Pace of early language development

[Brian MacWhinney]

Matthew,

     Actually, my analysis was based on this same assumption.  The  
Doppler effect should be clearest between adults and young teens.   
Labov also emphasizes the role of women in their twenties, alongside  
young male teens, but the general point is that young people in  
various social configurations are the chief instigators of new sound  
patterns, grammaticalizations, neologisms, and the rest.  Toddlers are  
certainly not the sources.  Although younger children not innovators  
in this way, they can play another role in terms of implementing cue  
hierarchy reconfiguration and leveling.
     Regarding the famous working class/middle class split in the UK  
and Basil Bernstein's ideas about a restricted code, you may find this  
analysis of UK preschools interesting, if only historically:

MacWhinney, B., & Osser, H. (1977). Verbal planning functions in  
children's speech. Child Development, 48, 978-985.

Of course that was all before the large expansion of immigrant  
populations in the UK.  When one factors in the role of having  
additional L1 sources, then the Linguistic Special Relativity effect  
would be enhanced.  Please don't ask me to do the math.

-- Brian

On Aug 3, 2009, at 6:28 AM, Matthew Saxton wrote:

> I think Brian’s suggestion is ingenious. However, to my knowledge,  
> language change is especially driven by young people in the teenage  
> years – with the introduction of new meanings, terms and phrases –  
> rather than by toddlers.
>
> The perception of a linguistic decline over successive generations  
> is sometimes driven by political considerations. A recent U.K.  
> example is the Bercow Review (by the same John Bercow who is now  
> Speaker of the House of Commons). Without citing any specific  
> sources, his report suggests that:
>
> Approximately 50% of children in some socio-economically  
> disadvantaged populations have speech and language skills that are  
> significantly lower than those of other children of the same age.
>
> The implication is that a steep decline is in train within the U.K.,  
> ascribable to socioeconomic factors. One such factor is whether or  
> not English is the child’s first language. It has become  
> increasingly common for very young children, who have had little  
> exposure to English, to be placed in English-language Nursery  
> settings. Such children will naturally depress average scores on  
> standardised language tests, especially in the early stages of their  
> exposure to English. But one could not argue from such data that the  
> language learning capacities of children had declined in any way.
>
> Regards,
>
> Matthew Saxton.
>
>
>
> *********************************************************************************************************
>
> Department of Psychology and Human Development,
> Institute of Education,
> University of London,
> 25 Woburn Square,
> London,
> WC1H 0AA.
>
> Tel: 020-7612-6509
> Fax: 020-7612-6304
>
> http://www.ioe.ac.uk
>
>
>
> >


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