Language documentation, acquisition and

socializationThe sketch acquisition manual

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Birgit Hellwig (bhellwig@uni-koeln.de)

Rebecca Defina, Shanley Allen, Lucy Davidson, Barb Kelly, Evan Kidd

Linguistic Diversity

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15%4%

30%33%

18%AmerikasEuropaAfrikaAsienPazifik

“7,099 known living languages“(Simons & Fennig 2017. Online-Version: http://www.ethnologue.com/)

Challenge

• “to show how the child’s mind can learn and the adult’s mind can use, with approximately equal ease, any one of this vast range of alternative systems. […] [This] calls for a diversified and strategic harnessing of linguistic diversity as the independent variable in studying language acquisition and language processing […]: Can different systems be acquired by the same learning strategies, are learning rates really equivalent, and are some types of structure in fact easier to use?”

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(Evans & Levinson 2009: 447)

Diversity in study of acquisition

• The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition (1985-1997)

• Frog Story project• Language socialization paradigm within

anthropology• CHILDES

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Including Papuan & Austronesian

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Including Papuan & Austronesian

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LanguageAcquisition

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“If we take all the acquisition studies together (experiments and longitudinal studies), we know something about the acquisition of approximately 70 to 80 languages (i.e., approximately 1% of all the languages spoken today). This 1% of languages also includes languages for which only one acquisition study of a single feature exists […].” (p. 144)

Elena Lieven & Sabine Stoll. 2010. Language. In Marc H. Bornstein (ed.). The Handbook of Cultural Developmental Science, 143-160. New York & London: Psychology Press.

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(1974-2016) (1980-2016)

1517 papers, ~101 languages

Kidd, Evan & Elena Lieven. 2019. Widening the contexts of language acquisition: Discussion. Paper presented at the First workshop on the Acquisition of lesser-studied languages, Cologne.

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(1974-2016) (1980-2016)

1517 papers, ~101 languages

Kidd, Evan & Elena Lieven. 2019. Widening the contexts of language acquisition: Discussion. Paper presented at the First workshop on the Acquisition of lesser-studied languages, Cologne.

Bias towards WEIRD populations

• Similar to each other– language structure and language environment

• Unusual – from a world-wide perspective– typologically unusual, rare features– unusual language & learning environments

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(Cysouw 2002; 2011; Dahl 1990; Haspelmath 2001; Henrich, Heine & Norenzayan 2010; Lüpke 2010)

(Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic)

“It is the burden of the present collection of studies to demonstrate that crosslinguistic study does more than reveal uniformities in development, because properties of individual language influence the course of development.” (Slobin 1985)

Child language documentation

• Scope of language documentation

• Language maintenance/revitalization(Child Language Research and Revitalization Working Group 2017)

• Insights into the adult language (Hellwig & Jung 2020)

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“comprehensive record of the linguistic practices characteristic of a given speech community”(Himmelmann 1998: 166)

Challenge

• “These conditions often make it difficult to follow the best-practice approaches to data collection which are commonly assumed in lab-based FLA research.” (Kelly et al. 2015: 287)

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Sketch Acquisition Project

• Language documentation– plus language acquisition & socialisation

• Project:– child corpus of manageable size– plus acquisition sketch

• Core group: Rebecca Defina, Birgit Hellwig, Shanley Allen, Lucy Davidson, Barb Kelly, Evan Kidd

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Sketch Acquisition Project

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Workshop series

Archiving & Publishing

Piloting under way: Qaqet, Totoli, Pitjantjatjara, Inuktitut, Dëne Sųłıné, Eegimaa, German, …

Manual

Acquisition Corpus

• Severe constraints on:– selection of participants– sampling intervals– amounts of data (e.g. Behrens 2008; Demuth 1996; 2008; Eisenbeiß 2006; 2010; Parisse 2019; Tomasello & Stahl 2004)

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Sample size & density influences:• probability of detecting a feature in the corpus• probability of detecting (systematic) errors in the corpus• reliability of our estimates, e.g., estimated age of first occurrence(cf. Allen 2019; Kidd & Lieven 2019)

Absence of a feature does not mean that a child does not know it.And its presence does not mean that a child uses it productively.

Acquisition Corpus

• Severe constraints on:– selection of participants– sampling intervals– amounts of data (e.g. Behrens 2008; Demuth 1996; 2008; Eisenbeiß 2006; 2010; Parisse 2019; Tomasello & Stahl 2004)

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≈ 1 hour/week recordingx 2 years (2;0-4;0)x 2 children = 208 hours

“[...] the majority of existing child speech samples [...] represent only a very small proportion of all the language the child produces and hears –on average around 1%. [...] and in some cases 1% sampling is not adequate to answer the question at hand.” (Tomasello & Stahl 2004: 118)

Sketch Corpus

• 5 hrs analyzed (10 hrs recorded)• Scenarios

– longitudinal (2 children at 5 time points)– cross-lagged (2+ children at 2-3 time points each)– cross-sectional (10 children at 1 time point each)

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Sketch Corpus

• 5 hrs analyzed (10 hrs recorded)• Scenarios

– longitudinal (2 children at 5 time points)– cross-lagged (2+ children at 2-3 time points each)– cross-sectional (10 children at 1 time point each)

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Case study

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QaqetPapuan (Baining)

PNG, East New Britain

~ 15,000 speakers

http://qaqet.phil‐fak.uni‐koeln.de/

(Stebbins & Van Der Mark 2009)

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Raunsepna (mountains, remote): Qaqet

Kamanakam (coast, accessible): Qaqet & Tok Pisin

• 2014-2022 (VolkswagenStiftung)• Longitudinal study

– 4 families– focus on children aged 2;0-4;0 (+ siblings)– 1hr / week video-recorded by families– natural setting

• ~400 hrs of recordings (74 annotated, 83 partly annotated)

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Sketch corpus

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Settings

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Village• in/around the house• + many different interlocutors

(adults, children)

Missing setting• children alone in the bush

Garden• in garden or garden hut• + few interlocutors

(a parent, a sibling)

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Mother YDS, nani utit YDS, we can gonani utit savramahleng we can go to the gardenkua nyinarli? do you hear?nani utit sevanu savramahleng we can go up to the gardennani utit savramahleng we can go to the garden

YDS (2;0) da? true?Mother ee yes

utir iv uretmatna we go and workYDS (2;0) da? true?Mother ee yes

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Mother YDS, nani utit YDS, we can gonani utit savramahleng we can go to the gardenkua nyinarli? do you hear?nani utit sevanu savramahleng we can go up to the gardennani utit savramahleng we can go to the garden

YDS (2;0) da? true?Mother ee yes

utir iv uretmatna we go and workYDS (2;0) da? true?Mother ee yes

Brother giavaqaira amala.. amaqulavaska your.. qulavas taro hereYDS (2;6) da? true?Brother ee yesYDS (2;6) aqulavas ka

aqu.. aqullai kaaquista [target: aqulavaska]avulaqaskaalu qavas

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Mother YDS, nani utit YDS, we can gonani utit savramahleng we can go to the gardenkua nyinarli? do you hear?nani utit sevanu savramahleng we can go up to the gardennani utit savramahleng we can go to the garden

YDS (2;0) da? true?Mother ee yes

utir iv uretmatna we go and workYDS (2;0) da? true?Mother ee yes

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Mother YDS, nani utit YDS, we can gonani utit savramahleng we can go to the gardenkua nyinarli? do you hear?nani utit sevanu savramahleng we can go up to the gardennani utit savramahleng we can go to the garden

YDS (2;0) da? true?Mother ee yes

utir iv uretmatna we go and workYDS (2;0) da? true?Mother ee yes

PTCL SBJ+verb PREP+directional PREP+NP purpose clausenani utitnani utit savramahlengnani utit sevanu savramahlengnani utit savramahleng

utir iv uretmatnacan we:go to:up to:on:the:garden and we:work

Variation Sets“partial repetitions […], with changes in lexical items, grammatical morphology, and/or word order, maintaining a constant communicative intent” (Küntay & Slobin 1996: 267)

vs. child speaker:Brother to YDS (2;0) ulunyi [5x] I see you [5x]

Sketch Corpus:Varied repetitions 895 IUs (24% of all child-directed IUs)Exact repetitions 352 IUs (10%)

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• Distracting routine• Tag-question routine• Exaggerated prosody• Variation & repetition• …

Child-directed speech (CDS)

• CDS register:– short, correct & complete; few hesitations & errors– exaggerated pitch, high F0, long duration, more pauses– restricted vocabulary, here & now– nursery vocabulary– many questions & imperatives– repetitions & variations

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Universality?

CDS in Qaqet

• Controlled study (The Qaqet Pear Story Corpus)– longer pauses, higher pitch & greater frequency range– fewer disfluencies & hesitations– short, less complex, lower MLU– (mostly) correct and complete– more imperatives & questions

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Frye, Henrike. 2019. Child-directed speech in Qaqet. University of Cologne, PhD Thesis.

YJL (4;0)

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ilira nyaqurlangua ramaqunasemi=lira nya=quarl-ngua te=ama=kunas-embecause=just.now 2SG=give-1SG PURP=ART=one-SG.RCD‘because just now you gave me one stunted one [talking about a peanut]’

unmarked vs. prepositional arguments

& 39 (combinable) particles (TAM, stance, NEG, INTRG, information structure) 13 prepositions

complex argument structure5 conjunctions

subject indexnyi ‘NPST’ vs. nya ‘neutral’

aspectual stemquarl ‘NCONT’ vs. kuarl ‘CONT’

8 noun classes, 3 numbers

5 articles

intervocalic lenition of plosives: t > r, k > q [ɣ](not in aspectual stems)

Phonology

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Cousin ZDL (2;0)ia, ar aɽaɽ [imitates]ar aɽnyi ma, ar aɽnyi ma, ar asar

(meeki ɲi) ɲariski „you say it“YDS(2;6) Brother Adultsnasti [imitates] [laugh]nasninistinati

2;6 adultsalum arumtalu ~ taju taru(a)jim ~ (a)tim (a)rimbulum buɽum

Morphophonology

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aɣuukuka ‘sweet potato’a=kuukuk-ka ‘NM=sweet.potato-SG.M’

YDS (2;0) *kaakak sweet potatoMother ee, *kuukuka yes, sweet potatoYDS (2;0) *kaakak sweet potatoBrother *akuukuka sweet potatoMother ee yesYDS (2;0) *kaakak sweet potatoBrother ussh! don‘t!

Noun tokens2;0-2;6 3;6-4;0

zero 101 17ART a 25 23POSS 5 99other ART 1 46

Morphology

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2;0 Motherɣuldit tiak(a) ama=ɣuldit-ki ʝi=knakfrog (3SG.F.SBJ)??.cry ART=frog-SG.F 3SG.F.SBJ=cry

SG DU PLm ka iam –f ki im –diminutive ini iram irangreduced em am apflat es ivim ivinglong it isim isingextended it itnem itnekcut off igel igrlim igrling

Expansion:YDS (2;0) *tit goYDS (2;0) *gaka my friendMother mh? yes?YDS (2;0) *tit goMother undit we go

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• Distracting routine• Tag-question routine• Exaggerated prosody• Variation & repetition• …

• ‘Difficult’ phonemes• Intervocalic lenition• Articles• Noun classes• …

A note of caution

• Limited database – impacts on the kinds of statements we can make: – descriptive rather than explanatory: descriptions of

what children hear & do & say – not of what they know– focus on qualitative analyses – not quantitative

• Major contribution: – broaden our understanding of the problem space– raise topics/questions – to be explored and tested in a

larger data set

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Not new …

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“However, despite the promise of this earlier typologically diverse work, when we fast-forward 30 years we do not see a boom in the study of FLA in typologically diverse languages and culturally different communities [...].” (Kelly & Nordlinger 2014: 180)

“to guide investigators in the collection of comparable cross-linguistic and cross-cultural data on the acquisition of communicative competence” (Slobin et al. 1967: ix)

Danke – Amatlungena – Tenkyu tru

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References

• Allen, Shanley. 2019. What can we tell from 5 hours of data? Problems and solutions. Paper presented at the First workshop on the Acquisition of lesser-studied languages, Cologne.

