Language Acquisition and Development

A generally held assumption about human statistical learning is that learners keep track of the global statistics of the elements of interest across the entire set of stimuli they are exposed to. In naturalistic settings, this assumption is problematic because it requires that the cognitive system keep track of an exponentially growing number of relations while determining which of those relations are relevant and which are not. We investigated a more plausible assumption, namely, that statistical learning proceeds incrementally, using small windows of opportunity in which the relevant relations are assumed to hold over temporally contiguous objects or events. This local statistical learning hypothesis was tested on two learning tasks, one involving non-adjacent structures and the other -- novel word-to-world mappings. Our results suggest that human subjects make use of simple general-purpose cognitive heuristics that exploit temporal contiguity and contrast, leading to superior learning in tasks that belong on two different levels of language acquisition.

The Handbook of Educational Linguistics is a dynamic, scientifically grounded overview revealing the complexity of this growing field while remaining accessible for students, researchers, language educators, curriculum developers, and educational policy makers.

-A single volume overview of educational linguistics, written by leading specialists in its many relevant fields

-Takes into account the diverse theoretical foundations, core themes, major findings, and practical applications of educational linguistics

-Highlights the multidisciplinary reach of educational linguistics

-Reflects the complexity of this growing field, whilst remaining accessible to a wide audience

In this study, we investigate the occurrence of L1 attrition among Argentinean learners of English (L2) living in their home country, which constitutes an L1-dominant environment. We analyzed the production of Voice Onset Time in word-initial plosives in L1 Spanish by monolingual and bilingual participants. We carried out both an inferential analysis and an individual verification of each participant’s production, which proved to be complementary. Our results suggest that not only is the L2 affected by the L1, but also the L1 can be modified in view of the contact with additional languages.

The paper organizes the topic of signs in Lev Vygotsky's various writings into a coherent whole in order to study signs' role in child development. Vygotsky related conventional signs that have their origin in interpersonal communication, and are subject to cultural history taking place over generations during historical time, to psychological functioning of individual human beings. Vygotsky's "natural history of signs" is the study of how symbolic activity appears and develops. The paper outlines the process of inclusion of symbols within the behaviour of the child and gives an account of various changes in psychological functions and their interrelations that it brings along. In cultural development specifically human forms of behaviour appear, and children's relationship to social and material environment is changed qualitatively. Vygotsky outlines the formation of sign use and analyses its developmental steps. Vygotsky's approach explains how the use of various sign systems shapes both the cognitive processes in the person, the child, and the cognitive development as a whole. Vygotsky's approach to signs is presented within the conceptual framework of its time.

Kinder erwerben kommunikative Mittel zur Erreichung ihrer Ziele im interaktiven Handeln. Eine essentielle diskursiv-pragmatische Fähigkeit ist das Argumentieren: Eigene Standpunkte im Gespräch zu begründen fördert die Selbstwirksamkeit der Kinder und damit potenziell ihre Möglichkeit zur sozialen Teilhabe. Der Beitrag beleuchtet argumentative Fähigkeiten von fünf- bis siebenjährigen Vorschulkindern im Rahmen eines Gesprächskreis-Projekts in einer Kita. Anhand eines Videokorpus von 16 Gesprächskreisen wird untersucht, über welche argumentativen Fähigkeiten die Vorschulkinder in lebensweltlich orientierten Gesprächskreisen verfügen und inwiefern sie dabei von den pädagogischen Fachkräften unterstützt werden. Im Ergebnis zeigen sich für dieses Alter ungewöhnlich viele und komplexe Argumentationsstrukturen. Dabei argumentieren die Vorschulkinder nicht nur zur Bearbeitung von Dissens (persuasives Argumentieren), sondern auch zur Etablierung von geltendem und geteiltem Wissen (exploratives Argumentieren). Insbesondere beim explorativen Argumentieren lassen sich im Korpus argumentative Problemlöseroutinen der Kinder extrahieren, z. B. wiederkehrende Argumentationsschemata. Zudem lassen sich argumentationsförderliche Verhaltensweisen der pädagogischen Fachkräfte extrahieren, welche im Sinne eines Sprachförderpotentials beschrieben werden können (z. B. partnerschaftlicher Umgang mit den Kindern; Assistenz bei Kategorisierung und Lösung von Problemen). Damit eignet sich das Gesprächsformat in besonderem Maße zur Entwicklung und Förderung argumentativer Fähigkeiten bei Kindern.

