Snail Transcript Presentation

Introduction §

• Conversation between Bella, girl of 1 year 11 months, and her Grandmother in the garden about snails

• Grandmother is her caregiver, serves as MKO while helping Bella, the child, in her language development.

• Throughout presentation, red C for child, blue G for grandma

• Bella well into the telegraphic stage, evidence provider later

• Subsystems developed into that expected of 2-3 year old, about 5 months ahead of expected language development

• “We are storytelling creatures, and as children we acquire language to tell those stories that we have inside us.” - Bruner, key theorist behind Interactionism

• Bella learns how to describe the world around her by imitating and interacting with her MKO, grandma

Features of Language §

Emerging Subsystems §

aka Bella’s Developmental Stage

• Well into the telegraphic stage

• At this point, Bella gone beyond two-word stage , producing coherent enough utterances, but somewhat lacking all the needed function words and morphemes to be syntactically accurate

• Children in the telegraphic stage almost sounds like text messages, omitting unnecessary words.

• Also gained the ability to ask basic questions, like “where” or “why”

• For example, child might say “Where daddy?” or “What that?” dropping the word *is

Lexical and Semantic Perspective:

• Actively asking where questions: “Where [nʌdə sneɪjəl]”
• Can point and direct others: “Look! I see [ənʌdə sneɪjəw]”

Morphological & Syntactic Perspective

• We can clearly see Bella well into stage as she is beginning to add grammatical morphemes to speech:

  • “[dɛəz] Mickey” uses contraction for “there is”
  • “Look he [pʊdɪn] his head way up in sky”: still developing inflectional morpheme -ing, g-dropping: replacing /ŋ/ sound with /n/, putting -> puttin’

• That last utterance was outlier, MLU is approx 3.44 lexemes, while this utterance had 9 lexemes, much higher than mean

• This is a common phrase, almost a collocation, possibly replacing the word sky with “clouds” or “stars”.

• Common phrase could have been repeated by MKO such as parents or grandmother and imitated by Bella, supporting Skinner’s Behaviourist ideas

Nonetheless, clear that Bella well into telegraphic stage, with good syntactic knowledge and understanding of location, and addition of the contractive “is” and gerund as part of speech. Being said, still does not use many conjunctions or why questions, place approximately 5 months ahead of expected language development.

Supported Theories §

aka Carer Strategies

• Mainly supports behaviourism + interactionism, evidently learning through interaction with MKO

• Lines that support cognitivism are present

  • Displays a proper understanding of location:
    • G: “Do you see another one?”
    • C: “[ʌn də flaʊwə]”
  • She would not be able to talk about location of snail if she didn’t understand location as concept, so cognitivism is supported in this way
    • G: “Do you see another snail?”
    • C: “[ən dæ twiː]”
  • Bella has also begun to use simple prepositions, such as “on” or “in”

• Not much evidence of innateness ∵ lack of “virtuous errors”, active role played by Grandma

• Throughout transcription, Child-directed-speech has constant repetition of phrases more “correctly” by MKO, evidence of operant conditioning and scaffolding.

  • eg. “Look! I see [ənʌdə sneɪjəw]”, Grandma replied back, “Do you see another snail?”
  • Repetition of more correct utterance supports the idea that Bella will imitate, -> negative reinforcement, supports behaviourist ideas
  • The transition of the declarative sentence to the interrogative sentence shows how MKO is scaffolding for child, expanding ZPD by questioning -> interactionist ideas supported

Interactionism §

Theory emphasises the interaction between children and their caregivers, in this case Bella & Grandma Focuses a lot on ZPD and scaffolded needed for learning to develop

• G: “Yes he’s in the tree” later Bella says “Look he [pʊdɪn]”
• Strongly supports interactionist theory: Bella no way of knowing the snail is male, but bc Grandma automatically assumes gender, Bella learns to assume the same. As such, Bella learns about society’s perceptions of the world

Behaviourism §

• Supported by various examples of recasts throughout transcript, uses operant conditioning for negative reinforcement
• Prime example is
  • C: “Where [nʌdə sneɪjəl]”
  • G: “Where’s another snail”
• Later in exact same passage, Bella is seen correcting herself by imitating her Grandma, repeating the exact same recast in a more phonetically correct lexeme “another” (not ellided)
  • G: “There’s another snail”
  • C: “[dɛəz ənʌdə sneɪjəw]”
• This recast also supports interactionism, as it provides scaffolding to build on ZPD

The Subsystems §

Phonological Processes §

Many phonological processes taking place in Bella’s language, and though she’s mostly intelligible, clear that her phonetic ability is at that of telegraphic stage

