Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-s22k5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-29T02:43:21.394Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The relation of children's single word utterances to single word utterances in the input*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Anat Ninio
Anat Ninio*
Affiliation:
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
*
Department of Psychology, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem 91905, Israel.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The reported study investigated the relation between children's single-word utterances and maternal single-word utterances expressing similar communicative intents. Twenty-four Hebrew-speaking dyads (the children about 1;6) were videotaped for 30 min in an unstructured session. Single-word utterances were analysed for their communicative intent and the relationship of the expression to the underlying intent was defined in the form of realization rules. Of 17,471 child utterances, 97·0% were realizations that were also used by mothers for expressing the same communicative intent. The most frequently modelled rule for an intent had the highest chance of being adopted by children, and the probability sharply decreased for the relatively less frequently modelled rules. The results suggest that children's single-word utterances are similar to, and probably learned from, single-word utterances of caretakers expressing the same specific communicative intents.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , February 1992 , pp. 87 - 110
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This research was supported by Grant No. 2467/81 from the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF), Jerusalem, Israel, to Anat Ninio and Carol Eckerman, by Grant No. 84–00267/1 from the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF), Jerusalem, Israel, to Anat Ninio and Catherine Snow, and by a grant from the Israeli Academy of Sciences.

References

REFERENCES

Allwood, J. (1981). On the distinction between semantic and pragmatics. In Klein, W. & Levelt, W. (eds), Crossing the boundaries in linguistics. Boston: Reidel.Google Scholar
Alston, W. P. (1968). Meanings and use. In Parkinson, G. H. R. (ed.), The theory of meaning Oxford:O.U.P.Google Scholar
Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Barrett, M. D. (1982). The holophrastic hypothesis: conceptual and empirical issues. Cognition 11, 47–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barrett, M. D. (1986). Early semantic representations and early word-usage. In Kuczaj, S. A. & Barrett, M. D. (eds), The development of early word meaning. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Bates, E. (1976). Language and context: studies in the acquisition of pragmatics. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Bates, E. & MacWhinney, B. (1979). A functionalist approach to the acquisition of grammar. In Ochs, E. & Schieffelin, B., (eds), Developmental pragmatics. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Bateson, M. C. (1975). Proto conversations. In Bullowa, M. (ed.), Before speech. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Benedict, H. (1979). Early lexical development: comprehension and production. Journal of Child Language 6, 183–200.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Booth, D. A. (1978). Language acquisition as the addition of verbal routines. In Campbell, R. N. & Smith, P. T. (eds), Recent advances in the psychology of language. New York: Plenum Press.Google Scholar
Bowerman, M. (1973). Structural relations in children's utterances: syntactic or semantic? In Moore, T. M., (ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Broen, P. (1972). The verbal environment of the language-learning child. Monograph of the American Speech and Hearing Association, 17.Google Scholar
Brown, R. (1965). Social psychology. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Bruner, J. S. (1975). The ontogenesis of speech acts. Journal of Child Language 2, 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carini, P. F. (1975). Observation and description: an alternative methodology for the investigation of human phenomena. North Dakota Study Group on Evaluation Monograph. Grand Forks, ND: University of North Dakota Press.Google Scholar
Carter, A. L. (1978). The development of systematic vocalizations prior to words: a case study. In Waterson, N. & Snow, C. (eds), The development of communication. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Chapman, S. R. (1981). Cognitive development and language comprehension in 10- to 21- month-olds. In Stark, R. (ed.), Language behavior in infancy and early childhood. New York: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Clark, R. (1974). Performing without competence. Journal of Child Language 1, 1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dore, J. (1975). Holophrases, speech acts and language universals. Journal of Child Language 2, 21–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dore, J. (1983). Feelings, form and intention in the baby's transition to language. In Golinkoff, R. M. (ed.), The transition from prelinguistic to linguistic communication. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Dore, J. (1985). Holophrases revisited: their ‘logical’ development from dialog. In Barrett, M. D. (ed.), Children's single-word speech. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Garnica, O. K. (1977). Some prosodic and paralinguistic features of speech directed to young children. In Snow, C. E., & Ferguson, C. A. (eds), Talking to children: language input and acquisition. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis: an essay on the organization of experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of talk. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. (1983). Felicity's condition. American Journal of Sociology 89, 1–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenfield, P. M. (1980). Going beyond information theory to explain early word choice: a reply to Roy Pea. Journal of Child Language 7, 217–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenfield, P. M. & Smith, J. H. (1976). The structure of communication in early language development. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Griffiths, P. (1985). The communicative functions of children's single-word speech. In Barrett, M., (ed.), Children's single-word speech, New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K. (1975). Learning how to mean – explorations in the development of language. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Harris, M., Barrett, M., Jones, D. & Brookes, S. (1988). Linguistic input and early word meaning. Journal of Child Language 15, 77–94.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Harrison, B. (1972). Meaning and structure: an essay in the philosophy of language. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Leonard, L. B. & Schwartz, R. G. (1978). Focus characteristics of single-word utterances after syntax. Journal of Child Language 5, 151–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lock, A. (1980). The guided reinvention of language, London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
McCarthy, D. (1954). Language development in children. In Carmichael, L. (ed.), Manual of child psychology (2nd edn). New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Ninio, A. (1983). A pragmatic approach to early language acquisition. Paper presented at the Study Group on Crosscultural and Crosslinguistic Aspects of Native Language Acquisition. The Institute for Advanced Studies, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem.Google Scholar
Ninio, A. (1985). The meaning of children's first words: evidence from the input. Journal of Pragmatics 9, 527–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ninio, A. (1986). The illocutionary aspect of utterances. Discourse Processes 9, 127–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ninio, A. & Snow, C. (1988). Language acquisition through language use: The functional sources of children's early utterances. In Levi, Y., Schlesinger, I. & Braine, M. D. S. (eds), Perspectives on a theory of language acquisition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Ninio, A., & Wheeler, P. (1984 a). A manual for classifying verbal communicative acts in mother-infant interaction. Working Papers in Developmental Psychology, No. 1. Jerusalem: The Martin and Vivian Levin Center, Hebrew University. Reprinted as Transcript Analysis, 1986, 3, 1–82.Google Scholar
Ninio, A., & Wheeler, P. (1984 b). Functions of speech in mother-infant interaction. In Garvey, C., Golinkoff, R. & Feagans, L. (eds), The development of communicative competence. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Peters, A. M. (1983). The units of language acquisition. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Pinker, S. (1984). Language learnability and language development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rodgson, M. M. (1976). Single-word usage, cognitive development and the beginnings of combinatorial speech. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Rommetveit, R. (1974). On message structure. London: Wiley.Google Scholar
Ryan, J. (1974). Early language development: towards a communicational analysis. In Richards, M. P. M. (ed.), The integration of a child into a social world. London: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language 50, 697–735.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schlesinger, I. M. (1971). The production of utterances and language acquisition. In Slobin, D. I. (ed.), The ontogenesis of grammar: a theoretical symposium. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Searle, J. R. (1975). A taxonomy of illocutionary acts. In Gunderson, K. (ed.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science Vol. 7. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Shipley, E. F., Smith, C. S. & Gleitman, L. R. (1969). A study in the acquisition of language: free responses to commands. Language 45, 322–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snow, C. E. (1979). The role of social interaction in language acquisition. In Collins, W. A. (ed.), Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology, Vol. 12. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Snyder, L. D. (1978). Communicative and cognitive abilities and disabilities in the sensorimotor period. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 24, 161–80.Google Scholar
Strawson, P. F. (1970). Meaning and truth. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Vendler, Z. (1972). Res cogitans. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Weisenberger, J. L. (1976). A choice of words: two-year-old speech from a situational point of view. Journal of Child Language 3, 275–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wexler, K. & Culicover, P. W. (1980). Formal principles of language acquisition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Wieman, L. A. (1976). Stress patterns of early child language. Journal of Child Language 3, 282–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar