Response to Deb Roy's study

[Susan Penfield]

A comment from Rex Sprouse ( in italics and posted elsewhere) is worth
considering in this context.

*     Less than 5 minutes ago: Deb Roy appears to equate the acquisition of
a word with the first (or with the consistent?) production of an adult-like
pronunciation of the   word. However, words are much more complex mental
objects, relating an abstract representation of sound, grammatical category
(noun, verb, etc.), morpho-syntactic features, semantic features, pragmatic
features, etc. No matter how sophisticated the technology used for recording
the child's speech, data about production alone can tell us about only one
(and I must say, for me, the least interesting) aspect of this cognitively
complex process.*
**
*       On a broader level, what I found disappointing about the talk is
that it was difficult to identify anything like a clear research question
behind the collection of massive     amounts of data. This is a very central
and very divisive matter within current linguistics: Recent technology has
made it easier to amass huge amounts of linguistic data. However, in the
absent of theoretically motivated research questions, it is difficult for me
to buy into the notion that this represents genuine progress.

*-My thoughts: What I find interesting, considering the ILAT audience, is
how very little we still know about language acquisition (first and second)
 in the context of revitalization.
 I would like to know about any targeted research studies that would be
aimed at better understanding the process.  We have teaching methods
(immersion, Master-Apprentice) which we all know are working in some
contexts -- but how, specifically?  And, what might we learn from more
focused studies, that raise clear questions, which actually might improve or
help us better understand what it takes to help people learn in
non-traditional, less formal, contexts?

Just trying to wrap my thoughts around all of this...

S.-
**********************************************************************************************
*Susan D. Penfield, Ph.D.
*
Research Coordinator, Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language
and Literacy (CERCLL),
Faculty affiliate in English,  Linguistics, Language, Reading and Culture
Second Language Acquisition and Teaching Ph.D. Program (SLAT),
American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI)
The Southwest Center
University of Arizona,
Tucson, Arizona 85721
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