• “[kaɪm] on [tiː] a [sneɪjəl], see”
  • Elision of the /l/ and /ɹ/ consonant clusters -> cluster reduction
  • Epenthesis of the /jə/ sound
• “[dɛəz ənʌdə sneɪjəw]”
  • Can see that epenthesis of /jə/ sound is consistent across her speech
  • /l/ consonant cluster also struggles her with an example of gliding the /l/ to /w/
• “Where [nʌdə sneɪjəl]”
  • Can see all examples so far had consistent th-stops turning /ð/ -> /d/, has a lot of gliding but mostly intelligible, indication of child-like speech
  • also elides /ə/ sound sometimes, especially when at start of word, but corrected by imitation and operant conditioning Consistent th-stopping makes sense of age group, as children not expected to properly articulate /ð/ until 4 - 6 years of age. Because /ð/ sound is quite complex, have to remember to breathe out with tiny gap between teeth and tongue. If this gap is forgotten /d/ is produced instead. Evidently sounds are very close in mouth, and subtle differences not picked up this early, especially at less than 2 years old.

Lexicology §

in ppt make sure to add couple transcribed examples

Bella’s demonstrated lexicon is about 20 words give or take, repeating “there’s”, “another”, “snail”, and “where” quite a bit. The repetition of phrases not unexpected at this development stage. Phrase “look he puttin’ his head way up in sky” from before was well beyond demonstrated lexicon of Bella’s throughout convo, further show outlier.

• Grandma and Bella probably spend quite bit of time in garden, as most content words she knows are under the semantic field of nature, such as “climb, tree, snail”
• Also knows words for people she spends lot of time with, such as brother “Mickey”, supporting interactionist ideas that interaction with MKO reinforces language learning New words are introduced through questioning and scaffolding, once again supporting interactionism
• G: “What colour is that flower?”
• C: “Look! I see [ənʌdə sneɪjəw]”
• Bella is distracted, and does not answer the question, but is still prompted to use new lexemes to describe her environment

Morphology §

As noted before, Bella is able to utilise the gerund, meaning she can use the inflectional morpheme -ing.

• Contrapuntally, she does not appear to use the -s morpheme to indicate the plural of snail, showing that her morphological progress is in the early phase of the telegraphic stage Bella also shows evidence of articles such as “a” appearing, showing that she is beginning to use more articles and function words in her speech:
• G: Look here’s a snail
• C: “[hiːəz ə sneɪjəl]” Also very clear evidence of a recast, imitating what MKO is saying and learning to add more grammar to speech. Overall, Bella’s morphological ability is at expected stage for a two year old, where utterances have a clear hierarchical structure but is not yet that of adult grammar.

Syntax/Semantics §

• Both syntax and semantics of Bella’s speech have been explored previously in presentation
• To reiterate, errors are dealt with by caregiver in a very behaviourist fashion, by recasting or repeating the utterance in a more correct form
• Semantically, is able to use interrogative sentences to question the world around her, using many “where” questions
• Still does not use any compound sentences yet, but SVO structure is present, showing it’s developing
  • “I see [ənʌdə sneɪjəw]”
  • Subject “I”, Verb “see”, Object “another snail”

Discourse §

Finally, Bella is picking up discourse features well. Adjacency pairs:

• G: “You want me to climb in the tree?”
• C: “[jɑː]”
• G: “No way, silly monkey! You want to climb in the tree?”
• C: “[jɑː]” These adjacency pairs show that Bella is just saying yes to question without necessarily knowing the meaning, but she understands that it is a question.

Bella also mostly coherent, participating in turn taking structure as seen above. Bella also sometimes uses discourse markers in her speech:

• C: “oh, oh!” This interjection of surprise conveys meaning to excitement, conveying meaning to MKO.

Caretaker Caretaker uses confirmation requests to prompt and scaffold the child.

• G: “That’s a lot of snails, isn’t it?”
• or G: “You put the snail in the garden, did you?” Scaffolding once again supports interactionist theories, as the discourse between the child and caregiver driving the conversation teaches Bella language.

Conclusion §

• Overall, Bella is quite relatively for her age. She seems to be well into the telegraphic stage of her language development, about 5 months ahead of the expected development at her age.

• This is evident by the emerging subsystems evident in her speech, such as the ability to ask questions and use prepositions of location.

• Throughout the passage, the grandma acts as a MKO and uses development strategies that very closely align with the Behaviourist and Interactionist language acquisition theories.

• Bella will likely continue to refine her language use as she approaches more adult-like grammatical ability, adding more function words and morphemes into her speech.

  • She already shows evidence of this, such as the inklings of using the inflectional gerund and basic article usage, but will develop more

• Like to finish off with a quote

“In sum, then, “thinking about thinking” has to be a principal ingredient of any empowering practice of education.”

Thank you for listening!