200 Subject: an onomatopoeic toddler and individual differences Message-ID: Hello, fascinating emails!!! Bruno mentions variation in the order of acquisition. Maybe we could add differences between linguistic domains (i.e. grammar, lexicon, phonology...)? This form of variation occurs in delayed language acquisition. For instance, in deaf children with cochear implants grammar development seems to go well behind lexical development. But, does it occur in some typically development children? How much variation is "normal"? I'd appreciate any references about this topic. Thanks in advance! Ignacio Moreno-Torres Universidad de Málaga Spain ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bruno Estigarribia" To: Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2007 11:56 PM Subject: an onomatopoeic toddler and individual differences > > > Margaret M. Fleck wrote: >> Nelson, Katherine wrote: >>> .... However, individual differences and idiosyncratic approaches >>> to learning to talk are far more prevalent than the current >>> literature would lead you to believe, and most children settle on >>> conventional sounds as well as meanings during the third year. >> On the one hand, I'm not sure anyone really believes stories about the >> extent of the differences until they >> actually have personal experience of a kid talking in full sentences >> at two years and a comparable kid who is nearly mute at the same age. >> To put this in perspective, however, there's about a 6-month spread in >> when fairly normal kids learn to walk. Probably a wider spread in >> when they learn how to come down a ladder. And a multi-year spread >> in potty training >> and learning standard preschool manual coordination tasks, e.g. >> holding a pencil effectively, cutting food with a >> knife and fork. For the non-language tasks, there seem to be >> differences in inherent ability and also differences >> in what the kid feels inclined to put effort into. > And the difference is not only regarding timing. Paths of acquisition > vary enormously as well as soon as you get away from simple measures of > language skill (witness the holistic vs. analytic continuum and its many > different incarnations, plus my own work on yes/no questions). >> >> Perhaps we shouldn't be all that surprised by similar variation in >> language learning. > Well, but you would be surprised, (or annoyed maybe ;-)) if you were > convinced language and cognition are radically different. A lot of > language acquisition researchers believe that. To me, that is a > completely open question. We're back to "not every typical human uses > knives and forks, but every typically developing child speaks", "oh but > every human uses tools", kind of discussion. Granted, walking is rather > universal... >> >> As a parent, I think there's a disconnect between printed discussions >> of skill timing and the information that's >> passed around the mommy and teacher network, with the manuals tending >> to understate the extent of the variation. > Which information is clearly anecdotal and elicited in very uncontrolled > environments, prone to all sorts of biases. Said as a parent of a 2 1/2 > year old who thinks his kid is way ahead of the curve... but what do I know? > Bruno Estigarribia > FPG-NDRC-UNC > > From ann.dowker at psy.ox.ac.uk Thu Aug 30 19:53:57 2007 From: ann.dowker at psy.ox.ac.uk (Ann Dowker) Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2007 20:53:57 +0100 Subject: an onomatopoeic toddler and individual differences In-Reply-To: <52489.85.57.37.237.1188476997.squirrel@gw.uma.es> Message-ID: An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From gagarina at zas.gwz-berlin.de Wed Aug 1 15:45:38 2007 From: gagarina at zas.gwz-berlin.de (Natalia Gagarina) Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2007 17:45:38 +0200 Subject: PhD student position - Centre for General Linguistics (ZAS) In-Reply-To: <20070720114529.A234A6DAF8@dmz02.zas.gwz-berlin.de> Message-ID: Please circulate: Centre for General Linguistics, Typology and Universals Research (Zentrum f?r Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft - ZAS) Berlin, Germany is the legal representative of six non-universitary research institutes in Berlin, funded by the Federal Republic of Germany and the community of the German Lands. ZAS invites applications for a PhD student position in the project "Language Acquisition as a Window to Social Integration among Russian Language Minority Children in Germany and Israel" in the Language Acquisition Research Group of the ZAS (Head Prof. Dr. M. Krifka) starting at September-October, 2007. Key areas of activity will be linguistic investigation of longitudinal and experimental data (topic areas: (a) linguistic: morpho-syntax, discourse and pragmatic; (b) sociolinguistic: identity and attitudes). A candidate should have basic knowledge of (depending on the person?s PhD research): - experimental methods in language acquisition research, - theoretical linguistics, - sociolinguistics - statistics (basic knowledge) A researcher must be fluent in German (and in Russian). Experience in working with children is preferable. Readiness to participate on multilingual team and in interdisciplinary research is expected. A university degree (BA/MA) in Linguistics or Developmental Psychology is required. Please direct your queries to Dr. N. Gagarina (gagarina at zas.gwz-berlin.de). The initial appointment is for two years. The half-time schedule is 20 hours per week, and the salary is according to the German TVoeD 1/2(East) scale. ZAS is an equal opportunity employer. As far as possible we ask to avoid sending application papers by e-mail. Applicants should send a curriculum vitae and photocopies of certificates, including a cover letter to: Zentrum f?r Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS) Dr. Natalia Gagarina Schuetzenstr. 18 10117 Berlin The post will begin on September 1, 2007 (or as soon as possible thereafter), and will continue until August 31, 2009. -- Dr. Natalia Gagarina Research Center for General Linguistics - ZAS Schutzenstr. 18 D-10117, Berlin Tel: +49-30-20192-503 Fax: +49-30-20192-402 Save a tree. Don't print this e-mail unless it's really necessary. From mfriend at sunstroke.sdsu.edu Mon Aug 6 22:55:43 2007 From: mfriend at sunstroke.sdsu.edu (Margaret Friend) Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2007 15:55:43 -0700 Subject: Position in Cognitive Development Message-ID: The DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY at SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY invites applications for tenure-track appointments to begin Fall, 2008. Three Assistant Professor positions are available: APPLIED RESEARCH FOCUS: AREA OPEN, INDUSTRIAL/ORGANIZATIONAL and COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT. The Psychology Department has a large and diverse population of undergraduate majors, an MA program, an MS program in Applied Psychology with emphases in I-O and Program Evaluation, and an APA-accredited doctoral program in Clinical Psychology offered jointly with the Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of California, San Diego. Additional information about SDSU and the Psychology Department can be found at http://www.sdsu.edu/ and http://www.psychology.sdsu.edu/index.html. Successful candidates will be committed to excellence in teaching and clearly demonstrate research productivity and the capacity to attract extramural support. Research that acknowledges and addresses multicultural perspectives is desirable. SDSU and the San Diego research community beyond our campus provide a very rich environment for interdisciplinary and collaborative work. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT: Candidates must hold a Ph.D. in a domain of Psychology that reflects expertise in Developmental Science. We seek an individual with expertise in Developmental Science and in Cognition. Such an individual might study memory, attention, executive function, problem-solving, categorization, or statistical learning, for example. The successful candidate would be expected to contribute to the undergraduate and graduate curriculum in Development and in Cognition. In particular, this individual would be expected to teach undergraduate courses in Development and in Cognition, an occasional graduate seminar in Development, and would have the opportunity to mentor students in the Psychology Master's Program and in the Mathematics and Science Education Doctoral program. Candidates should demonstrate strong potential for obtaining extramural funding and maintaining an active research program. The full text of this advertisement can be accessed at http://bfa.sdsu.edu/ps/Pyschology.htm Thank you for your interest and attention! Margaret Friend Margaret Friend, Ph.D. Child Language and Emotion Lab Department of Psychology and SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Language and Communicative Disorders San Diego State University 6363 Alvarado Court, Ste.103 San Diego, CA 92120 619-594-0273 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From romida-sihombing at telkom.net Fri Aug 10 01:01:21 2007 From: romida-sihombing at telkom.net (Romaida Sihombing) Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 08:01:21 +0700 Subject: searching info on gelason data In-Reply-To: <86082.49811@mail.talkbank.org> Message-ID: Dear all, Does anybody here any information 1. any research using gleason data in CHILDES? 