Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-qdpjg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-16T23:47:03.418Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What is a representative language sample for word and sound acquisition?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 September 2018

Naomi Yamaguchi
Naomi Yamaguchi*
Affiliation:
Laboratoire de Phonétique et Phonologie, CNRS and Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Naturalistic data are a useful source for language acquisition research. Recently, the emphasis has been placed on using denser corpora, in order to capture a more accurate picture of child language development. However, working with large amounts of data raises resource issues, since it is time-consuming to record and to transcribe. In this article, I focus on what would be the ideal duration of a naturalistic recording for it to be considered a representative enough sample of children's linguistic behaviours to observe the acquisition of words and sounds. Some of the results suggest that 30 minutes of recording may be enough to capture these specific developments, but these results are discussed in the perspective of what an ideal session could be.

Résumé

Les données naturalistes sont une ressource utile pour la recherche en acquisition du langage. Récemment, l'emphase a été mise sur l'importance de corpus plus denses afin de rendre compte de façon précise du développement du langage chez l'enfant. Cependant, travailler avec de grandes quantités de données soulève des problèmes de ressources, étant donné le coût en temps de l'enregistrement et de la transcription. Dans cet article, je traite de la durée idéale d'un enregistrement naturaliste, pour que ce dernier soit considéré comme un échantillon représentatif des comportements linguistiques des enfants quand on veut observer l'acquisition des mots et des sons. Certains des résultats suggèrent que 30 minutes d'enregistrement peuvent suffire pour rendre compte de ces développements spécifiques, mais ces résultats sont discutés par rapport à ce que pourrait être une session idéale.

