Browsing by Subject "Language acquisition"
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Item The acquisition of German phonology by children(1999) Grantham, Mary Carol; Louden, Mark LaurenceItem The acquisition-learning distinction : implications for the theory and practice of language teaching ; Dialectal variation in the intonation of verb final clauses(1989) Burnes, Ann Elizabeth; Donahue, Frank E.; Chun, Dorothy M.Item Auditory constraints on infant speech acquisition : a dynamic systems perspective(2003-05) Von Hapsburg, Deborah; Davis, Barbara L. (Barbara Lockett)Item Bilingual First Language Acquisition (BFLA) in children of bilingual/bicultural families : an annotated bibliography for parents and teachers(2013-08) Foster, Damiel Theresa; Horwitz, Elaine Kolker, 1950-Bilingual First Language Acquisition is not a new concept in the field of bilingualism but it is one that has become increasingly prevalent today. Inspired by my own BFLA background, this report is designed to grant some insight into this phenomenon that is presently observable worldwide. It is designed as an annotated bibliography in that it presents literature summaries of twenty-three articles concerning the BFLA theme. It is meant as a guide for parents and educators who are raising bilingual children in a world where bilingualism is not only prevalent and essential but also incredibly admirable.Item Constraints on infant speech acquisition : a cross-language perspective(2001-08) Gildersleeve-Neumann, Christina Elke; Davis, Barbara L. (Barbara Lockett)This study explored the relative contributions of child-internal production factors and perceptual influences from the ambient language on early speech-+ acquisition. Research has suggested that both articulatory complexity and perceptual distinctiveness impact a language's phonetic inventory; however, the ways these two properties interact during speech acquisition is not well understood. Quichua, spoken in Highland Ecuador, differs from English in many phonological properties. Babbling and early words of seven Quichua-learning infants between 9 and 16 months at the onset were followed longitudinally for 6 months. They were compared to the babbling and early words of Englishlearning infants and to Quichua and English adult speech samples. Production factors predominated in the babbling and early words of the Quichua infants. The infants' productions in the two language environments were more similar than the Quichua infants' speech productions were to the Quichua adult language models. Infants from both language environments primarily produced coronal stops and nasals, lower left quadrant vowels, simple consonantvowel syllables, one-syllable utterances, as well as similar predicted intrasyllabic consonant-vowel co-occurrence and intersyllabic consonant-consonant and vowel-vowel variegation patterns. Evidence of ambient language influences was apparent in consonant and vowel inventories and utterance length in the older infants. Dorsals, fricatives, and affricates occurred more frequently, and labials and liquids occurred less frequently in Quichua than English-learning infants. Quichua infants also produced more low vowels in late babbling and more two- and three-or-more syllable words. These findings all mirror Quichua properties. In addition, the Quichua infants' lower level of word use and shorter babbling length appear to reflect cultural influences. These findings indicate that child-internal production factors, ambient language influences and cultural norms must all be considered in an attempt to understand early speech acquisition. Many of the production patterns observed in the infants' utterances also occurred in the adult ambient language, although not to the same extent as in the infants. Based on the parallel findings in infants and adults, it appears that production-based factors are a principle underlying factor in babbling and first words, and are so basic to the production mechanism that they are retained to a lesser extent in modern languages.Item The development of accuracy in early speech acquisition: relative contributions of production and auditory perceptual factors(2005) Warner-Czyz, Andrea Dawn; Davis, Barbara L. (Barbara Lockett)Item Expressing emotions in a first and second language : evidence from French and English(2010-12) Paik, Jee Gabrielle; Birdsong, David; Blyth, Carl; Donaldson, Bryan; Meier, Richard; Schallert, DianeThis dissertation presents results from a study on the expression of emotions in a second language in order to address two overarching research questions: 1) What does the acquisition of L2 emotion lexicon and discourse features tell us about the pragmatic and communicative competence of late learners and the internalization of L2-specific concepts, and 2) Knowing that expressing emotions in L2 is one of the most challenging tasks for L2 learners (Dewaele, 2008), what can late L2 learners do at end-state, with regards to ultimate attainment and the possibility of nativelikeness? Narratives of positive and negative emotional experiences were elicited from late L2 learners of English and French at end-state, both in their L1 and L2. First, the acquisition of L2 emotion words was analyzed through the productivity and lexical richness of the emotion vocabulary of the bilinguals. Analysis of L2 emotion concepts was also conducted through the distribution of emotion lemmas across morphosyntactic categories. Lexical choice of emotion words was also investigated. Results showed that although L2 English and L2 French bilinguals' narratives were shorter than the monolinguals' and the proportion of emotion word tokens were fewer than that of monolinguals', bilinguals showed greater lexical richness than the monolinguals. In terms of morphosyntactic categories, bilinguals behaved in a nativelike pattern such that L2 English bilinguals favored adjectives and L2 French bilinguals preferred nouns/verbs. This pattern was held constant