2. what the research is about? Thanks, Dr. Romaida Sihombing University of North Sumatra ======================================================================================= Pengen Coba Music Mail GRATIS? Aktifkan Music Mail anda di mail telkom.net dan plasa.com dan kirim email dengan Music Mail ke seluruh rekan anda. Berlaku hingga 31 Agustus 2007 ======================================================================================= From gleason at bu.edu Fri Aug 10 06:33:20 2007 From: gleason at bu.edu (Jean Berko Gleason) Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 02:33:20 -0400 Subject: searching info on gelason data In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Romaida Sihombing, Those data were originally collected to get information about naturally occurring conversations in families at dinner, and to compare mothers' and fathers' interactions with boys and girls in several different situations--playing 'store', reading a book, playing with a toy. We've used the data over the years to examine gender differences, the use of routines in language, the development of color terminology, diminutives, various other lexical domains (e.g., animal terms, money words), baby talk, talk about talk, fathers' speech, prohibitives, politeness, and so on. I'll paste in a representative sample of publications that I hope will be of some use. cheers, Jean Berko Gleason ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Masur, E. & Gleason, J. Berko. (1980). Parent?child interaction and the acquisition of lexical information during play/. Developmental Psychology, 16, /404?409. Gleason, J. Berko. (1980). The acquisition of social speech and politeness formulae. In H. Giles, and W. P. Robinson, P.M. Smith, (Eds.), /Language: Social Psychological Perspectives/. Pergamon Press, Oxford and New York, 21-27.. Greif, E. B. & Gleason, J. Berko. (1980). Hi, thanks, and goodbye: More routine information. /Language in Society, 9, /159?166. Bellinger, D. & Gleason, J. Berko. (1982). Sex differences in parental directives to young children. /Journal of Sex Roles, 8(11), /1123-1139. /Reprinted/ in C. N. Jacklin (Ed.), (1992). /Gender. /London: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. Gleason, J. Berko, & Greif, E. B. (1983). Men's speech to young children. In B. Thorne, C. Kramerae, and N. Henley (Eds.), /Language, Gender, and Society, /2nd edition. Rowley, MA: Newbury House, 140-150. Gleason, J. Berko, Perlmann, R. Y., & Greif, E. B.. (1984). What's the magic word: Learning language through routines. /Discourse Processes, 6(2), /493?502. Menn, L. & Gleason, J. Berko. (1986). Babytalk as a stereotype and register: Adult reports of children's speech patterns. In J. A. Fishman et al. (Eds.) /The Fergusonian Impact. Vol I. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 111?125. / Snow, C. E., Perlmann, R. Y. & Gleason, J. Berko. 1990. Developmental perspectives on politeness: Sources of children's knowledge. /Journal of Pragmatics, 14, /289-305. Gleason, J. Berko, Perlmann, R. Y., Ely, D.,& Evans, D. (1994). The babytalk register: Parents' use of diminutives. In J. L. Sokolov & C. E. Snow (Eds.), /Handbook of Research in Language Development Using CHILDES. /Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Tingley, E., Gleason, J. Berko., & Hooshyar, N. (1994) Mothers= lexicon of internal state words in speech to children with Down syndrome and to nonhandicapped children at mealtime. /Journal of Communication Disorders, 27, /135-155. Ely, R., Gleason, J. Berko, Narasimhan, B., & McCabe, A. (1995). Family talk about talk: Mothers lead the way. /Discourse Processes , /19, 201?218. Ely, R., Gleason, J. Berko & McCabe, A. (1996) "Why didn't you talk to your Mommy, Honey?": Parents' and children's talk about talk. /Research on Language and Social Interaction.29, 1/, 7-25. Gleason, J. Berko, Ely, R., Perlmann, R. Y., & Narasimhan, B. (1996). Patterns of prohibition in parent-child discourse. In D. I. Slobin, J. Gerhardt, A. Kyratzis, & J. Guo (Eds.), /Social interaction, social context, and language: Essays in honor of Susan Ervin-Tripp. /Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.. Leaper, C. & Gleason, J. Berko. (1996). The relationship of play activity and gender to parent and child sex-typed communication. /International Journal of Behavioral Development, 19/, 689-703. Gleason, J. Berko & Ely, R. (1997). Input and the acquisition of vocabulary: Examining the parental lexicon. In C. Mandell & A. McCabe (Eds.), The Problem of Meaning: Behavioral and Cognitive Perspectives. New York: Elsevier. Ely, R. & Gleason, J. Berko. (1998). What Color is the Cat? Color Words in Parent-Child Conversations. In A. Aksu-Ko, E. Erguvanli-Taylan, A. Sumru Ozsoy, & A. Kuntay (Eds.) /Perspectives on Language Acquisition: Selected Papers from the VIIth International Congress for the Study of Child Language./ Istanbul: Bogazici University. Ely, R., Gleason, J. Berko, * *MacGibbon, A., & * *Zaretsky, E. (2001). Attention to Language: Lessons Learned at the Dinner Table. /Social Development, 10, /3, 355-373. Gleason, J. Berko & Ely, R. (2005). Gender differences in language development: Interactional effects. In B. Bokus, (Ed.) /Studies in the Psychology of Child Language (in Honor of Grace Wales Shugar) /Warsaw: Matrix, 249-263. Gleason, J. Berko, Ely, R., Phillips, B., & Zaretsky, E. (In press). Alligators all around: The acquisition of animal terms in English and Russian. In D. Guo & E. Lieven (Eds.) /Crosslinguistic Approaches to the Psychology of Language: Research in the Tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin/. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Romaida Sihombing wrote: > Dear all, > > Does anybody here any information > 1. any research using gleason data in CHILDES? > 2. what the research is about? > > Thanks, > > Dr. Romaida Sihombing > University of North Sumatra > > ======================================================================================== > > Pengen Coba Music Mail GRATIS? Aktifkan Music Mail anda di mail > telkom.net dan plasa.com dan kirim email dengan Music Mail ke seluruh > rekan anda. Berlaku hingga 31 Agustus 2007 > ======================================================================================== > > From dservin at planeta.com.mx Fri Aug 10 18:05:47 2007 From: dservin at planeta.com.mx (dservin at planeta.com.mx) Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 13:05:47 -0500 Subject: searching info on gelason data Message-ID: Acuse de recibo Su searching info on gelason data document o: Ha sido Diana Servin/Planeta/mx recibido por: Con 10/08/2007 12:56:00 p.m. fecha: From emasst85 at yahoo.com Fri Aug 10 18:05:21 2007 From: emasst85 at yahoo.com (elham mahjub) Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 11:05:21 -0700 Subject: Cognitive Style Inventory Message-ID: Dear all ; I'm just wondering if anyone of you has any access to the Cognitive Style Index ( Allinson & Hayes 1996 ) , or can give me any clue how to gain it . The more i have searched the net the less i could get , since all i could get were just the studies used CSI as their questionnaire , not the questionnaire itself . Any guidelines on how to gain this actual questionnaire or any other standard index for measuring listening strategies would be appreciated . With Great Thanks Elham Mahjub M.A student Ilam University , Iran --------------------------------- Sick sense of humor? Visit Yahoo! TV's Comedy with an Edge to see what's on, when. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karla-mcgregor at uiowa.edu Fri Aug 10 19:47:23 2007 From: karla-mcgregor at uiowa.edu (McGregor, Karla K) Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2007 14:47:23 -0500 Subject: role of analogy in thought and learning Message-ID: The Iowa Center for Developmental and Learning Sciences (http://www.uiowa.edu/~icdls/) brings together researchers who seek to understand processes that underlie development and learning from neurons to neighborhoods, acknowledging that the brain, mind, body, physical environment, social relationships, and large-scale social systems are all intertwined. Toward this end, we are pleased to announce the first workshop of our 2007-08 series: The Role of Analogy in Thought and Learning September 28, 2007, 8:00am - 12:00pm Room 401, John Pappajohn Business Building 10 East Jefferson St., Iowa City, IA Program: What's special about humans? Dedre Gentner Professor, Psychology and School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University Analogical Apes and Paleological Monkeys Revisited: Does the "Profound Disparity" in analogical reasoning between apes and monkeys still stand? Roger Thompson Dr. E. Paul and Frances H. Reiff Professor of Psychology, Franklin and Marshall College Roots of analogy: Relational matching-to-sample behavior in pigeons, baboons and children Ed Wasserman Stuit Professor of Experimental Psychology, University of Iowa Moderator: Amanda Owen Assistant Professor, Speech Pathology and Audiology, University of Iowa To ensure adequate meeting space, please register by e-mail: john-spencer at uiowa.edu Funding was generously provided by the Perry A. and Helen Judy Bond Fund. Additional support was provided by the Psychology Department, the Speech Pathology and Audiology Department, and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Iowa. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From macw at cmu.edu Sat Aug 11 08:46:31 2007 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Sat, 11 Aug 2007 10:46:31 +0200 Subject: professorships Message-ID: College of Education Chairs in Education - Four Positions University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand Vacancy Number: A167-07V Closing Date: 30 September 2007 The University of Canterbury College of Education was created on 1 January 2007 by the merger of the Christchurch College of Education (founded 1877) and the University of Canterbury (founded 1873). Both institutions have distinguished histories and a record of outstanding service both provincially, nationally and internationally. Their merger has created the opportunity to further enhance their joint reputations for excellence and leadership in educational studies, initial and postgraduate teacher education, coach education, professional development and educational research and consultancy. The appointment of four Professors in Education signals the University of Canterbury's commitment to support the College of Education's development as a centre of national and international excellence. The primary roles of the Professors will be to exercise outstanding academic leadership, to develop the research capacity of the College and to mentor staff as they grow their research agendas. Essential qualifications for appointment as a Professor in Education include a doctorate in a relevant field of study; a significant record of scholarly research and writing including publications in highly ranked internationally refereed journals; successful tertiary teaching and leadership experience including supervision of higher degree students and the ability to attract external research funding. The University of Canterbury welcomes applications from suitably qualifi ed people with an interest in the broad fields of educational research, teacher education, and special education, particularly those with strengths and expertise in one or more of the following areas: . Language and literacy development . Science education . Early childhood development . Child health and health education . Early intervention . Educational leadership . Childhood language disorders . Teaching and learning. For further information and to apply online visit http:// vacancies.canterbury.ac.nz or phone +64 3 343 7727 or email barbara.anderson at canterbury.ac.nz to request an application form. "Christchurch is a wonderful city to live and work in where you can enjoy a healthy, active lifestyle amidst a natural environment world-renowned for its beauty." See link for city details http://www.canterbury.ac.nz/liaison/christchurch.shtml From speakit02 at aol.com Tue Aug 14 02:47:18 2007 From: speakit02 at aol.com (speakit02 at aol.com) Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 22:47:18 -0400 Subject: Remove from list, please. In-Reply-To: <8C9AB5F4B5AA67C-4AC-119D@webmail-md06.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: Wouldn't it be nice to get caught committing random acts of kindness. -----Original Message----- From: mero1 at aol.com To: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org Sent: Sun, 12 Aug 2007 9:20 pm Subject: remove remove AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at AOL.com. ________________________________________________________________________ AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at AOL.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sigaluk at gmail.com Tue Aug 14 09:02:21 2007 From: sigaluk at gmail.com (Sigal Uziel-Karl) Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 12:02:21 +0300 Subject: references to work on the acquisition of adverbs Message-ID: Dear list members, I am looking for references to work on the acquisition of adverbs (manner, time, location, etc.) and adverbial clauses by children acquiring their L1. I am particularly interested in work that relates to early acquisition - types of adverbs, order of adverb acquisition, constructions in which adverbs are used early on etc. Any input on this topic would be appreciated! Best, Sigal Uziel-Karl. sigal at alum.mit.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From susan.foster-cohen at canterbury.ac.nz Tue Aug 14 20:51:57 2007 From: susan.foster-cohen at canterbury.ac.nz (Susan Foster-Cohen) Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 08:51:57 +1200 Subject: Youtube Message-ID: Hi, all. Just wanted to say that I've been delighted at the hugely useful little clips I've found on Youtube for my undergraduate language acquisition course. If others have not thought of looking there, they may be surprised at what is on offer. And they can be easily downloaded by using one of the 'download from Youtube' programmes freely available on the web. If people want me to suggest some clips, I'll be happy to share the links for the ones I'm using at the moment. However, if you just search 'child language' or 'language acquisition' you'll find them. Cheers, Susan Foster-Cohen From cbowen at ihug.com.au Tue Aug 14 23:17:41 2007 From: cbowen at ihug.com.au (Caroline Bowen) Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 09:17:41 +1000 Subject: Youtube In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Thank you Susan! I followed your suggestion and found illumination here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFD01r6ersw&mode=related&search= Best wishes, Caroline ========================= Caroline Bowen PhD CPSP Speech Language Pathologist 9 Hillcrest Road Wentworth Falls NSW 2782 Australia e: cbowen at ihug.com.au i: http://speech-language-therapy.com/ t: 61 2 4757 1136 ========================= -----Original Message----- From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org [mailto:info-childes at mail.talkbank.org] On Behalf Of Susan Foster-Cohen Sent: Wednesday, 15 August 2007 6:52 AM To: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org Subject: RE: Youtube If people want me to suggest some clips, I'll be happy to share the links for the ones I'm using at the moment. However, if you just search 'child language' or 'language acquisition' you'll find them. Susan Foster-Cohen From fbinder at eva.mpg.de Wed Aug 15 07:53:51 2007 From: fbinder at eva.mpg.de (Frank Binder) Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 09:53:51 +0200 Subject: Youtube In-Reply-To: Message-ID: "prohibited - but not under all circumstances" =o) Dear Susan, Dear all, my sincere apologies if I may interrupt some joyful sessions, but I feel it is important to let you know that youtube's Terms of Use (http://youtube.com/t/terms) specifically prohibit any downloading (and probably editing) of videos (or other user submissions). Presumably (and besides other reasons) this is to protect their users, esp. those who submit videos there, from being used (or viewed) "improperly". I think, as scientists working with data provided by other people, we can respect that. Now, their videos might still be used, afaik. They seem to offer an "Embeddable player" which should allow to play videos from youtube. However, I could not find information on whether this works within anything else than "other websites". Did anyone ask them? Best, and least troublesome (?), may be to let youtube know, exactly which videos you would like to use in which contexts and for which purpose, and ask for written consent to do so. Does anyone have experience in that direction? This has been an issue at our institute as well. Thanks to our IT-admin, who informed us about youtube's terms of use some months ago =o) Best, Frank Susan Foster-Cohen wrote: > > Hi, all. > > Just wanted to say that I've been delighted at the hugely useful little > clips I've found on Youtube for my undergraduate language acquisition > course. If others have not thought of looking there, they may be > surprised at what is on offer. And they can be easily downloaded by > using one of the 'download from Youtube' programmes freely available on > the web. > > If people want me to suggest some clips, I'll be happy to share the > links for the ones I'm using at the moment. However, if you just search > 'child language' or 'language acquisition' you'll find them. > > Cheers, > > Susan Foster-Cohen > > > > > From susan.foster-cohen at canterbury.ac.nz Wed Aug 15 12:23:23 2007 From: susan.foster-cohen at canterbury.ac.nz (Susan Foster-Cohen) Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2007 00:23:23 +1200 Subject: Youtube Message-ID: Dear All: O.K., well I don't want to get myself or anyone else in trouble, so here are descriptions of some things I have been happy to find: 1) There is a set of four videos of Neil Smith working with Christopher. Seriously cool stuff. 2) There is a Simpsons cartoon in which Millhouse talks about his learning of Italian. It raises the issue of the affective dimension of second language acquisition. 3) There is a lovely clip of a boy called Ernie (Ernie Goo Goo) in which a child obligingly demonstrates several phonological processes. 4) There is an excellent chunk out of a Nova programme with the inimitable Robert Krolwich explaining mirror neurons. Possibly too long to show in class, but I gave my students the link, and asked them to watch it for homework. Allows one to bring in new stuff about innate human sociability and motor theories of speech perception. 5) There is a charming wee trilingual who speaks Greek then Italian then German. You could hear my monolingual NZ students gasp as he switches. 6) There is a wee girl whose mother is trying to elicit metalinguistic capacities from an infant who is clearly learning to speak both Mandarin and English, but who is not yet ready to translate. "What's your name in Mandarin?" 