<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Dear Everyone,</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I think
the challenge of bringing knowledge to the public and the applied domain
belongs to everyone---- no one is exempt.<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>A good standard is medicine: the level of public
knowledge about the details of medicine (cholesterol, diabetes 2) vastly
exceeds public knowledge of basic linguistic effects ( long-distance rules,</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">quantification,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>anaphora).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Our obligation
is to communicate what we know, what we do not know, the scope of the
questions,</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">and the role of personal (parental) judgement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>In medicine, we hear of "side-effects"
and "risk percentages", and some information on</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">which parts of medicine are advanced and which are still
rather primitive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>There is also
growing knowledge of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>what should
be</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">personal discretion (you decide whether a risky operation
should be done).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>(Yesterday I
spoke to a diabetes expert whose son has diabetes---unlike some parents, he
does not stop his child from going to birthday parties because cake and ice
cream are served---those are primarily personal decisions and not medical ones.
How strenuously you push a child who is behind in reading is largely a parental
decision. In retrospect I think we pushed</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">my daughter, now in law school, a bit too hard when she had
trouble reading, though her continuing absolute inability to spell suggests a
deep difference is still present.)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>The value and problems with the LENA system can only be seen if we
understand the full challenge of acquisition.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Knowing vocabulary diversity and turn-taking is relevant,
but parents must see just how small a part of the whole system</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">it is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>No one
would say that recognizing colors is a real test of vision.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>There is depth perception, astigmatism,
etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">problem lies in parents thinking that a 1/100 piece of
information is a guide to everything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>Nice to know colors, but it</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">is a small corner of the whole story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Here is where we must
collectively not be guilty of false advertising. I know a lot more about the
syntax end of things than other dimensions, so my word should perhaps be respected
in one sphere, but not as a guide to</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">them all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>We still lack
basic insights into the acquisition path, but parents should be able to get a
sense of what it is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>Parents can understand it----I just gave a very successful<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>lecture (I was worried it might not be
well-received)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>to 80 young parents
at the Wellesley Women's Forum and they were all eager to ask their children
"who bought what"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>(and try
some<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>other<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>simple explorations ).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I find that parents absorb easily
various things that produce furrowed brows in psychologists who think grammar
is somehow "too hard".<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>How can we communicate the basic
challenge of learning language in intuitive and lively ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>(I have taken a stab at this in my book
"The Prism of Grammar", but this needs to be done from many more
perspectives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>By the
way,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>writing simply is not just a
talent, but a hardwork skill ---I rewrote the book entirely three times).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>1)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>How can we communicate
how complex the achievement of learning language is?<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>A real evaluation</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">of a child's syntax would require 1000 questions—more than a
brief test can undertake.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>All tests are therefore crude measures.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Those two sentences can tell parents a lot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>What is mssing?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We need to know when children grasp ellipsis: "I want some",
but</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">not *I want every.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>We need to know just when they can handle backwards anaphora "Near him,
Bill keeps a bottle", we</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">need to know when children know you answer the first and
last wh-, but not the middle "how": "You all have blocks. Who knows how to
build what?" or parasitic gaps, also found in nursery school: " what can you
carry __without dropping__", etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>There are good indications</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">that there are separate systems underlying different parts
of syntax, so they might separately fail.<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The same challenge exists in
phonology and pragmatics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>Phonology involves all kinds of connections that are fairly well</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">understood, and many that are not, like intonation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Pragmatics involves turn-taking,
but also sophisticated implicatures, whose acquisition study is still in its
infancy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>In the DELV
test, which Harry Seymour, Jill deVilliers and I (with</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">huge help from others) developed,<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>we just scratch the surface of these questions, but in most
tests these questions are not addressed at all. Instead there is a bias toward
vocabulary and mastery of inflection, which is really a misweighting of the
core questions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It is as if you
tested athletic ability only my measuring how fast people can run.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It is relevant and useful because it is
measureable, but (as any coach knows) hardly the essence of basketball, etc.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">These are things which parents can grasp----just like we
grasp the fact that Alzheimer's research is in its infancy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>2)
We need to communicate, in light of the larger questions, what we do know about
vocabulary acquisiton, learning</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">of inflection, and how it is affected by dialect
knowledge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We do not
all agree about all of these issues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>This can be communicated</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Again,
disagreements in medicine are not in principle hidden from the public (though
some no doubt are).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Those
who are experts in these subdomains should<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>speak out about their view of, for instance, vocabulary
development as it varies across acquisition, and also different dialects</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">and cultures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">How should this be done?<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>I think a blog is a good idea.<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>And I think it might start as a kind of wikipedia of
communication disorders.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">One might ask experts in various smaller domains to provide
summaries, to which others might add commentary, and then these are made</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">known to magazines which in turn could publish excerpts and
provide leads (the NYT reports of the political blogosphere).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>From there</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">efforts to author articles might emerge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I, like Kathy, am not a technie,
but I wonder if this kind of an effort could be attached to the</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">wonderful work that Brian has done in building the CHILDES
community.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I am glad that this discussion is taking place.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Tom Roeper</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 11:56 AM, Brian MacWhinney <<a href="mailto:macw@cmu.edu">macw@cmu.edu</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div style="word-wrap:break-word">Marnie, Keith, et al.<div><br><div> I think that the likelihood of tenure review committees deciding to give credit for publications in magazines like Parenting is close to zero. Of course, there is no such thing as bad publicity and no reason not to engage in such outreach, when possible. And there is nothing wrong with setting up blogs and such. But, in the end, we are researchers and so we really ought to treat these issues as researchable topics. Of course, that means we need funding. It seems that the Canadians have figured out how to do this. If you remember, the discussion of Baby Signs last Fall eventually came upon a truly definitive review of the topic from Johnston, Durieux-Smith, & Bloom. If you would like to review that article, the link is <a href="http://www.cllrnet.ca/news/inthenews/104" target="_blank">http://www.cllrnet.ca/news/inthenews/104</a> That article itself didn't get through to Parenting, but it is certainly composed in a way that should allow the message to get through.</div>
<div> Apparently, this research was sponsored through a Canadian Center of Excellence grant that funded the Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network. Wisely, this center decided to initiate a competition for reviews of this type.</div>
<div> Clearly such a review and evaluation is now needed on LENA. It could easily come up with results that surprise all of us. In any case, I love this model of the way in which researchers can make a substantive contribution to the understanding of products targeted to parents and still end up with a grant award and a good journal publication. I wonder who could support this type of work in the States.</div>
<div><br></div><div>--Brian MacWhinney</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px"><a href="http://www.cllrnet.ca/news/inthenews/104" target="_blank">http://www.cllrnet.ca/news/inthenews/104</a></div>
</div><div class="Ih2E3d"><div><div><div>On Mar 1, 2008, at 1:27 PM, Marnie Arkenberg wrote:</div><blockquote type="cite"><font color="#000000"><br></font> <div>On LENA: Basically we all feel there needs to be some kind of dissemination of our research, not just to the scientific community but to the general public as well. As mundane as it may sound, as a paranoid new parent I read information from online parenting sources and parenting magazines--places that are quick and easy to access. It's rare for me to see a name of a researcher from our community, much less something written by us. If we want to make statements to the public about the issues and research we think important for parents to know, we need to be proactive about writing articles suited for that venue. We've set the stage for this not to happen--at last glance, at least at my institution, magazine publications didn't count much towards tenure. We can blame journalists if we want, but we certainly play a role.</div>
<div><br></div></blockquote></div></div></div></div><div class="Ih2E3d"><br>
</div></div><br>
</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Tom Roeper<br>Dept of Lingiustics<br>UMass South College<br>Amherst, Mass. 01003 ISA<br>413 256 0390<br>
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