The History Of Child Language Studies

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Introduction
Ingrams textbook has the terms method,

description and explanation as a subtitle. This course is designed to teach a little about each of these terms and how they interact to produce a record of first language acquisition. A simple approach to teaching first language acquisition would simply provide a description of childrens language through the first three years of life. There are certainly many textbooks on language acquisition that take this approach. is that the description is provided without a 4/14/12 historical background. Ingram identifies three

One limitation of focusing solely on description

Table Historical Approaches

Diary Studies Age 0-1;0 1;0-1;6 Stern (1924) Preliminary stage First period ALS 1 single word stage Large Sample Nice (1925) MLU single-word utterances Longitudinal Brown (1973)

1;6-2;0

Second period

early sentence stage

1-1.99

Stage I: semantic roles

3;0

Third period 2-2;6

3.5

short sentence stage

2-2.49 2.5-2.99

Stage II: inflection Stage III: modality Stage IV: embedding

4;0

Fourth period 2;6+

complete sentence stage

3-3.99

4+

Stage V: coordination

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Ingram identifies these historical periods in terms of both the methods common during the time as well as their theoretical approach.
Method Diary Studies Large Sample Longitudinal

Theory unifying principles behaviorist linguistic rule

acquisition

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Three Major Periods of Child Language Studies

A. Diary Studies: baby biographies (1876-1926)
1. 2.

Method: parent observer, unsystematic, diverse

inductive,

Description: major diaries- Taine 1877, Darwin 1877, Stern & Stern 1907 Die Kindersprache, major journal Pedagogical Seminary edited by G. Stanley Hall; later diaries: Leopold 1939-49 on Hildegard, Lewis 1936, 51 on K.

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3.

Theory: nativist, if any (see Taine 1877, quote, p. 9) We only help it [the child: DI] to catch them [general ideas: DI] by the suggestion of our words. It attaches to them ideas that we do not expect and spontaneously generalizes outside and beyond our cadres. At times it invents not only the meaning of the word but the word itself... In short, it learns a ready-made language as a true musician learns counterpoint or a true poet prosody; it is an original genius adapting itself to a form constructed bit by bit by a succession of original geniuses; if language were wanting, the 4/14/12 child would recover it little by little or would

B. Large Sample Studies (1926-1957)

1.

Method: large number of subjects, crosssectional, systematic, small samples per child, quantitative analysis. Description: major studies- M. Smith (Iowa), D. McCarthy & M. Templin (Minnesota); Templin 1957 Theory: behaviorist, if any, e.g., Bloomfield 1933 on word acquisition (see p. 19). (Also Skinner 1957)

2.

3.

child vocalizes [da] child imitates similar adult words, e.g. doll as [da] child associates sound to context child displaces to broader context 4/14/12

C. Longitudinal and Experimental Studies (1957- present)

1. 2.

Method: 3 children, regular visits, 2 observers, recorded and transcribed. Description: major studies- Brown 1973 on Adam, Eve, Sarah, Bloom 1970 on Eric, Gia, Kathryn, Braine 1963 on Gregory, Andrew, Steven. Chomsky (see p 24): multiple methods; competence vs. performance

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II. Theory: two approaches (p. 27)

a) Child Language: data oriented, inductive, focus on what

children doovergeneralizations, local strategies, dynamic grammarconstructionist

b) Language Acquisition: theory oriented, deductive, focus

on what children do not doconstraints, rich interpretations, static grammarmaturationist

c) These

approaches offer different perspectives on restructuring in child grammari. Constructionist approaches limit restructuring and make it subject to environmental conditions. ii. Nativist approaches suggest two posibilities:
1. Strong Inclusion Hypothesis (p. 70)childs grammar is

adult-like, no learning
2. Restructuring Hypothesisdue to rare input or maturation,

again no learning

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Assessment:

we need to combine the methodological rigor of Child Language research with the theoretical orientation of Language Acquisition, i.e. CL needs more theory, LA needs more data. language acquisition, language development one that predicts

What is required is a real theory of child

Current theories describe rather than explain

language acquisition, c.f. Brainard 1978 them

They lack independent evidence to support They do not make interesting predictions They ignore semantics and pragmatics
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al. (1996), Methods for Assessing Childrens Syntax.

III. Current methods of data collection spontaneous production data in McDaniel et c.f., Demuth Collecting
Spontaneous language sampling
1.

It is important to know the strengths and weaknesses of each method

A.

Strengths
a. b. c.

Provides a general picture of all the childs linguistic abilities May reveal unexpected or novel features of child language, including errors, omissions and overgeneralizations Documents language environment (Input)

2.

Weaknesses
a. b. c.

Transcription and analysis of language samples is timeconsuming It is easy to miss rare constructions, e.g., passives, relative clauses 4/14/12 Variation between children requires more than one subject

B.

Parental diaryhistorically the first method 1. Strengthresearcher is familiar with the child and the childs language 2. Weaknesstends to be unsystematic

C. Experimental approaches

StrengthCan collect a great deal of data on a targeted linguistic feature fail to collect data on related features, context; the method may not apply to all languages
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WeaknessMay not be ecologically valid; may