7) And there is a wonderful parody of the pompous linguist played by Stpehen Fry and Hugh Laurie in which he gets it remarkably right, including a wonderful 'betcha never heard this sentence before' sentence. There are other bits and bobs I've found, too, but it seems you'll just have to go fishing for yourselves. With the ones above, I think I've given you enough key words to help you find them all. Cheers, Susan -----Original Message----- From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org on behalf of Frank Binder Sent: Wed 8/15/2007 7:53 PM To: Susan Foster-Cohen Cc: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org; Petra Jahn Subject: Re: Youtube "prohibited - but not under all circumstances" =o) Dear Susan, Dear all, my sincere apologies if I may interrupt some joyful sessions, but I feel it is important to let you know that youtube's Terms of Use (http://youtube.com/t/terms) specifically prohibit any downloading (and probably editing) of videos (or other user submissions). Presumably (and besides other reasons) this is to protect their users, esp. those who submit videos there, from being used (or viewed) "improperly". I think, as scientists working with data provided by other people, we can respect that. Now, their videos might still be used, afaik. They seem to offer an "Embeddable player" which should allow to play videos from youtube. However, I could not find information on whether this works within anything else than "other websites". Did anyone ask them? Best, and least troublesome (?), may be to let youtube know, exactly which videos you would like to use in which contexts and for which purpose, and ask for written consent to do so. Does anyone have experience in that direction? This has been an issue at our institute as well. Thanks to our IT-admin, who informed us about youtube's terms of use some months ago =o) Best, Frank Susan Foster-Cohen wrote: > > Hi, all. > > Just wanted to say that I've been delighted at the hugely useful little > clips I've found on Youtube for my undergraduate language acquisition > course. If others have not thought of looking there, they may be > surprised at what is on offer. And they can be easily downloaded by > using one of the 'download from Youtube' programmes freely available on > the web. > > If people want me to suggest some clips, I'll be happy to share the > links for the ones I'm using at the moment. However, if you just search > 'child language' or 'language acquisition' you'll find them. > > Cheers, > > Susan Foster-Cohen > > > > > From hbortfeld at psych.tamu.edu Wed Aug 15 13:52:35 2007 From: hbortfeld at psych.tamu.edu (Bortfeld, Heather) Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 08:52:35 -0500 Subject: Youtube Message-ID: These sound great! Any chance you might list the YouTube names of these clips, to make for easier localization? Presumably this won't violate any copyright or user rules. Thanks, Heather Bortfeld -----Original Message----- From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org on behalf of Susan Foster-Cohen Sent: Wed 8/15/2007 7:23 AM To: Frank Binder Cc: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org; Petra Jahn Subject: RE: Youtube Dear All: O.K., well I don't want to get myself or anyone else in trouble, so here are descriptions of some things I have been happy to find: 1) There is a set of four videos of Neil Smith working with Christopher. Seriously cool stuff. 2) There is a Simpsons cartoon in which Millhouse talks about his learning of Italian. It raises the issue of the affective dimension of second language acquisition. 3) There is a lovely clip of a boy called Ernie (Ernie Goo Goo) in which a child obligingly demonstrates several phonological processes. 4) There is an excellent chunk out of a Nova programme with the inimitable Robert Krolwich explaining mirror neurons. Possibly too long to show in class, but I gave my students the link, and asked them to watch it for homework. Allows one to bring in new stuff about innate human sociability and motor theories of speech perception. 5) There is a charming wee trilingual who speaks Greek then Italian then German. You could hear my monolingual NZ students gasp as he switches. 6) There is a wee girl whose mother is trying to elicit metalinguistic capacities from an infant who is clearly learning to speak both Mandarin and English, but who is not yet ready to translate. "What's your name in Mandarin?" 7) And there is a wonderful parody of the pompous linguist played by Stpehen Fry and Hugh Laurie in which he gets it remarkably right, including a wonderful 'betcha never heard this sentence before' sentence. There are other bits and bobs I've found, too, but it seems you'll just have to go fishing for yourselves. With the ones above, I think I've given you enough key words to help you find them all. Cheers, Susan -----Original Message----- From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org on behalf of Frank Binder Sent: Wed 8/15/2007 7:53 PM To: Susan Foster-Cohen Cc: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org; Petra Jahn Subject: Re: Youtube "prohibited - but not under all circumstances" =o) Dear Susan, Dear all, my sincere apologies if I may interrupt some joyful sessions, but I feel it is important to let you know that youtube's Terms of Use (http://youtube.com/t/terms) specifically prohibit any downloading (and probably editing) of videos (or other user submissions). Presumably (and besides other reasons) this is to protect their users, esp. those who submit videos there, from being used (or viewed) "improperly". I think, as scientists working with data provided by other people, we can respect that. Now, their videos might still be used, afaik. They seem to offer an "Embeddable player" which should allow to play videos from youtube. However, I could not find information on whether this works within anything else than "other websites". Did anyone ask them? Best, and least troublesome (?), may be to let youtube know, exactly which videos you would like to use in which contexts and for which purpose, and ask for written consent to do so. Does anyone have experience in that direction? This has been an issue at our institute as well. Thanks to our IT-admin, who informed us about youtube's terms of use some months ago =o) Best, Frank Susan Foster-Cohen wrote: > > Hi, all. > > Just wanted to say that I've been delighted at the hugely useful little > clips I've found on Youtube for my undergraduate language acquisition > course. If others have not thought of looking there, they may be > surprised at what is on offer. And they can be easily downloaded by > using one of the 'download from Youtube' programmes freely available on > the web. > > If people want me to suggest some clips, I'll be happy to share the > links for the ones I'm using at the moment. However, if you just search > 'child language' or 'language acquisition' you'll find them. > > Cheers, > > Susan Foster-Cohen > > > > > From macw at cmu.edu Wed Aug 15 18:42:28 2007 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 20:42:28 +0200 Subject: New French and English Comparable Corpora Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, I am happy to announce the addition to CHILDES of two new corpora designed to provide a direct comparison between French and English, while also providing excellent material for the study of the learning of each language separately. The two corpora each include six children (3 male, 3 female) studied intensively between the ages of one and three. The English data are from Katherine Demuth's group at Brown University in Providence RI and the French data are from Harriet Jisa's group at the University of Lyon 2. The files are all linked to video and the video for 10 of the children is available from the web. For easier web playback, we will eventually extract MP3 and Wave files from the video. A few of the segments of the French data are not yet in place, but will be configured shortly. All of the data are also transcribed throughout in IPA on the %pho line, making this now the largest database available for the study of child phonology. The English corpus can be found under /Eng-USA/Providence and the French corpus can be found under /Romance/French/Lyon. Fuller documentation can be found in the database manuals. Many thanks to Katherine, Harriet, and their coworkers for this enormously impressive contribution. I believe this corpus will have a major impact on a wide variety of issues in the study of language development. --Brian MacWhinney From fwouk at comcast.net Wed Aug 22 04:18:30 2007 From: fwouk at comcast.net (Fay Wouk) Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2007 16:18:30 +1200 Subject: Need data set for student analysis Message-ID: Hi. I'd appreciate some advice as to what out of the vast amount of data in Childes would be good data sets to use for the term paper I want to assign my students. What I want is a longitudinal study of a single child, covering a period of several months, going from the two-word stage well into multiword (say an MLU of about 3), that comes with sound files and ideally also with video. It could be any variety of English (the students are mostly New Zealanders or second language speakers of English). Can anyone recommend a good set of files to use? thanks, Fay From mariehojholt at stofanet.dk Wed Aug 29 10:05:15 2007 From: mariehojholt at stofanet.dk (mariehojholt) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:05:15 +0200 Subject: an onomatopoeic toddler Message-ID: Dear all! Being new at this network I wish to thank you all for a fantastic opportunity to correspond with equals, or, kind of. I am graduate student of linguistics in Aarhus, Denmark. Here is my question: I am looking for relevant studies of children who do not seem to acquire actual words as much as onomatopoeic sounds. My two-year-old son Harald, is developing "according to plan" but doesn't care for the "linguistic symbols that the surrounding environment has as consensus": words. Here is a short list of his sounds and utterances: "Mor (mummy) aa-aj (~not) bzzz (sound of fly) krqr (sound of breaking which means "egg") - pip-pip (sound of bird) krqr (sound of breaking"  - so: Mummy, flies don't have eggs, BIRDS have eggs!" "words": water: "aah!" (sound you make after drinking) food: "mtl-mtl" (chewing-sound) sleeping/bed: "hhhrr-pfffff" (sleeping sound) toothbrush: "hrhr-hrhr" Cracker/"broken"/egg: "krqr"  Pooridge: "ph-ph-ph" (sound of boiling) Apart from this he uses all the usual onomatopoeic