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Continuing my interest in growing up bilingual, I wanted to look at older age groups as well. Although most of the syntax has developed by about age four, there are still a number of different aspects of language that are acquired later in life. In class, we discussed learning about different registers and a more complex grammar. However, children also develop a sense of rhetorical expressiveness that is appropriate for a particular language. This sounds a lot like different registers, but there is a difference. Registers refer to the using the appropriate speech patterns with a certain group of people, such as more formal grammar with teachers. On the other hand, rhetorical expressiveness is the style that a particular language uses. It consists of the particular way in which things are normally said. This study uses a technical example called "first mentions" (or introducing a new object). So what about rhetorical style that helps us understand growing up bilingual?

Esther Álvarez studied a particular bilingual child by the name of Jan. Jan is a boy growing up in Spain, learning to speak Spanish and English. His mother only speaks Spanish to him, while his father uses English. The boy is tested every year starting at 6 years, 11 months to 10 years, 11 months. Every year he tells the same story in both English and Spanish. Álvarez uses the story Frog, where are you? as a means to elicit first mentions. What he is primarily looking at is the development of using the correct indirect or direct articles when introducing new objects (both animate and inanimate). He also looks at the different sentence structures used. His main question is whether rhetoric of first mentions develops at the same rate in both Spanish and English.

Álvarez finds that Jan developed each language’s rhetoric style according to first mentions in a similar manner to monolinguals of English and Spanish. The only issues dealt with new objects that were plural. However, he was always accurate with sentences structured as “subject+ agency+ action verb”, and the noun following the verb. Another interesting observation was that Jan used presentational relatives more often in English than Spanish; however, this structure is more typical in Spanish. Álvarez interrupted these results as supporting the theory of some interdependence when developing second languages. Although the two languages develop for the most part autonomously, there are still some aspects that develop interdependently.

While these results are interesting, I have some reservations. Jan was not as fluent in English as Spanish, preferring Spanish in most conversational settings. Additionally, the fact that the same story was used for every single session might have also confounded the data. It seems to me that repeating the same story many times over would get boring by the fourth year. Additionally, since he used the same story in English and Spanish, there may have been some bias for structuring sentences a certain way. Before the entire study, Jan told the story to his mother in Spanish. By doing this, he may have created a prototype of the story that he was trying mimic in the other language.

Álvarez, E. (2003). “Character introduction in two languages: Its development in the stories of a Spanish-English bilingual child age 6;11 - 10;11. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 6(3), 227-243.

I ordered it from interlibrary loan, so if anyone wants to look at it for their final papers, just email me. =)

From our recent discussions about sign language, there were many questions about children growing up learning both sign language and the written language of their country. Since this is a form of growing up bilingual, I decided to look into how children actually develop two different languages at the same time. I looked at two different verbal languages since I am also curious in how this happens.

For this study, Macrory (2007) looked at a young girl by the name of Adéle who spoke French with her mother and English with her father. A period of an hour was recorded and transcribed over the course of about a year and a half with each the mother and the father individually. Macrory examined the different types of questions elicited by the girl.

He found that she developed questions according to how monolinguals for each language would typically develop question grammar structure. For English, this is typically inversion of the verb and for French it is normally a raise in intonation at the end of sentence. Her questions followed exactly that pattern. Macrory also looked at the sentences over time, which she developed normally, building from a less complex structure to a more complex structure. This development could indicate that she used the “new-upon-old” strategy. Additionally, he also compared the similarity between the mother and child and the father and child’s question formation. He found that the child more frequency used the question structure of the mother, but it also occurred with the father. The child frequent use of the parent’s question structure provides evidence for the connectionist theory of developing language. This suggests that Adéle is using the language that she most frequently hears instead of starting “from scratch”. While I feel it may be common to use a parent’s sentence structure, especially because of syntactic priming, I do not think that the child is actually learning through imitation, which seems to be what he is suggesting.

This study provides interesting background about how a child develops both languages simultaneously. The parents each speak a different language with the child. I wonder what other methods are used to teach children multiple languages at an early age?