Spoken language acquisition is shaped by multi-faceted developments in the perception, speech motor and phonological domains. While those develop synergistically in most children, certain speech and language disorders have pointed at deviancies in how children organize speech gestures in utterances (developmental apraxia of speech [6,12]; developmental dyslexia [2,11]; stuttering [4,5]). In this study, we are interested in the developmental relation that may exist between spoken language and aloud reading. Both mechanisms require a precise control over speech articulators (e.g. tongue, lips) as well as their temporal coordination to produce intelligible phonetic outputs. Both mechanisms also require children to develop phonological awareness (PA), the knowledge that words are composed of smaller units (syllables, segments). The main difference between the two mechanisms is that spoken language develops much earlier than reading (through repeated exposure and practice speaking the language) while (aloud) reading requires extensive explicit instruction in school. The goal of the present study is to test whether a link between speech production maturation, phonological awareness and reading exist in children at the early stage of reading acquisition. In particular, we test the hypothesis that PA development and reading observed in primary school lead to significant changes in spoken language production from an organic, experience-based organization to a more precise organization informed by structural knowledge of the native language. The speech production parameter we are considering here is anticipatory V-to-C coarticulation degree (CD), a measure of the temporal overlap of speech gestures that has been found to decrease with age (i.e. from preschool to the first grade to adulthood) with children becoming more proficient speakers [9, 10]. Hence, if our hypothesis is validated, we should observe a negative relation between CD, PA and reading, that is, children with advanced PA and reading skills should exhibit lower CD as a sign of speech pattern maturation resembling those of adults. To test this hypothesis, assessment of CD, PA and reading ability was conducted in 33 native German children at the end of the first grade (mean age 7.04; 20 females), presenting no history of visual hearing or motor disability. The production task consisted in the repetition of pre-recorded disyllabic C1VC2ǝ non-words by a native female adult model speaker. Target vowels corresponded to a tense vowel (/i:/, /y:/, /e:/, /a:/) and C1 was one of the four /b/, /d/, /g/ and /z/ consonants. Ultrasound imaging was used to record movement of the tongue during the production of the target utterances. Tongue data was analyzed within SOLLAR (a Matlab-based platform developed for kinematic data analysis [8] to extract CD estimates for each child. The raw score of two PA tasks (rhyme production and segment manipulation) as well as reading task (short text) were calculated based on a standard German assessment procedure [3,7]. For reading, a reading fluency score was calculated based on both speed and the accuracy; for PA we selected tasks taping unto the awareness of large (rhymes) and small (segments) units. To test the effect of PA and reading scores of CD, linear mixed models [1] and general additive mixed effects models are used [13,14, 15]. Results show that for both PA and reading scores have non-linear effects on CD, with high scores correlating with lower degree of coarticulation (p<2e-16). This indicates that the speech of less proficient readers is associated with greater CD and hence organized in syllable-sized units rather than in segments. These findings, should motivate future studies addressing the acquisition of spoken language fluency in languages using alphabetical writing systems to take factors such as PA and reading into account, in addition to other commonly examined factors such as to speech motor control and anatomical development.

‘Locative enclitics in Luganda: Form and Meaning’ is a study which describes the syntactic contexts and use of locative enclitics in Luganda. Locative enclitics are words which cannot stand alone but are attached on a verb to make meaning. Their status is ambiguous between free word and affix, hence motivating their analysis as enclitics. The enclitics are attached on the post final position of their hosts. Although the locative enclitics occur regularly in some Bantu languages (Luganda, Runyankore-Rukiga, Runyoro-Rutooro, Lunda, Ikizu, Fwe, Chichewa, Kinyarwanda among others), they have not been widely studied in the literature. 
The major aim of this study is to examine the Morphosyntax of the locative enclitics while encompassing their meaning, both locative and non-locative. The study looks at verbal locative enclitics only but the locative enclitics also appear in other word categories in Luganda. This study is descriptive, with a qualitative approach. The data used in this study was collected through reviewing documents in Luganda - novels and plays and also the spoken discourses. 
The study shows that the enclitics occur in several syntactic contexts, for example in locative inversion constructions where they are obligatory, and the absence of the enclitic in this construction leads to ungrammaticality of the construction. The enclitics also occur with locative phrases, where they trigger locative noun agreement. The enclitics also occur with the object marker, in which case the enclitic rules out ambiguity and only the locative interpretation is possible, as discussed in chapter four. Luganda does not use locative object markers but uses the locative enclitics which serve a semantic function in this case. The enclitic in Luganda can appear on any kind of verb, and it is possible for two enclitics to appear on the same verb, serving different functions. When the locative phrase is an argument it can be pronominalized on the verb. However, when it is an adjunct, it can only be pronominalized when the applicative suffix is attached on the verb. The enclitic in Luganda serves many non-locative discourse pragmatic functions which include showing urgency, politeness, showing the idea of ‘instead of’ and also emphasis. It has also been observed that enclitics are widely used in the urban youth languages (‘Luyaaye’) but this was not the focus of the current study. The results from the study offer explanations of key areas of syntax, morphology and pragmatics relating to the form and functions of locative enclitics and the whole system of locative marking in Luganda and other Bantu languages.

A central question for cognitive science is whether children's linguistic productivity can be captured by item-based learning, or whether the learner must be guided by abstract, system-wide principles governed by innate constraints. Here, we present a computational model of early language acquisition which learns to discover and use lexically-based frames in a fully incremental, on-line fashion. The model is rooted in simple prediction-and recognition-based processes, subject to the same memory limitations as language learners. When exposed to English corpora of child-directed speech, the model is able learn developmentally plausible frames and use them to capture over 70% of the utterances produced by target children aged 2 to 5. Across a typologically diverse range of 29 languages, the model is able to capture over 68% of child utterances. Together, these findings suggest that much of children's early linguistic productivity can be captured by item-based learning through computationally simple mechanisms.

RESUMO: Neste estudo, apresentamos um relato sobre uso de Literatura Infantil na coleta de dados de desenvolvimento linguístico de crianças com desenvolvimento típico. Após apresentar a literatura na área de Psicolinguística sobre desenvolvimento da linguagem e sobre a Literatura Infantil, discutimos os métodos de coleta de dados. Com intuito de mostrar a importância do uso desse tipo de literatura, apresentamos exemplos de sessões de coleta e estimulação de fala de crianças de 2-3 anos. Por fim, descrevemos os aspectos linguísticos que foram trabalhados por meio da leitura de diferentes obras.
Palavras-chave: desenvolvimento da linguagem, literatura infantil, coleta de dados.

ABSTRACT: In this study, we present a discussion on the use of Children’s Literature in language development data collection of children with typical development. After presenting the Psycholinguistics literature on language development as well as on the Children's Literature, we discuss methods of collecting children's data. In order to show the importance of the use of this literature, we present examples of sessions of data collection and speech stimulation of children at age 2-3 years. Finally, we describe the linguistic aspects we stimulated by the reading of different books. 
Keywords: language development, children’s literature, data collection.