sounds typical for children: animal sounds, vehicle sounds... He does have some actual words: Mom, dad, diper, blue, Gorm (brother), home, now, more, shoe, in, ...but not too many verbs. I hope some of you have comments on this, or links, references or anything. I am not worried about him, since he is a happy, clever boy who communicates adequately and relevantly, and - to me - intelligably. Though, I am hyperinterested in understanding his procedures and apparently somewhat onomatopoeic-ICONIC language behaviour. He is not interested in us telling him what the real words are, and if we try to push him, he ignores us or get angry. All my best, Marie Hoejholt -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From macw at cmu.edu Wed Aug 29 13:47:56 2007 From: macw at cmu.edu (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:47:56 -0400 Subject: an onomatopoeic toddler In-Reply-To: <19c2d8f6cef7504fc2a54ec317182ce4@webmail.stofa.dk> Message-ID: Dear Marie, All children do this to some degree. What is remarkable is that some chidlren only do a little bit of this and others much more. It would be very helpful if you could tabulate his complete vocabulary and compute the percentage of words that are conventional from the total. It would also be helpful if you could track this over the next 10 months. If you had just this basic information on a case of this type, you would perhaps have more than I can think of in the current literature. Possibly other info-childes readers will know of something I have missed. There is, of course, the famous case of the lady in Iceland who invented her own language and forced everyone to learn that. If you couldn't speak her language, you couldn't really interact with her at all. I wonder what experiences your son has when trying to communicate with people outside your family who have not yet learned his language. --Brian MacWhinney On 8/29/07 6:05 AM, "mariehojholt" wrote: > > Dear all! > Being new at this network I wish to thank you all for a fantastic opportunity > to correspond with equals, or, kind of. I am graduate student of linguistics > in Aarhus, Denmark. > Here is my question: > I am looking for relevant studies of children who do not seem to acquire > actual words as much as onomatopoeic sounds. > My two-year-old son Harald, is developing "according to plan" but doesn't care > for the "linguistic symbols that the surrounding environment has as > consensus": words. > > Here is a short list of his sounds and utterances: > "Mor (mummy) aa-aj (~not) bzzz (sound of fly) krqr (sound of > breaking which means "egg") - pip-pip (sound of bird) krqr > (sound of breaking"  > - so: Mummy, flies don't have eggs, BIRDS have eggs!" > > "words": > water: "aah!" (sound you make after drinking) > food: "mtl-mtl" (chewing-sound) > sleeping/bed: "hhhrr-pfffff" (sleeping sound) > toothbrush: "hrhr-hrhr" > Cracker/"broken"/egg: "krqr"  > Pooridge: "ph-ph-ph" (sound of boiling) > > > Apart from this he uses all the usual onomatopoeic sounds typical for > children: animal sounds, vehicle sounds... > He does have some actual words: Mom, dad, diper, blue, Gorm (brother), home, > now, more, shoe, in, ...but not too many verbs. > I hope some of you have comments on this, or links, references or anything. > I am not worried about him, since he is a happy, clever boy who communicates > adequately and relevantly, and - to me - intelligably. > Though, I am hyperinterested in understanding his procedures and apparently > somewhat onomatopoeic-ICONIC language behaviour. > He is not interested in us telling him what the real words are, and if we try > to push him, he ignores us or get angry. > All my best, > Marie Hoejholt > From cslater at alma.edu Wed Aug 29 14:57:51 2007 From: cslater at alma.edu (Carol Slater) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 10:57:51 -0400 Subject: an onomatopoeic toddler Message-ID: Hi, Marie-- I don't know of any relevant studies, but if you are not already familiar with Heinz Werner's Comparative Psychology of Mental Development, you might be interested in his proposal that early symbol formation quite generally makes use of parts/aspects of the things/events symbolized and only gradually become differentiated from them. With regard to children inventing their own language, let me add to Brian McWhinney's mention of the lady from Iceland Ludwig Bemelmans's (undoubtedly apocryphal) anecdote that as a child in Austrian Tyrol his parents arranged for each of several adults to speak a different language to him, with the consequence that he did not talk until he was three, assuming that everyone had their own language and waiting patiently for his own to come along. Do take good notes and make videotapes! Cheers, Carol Slater Psychology Alma College Alma MI 48801 cslater at alma.edu From slobin at berkeley.edu Wed Aug 29 15:14:28 2007 From: slobin at berkeley.edu (Dan I. Slobin) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 08:14:28 -0700 Subject: an onomatopoeic toddler In-Reply-To: Message-ID: footnote on the Icelandic case: This was not an instance of onomatopoeia, but of twin language. A boy and girl twin in the late 18th century, as reported by a 19th century Danish linguist, created a private language, as is sometimes documented for twins. Because they weren't readily acquiring standard Icelandic, the parents separated the twins, sending the boy to a distant farm, where he died. After that, the girl continued to speak their shared language, and the community learned it in order to communicate with her and to insure that she learned enough religion for the salvation of her soul. There is almost no documentation of the language, so we can't know how close it was to Icelandic. The few other documented twin languages that I know of turn out to be quite clearly based on the surrounding language, with some phonological alterations and some innovations. Has anyone documented the extent to which such innovations are creative sound icons like those reported by Marie? another footnote: Marie's examples seem to be attempts at iconic representation in the acoustic modality, like visual icons in the motor modality shown in early gesture in both hearing and deaf children. Dan Slobin At 06:47 AM 8/29/2007, Brian MacWhinney wrote: >Dear Marie, > All children do this to some degree. What is remarkable is that some >chidlren only do a little bit of this and others much more. It would be >very helpful if you could tabulate his complete vocabulary and compute the >percentage of words that are conventional from the total. It would also be >helpful if you could track this over the next 10 months. If you had just >this basic information on a case of this type, you would perhaps have more >than I can think of in the current literature. Possibly other info-childes >readers will know of something I have missed. > There is, of course, the famous case of the lady in Iceland who invented >her own language and forced everyone to learn that. If you couldn't speak >her language, you couldn't really interact with her at all. I wonder what >experiences your son has when trying to communicate with people outside your >family who have not yet learned his language. > >--Brian MacWhinney > > >On 8/29/07 6:05 AM, "mariehojholt" wrote: > > > > > Dear all! > > Being new at this network I wish to thank you all for a fantastic > opportunity > > to correspond with equals, or, kind of. I am graduate student of > linguistics > > in Aarhus, Denmark. > > Here is my question: > > I am looking for relevant studies of children who do not seem to acquire > > actual words as much as onomatopoeic sounds. > > My two-year-old son Harald, is developing "according to plan" but > doesn't care > > for the "linguistic symbols that the surrounding environment has as > > consensus": words. > > > > Here is a short list of his sounds and utterances: > > "Mor (mummy) aa-aj (~not) bzzz (sound of fly) krqr (sound of > > breaking which means "egg") - pip-pip (sound of bird) krqr > > (sound of breaking"  > > - so: Mummy, flies don't have eggs, BIRDS have eggs!" > > > > "words": > > water: "aah!" (sound you make after drinking) > > food: "mtl-mtl" (chewing-sound) > > sleeping/bed: "hhhrr-pfffff" (sleeping sound) > > toothbrush: "hrhr-hrhr" > > Cracker/"broken"/egg: "krqr"  > > Pooridge: "ph-ph-ph" (sound of boiling) > > > > > > Apart from this he uses all the usual onomatopoeic sounds typical for > > children: animal sounds, vehicle sounds... > > He does have some actual words: Mom, dad, diper, blue, Gorm > (brother), home, > > now, more, shoe, in, ...but not too many verbs. > > I hope some of you have comments on this, or links, references or anything. > > I am not worried about him, since he is a happy, clever boy who > communicates > > adequately and relevantly, and - to me - intelligably. > > Though, I am hyperinterested in understanding his procedures and apparently > > somewhat onomatopoeic-ICONIC language behaviour. > > He is not interested in us telling him what the real words are, > and if we try > > to push him, he ignores us or get angry. > > All my best, > > Marie Hoejholt > > >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Dan I. Slobin, Professor of the Graduate School Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics Department of Psychology email: slobin at berkeley.edu 3210 Tolman #1650 phone (Dept): 1-510-642-5292 University of California phone (home): 1-510-848-1769 Berkeley, CA 94720-1650 fax: 1-510-642-5293 USA http://ihd.berkeley.edu/slobin.htm >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From slobin at berkeley.edu Wed Aug 29 15:41:01 2007 From: slobin at berkeley.edu (Dan I. Slobin) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 08:41:01 -0700 Subject: an onomatopoeic toddler In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070829080752.03d7be98@berkeley.edu> Message-ID: I've found references to the Icelandic twin study in the CHILDES bibliography. Maybe Marie or another Scandinavian user of CHILDES can track these down and give us a fuller report. (My summary is based on my recall of a German report; I'll try to find it.) Here are the Danish references: @article{ Author = {Eschricht, D. F.