Keywords

methodologylanguage acquisitionnaturalistic datalexical developmentphonological developmentméthodologieacquisition du langagedonnées naturalistesdéveloppement lexicaldéveloppement phonologique
Type
Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 63 , Issue 4: Phonetic/phonological development and input characteristics in early lexical acquisition/Le développement phonétique/phonologique et les caractéristiques de l'apport linguistique dans l'acquisition lexicale précoce , December 2018 , pp. 667 - 685
Copyright
© Canadian Linguistic Association/Association canadienne de linguistique 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bassano, Dominique, Eme, Pascale-Elsa, and Champaud, Christian. 2005. A naturalistic study of early lexical development: General processes and inter-individual variations in French children. First Language 25(1): 67–101.Google Scholar
Bates, Elizabeth, Bretherton, Inge, and Snyder, Lynn. 1988. From first words to grammar: Individual differences and dissociable mechanisms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bates, Elizabeth, Dale, Philip S., and Thal, Donna. 1995. Individual differences and their implications for theories of language development. In The handbook of child language, ed. Fletcher, Paul and MacWhinney, Brian, 96–151. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bates, Elizabeth, Marchman, Virginia A., Thal, Donna J., Fenson, Larry, Dale, Philip, Steven Reznicka, J., Reilly, Judy, and Hartung, Jeff. 1994. Developmental and stylistic variation in the composition of early vocabulary. Journal of Child Language 21(1): 85–123.Google Scholar
Beckman, Mary E., Yoneyama, Kiyoko, and Edwards, Jan. 2003. Language-specific and language-universal aspects of lingual obstruent productions in Japanese-acquiring children. Journal of the Phonetic Society of Japan 7(2): 18–28.Google Scholar
de Boysson-Bardies, Bénédicte and Vihman, Marilyn M.. 1991. Adaptation to language: Evidence from babbling and first words in four languages. Language 67(2): 297–319.Google Scholar
Chabanal, Damien, Liegeois, Loic, and Chanier, Thierry. 2015. Acquisition de la variation phonologique et recueil de corpus d'interactions naturelles parents-enfants : nouvelle méthode, nouveaux enjeux. Lidil 51: 65–88.Google Scholar
Conant, Susan. 1987. The relationship between age and MLU in young children: A second look at Klee and Fitzgerald's data. Journal of Child Language 14(1): 169–173.Google Scholar
Demuth, Katherine. 1995. Problems in the acquisition of tonal systems. In The acquisition of non-linear phonology, ed. Archibald, John, 111–134. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Demuth, Katherine. 2008. Exploiting corpora for language acquisition research. In Corpora in language acquisition research: History, methods, perspectives, ed. Behrens, Heike, 199–205. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Demuth, Katherine, Culbertson, Jennifer, and Alter, Jennifer. 2006.Word-minimality, epenthesis, and coda licensing in the early acquisition of English. Language and Speech 49(2): 137–174.Google Scholar
Demuth, Katherine and Kehoe, Margaret. 2006. The acquisition of word-final clusters in French. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 5: 59–81.Google Scholar
Edwards, Jan and Beckman, Mary E.. 2008. Methodological questions in studying consonant acquisition. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics 22(12): 937–956.Google Scholar
Eisenbess, Sonia. 2010. Production methods in language acquisition research. In Experimental methods in language acquisition research, ed. Blom, Elma and Unsworth, Sharon, 11–34. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Fenson, Larry, Dale, Philip S., Steven Reznick, J., Bates, Elizabeth, Thal, Donna J., Pethick, Stephen J., Tomasello, Michael, Mervis, Carolyn B., and Stiles, Joan. 1994. Variability in early communicative development. Chicago: Society for Research in Child Development. URL http://www.jstor.org/stable/1166093.Google Scholar
Fenson, Larry, Dale, Philip S., Steven Reznick, J., Thal, Donna J., Bates, Elizabeth, Hartung, J.P., Pethick, S., and Reilly, J.S.. 1993. The MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories: User's guide and technical manual. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.Google Scholar
Fenson, Larry, Marchman, Virginia A., Thal, Donna J., Dale, Philip S., Steven Reznick, J., and Bates, Elizabeth. 2007. MacArthur-Bates communicative development inventories. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes, second ed.Google Scholar
Fikkert, Paula. 1994. On the acquisition of prosodic structure. Doctoral dissertation, Rijksuniversiteit Leiden. URL http://hdl.handle.net/2066/32125.Google Scholar
Fikkert, Paula. 2007. Acquiring phonology. In The Cambridge handbook of phonology, ed. de Lacy, Paul, 537–554. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fougeron, Cécile and Jun, Sun-Ah. 1998. Rate effects on French intonation: Prosodic organization and phonetic realization. Journal of Phonetics 26(1): 45–69.Google Scholar
Freitas, Maria João. 2003. The acquisition of onset clusters in European Portuguese. Probus 15(1): 23–46.Google Scholar
Gilkerson, Jill and Richards, Jeffrey A.. 2008. The LENA natural language study. Technical report, LENA Foundation, Boulder CO.Google Scholar
Glas, Ludivine and Kern, Sophie. 2015. Early vocabulary development in french monolingual children and activity types. Presented at the Workshop on Infant Language Development, Stockholm.Google Scholar