across the first languages of the bilinguals. With respect to lexical choice, bilinguals used the same emotion lemmas used the most by monolinguals. On occasion, non-nativelike patterns also emerged, suggesting both L1 transfer on L2 (L2 English bilinguals favoring nouns/verbs) and L2 transfer on L1 (L1 English bilinguals favoring nouns/verbs). However, these rare instances could be explained by individual and typological variability. The findings suggest that late L2 learners can achieve nativelike levels of attainment in L2, providing evidence against the existence of a critical period for the acquisition of L2 pragmatics and culture-specific L2 lexicon. In a separate analysis, the L2 discourse of emotion was investigated under a corpus linguistic framework, in order to shed some light into the ways late L2 learners of English and French talk about emotions in narratives of personal stories. The use of stance lemmas and tokens, and the distribution of these stance markers across categories of certainty and doubt evidentials, emphatics, hedges, and modals, as well as lexical choice of stance were analyzed. This was followed by an analysis of discourse features, such as figurative language, reported speech, epithets, depersonalization, and amount of detail. Results showed that although bilinguals produced significantly less stance lemmas and tokens than monolinguals, in terms of the distribution of stance categories, the French group (L2 French and L1 French bilinguals) behaved in a nativelike pattern, favoring emphatics, certainty evidentials, doubt evidentials, hedges, and modals. The English group's results, on the other hand, were somewhat inconsistent, in that neither L2 English bilinguals, nor L1 English bilinguals followed the distribution pattern of English monolinguals. In terms of nativelike performance, we conclude that the L2 French bilinguals did perform nativelike with regards to stance marking, and that L2 English bilinguals also performed nativelike, but only for certain categories of stance. Also, L2 English transfer on L1 French was evidenced for L1 French bilinguals. Analysis of discourse features revealed between 1 up to 10 bilinguals (L2 English or French) out of 31 who used those features which were only evidenced in native speech in previous research. The findings here, once again suggest that late L2 learners can acquire aspects of L2 discourse to a nativelike degree.Item Gender acquisition in Spanish by first and second language acquirers(Texas Tech University, 1985-08) Cain, Jacquelin PardueNot availableItem A grammatical approach to topic and focus : a syntactic analysis with preliminary evidence from language acquisition(2011-08) Lyu, Hee Young; Meier, Richard P.; Green, Lisa J.; Wechsler, Stephen M.; Beavers, John T.; Asher, Nicholas M.The goal of this dissertation is to argue on the basis of the minimalist framework that the topichood of sentence topics and contrastive focus result from derivational and structural differences in the left periphery and to provide acquisition data from child language to support this claim, showing data from Korean, a free word-order and pro-drop language in which topics and contrastive foci are realized morphologically. In Korean, topic phrases merge in the left periphery and contrastive focus phrases undergo scrambling, one of the shared properties of free word-order languages. It is consistent in fixed word-order languages such as Italian and Hungarian and a free word-order language like Korean that topics merge and contrastive foci move to the left. Topics precede contrastive foci: topics merge in TopP, a higher functional projection than FocP, to which focus phrases move. In the process of language acquisition, the derivational and structural differences between topic phrases and contrastive focus phrases may have influences on the developmental order of grammar acquisition. In acquisition data from two-year-old Korean children, topics emerge earlier than contrastive foci, indicating that topic and contrastive focus are also acquisitionally different. This study is the first attempt to examine the structural differences and the influence on language acquisition of morphologically derived topic phrases and contrastive focus phrases in acquisition data from a free word-order and pro-drop language. This study shows the structural consistency of topic and contrastive focus between a free word-order language and fixed word-order languages. The syntactic and acquisitional distinction of topic merge and contrastive focus movement is compatible with the semantic and pragmatic approaches to topic and focus. This study provides evidence of the syntactic differences between topic and contrastive focus without dependence on phonetic features; therefore, this study is a base for drawing a map of the left periphery of human languages.Item Imitation of words and actions across cultures(2015-08) Klinger, Jörn; Bannard, Colin; Beaver, David; Echols, Catharine; Legare, Cristine; Quinto-Pozos, David; Woodbury, AnthonyHumans imitate in a unique way. They imitate selectively, that is, they imitate intentional actions at a higher rate than accidental ones. At the same time humans tend to faithfully imitate actions that do not seem to be relevant to an end goal. Selectively imitating intentional actions allows us to learn efficiently from others, while faithful imitation makes it possible to acquire complex cultural conventions without immediately understanding the contribution of each of its components. Recent studies suggest that this unique way of imitating is universal across cultures and enables humans to develop complex cultural practices that set them apart from other species. The evidence so far, however, is almost exclusively based on studies about the imitation of actions, while little work has been done on the imitation of language. Language is arguably humanity's most important cultural product and unlike instrumental actions that are