A blog entry on Language Log describes how frequently the phrase 'be like' is being used in place of 'say' The author of the blog post admits that he is older and still hasn't yet made this switch in his mind. The author of the blog did a Google search of the phrase 'call him up and be like' and got 7,590 hits. He also did a search of the phrase 'call him up and be all' which is used just as 'be like'. However he only got two hits for this phrase. This large number of hits he got shows how the phrase 'be like' is now being used in place of 'say' in conversation. This definitely relates to our discussions in class. First it shows that language does change, and that this change is most likely inevitable. It also shows that some people are a little hesitant about change. Also most likely the phrase 'be like' originated in younger generations and has now made its way into mainstream language. This is how most language changes occur. A language change usually occurs in one generation. The following generation picks up this change and uses it more frequently, and this cycle continues until it is integrated into mainstream language.

Continue reading "I was like "language changes"" »

A recent blog I saw examined a study that dealt with infant word categorization. In this study the researchers studied 6-month old infants and 12-month old infants. Within each group infants were assigned to either the word or tone group. The experiment consisted of the infants looking at a series of pictures, either all dinosaurs or all fish. Infants in the word group would hear the same work (although it was a made up word) as each picture came up on a screen. Infants in the tone group would hear a tone sequence as each picture appeared on the screen. After eight familiarization trials, two pictures appeared on the screen; one of a fish and one of a dinosaur. The researchers recorded the amount of time the infants looked at the novel picture. That is, if they had been familiarized with dinosaurs, then they should look at fish longer. The study found that infants did in fact look longer at the novel picture when words were associated with the picture. It was also found that when tones were associated with the picture, infants did not look at the novel picture longer. This indicates that infants use words to categorize objects. I found this to be useful because of our talks about how infants are capable of blocking out other noises when learning a language. This study indicates that infants do not associate random sounds with meanings. This is important during language acquisition because of all the sounds infants hear. It is important that they only learn to associate words with objects and meaning. The next question would is how infants only use words to categorize meanings?

Continue reading "Do we learn words before we talk?" »

Link to see this study
This study explores how cross-cultural perception of facial expressions show differences between how cultures view emotions and context. The study examined differences between American and Japanese cultures. Westerners (Americans) have analytic patterns of attention and tend to break things into categories, while East Asians have a holistic pattern of attention and view things in terms of their relationship with other things. Westerners also focus more on focal objects and less to objects in context. With regard to emotions, Westerners view emotions as internal personal reactions, while East Asians view emotions in context with relationships. For this study, the researchers presented individuals from each culture with cartoons with facial expressions depicting different emotions. Each cartoon had one focal person and four background individuals. The background individuals could either have the same emotion displayed as the focal person or a different emotion displayed. The participants were then asked if they noticed that the background individual’s facial expressions changing and if the background individual’s facial expressions affected their judgment of the focal individual’s emotion. The majority of Japanese participants said that the background individual’s facial expressions influence their judgment of the focal person, while this was not the case for Americans. These results indicate that Japanese individuals are not as narrowly focused on judging people's feelings as American are. This is also supported by the fact that when the background individuals shared the same emotion as the focal person, Japanese participants rated the emotion of the focal person as stronger. It was also found that American participants were more likely to allocate their gaze on the focal person. These results indicate a cultural difference. Japanese culture is more attentive to contextual information, while Westerners focus on individual details. This study also indicates that facial expressions are important in communicating emotions.

On page 145 of Talking Hands, Fox explains how genes play a role in how sign language is used within a community. I found this extremely interesting that genetic material can actually have an effect on how a community used a language. Fox says that in a community where the dominant gene for hereditary deafness is prevalent a spontaneous sign language may arise, but this language will be "walled off". She means that the sign language will only be used by the deaf people and their immediate family. The community will therefore not be a signing community. However, if the gene for hereditary deafness is recessive within a community the community will probably become a signing community. This was the case for the sign language that formed in Martha's Vineyard. My first question is whether the sign language in Martha's Vineyard became a community sign language because of the fact that it was an island community with a lot of marriages between cousins which allowed for the recessive gene to be expressed more, or if a normal community where the recessive gene for hereditary deafness was more prevalent would show the same use of sign language? Wouldn't a community where the dominant form of the gene was more prevalent cause sign language to be used more within a community? I also wondered if anyone could think of any parallel examples of something like this in spoken language or if this was only something seen with sign language?