After 'mama,' children's first words include 'this' and 'that'
Date:
April 7, 2022
Source:
Cornell University
Summary:
Across languages and cultures, words that help direct caregivers'
attention are likely to be among the first children learn and use
frequently, according to a new study of early vocabulary development
in an Indigenous language.
FULL STORY ========================================================================== Across languages and cultures, words that help direct caregivers'
attention are likely to be among the first children learn and use
frequently, according to a new Cornell study that is the largest ever,
by sample size, of early vocabulary development in an Indigenous language.
==========================================================================
The early use of words like "this" and "that" has been documented in
widely spoken languages such as English, Spanish and Mandarin, which
have relatively simple systems for demonstratives, said Amalia Skilton,
a linguistics scholar and Klarman Fellow in the College of Arts and
Sciences (A&S).
Skilton observed similar patterns among 45 Ticuna speakers in Peru,
suggesting that children's strong drive to share attention has similar
effects on language learning -- especially on the first words -- even in languages that differ structurally and that are spoken in very different
social settings.
"Children learn demonstratives that call others' attention to objects --
such as 'this/that' and 'here/there' -- at extremely young ages, when they
know very few other words," Skilton said. "'This' and 'here' show up just
as early as stereotypical first words like 'mama.'" Demonstratives play
a "starring role" in language development, Skilton writes in "Learning
Speaker- and Addressee-Centered Demonstratives in Ticuna," published
April 7 in the Journal of Child Language. They are one of the main tools
for directing what linguists call joint attention, which allows us to
label objects with names, coordinate our actions and cooperate.
"Sharing attention is the infrastructure for the rest of language and
social interaction," Skilton said.
========================================================================== English has only two primary demonstratives ("this" and "that") but
some languages have up to a dozen. Ticuna, spoken by roughly 69,000
Indigenous people living along the Amazon/Solimo~es River in Peru,
Colombia and Brazil, features six demonstratives, four of which were
studied because of their more common usage.
Over more than a year in Cushillococha, Peru, a community of about 5,000
that relies on subsistence farming, Skilton recorded children ages 1 to
4 at play and interacting with caregivers in their homes. She analyzed
Ticuna language development captured in nearly 15 hours of video samples.
Despite their small vocabularies, 12 of the 14 one-year-olds observed in
the study said "this/that" or "here/there," demonstrating the universal
drive to share attention. Skilton said the research confirms that
caregivers can expect children to start using those words at around
12 to 18 months old "no matter what language they speak." But the
type of demonstratives used shows that while very young children are
eager to share attention, they have difficulty understanding others' perspectives. Ticuna children learned "egocentric" demonstratives --
equivalent to "this/here near me" -- about two years earlier than
"interactive" demonstratives like "that/there near you," Skilton
found. And they used those egocentric words more often than adults,
accounting for as much as 15% of all words spoken.
It's already known that children have trouble understanding what others
believe or know. Skilton said her research adds the finding that young
children also struggle with understanding how other people view objects
in space. She believes that's a function of cognitive development,
not the learning of any particular language.
Thus, Skilton said, parents and other caregivers shouldn't necessarily
be concerned if children under age 3 use interactive words incorrectly.
"While adults think of these words as simple," Skilton said, "their
meanings are fairly challenging for children to understand at young ages
and having trouble with them is a typical part of child development."
Skilton plans to return to Peru to continue her research that comprises
the first comprehensive study of joint attention development in a
non-Western setting, shifting her focus to children's use of pointing
gestures to direct adults' attention. She is collaborating during her three-year Klarman fellowship with faculty host Sarah Murray, associate professor in the Department of Linguistics (A&S).
Skilton's research has been supported by a National Science Foundation
(NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship, an NSF Documenting Endangered
Languages Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, and an NSF
Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship.
========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Cornell_University. Original written
by James Dean, courtesy of the Cornell Chronicle. Note: Content may be
edited for style and length.
========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Amalia Skilton. Learning speaker- and addressee-centered
demonstratives
in Ticuna. Journal of Child Language, 2022; 1 DOI: 10.1017/
S0305000922000101 ==========================================================================
Link to news story:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/04/220407145515.htm
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