[From: Bruce Nevin (Mon 92044 13:46:51)]
(Clark McPhail (Fri, 1 May 1992 14:56:28) ) --
Am I correct
in my PCT interpretation that the infants from birth to 6 months are
storing a lot of sound perceptions, that those which are stored most
frequently and are more likely to be called up to serve as reference
signals against which to judge what is hear in others' speech (and
subsequently as reference signals against which to judge what one hears in
one's own speech)?
I haven't read the article, but will. In general, the above is what I
would expect and consequently is the interpretation I would try to make,
however "objective" I might try to be. Joel's comments seem on the mark
to me, except the maybe palliative observation that you have to begin a
longitudinal study somewhere, and need not wait until it is completed to
publish initial results. I gather (hope) that is the intent. Kenneth
Stevens is generally pretty careful. Of course, he has his theoretical
presuppositions too.
(Joel Judd (Fri, 1 May 1992 18:26:41) ) --
Now, depending on the context, of course, you might [use wh-questions]
early learners, middle learners, even some pretty proficient learners will
do things like just start to repeat back the sentence . . .
or just start picking salient words out and repeating them . . .
This communicative technique seems to be one which takes
a long time to develop, regardless of the proficiency of the learner.
I take it you mean second language learners.
Is there a germ of an assessment experiment here?
I expect it would be an effective diagnostic if their attention is on
the content and not on the means they use for asking questions.
(Avery Andrews (Fri, 1 May 1992 14:51:12 PDT) ) --
I'm assuming that interaction matters [for language acquisition] and
correction doesn't, at least not much
There is explicit correction in the mother-child interactions Bruner
and his students studied.
There is both explicit and implicit correction in most other language
interactions between children and adults. There is a great deal of
repetition of words and phrases in any discourse--patterned repetition
is a great deal of what constitutes discourse coherence-- and a great
deal more of it in adult-child interactions than in other forms of
discourse. The repetition of a phrase by an adult provide a model to
the child showing how she ought to have said the phrase. The adult is
often unaware of doing this.
Accomodation to others' usage is lifelong. Deferring to the usage of
one you esteem or who is in authority (just as child to adult) or for
other reasons less clear (the lawyer asking who was them bottles shared
between). Or not agreeing in usage (e.g. pronouncing "harass" like
"heiress" with an h rather than like "her ass," or vice versa). Holding
out calls attention to the difference and people tend to become alert
to possible judgments associated with the difference ("uneducated,"
"snob," etc.) Maybe one person conforms to the other's usage because of
agreeing with such judgment (yeah, that's the *right* way to say it), or
maybe one conforms to the other's usage so as to avoid occasioning such
discomfort, to affirm co-membership, etc. (The lawyer's motive?)
Bruce Nevin
bn@bbn.com