restricted by the laws of physics, language is a fairly arbitrary system of conventions and thus more prone to cross-cultural variance. Claims about the cultural universality in imitation learning thus need to be supported by data from verbal imitation. The present work addresses this point in four studies. The first three studies tested children's imitation of adjectives in different contexts across three different cultures: a small indigenous community in Mexico and two western large-scale societies. In various verbal imitation tasks we found cross-cultural differences. We propose that these differences are due to differences in the amount of time spent in dyadic caregiver-child interaction in indigenous and western culture. Further, the data suggest that this cultural variation arises from the fact that humans across cultures in both verbal and instrumental tasks imitate selectively when the function of an element is transparent to them. When its function is opaque they do the safe thing: faithfully imitate. This account is tested in study four. In an instrumental task adults and children imitated faithfully when the function of the actions performed was opaque, but not when they were transparent. This allows us to propose that the cross-cultural differences we observe are thus due to differences in experience that make different aspects of language use more or less transparent to learners.Item Intonation : the current state of affairs in the instruction of German ; The role of computer-assisted instruction in the German classroom : implications for today and the future(1988) Osborne, Deborah Rose Ogren; Chun, Dorothy M.; Donahue, Frank E.Item Kantian and Hegelian tendencies in twentieth century theories ; Mentalist versus mechanist approaches to first language acquisition(1993) Reinke, Cindy L.; Arens, Katherine, 1953-; Louden, Mark LaurenceItem Morphosyntactic priming in bilingual children(2011-05) Fitzpatrick, Kerry Elisabeth; Bedore, Lisa M.; Peña, Elizabeth D.Limited information exists regarding the acquisition of syntax and morphology in young Spanish-English bilingual language learners. A method to measure short-term language learning is through structural priming; an auditory model of the target structure is presented, which influences a subject’s subsequent production. The purpose of this thesis was to develop and pilot priming tasks in both English and Spanish to analyze the language production of typically developing bilingual elementary school students. The morphosyntactic structures targeted in the structural priming task included the third person singular and past tense in English, as well as direct object clitics and imperfect tense in Spanish. The study included three participants, aged 4;7, 6;7, and 10;11. Results revealed that bilingual elementary students with varied language exposure are influenced and learn from morphosyntactic priming.Item Motivational teaching strategies for pronunciation(2010-12) Kusey, Crystal Lyn; Sardegna, Veronica G.; Schallert, DianeCurrent research into L2 motivation addresses all aspects of language learning. However, there is a paucity of research into students’ L2 motivations to improve their speaking skills. Specifically, research on pronunciation issues is very rare. This report sheds light on factors that relate to pronunciation issues and their facilitating or hindering effects on L2 motivation. It starts by reviewing research that informs about students’ social-psychological and utilitarian motivations to acquire a second language. Interestingly, these general L2 motivations are mostly affected by factors related to students’ pronunciation skills. The second section discusses the negative factors, which have been found to hinder students’ motivations to learn, and in particular to improve their pronunciation. Based on these research findings, the third section of the report offers recommends pronunciation-teaching strategies to motivate and empower students. This report makes a case for Multi-competence that focuses on increased intelligibility through suprasegmentals and sociopragmatic awareness.Item Native and non-native intuitions on the phonology of binomial locutions(2016-08) Green, Viola Vladimirovna; Birdsong, David; Griffin, Zenzi; Smiljanic, Rajka; Blyth, CarlBinomial locutions are a well-known case of structural iconicity that exists in many languages. By binomial locutions I understand formations that have the shape of A conjunction B (1a), or A-B (1b): (1). a. English: bread and butter, wear and tear; French: dire et juger, aller et retour, ni foi ni loi b. English: wishy-washy, helter-skelter; French: pêle-mêle, clopin-clopant, tohu-bohu This dissertation deals with phonological patterns in binomial locutions. It will be argued that two kinds of constraints underlie their formation and fossilization of their word order: constraints on the directionality of a certain phonological feature (Birdsong, 1979; Cooper & Ross, 1975) and constraints on the choice of the corresponding segments (Minkova, 2002; Yip, 1988-2000). I refer to the first kind of constraints as to Directionality Constraints and to the second kind of constraints as to Correspondence Constraints. The main objective of this study is to investigate the psychological reality and the relative strength of these constraints in native and non-native speakers of English and French. This study is experimental and closely models the hypothesis and the methodology set forth in Birdsong (1979). Speakers’ sensitivities to the putative constraints are tested with a computer-based judgment task, using pairs of nonsensical expressions, structured in such a way that one expression obeys a specific constraint, and the other expression disobeys it. The task of the participants is to listen to such pairs and to indicate which of them they prefer by using a 6-point scale. The results of this experiment reveal that native English speakers are more sensitive than both native French