Response to Deb Roy's study

[Lauren Zentz]

This might be a good book to start with:


Ochs, Elinor and Bambi Schieffelin (1986). Language Socialization Across
Cultures. New York: Cambridge University Press.

On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 11:40 AM, Susan Penfield
<susan.penfield at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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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