• After 'mama,' children's first words inc

    From ScienceDaily@1:317/3 to All on Thu Apr 7 22:30:42 2022
    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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