Language acquisition

Question 1

Stages of lang development

Answer 1

babbling, utterances (telegraphic), holophrastic (two word), vocabulary, narrative

Question 2

Babbling

Answer 2

Start at same time as spoken (10-14m)- unccomunicative and syllabic, ‘mabble’
Quebec: petitto and marentette (91); ASL: Mastaka 2000
‘universality’ consistent cross linguistically- Lee 2010
Primary acquisition step cross-modal.

Question 3

Hollophrastic stage: utterances

Answer 3

Signing comes before spoken due to physical/motor constraints- linguistically ready not physically
Orlanksy and Bonvillian 85: 8.6m for deaf, 10-13m in spoken (gesell and thompson 34/capute 1986) Prinz 1979*

Question 4

Prinz 1979*

Answer 4

hearing child with deaf mother- first sign well before first word– fine motor development matures before spoken vocal apparatus for speech and visual feedback

Question 5

Holophrastic iconicity advantage?

Answer 5

First sign at 18m are not iconic and match spoken words produced (Tolar 2007)
after first words mirror dev timelimes and type of words: referential ocntext and concrete labelling up to 12 months (goldin meadow 2003/petitto 1988)
CONFOUND?- first words heard are not iconic
BUT iconicity seems important to 2L sign learners (morgan 2002)

Question 6

Vocabulary

Answer 6

Vocab spurt at same time- 18m in deaf and hearing Woll 1988
Developmentally mirrored- 3yo vocab same size (300w)- morgan 2008
Grammar develops through schooling and interactions, with discourse functions from 2-3 (school age) Morgan 2008

Question 7

Telegraphic

Answer 7

Two word stage is the same in both (woll 1998), same type of words and combinations apart from obvious grammar eg (where mummy, mummy where)

Question 8

Narrative

Answer 8

Dev through narrattive aids read and literacy skills and ability to recount evens with structure, plots, sub plots, aims and objectives
- predicts emo, soc, cog and academic readiness to start school- mccabe and peterson–
Hearing children are much more scaffolded for this, esp by 3/4 yo; deaf children are slower with grammar but okay for structure

Question 9

Phonological similarities in H and D

Answer 9

HS progresses in complexity; mostly errors in HS

• Morgan 2007- deaf child 19-34m DoD- unmarked common HS come first- same as in hearing phonemes and replace marked with unmarked
• Vihman 1996: feature markedness impacts substitution- as vocab increases reduces need for substitution
• -Hearing children delete final consonants,weak syllables and consonant clusters- Jakobsen 1968)

Question 10

Phonological dissimilarities in H and D

Answer 10

Substitution in sign is predominantly ‘whole word’ rather than at phoneme: phoneme (Brown 1979)
Marked HS with unmarked circular HS (Morgan 07)
Linguistic differences: (Hockett 60 meaningless features) in sign parameters build to words, spoken phonemes to morphemes– therefore Emmorey 2002: organisation encourages different levels of substitution

Question 11

Morphology- same or different?

Answer 11

Plain verbs can be inflected with facial expression, or SV agreement
Morphology develops slowly in ASL BSL LSN LIS- confusion with person
Newport and Meier 1985 initially use word order without inflections (give) uninflected until 3; 6yo, gain complexity at 5yo

Question 12

Classifier (eg plural– change word somehow)

Space in sign

Answer 12

Both slow to develop in sign, although spoken also have problems with space
Under 5 use paths of motion/location
Over 5 describe sequentially over simultaneously

Question 13

What factors may affect development compared to spoken?

Answer 13

Exposure (must be looking), and 10% only are DoD

Visual field: impacted by looking at VF and lip pattern

Question 14

Visual field

Answer 14

Blind 13-14yo dont recognise sounds with visible articulation, same in deaf- don’t recognise visibly identical sounds (Gokesz 1972)
Mills 1983: hearing use auditory and visual information, so D are limited
Morgan 2007: more errors when signed in peripheral vision or small areas eg neck- unique to deaf children; FB is important

Question 15

Morgan 2007

Answer 15

Morgan 2007: 19-24m, natural interaction with mother, all sign recorded; progression in phonological complexity, structural change and substitution, constraints to visual modality cause SL specific patterns- errors in HS and peripheral vision and whole word substitution

Question 16

SLI in deafness

Answer 16

Morgan 2007; case study of DoD child with no other explanation for SAL difficulties
Mason 2010: large scale study; found 13 children with SLI: organisation is so that it can surface in both modalities (not due to auditory processing deficit)

Question 17

challenges in studying/comparing deaf/hearing

Answer 17

Assessments: written english instructions, need clincial admin and live fluent signer with knowledge of deaf culture (organidou 2015)
Available tests: BSL RST (1999), BSL PT (2005)

Reading age: Conrad 1979: Large scale in eng and wales; low reading age- suitability of tests and comparison?
also shown by Walters 06: dutch deaf; 4% at expected age.

Comparison samples: should be Dod native, btut very small pop so sample has wide varaibility of exposure, poor quality and limited exposure to doH

Question 18

Nativity advantage

Answer 18

Emmorey 2005: native signers are more sensitive to errors of verb agreement than early
Gowan 1999: utterance complexity wider in early than native

Question 19

Less than 10% of children are born Dod

Answer 19

Mayberry and Eichen 2011

Question 20

problems with studying population

Answer 20

a lot of variability in age of exposure and quality of this exposure; children exposured to sign and speech (HoD) show a unique type of bilingualism- cross-modal bilingualism; code-blending input and output (simultaneous articulation of speech and sign)- Van den Bogaerde; Baker, 2009

Question 21

Klatter-Foler 2006

Answer 21

Dutch ltnl study 3 years; bimodal bilinguals: both modalities were better than monolingual peers in syntactic complexity: outcomes predicted by speech reading and HL severity