• Behrens, Heike (ed.). 2008. Corpora in language acquisition research: History, methods, perspectives. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

• Berman, Ruth & Dan I. Slobin. 1994. Relating events in narrative: A cross-linguistic developmental study. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

• Brown, Penny & Marisa Casillas. To appear. Childrearing through social interaction on Rossel Island, PNG. In A. J. Fentiman & M. Goody (eds.). Esther Goody revisited: Exploring the legacy of an original inter-disciplinarian. New York, NY: Berghahn.

• Child Language Research and Revitalization Working Group. 2017. Language documentation, revitalization, and reclamation: Supporting young learners and their communities. Waltham, MA: EDC.

• Cysouw, Michael. 2002. Interpreting typological clusters. Linguistic Typology 6. 49–93.

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References

• Cysouw, Michael. 2011. Quantitative explorations of the worldwide distribution of rare characteristics, or: The exceptionality of northwestern European languages. In Horst J. Simon & Heike Wiese (eds.), Expecting the unexpected: Exceptions in grammar, 411-432. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

• Dahl, Östen. 1990. Standard Avarage European as an exotic language. In Johannes Bechert, Giuliano Bernini & Claude Buridant (eds.). Towards a typology of European languages, 3-8. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

• Demuth, Katherine. 1996. Collecting spontaneous production data. In Dana McDaniel, Cecile McKee & Helen Smith Cairns (eds.), Methods of assessing children’s syntax, 3-22 Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

• Demuth, Katherine. 2008. Exploiting corpora for language acquisition research. In Heike Behrens (ed.). Corpora in language acquisition research: Finding structure in data, 199-205. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

• Eisenbeiß, Sonja. 2006. Documenting child language. In Peter K. Austin (ed.). Language documentation and description, vol. 3, 106-140. London: SOAS.

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References

• Eisenbeiß, Sonja. 2010. Production Methods. In Elma Blom & Sharon Unsworth (eds.). Experimental methods in language acquisition research, 11-34. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

• Evans, Nick & Steve C. Levinson. 2009. The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32: 429-492.

• Frye, Henrike. 2019. Child-directed speech in Qaqet. University of Cologne, PhD Thesis.• Gallaway, Clare & Brian J. Richards (eds.). 1994. Input and interaction in language

acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.• Haspelmath, Martin. 2001. The European linguistic area: Standard Avarage European. In

Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreicher & Wolfgang Raible (eds.). Language typology and language universals: An international handbook, 1492-1510. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

• Hellwig, Birgit. 2020. Initial observations on complex predicates in Qaqet children's language. First Language, Special Issue.

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References

• Hellwig, Birgit & Dagmar Jung. 2020. Child-directed language – and how it informs the documentation and description of the adult language. Language Documentation and Conservation 14: 188-214.

• Henrich, Joseph, Steven J. Heine & Ara Norenzayan. 2010. The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33.2/3: 61-83.

• Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 1998. Documentary and descriptive linguistics. Linguistics 36.1: 161-195.

• Kelly, Barbara, William Forshaw, Rachel Nordlinger & Gillian Wiggelsworth. 2015. Linguistic diversity in first language acquisition research: Moving beyond the challenges. First Language 35.4/5: 286-304.

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• Kidd, Evan & Elena Lieven. 2019. Widening the contexts of language acquisition: Discussion. Paper presented at the First workshop on the Acquisition of lesser-studied languages, Cologne.

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References

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