}, Title = {Om den islandske sproglaverske saeunn}, Journal = {Danske Maanedsskrift}, Volume = {8}, Pages = {379-402}, Note = {DANISH}, Keywords = {ICELANDIC ; METHODOLOGY-LONGITUDINAL STUDY ; IDIOGLOSSIA ; MULTIPLE BIRTHS}, Year = {1858} } @article{ Author = {Jonasson, S.}, Title = {Om en sproglaverske}, Journal = {Danske Maanedsskrift}, Volume = {8}, Pages = {158-164}, Note = {DANISH}, Keywords = {ICELANDIC ; METHODOLOGY-LONGITUDINAL STUDY ; IDIOGLOSSIA ; MULTIPLE BIRTHS}, Year = {1858} } And here's an Icelandic report: @article{ Author = {Mal, Saeunnar}, Title = {Islenzkar sogur, Sogusafn isafoldar iv}, Note = {ICELANDIC}, Keywords = {ICELANDIC ; METHODOLOGY-LONGITUDINAL STUDY ; IDIOGLOSSIA ; MULTIPLE BIRTHS}, Year = {1891} } -Dan At 08:14 AM 8/29/2007, Dan I. Slobin wrote: >footnote on the Icelandic case: >This was not an instance of onomatopoeia, but of twin language. A >boy and girl twin in the late 18th century, as reported by a 19th >century Danish linguist, created a private language, as is sometimes >documented for twins. Because they weren't readily acquiring >standard Icelandic, the parents separated the twins, sending the boy >to a distant farm, where he died. After that, the girl continued to >speak their shared language, and the community learned it in order >to communicate with her and to insure that she learned enough >religion for the salvation of her soul. There is almost no >documentation of the language, so we can't know how close it was to >Icelandic. The few other documented twin languages that I know of >turn out to be quite clearly based on the surrounding language, with >some phonological alterations and some innovations. Has anyone >documented the extent to which such innovations are creative sound >icons like those reported by Marie? > >another footnote: >Marie's examples seem to be attempts at iconic representation in the >acoustic modality, like visual icons in the motor modality shown in >early gesture in both hearing and deaf children. > >Dan Slobin > > >At 06:47 AM 8/29/2007, Brian MacWhinney wrote: >>Dear Marie, >> All children do this to some degree. What is remarkable is that some >>chidlren only do a little bit of this and others much more. It would be >>very helpful if you could tabulate his complete vocabulary and compute the >>percentage of words that are conventional from the total. It would also be >>helpful if you could track this over the next 10 months. If you had just >>this basic information on a case of this type, you would perhaps have more >>than I can think of in the current literature. Possibly other info-childes >>readers will know of something I have missed. >> There is, of course, the famous case of the lady in Iceland who invented >>her own language and forced everyone to learn that. If you couldn't speak >>her language, you couldn't really interact with her at all. I wonder what >>experiences your son has when trying to communicate with people outside your >>family who have not yet learned his language. >> >>--Brian MacWhinney >> >> >>On 8/29/07 6:05 AM, "mariehojholt" wrote: >> >> > >> > Dear all! >> > Being new at this network I wish to thank you all for a >> fantastic opportunity >> > to correspond with equals, or, kind of. I am graduate student of >> linguistics >> > in Aarhus, Denmark. >> > Here is my question: >> > I am looking for relevant studies of children who do not seem to acquire >> > actual words as much as onomatopoeic sounds. >> > My two-year-old son Harald, is developing "according to plan" >> but doesn't care >> > for the "linguistic symbols that the surrounding environment has as >> > consensus": words. >> > >> > Here is a short list of his sounds and utterances: >> > "Mor (mummy) aa-aj (~not) bzzz (sound of fly) krqr (sound of >> > breaking which means "egg") - pip-pip (sound of bird) krqr >> > (sound of breaking"  >> > - so: Mummy, flies don't have eggs, BIRDS have eggs!" >> > >> > "words": >> > water: "aah!" (sound you make after drinking) >> > food: "mtl-mtl" (chewing-sound) >> > sleeping/bed: "hhhrr-pfffff" (sleeping sound) >> > toothbrush: "hrhr-hrhr" >> > Cracker/"broken"/egg: "krqr"  >> > Pooridge: "ph-ph-ph" (sound of boiling) >> > >> > >> > Apart from this he uses all the usual onomatopoeic sounds typical for >> > children: animal sounds, vehicle sounds... >> > He does have some actual words: Mom, dad, diper, blue, Gorm >> (brother), home, >> > now, more, shoe, in, ...but not too many verbs. >> > I hope some of you have comments on this, or links, references >> or anything. >> > I am not worried about him, since he is a happy, clever boy who >> communicates >> > adequately and relevantly, and - to me - intelligably. >> > Though, I am hyperinterested in understanding his procedures and >> apparently >> > somewhat onomatopoeic-ICONIC language behaviour. >> > He is not interested in us telling him what the real words are, >> and if we try >> > to push him, he ignores us or get angry. >> > All my best, >> > Marie Hoejholt >> > > > >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >Dan I. Slobin, Professor of the Graduate School >Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics > >Department of Psychology email: slobin at berkeley.edu >3210 Tolman #1650 phone (Dept): 1-510-642-5292 >University of California phone (home): 1-510-848-1769 >Berkeley, CA 94720-1650 fax: 1-510-642-5293 >USA http://ihd.berkeley.edu/slobin.htm > >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> > >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Dan I. Slobin, Professor of the Graduate School Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics Department of Psychology email: slobin at berkeley.edu 3210 Tolman #1650 phone (Dept): 1-510-642-5292 University of California phone (home): 1-510-848-1769 Berkeley, CA 94720-1650 fax: 1-510-642-5293 USA http://ihd.berkeley.edu/slobin.htm >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From velleman at comdis.umass.edu Wed Aug 29 16:01:27 2007 From: velleman at comdis.umass.edu (Shelley Velleman) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:01:27 -0400 Subject: an onomatopoeic toddler In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.2.20070829080752.03d7be98@berkeley.edu> Message-ID: In some cases, "twin languages" turn out to be phonologically impaired children who share certain patterns. In the Icelandic case, given that the girl did not ever learn the standard language, I would suspect that there was some kind of disorder there. Shelley Velleman "If someone tells you your ideas are half-assed, turn the other cheek" -- Alice Callum Shelley Velleman Communication Disorders Univ. of Mass. - Amherst velleman at comdis.umass.edu On Aug 29, 2007, at 11:14 AM, Dan I. Slobin wrote: > footnote on the Icelandic case: > This was not an instance of onomatopoeia, but of twin language. A > boy and girl twin in the late 18th century, as reported by a 19th > century Danish linguist, created a private language, as is > sometimes documented for twins. Because they weren't readily > acquiring standard Icelandic, the parents separated the twins, > sending the boy to a distant farm, where he died. After that, the > girl continued to speak their shared language, and the community > learned it in order to communicate with her and to insure that she > learned enough religion for the salvation of her soul. There is > almost no documentation of the language, so we can't know how close > it was to Icelandic. The few other documented twin languages that > I know of turn out to be quite clearly based on the surrounding > language, with some phonological alterations and some innovations. > Has anyone documented the extent to which such innovations are > creative sound icons like those reported by Marie? > > another footnote: > Marie's examples seem to be attempts at iconic representation in > the acoustic modality, like visual icons in the motor modality > shown in early gesture in both hearing and deaf children. > > Dan Slobin > > > At 06:47 AM 8/29/2007, Brian MacWhinney wrote: >> Dear Marie, >> All children do this to some degree. What is remarkable is >> that some >> chidlren only do a little bit of this and others much more. It >> would be >> very helpful if you could tabulate his complete vocabulary and >> compute the >> percentage of words that are conventional from the total. It >> would also be >> helpful if you could track this over the next 10 months. If you >> had just >> this basic information on a case of this type, you would perhaps >> have more >> than I can think of in the current literature. Possibly other >> info-childes >> readers will know of something I have missed. >> There is, of course, the famous case of the lady in Iceland >> who invented >> her own language and forced everyone to learn that. If you >> couldn't speak >> her language, you couldn't really interact with her at all. I >> wonder what >> experiences your son has when trying to communicate with people >> outside your >> family who have not yet learned his language. >> >> --Brian MacWhinney >> >> >> On 8/29/07 6:05 AM, "mariehojholt" wrote: >> >> > >> > Dear all! >> > Being new at this network I wish to thank you all for a >> fantastic opportunity >> > to correspond with equals, or, kind of. I am graduate student of >> linguistics >> > in Aarhus, Denmark. >> > Here is my question: >> > I am looking for relevant studies of children who do not seem to >> acquire >> > actual words as much as onomatopoeic sounds. >> > My two-year-old son Harald, is developing "according to plan" >> but doesn't care >> > for the "linguistic symbols that the surrounding environment has as >> > consensus": words. >> > >> > Here is a short list of his sounds and utterances: >> > "Mor (mummy) aa-aj (~not) bzzz (sound of fly) krqr >> (sound of >> > breaking which means "egg") - pip-pip (sound of bird) >>  krqr >> > (sound of breaking"  >> > - so: Mummy, flies don't have eggs, BIRDS have eggs!" >> > >> > "words": >> > water: "aah!" (sound you make after drinking) >> > food: "mtl-mtl" (chewing-sound) >> > sleeping/bed: "hhhrr-pfffff" (sleeping sound) >> > toothbrush: "hrhr-hrhr" >> > Cracker/"broken"/egg: "krqr"  >> > Pooridge: "ph-ph-ph" (sound of boiling) >> > >> > >> > Apart from this he uses all the usual onomatopoeic sounds >> typical for >> > children: animal sounds, vehicle sounds... >> > He does have some actual words: Mom, dad, diper, blue, Gorm >> (brother), home, >> > now, more, shoe, in, ...but not too many verbs. >> > I hope some of you have comments on this, or links, references >> or anything. >> > I am not worried about him, since he is a happy, clever boy who >> communicates >> > adequately and relevantly, and - to me - intelligably. >> > Though, I am hyperinterested in understanding his procedures and >> apparently >> > somewhat onomatopoeic-ICONIC language behaviour. >> > He is not interested in us telling him what the real words are, >> and if we try >> > to push him, he ignores us or get angry. >> > All my best, >> > Marie Hoejholt >> > > >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> > Dan I. Slobin, Professor of the Graduate School > Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics > > Department of Psychology email: slobin at berkeley.edu > 3210 Tolman #1650 phone (Dept): 1-510-642-5292 > University of California phone (home): 1-510-848-1769 > Berkeley, CA 94720-1650 fax: 1-510-642-5293 > USA http://ihd.berkeley.edu/ > slobin.htm > >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kenny at UDel.Edu Wed Aug 29 16:33:57 2007 From: kenny at UDel.Edu (Kenneth Hyde) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:33:57 -0400 Subject: an onomatopoeic toddler In-Reply-To: <19c2d8f6cef7504fc2a54ec317182ce4@webmail.stofa.dk> Message-ID: Marie, Your son is definitely not an isolated case. My oldest nephew went through a similar "stage." My sister reported (and video-documented) that he had an extensive vocabulary of onomatopoeic words that he created on his own (they weren't based on anything that other people were doing in his environment). Among others, he had a "plp-plp" sort of semi-click (it sounded exactly like bubbles in water) that was his word for "fish." What I found particularly striking is that many of the phenomena we are used to seeing with normal words also showed up with these O-words: over-generalization, under-extensions, etc. For example, "plp-plp" was used, not only to represent fish, but also to refer to Pepperidge Farms Goldfish crackers (a type of cheese cracker snack in the US, shaped like a fish). He also had a word "vrrm" (which was not the standard English 'vroom") which was used to refer only to his father's pickup truck and no other vehicles. And then was used to announce when his father arrived home, an interesting bit of semantic broadening. Unfortunately, Robbie had shed almost all of his O-words before I was able to visit him, but I did get to hear "plp-plp' in use. As I said, my sister video-documented all of the words she could (as a non- linguist and non-research professional, her method was a bit obtrusive, consisting mostly of "Robbie, what's that?" and "Robbie, say "fish" etc.) She recently converted some of the videos to DVD format and sent them to me, but I haven't had a chance to look through them. I'm hoping they will be some-what usable. Oh, and a related but different phenomena. A Chinese-American friend of mine contacted me about her daughter, when her daughter was just starting to acquire "words." Her concern was that her daughter was making a popping noise and using it as a word. In this case, I actually got to do some observations and the popping noise was a bi- labial egressive click. While it clearly wasn't a "non-speech" sound, it was interesting nevertheless as a sound that was not part of the phonological environment. And yes, it clearly was a "word" for the little girl, meaning "pretty." Ken Kenneth Hyde ELI & Dept of Linguistics University of Delaware kenny at udel.edu "No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulders will seriously cramp his style.?K. Z. Steven Brust -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From KNelson at gc.cuny.edu Wed Aug 29 17:22:44 2007 From: KNelson at gc.cuny.edu (Nelson, Katherine) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 13:22:44 -0400 Subject: FW: an onomatopoeic toddler Message-ID: I'm sending on this comment that I originally sent to Marie and neglected to send to Info-childes because the discussion has gotten so interesting, especially with respect to the cases of children who seem to make a distinction between their own language and that of their parents' or other speakers. A further note: both my daughters had idiosyncratic "words" as many others do, and we did our best to use their words (e.g."enky" for bottle) until they were ready to use ours. Katherine ________________________________ From: Nelson, Katherine Sent: Wed 8/29/2007 9:19 AM To: mariehojholt Subject: RE: an onomatopoeic toddler Dear Marie, As you probably know, it is usual for toddlers to have some onomatopoeic "words" although I've rarely heard of a child who combined them in sentences in the way you quote. However, individual differences and idiosyncratic approaches to learning to talk are far more prevalent than the current literature would lead you to believe, and most children settle on conventional sounds as well as meanings during the third year. It is my belief (based on tracking a daughter and granddaughter during virtually wordless second years) that some children believe that understanding the language used by parents is fine, but that that language is theirs, and there is no persuasive reason for me (the child) to learn to use it, as it doesn't express what I have to say. Or something like that. In these cases, the dam was broken at around 2 years and language flowed. It could be that your child is working on a similar "theory." My studies of word learning in natural environments, and those of other scholars, indicate very different patterns of acquisition, in terms of both numbers and kinds of words during the second year of life. For reference to this literature see my 2007 book "Young Minds in Social Worlds" Harvard University Press. And of course there are many who speculate that human languages arose using onomatopoetic sound patterns. Harald may just be following this ancient strategy, despite the availability of a more conventional symbolic system. Katherine Nelson ________________________________ From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org on behalf of mariehojholt Sent: Wed 8/29/2007 6:05 AM To: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org Subject: an onomatopoeic toddler Dear all! Being new at this network I wish to thank you all for a fantastic opportunity to correspond with equals, or, kind of. I am graduate student of linguistics in Aarhus, Denmark. Here is my question: I am looking for relevant studies of children who do not seem to acquire actual words as much as onomatopoeic sounds. My two-year-old son Harald, is developing "according to plan" but doesn't care for the "linguistic symbols that the surrounding environment has as consensus": words. Here is a short list of his sounds and utterances: "Mor (mummy) aa-aj (~not) bzzz (sound of fly) krqr (sound of breaking which means "egg") - pip-pip (sound of bird) krqr (sound of breaking" - so: Mummy, flies don't have eggs, BIRDS have eggs!" "words": water: "aah!" (sound you make after drinking) food: "mtl-mtl" (chewing-sound) sleeping/bed: "hhhrr-pfffff" (sleeping sound) toothbrush: "hrhr-hrhr" Cracker/"broken"/egg: "krqr" Pooridge: "ph-ph-ph" (sound of boiling) Apart from this he uses all the usual onomatopoeic sounds typical for children: animal sounds, vehicle sounds... He does have some actual words: Mom, dad, diper, blue, Gorm (brother), home, now, more, shoe, in, ...but not too many verbs. I hope some of you have comments on this, or links, references or anything. I am not worried about him, since he is a happy, clever boy who communicates adequately and relevantly, and - to me - intelligably. Though, I am hyperinterested in understanding his procedures and apparently somewhat onomatopoeic-ICONIC language behaviour. He is not interested in us telling him what the real words are, and if we try to push him, he ignores us or get angry. All my best, Marie Hoejholt -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mfleck at cs.uiuc.edu Wed Aug 29 19:15:23 2007 From: mfleck at cs.uiuc.edu (Margaret M. Fleck) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 14:15:23 -0500 Subject: FW: an onomatopoeic toddler In-Reply-To: <63B7BFD15E49DF42BF14DAC6E55ABC511EFE43@MAILBE.acad.gc.cuny.edu> Message-ID: Nelson, Katherine wrote: > .... However, individual differences and idiosyncratic approaches > to learning to talk are far more prevalent than the current literature > would lead you to believe, and most children settle on conventional > sounds as well as meanings during the third year. On the one hand, I'm not sure anyone really believes stories about the extent of the differences until they actually have personal experience of a kid talking in full sentences at two years