MLU and comparison criteria

[Annette Karmiloff-Smith]

The problem that remains for me mentioned by Ann Peters "at least for adults".
Surely MLU calculations are an attempt to get at what the linguistic
representations
are "for the child".  So, it could be that raggazzi is a plural for
the child of raggazzo
and that "for the child" there is a representational relationship
between the two,
but it could be that the child has learnt "raggazzi" as an unanalyzed
whole linked to a
specific context.  In other words, the child could be matching the
phonology rather than
the morphology.  I have no solution except there may be clauses in
intonation  or the
rest of each child's particular productions, etc., but the problem is
real in my view,
and may be more so for highly agglutinating languages.
Annette
At 7:27 am -1000 17/12/00, Ann Peters wrote:
>While I agree with the points made by Dan and Yonata, I'd like to add a
>couple more thoughts. One way to look at MLU is to consider how many *bits
>of meaning* are being strung together. This is the issue Dan was
>addressing.
>Another way is to consider how many *segmentable pieces* of language are
>being strung together. My feeling is that we need to think about *both*
>kinds of measures.
>>From this point of view, to take Dan's examples:
>	ragazz-i probably contains 2 'pieces'
>	parl-o probably contains 2 as well - at least for adults.
>Although I'd guess that the Hebrew restriction on at most 2
>"morphemes" for any word probably works fine for Hebrew and Italian, it
>wouldn't do for Turkish or Finnish. In other words, the degree of
>'agglutinativity' of a language is also important.
>I agree with Dan's and Yonata's points about productivity.
>ann
>
>
>****************************
>Dr. Ann M. Peters, Professor
>Department of Linguistics
>University of Hawai`i               email: ann at hawaii.edu
>1890 East West Road, Rm 569         phone: 808 956-3241
>Honolulu, HI  96822                 fax:   808 956-9166
>http://www2.hawaii.edu/~ann/

--
________________________________________________________________
Professor A.Karmiloff-Smith, FBA, FMedSci, FRSA, MAE, C.Psychol.
Head, Neurocognitive Development Unit,
Institute of Child Health,
30 Guilford Street,
London WC1N 1EH, U.K.
tel: 0207 905 2754
fax: 0207 242 7717
http://www.ich.ucl.ac.uk/units/ncdu/NDU_homepage.htm
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