Spoken language acquisition is shaped by multi-faceted developments in the perception, speech motor and phonological domains. While those develop synergistically in most children, certain speech and language disorders have pointed at deviancies in how children organize speech gestures in utterances (developmental apraxia of speech [6,12]; developmental dyslexia [2,11]; stuttering [4,5]). In this study, we are interested in the developmental relation that may exist between spoken language and aloud reading. Both mechanisms require a precise control over speech articulators (e.g. tongue, lips) as well as their temporal coordination to produce intelligible phonetic outputs. Both mechanisms also require children to develop phonological awareness (PA), the knowledge that words are composed of smaller units (syllables, segments). The main difference between the two mechanisms is that spoken language develops much earlier than reading (through repeated exposure and practice speaking the language) while (aloud) reading requires extensive explicit instruction in school. The goal of the present study is to test whether a link between speech production maturation, phonological awareness and reading exist in children at the early stage of reading acquisition. In particular, we test the hypothesis that PA development and reading observed in primary school lead to significant changes in spoken language production from an organic, experience-based organization to a more precise organization informed by structural knowledge of the native language. The speech production parameter we are considering here is anticipatory V-to-C coarticulation degree (CD), a measure of the temporal overlap of speech gestures that has been found to decrease with age (i.e. from preschool to the first grade to adulthood) with children becoming more proficient speakers [9, 10]. Hence, if our hypothesis is validated, we should observe a negative relation between CD, PA and reading, that is, children with advanced PA and reading skills should exhibit lower CD as a sign of speech pattern maturation resembling those of adults. To test this hypothesis, assessment of CD, PA and reading ability was conducted in 33 native German children at the end of the first grade (mean age 7.04; 20 females), presenting no history of visual hearing or motor disability. The production task consisted in the repetition of pre-recorded disyllabic C1VC2ǝ non-words by a native female adult model speaker. Target vowels corresponded to a tense vowel (/i:/, /y:/, /e:/, /a:/) and C1 was one of the four /b/, /d/, /g/ and /z/ consonants. Ultrasound imaging was used to record movement of the tongue during the production of the target utterances. Tongue data was analyzed within SOLLAR (a Matlab-based platform developed for kinematic data analysis [8] to extract CD estimates for each child. The raw score of two PA tasks (rhyme production and segment manipulation) as well as reading task (short text) were calculated based on a standard German assessment procedure [3,7]. For reading, a reading fluency score was calculated based on both speed and the accuracy; for PA we selected tasks taping unto the awareness of large (rhymes) and small (segments) units. To test the effect of PA and reading scores of CD, linear mixed models [1] and general additive mixed effects models are used [13,14, 15]. Results show that for both PA and reading scores have non-linear effects on CD, with high scores correlating with lower degree of coarticulation (p<2e-16). This indicates that the speech of less proficient readers is associated with greater CD and hence organized in syllable-sized units rather than in segments. These findings, should motivate future studies addressing the acquisition of spoken language fluency in languages using alphabetical writing systems to take factors such as PA and reading into account, in addition to other commonly examined factors such as to speech motor control and anatomical development.