speakers and non-native English speakers to Directionality Constraints. Moreover, native English speakers prefer rhyming patterns over ablaut alliterating patterns – a trend, that was not observed in other groups tested. Finally, most participants displayed sensitivities to two constraints on directionality – Vowel Quality and Final Consonant Number. I argue that sensitivity to these constraints stems from various factors (iconicity, perceptual salience, short-before-long and unmarked-before-marked principles), which all conspire to favor the same order and predict the same direction of fossilization.Item Novel word learning by Spanish-speaking preschoolers(2006) Aghara, Rachel Greenblatt; Bedore, Lisa M.Item Performance on semantic language tasks by Spanish-English bilingual children with varying levels of language proficiency(2002) Kester, Ellen Stubbe; Peña, Elizabeth D.This study explores a functionalist approach to language acquisition by examining the performance of bilingual children with varying levels of proficiency in English and Spanish on a test of semantic language skills with six different tasks. Overall test performance was similar across language groups and for bilinguals in their two languages but differences were seen in performance on the individual semantic language tasks. Specifically, the bilingual children demonstrated better performance on the Linguistic Concepts task in English and on the Functions task in Spanish, and the bilingual children performed better on the Categorization task than predominantly Spanish speaking children. Finally, different developmental trajectories were seen in the different language proficiency groups. These findings would be predicted by input given socialization practices and structural differences in the two languages.Item The phonetic basis of early speech acquisition in Korean(2003-08) Lee, Soyoung; Davis, Barbara L. (Barbara Lockett)The study investigated relative roles of production and perception mechanisms in early speech acquisition in Korean. Previous studies investigating this issue have been based on Indo-European languages. Data from a non Indo-European language such as Korean, which has different phonemes from English, can confirm the presence of universal production patterns as well as potential perceptual influences from the ambient language. Speech of six Korean-learning infants (KI) was studied longitudinally (8-24 months). These data were compared with English-learning infant (EI) data for the babbling period as well as with Korean infant-directed speech (IDS). In addition, IDS was compared with Korean adult-directed speech (ADS) to explore whether the two types of speech styles show similar characteristics in Korean. Similar patterns for segments and utterances were found between KI and EI, supporting the assertion that early infant speech is primarily based on production system factors. However, KI showed more frequent language specific consonants such as fortis and long medial consonants as well as low central vowels and VCV utterances than EI, indicating that characteristics of the Korean language also influenced the speech patterns of KI. IDS was found to be different from ADS in most aspects, while being similar to KI infant speech, suggesting that Korean IDS may be adjusted to the needs of infant learners. Inter-syllabic patterns were observed in all speech types, supporting the claim that they are fundamental aspects of the production system. However, intra-syllabic patterns were only present in both groups of infants’ babbling, suggesting that this aspect of frame dominance is strongly present in infants’ pre-speech babbling, but may not be predominant in adult languages. Intra-syllabic patterns in infants’ words could be also influenced by the ambient language patterns. Results of this study suggest that infants’ early speech is primarily determined by production factors, but their production patterns are influenced by the characteristics of their ambient language in some aspects during babbling. IDS may facilitate infant acquisition by producing input that is matched to the infant production system and is also perceptually distinctive.Item The phonetic basis of early speech acquisition in Korean(2003-08) Yi, So-yŏn; Davis, Barbara L. (Barbara Lockett)Item Phonological changes in syllable duration and filler syllables in early child language(Texas Tech University, 2005-05) Winchester, Kimberly Sue; Aoyama, KatsuraThis study investigated the development of prosody in American English and its relationship to segmental phonology and morphology with a focus on the acquisition of stress patterns. The data were collected from a male child by his father from 1;4 to 4;4 biweekly. Of these, twelve data points between 18 and 23 months were analyzed (approximately 30 minutes each). All utterances were coded into one of the following categories using transcriptions, notes, and audio data: Monosyllabic, Filler plus Monosyllabic, Disyllabic, Filler plus Disyllabic, Multisyllabic, and Filler plus Multisyllabic. The total number of utterances and syllables per utterance increased from 18 to 23 months. At 18 months, only 35% (84/236) of the child’s utterances were multisyllabic, while 72% (612/851) such utterances were produced at 23 months. At 18 months, 20% of the utterances (48/236) contained filler syllables. Between 21_2 and 22_0 months, the number of filler syllables decreased suddenly. At 22 and 23 months, the child produced filler syllables again, but this time with disyllabic and multisyllabic words. The disyllables were coded into one of the following: trochaic, iambic, or evenly stressed, then acoustic analysis was conducted on duration of those disyllables. A total of 160 utterances were measured. The results indicate that the second syllable was in general longer than the first syllable and the difference between first and second syllables was not significant at 21 months, whereas it was significant at 18 and 23 months.