Linguistic Development Research Paper Page 7
ADVERTISEMENT
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
373 HISTORY
7
Importantly, parents very seldom correct any errors in the grammar and pronunciation of a child’s
utterance. The child itself must perform the discrimination. It is not clear whether constant cor-
rection would serve any useful purpose. Children, when corrected, seldom pay any attention to
the correction – the continue as before. What the parents do is provide enough input for the dis-
criminative/categorical process to take place in the child. It is also clear that the reason the child
ignores the admonishments of the parent is that the child is probably being told not to over-extend
a grammatical rule to a certain situation. But children favour general rules over listemes, in the
early stages of using a rule.
3
History
3.1
Diary Studies: till 1930
From 1877 until 1930 the main way that linguists could study the development of language was
through the diary study. the observer, who was typically a parent, recorded daily the speech of
the child. The techniques is still used, although in recent years the child was recorded on a tape
recorder. Although several excellent diaries were kept during this period, there were none for the
English language. There were a few sporadic reports produced which were incomplete and sketchy
in their coverage. (see [Hil14, Hum80, Leo47, Smi73])
Most of the diary studies were of syntax, and little research was made on phonological development.
The main benefit which has been accrued from studies of this sort is simply the raw data that they
provide. No diary studies have ever been performed on phonologically disabled children.
3.2
Large Sample Studies: 1930 - 1957
The second period of study began with the advent of Dorothea MacCarthy’s book Language Devel-
opment Of The Preschool Child (see [McC30]). In this study the practice of collecting large bodies
of data on the abilities of children at a certain age. Instead of data on a single child, short samples
of speech from large numbers of children across different ages were taken. Such methods were the
first systematic attempts to study development, although such claims had been made during the
diary period.
Three major studies in the area of phonological development were [WIMB31], [Poo34] and [Tem57].
During the period of large sample studies there was a methodology known as “taxonomic phonemics
that was concerned with the way that languages use contrast to distinguish meanings in language.
For example English uses the sounds /p/ and /b/ to distinguish the difference between the words
pit and bit. Relying on this principle the area of taxonomic phonemics developed a number of
assumptions about the nature of language and its analysis.
3.3
Linguistic Studies: 1957 onwards
Since 1957 there has been a marked change in the approach to the study of children’s language.
The change was toward linguistic analysis. Instead of just looking at the utterances of the child, the
attempt is made to understand what the rules were that produced the output.
The reason for the change in emphasis in developmental linguistics is the advent of the work on
transformational grammar by Noam Chomsky (see [Cho57]). People were trying to find out what
the rules were and how they changed with time. There was interest before Chomsky on the idea of
ADVERTISEMENT
0 votes
Related Articles
Related forms
Related Categories
Parent category: Education