Coarticulation characterizes the temporal overlap of articulatory gestures for neighboring segments, hence contributing to make speech fast and continuous [1]. In adults, many studies have shown that coarticulation isn´t (solely) a by-product of production but is used by listeners to anticipate upcoming speech material ahead of their acoustic onset [2, 3, 4]. In children, the question remains whether coarticulatory information is used in the same way and to the same extent as in adults. While the literature is replete with studies showing infants´sensitivityinfants´sensitivity to transitional information (e.g., [5, 6]), the maturational trajectory of speech processing as children transition into more phonologically-driven processing is not well understood. Previous research investigating vocalic anticipation in speech production revealed that children exhibit greater vocalic prominence over time which results in an earlier initiation of the vowel within syllable and greater temporal overlap of their lingual gestures as compared to adults [7, 8, 9]. Interestingly, this translates into a facilitative vowel identification effect when adults are exposed to child speech (3, 4, 5 and 7 years) as compared to adult´s speech [3]. To the authors´knowledgeauthors´knowledge, only a few studies have examined this phenomenon further [10, 11] while no study so far investigated vowel anticipation in children. The present study expands on previous research by examining adultsás well as children´s anticipatory perception using not only speech samples from adults but also from children of different age groups. The two main hypotheses we tested are that 1) both adults and children would identify upcoming vowel targets earlier in child´s speech as compared to adult´s speech; 2) this effect should be sensitive to gestural compatibility between consecutive segments, resulting into different degrees of perceptual salience of coarticulatory information. More specifically, listeners should anticipate vowels earlier when gestures of adjacent segments recruit different organs and can overlap in time without impeding intelligibility (e.g., /bu/) as compared to cases where the same organ is recruited for both segments (e.g., /du/). However, we expected consonantal effects to be reduced with child stimuli who globally show greater vocalic coarticulation than adults. To test these hypotheses, we used stimuli previously recorded in a large cross-sectional investigation of coarticulatory patterns in children and adults [7]. We first investigated the ability of 94 adults to detect a target vowel (V3 = /i:, y:, u:, a:/) ahead of its acoustic onset in short utterances of the form article + nonword (V1C1V2 + C2V3C3V4 with C2= /b, d/; C3 = /g/; V2&4= schwa, noted @ from here). A multiple forced choice gating paradigm [12] was designed using the speech of 3-, 5-, and 7-year-olds and adults with 5 temporal gates corresponding to the temporal windows (G1= @ midpoint; G2= @ offset; G3= C2 midpoint; G4= C2 offset; G5 = V3 midpoint). Stimuli were presented in OpenSesame [13] using headphones. Preliminary results show that accuracy increases as the portion of the signal gets longer (i.e. later gate). Furthermore, performances differ as a function of C2V3 pair identity suggesting that perceptual patterns are not uniform across the whole set of vowels for a given consonant. Instead, patterns seem to vary as a function of the gestural specifics for both segments that are coproduced with one another, as found in previous investigations of the coarticulatory patterns themselves [14]. Surprisingly, although listeners showed sensitivity towards coarticulatory differences between CV pairs, a clear age effect was absent. To address these observations in more detail, in-depth analyses are currently being conducted. In order to investigate effect of listener`s age, perception data for 7-year-olds are currently collected. While the procedure is the same as the one used for the adults, the set of child stimuli only includes 3-year-olds, 7-year-olds (as peer group) and adults.

This paper attempts to address the issue of language development in hearing impaired children. It argues that interpreters, teachers or peers can provide deaf children with language exposure so that they can acquire their native languages more easily. It also argues that the provision of a developmentally appropriate print-rich environments is the key to literacy success and that providing deaf students with the opportunity to respond to and ask questions in the classroom will help them acquire language. It is noted that if peers learn to sign, and if teachers teach them to sign, it will increase the opportunity for social interaction for deaf students whereby affecting their learning outcomes. It stresses the point that the presence of deaf students in a class should be a learning experience for everyone. It also discusses strategies that can be incorporate into teaching by teachers for helping children with hearing impairments achieve more.

(released open access: https://pubs.asha.org/doi/10.1044/2019_JSLHR-S-CSMC7-18-0208)
This study examines the temporal organization of vocalic anticipation in German children from 3 to 7 years of age and adults. The main objective was to test for non-linear processes in vocalic anticipation, which may result from the interaction between lingual gestural goals for individual vowels, and those for their neighbours over time.
The technique of ultrasound imaging was employed to record tongue movement at five time points throughout short utterances of the form V1#CV2. Vocalic anticipation was examined with Generalized Additive Modeling, an analytical approach allowing for the estimation of both linear and non-linear influences on anticipatory processes.
Adults and children exhibited non-linear patterns of vocalic anticipation over time with the degree and extent of vocalic anticipation varying as a function of the individual consonants and vowels assembled. However, noticeable developmental discrepancies were found with vocalic anticipation being present earlier in children's utterances at 3-4-5 years of age in comparison to adults and to some extent 7-year-old children.
A developmental transition towards more contextually-specified coarticulatory organizations seems to occur from kindergarten to primary school to adulthood. In adults, non-linear anticipatory patterns over time suggest a strong differentiation between the gestural goals for consecutive segments. In children, this differentiation is not yet mature: variations in the temporal overlap of lingual gestures for consecutive segments are present but vowels show greater prominence over time and seem activated more in-phase with those of previous segments relative to adults.