Gleason, Jean Berko, Ely, R, Phillips, B, and Zaretsky, Elena. 2009. Alligators all around: The acquisition of animal terms in English and Russian. In Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology of language: Research in the tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin, ed. Guo, Jiansheng, Lieven, Elena, Budwig, Nancy, Ervin-Tripp, Susan, Nakamura, Keiko, and Ozcaliskan, Seyda, 17–26. New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Grégoire, Antoine. 1937. L'apprentissage du langage: les deux premières années. Paris: Alcan.Google Scholar
Grosjean, François and Deschamps, Alain. 1975. Analyse contrastive des variables temporelles de l'anglais et du français: vitesse de parole et variables composantes, phénomènes d'hésitation. Phonetica 31(3–4): 144–184.Google Scholar
Kern, Sophie. 2003. Le compte-rendu parental au service de l’évaluation de la production lexicale des enfants français entre 16 et 30 mois. Glossa 85: 48–62.Google Scholar
Kern, Sophie. 2007. Lexicon development in French-speaking infants. First Language 37(3): 227–250.Google Scholar
Kern, Sophie and Gayraud, Frédérique. 2010. Inventaire français du développement communicatif. Grenoble: Editions La Cigale.Google Scholar
Leaper, Campbell and Gleason, Jean Berko. 1996. The relationship of play activity and gender to parent and child sex-typed communication. International Journal of Behavioral Development 19(4): 689–703.Google Scholar
Lieven, Elena and Behrens, Heike. 2012. Dense sampling. In Research methods in child language: A practical guide, ed. Hoff, Erika, 226–239. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, Brian. 2000. The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, third ed.Google Scholar
Maratsos, Michael. 2000. More overregularizations after all : New data and discussion on Marcus, Pinker, Ullman, Hollander, Rosen and Xu. Journal of Child Language 27(1): 183–212.Google Scholar
Marcus, Gary F., Pinker, Steven, Ullman, Michael, Hollander, Michelle, John Rosen, T., Xu, Fei, and Clahsen, Harald. 1992. Overregularization in language acquisition. Chicago: Society for Research in Child Development.Google Scholar
Maslen, Robert J. C., Theakston, Anna L., Lieven, Elena V. M., and Tomasello, Michael. 2004. A dense corpus study of past tense and plural overregularization in English. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 47(6): 1319–1333.Google Scholar
Rose, Yvan. 2000. Headedness and prosodic licencing in the L1 acquisition of phonology. Doctoral dissertation, McGill University.Google Scholar
Rose, Yvan and MacWhinney, Brian. 2014. The PhonBank project: Data and software-assisted methods for the study of phonology and phonological development. In The Oxford handbook of corpus phonology, ed. Durand, Jacques, Gut, Ulrike, and Kristoffersen, Gjert, 380–401. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rose, Yvan, MacWhinney, Brian, Byrne, Rodrigue, Hedlund, Gregory, Maddocks, Keith, O'Brien, Philip, and Wareham, Todd. 2006. Introducing Phon: A software solution for the study of phonological acquisition. In Proceedings of the 30th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, ed. Bamman, David, Magnitskaia, Tatiana, and Zaller, Coleen, 489–500. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Rouas, Jean-Luc, Farinas, Jérôme, and Pellegrino, François. 2004. Évaluation automatique du débit de la parole sur des donnés multilingues spontanées. In XXVe journées d’étude sur la parole, 437–440. Fez, Morocco.Google Scholar
Rowland, Caroline F. and Fletcher, Sarah L.. 2006. The effect of sampling on estimates of lexical specificity and error rates. Journal of Child Language 33(4): 859–877.Google Scholar
Rowland, Caroline F., Fletcher, Sarah L., and Freudenthal, Daniel. 2008. How big is big enough? Assessing the reliability of data from naturalistic samples. In Corpora in language acquisition research: History, methods, perspectives, ed. Behrens, Heike, 1–24. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Salazar Orvig, Anne, Marcos, Haydée, Heurdier, Julien, and Da Silva, Christine. in press. Referential features, speech genres and activity types. In Sources of variation in first language acquisition: Languages, contexts, and learners, ed. Hickmann, Maya, Veneziano, Edy, and Jisa, Harriet, Trends in Language Acquisition Research. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
dos Santos, Christophe. 2007. Développement phonologique en français langue maternelle: Une étude de cas. Doctoral dissertation, Université Lumière Lyon 2.Google Scholar
Tamis-LeMonda, Catherine S., Shannon, Jacqueline D., Cabrera, Natasha J., and Lamb, Michael E.. 2004. Fathers and mothers at play with their 2- and 3-year-olds: Contributions to language and cognitive development. Child Development 75(6): 1806–1820.Google Scholar
Tomasello, Michael and Stahl, Daniel. 2004. Sampling children's spontaneous speech: How much is enough? Journal of Child Language 31(1): 101–121.Google Scholar
Vihman, Marilyn May, Macken, Marlys. A., Miller, Ruth, Simmons, Hazel, and Miller, Jim. 1985. From babbling to speech: A re-assessment of the continuity issue. Language 61(2): 397–445.Google Scholar
Wauquier, Sophie and Yamaguchi, Naomi. 2013. Templates in French. In The emergence of phonology: Whole word approaches and cross-linguistic evidence, ed. Vihman, Marilyn and Keren-Portnoy, Tamar, 317–342. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Yamaguchi, Naomi. 2012. Parcours d'acquisition des sons du langage chez deux enfants francophones. Doctoral dissertation, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3.Google Scholar