and a comparable kid who is nearly mute at the same age. To put this in perspective, however, there's about a 6-month spread in when fairly normal kids learn to walk. Probably a wider spread in when they learn how to come down a ladder. And a multi-year spread in potty training and learning standard preschool manual coordination tasks, e.g. holding a pencil effectively, cutting food with a knife and fork. For the non-language tasks, there seem to be differences in inherent ability and also differences in what the kid feels inclined to put effort into. Perhaps we shouldn't be all that surprised by similar variation in language learning. As a parent, I think there's a disconnect between printed discussions of skill timing and the information that's passed around the mommy and teacher network, with the manuals tending to understate the extent of the variation. In fact, it's a common topic of discussion among parents, because they all want to reassure themselves that their kid isn't the only one who is mute at 2, not toilet trained at 3, can't hold a pencil properly at 5, or whatever. Margaret From mccune at rci.rutgers.edu Wed Aug 29 19:50:32 2007 From: mccune at rci.rutgers.edu (Lorraine McCune) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 15:50:32 -0400 Subject: FW: an onomatopoeic toddler In-Reply-To: <46D5C5CB.5040901@cs.uiuc.edu> Message-ID: I agree. In a prospective study of 20 children beginning at 8 months of age only about 2/3 were using referential words by 16 months. Following 10 until they were using "sentences", one made this transition at 19 months, one at 31 months with the rest strung out in between. Lorraine McCune At 03:15 PM 8/29/2007, Margaret M. Fleck wrote: >Nelson, Katherine wrote: >> .... However, individual differences and idiosyncratic >> approaches to learning to talk are far more prevalent than the >> current literature would lead you to believe, and most children >> settle on conventional sounds as well as meanings during the third year. >On the one hand, I'm not sure anyone really believes stories about >the extent of the differences until they >actually have personal experience of a kid talking in full sentences >at two years and a comparable kid who is nearly mute at the same age. > >To put this in perspective, however, there's about a 6-month spread >in when fairly normal kids learn to walk. >Probably a wider spread in when they learn how to come down a ladder. >And a multi-year spread in potty training >and learning standard preschool manual coordination tasks, e.g. >holding a pencil effectively, cutting food with a >knife and fork. For the non-language tasks, there seem to be >differences in inherent ability and also differences >in what the kid feels inclined to put effort into. > >Perhaps we shouldn't be all that surprised by similar variation in >language learning. > >As a parent, I think there's a disconnect between printed >discussions of skill timing and the information that's >passed around the mommy and teacher network, with the manuals >tending to understate the extent of the variation. >In fact, it's a common topic of discussion among parents, because >they all want to reassure themselves that >their kid isn't the only one who is mute at 2, not toilet trained at >3, can't hold a pencil properly at 5, or whatever. > >Margaret > > From aananda at stanford.edu Wed Aug 29 21:56:58 2007 From: aananda at stanford.edu (Bruno Estigarribia) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 17:56:58 -0400 Subject: an onomatopoeic toddler and individual differences In-Reply-To: <46D5C5CB.5040901@cs.uiuc.edu> Message-ID: Margaret M. Fleck wrote: > Nelson, Katherine wrote: >> .... However, individual differences and idiosyncratic approaches >> to learning to talk are far more prevalent than the current >> literature would lead you to believe, and most children settle on >> conventional sounds as well as meanings during the third year. > On the one hand, I'm not sure anyone really believes stories about the > extent of the differences until they > actually have personal experience of a kid talking in full sentences > at two years and a comparable kid who is nearly mute at the same age. > To put this in perspective, however, there's about a 6-month spread in > when fairly normal kids learn to walk. Probably a wider spread in > when they learn how to come down a ladder. And a multi-year spread > in potty training > and learning standard preschool manual coordination tasks, e.g. > holding a pencil effectively, cutting food with a > knife and fork. For the non-language tasks, there seem to be > differences in inherent ability and also differences > in what the kid feels inclined to put effort into. And the difference is not only regarding timing. Paths of acquisition vary enormously as well as soon as you get away from simple measures of language skill (witness the holistic vs. analytic continuum and its many different incarnations, plus my own work on yes/no questions). > > Perhaps we shouldn't be all that surprised by similar variation in > language learning. Well, but you would be surprised, (or annoyed maybe ;-)) if you were convinced language and cognition are radically different. A lot of language acquisition researchers believe that. To me, that is a completely open question. We're back to "not every typical human uses knives and forks, but every typically developing child speaks", "oh but every human uses tools", kind of discussion. Granted, walking is rather universal... > > As a parent, I think there's a disconnect between printed discussions > of skill timing and the information that's > passed around the mommy and teacher network, with the manuals tending > to understate the extent of the variation. Which information is clearly anecdotal and elicited in very uncontrolled environments, prone to all sorts of biases. Said as a parent of a 2 1/2 year old who thinks his kid is way ahead of the curve... but what do I know? Bruno Estigarribia FPG-NDRC-UNC From imoreno at uma.es Thu Aug 30 12:29:57 2007 From: imoreno at uma.es (imoreno at uma.es) Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2007 14:29:57 +0200 Subject: an onomatopoeic toddler and individual differences Message-ID: Hello, fascinating emails!!! Bruno mentions variation in the order of acquisition. Maybe we could add differences between linguistic domains (i.e. grammar, lexicon, phonology...)? This form of variation occurs in delayed language acquisition. For instance, in deaf children with cochear implants grammar development seems to go well behind lexical development. But, does it occur in some typically development children? How much variation is "normal"? I'd appreciate any references about this topic. Thanks in advance! Ignacio Moreno-Torres Universidad de M?laga Spain ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bruno Estigarribia" To: Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2007 11:56 PM Subject: an onomatopoeic toddler and individual differences > > > Margaret M. Fleck wrote: >> Nelson, Katherine wrote: >>> .... However, individual differences and idiosyncratic approaches >>> to learning to talk are far more prevalent than the current >>> literature would lead you to believe, and most children settle on >>> conventional sounds as well as meanings during the third year. >> On the one hand, I'm not sure anyone really believes stories about the >> extent of the differences until they >> actually have personal experience of a kid talking in full sentences >> at two years and a comparable kid who is nearly mute at the same age. >> To put this in perspective, however, there's about a 6-month spread in >> when fairly normal kids learn to walk. Probably a wider spread in >> when they learn how to come down a ladder. And a multi-year spread >> in potty training >> and learning standard preschool manual coordination tasks, e.g. >> holding a pencil effectively, cutting food with a >> knife and fork. For the non-language tasks, there seem to be >> differences in inherent ability and also differences >> in what the kid feels inclined to put effort into. > And the difference is not only regarding timing. Paths of acquisition > vary enormously as well as soon as you get away from simple measures of > language skill (witness the holistic vs. analytic continuum and its many > different incarnations, plus my own work on yes/no questions). >> >> Perhaps we shouldn't be all that surprised by similar variation in >> language learning. > Well, but you would be surprised, (or annoyed maybe ;-)) if you were > convinced language and cognition are radically different. A lot of > language acquisition researchers believe that. To me, that is a > completely open question. We're back to "not every typical human uses > knives and forks, but every typically developing child speaks", "oh but > every human uses tools", kind of discussion. Granted, walking is rather > universal... >> >> As a parent, I think there's a disconnect between printed discussions >> of skill timing and the information that's >> passed around the mommy and teacher network, with the manuals tending >> to understate the extent of the variation. > Which information is clearly anecdotal and elicited in very uncontrolled > environments, prone to all sorts of biases. Said as a parent of a 2 1/2 > year old who thinks his kid is way ahead of the curve... but what do I know? > Bruno Estigarribia > FPG-NDRC-UNC > > From ann.dowker at psy.ox.ac.uk Thu Aug 30 19:53:57 2007 From: ann.dowker at psy.ox.ac.uk (Ann Dowker) Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2007 20:53:57 +0100 Subject: an onomatopoeic toddler and individual differences In-Reply-To: <52489.85.57.37.237.1188476997.squirrel@gw.uma.es> Message-ID: An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: