Bernard Kaplan

A developmental approach to language acquisition: two case studies

The aim of this article is to revitalize and extend functionalist approaches to language use and language acquisition by utilizing a theory which focuses on general issues of human development. The emphasis here is to show how such developmental considerations enable one to reconstruct a growing childs own efforts to acquire and use a language in increasing accord with cultural demands as to a telos of language development. Two case studies are presented. The first one deals with early phases of language use, in which we analyse subtle ontogenetic changes in the organization and reorganization of personal pronouns referring to the Self. In the second case study, we focus on language modifications during later ontogenesis, analysing the changing functions involving the nominal-pronominal contrast and the contrast between particular tense-aspect markings. It is argued that the ontogenetic changes in both sub-domains are illuminated by exploiting in their analyses Werner & Kaplans Orthogenetic Principle, in which development is defined in terms of increasing differentiation and hierarchic integration in human functioning. In a final section, we distinguish our Developmental Approach to language acquisition and language use from other functionalist approaches.

Exploratory Applications of the Organismic—Developmental Approach to Transactions of Men-in-Environments

A variety of techniques issuing from the organismic-developmental approach to transactions of men-in-environments are described and critically evaluated in this paper. The major paradigm characterizing all of the studies deals with entrance and adaptation to new environments. The single-frame analysis is illustrated by several studies with subjects varying in age and race, and with environments ranging in scale from a room to a large institutional setting. The frame-sequence analysis is illustrated by two cases of temporary migrants to a new country in two environmental settings. Group debriefing is illustrated by a constructed case history of a brief professional task-oriented migration. From one technique to the next, the boundaries between subject and experimenter are progressively blurred. The roles of subjects range from being passive respondents to participants and finally to participant-experimenters. The role of investigators range from preparing the instruments for “others to use” to cooperating with participants in determining the character and significance of the transactional experience.

Paradigm, Paraphrase, Paralogia, and Paralysis: All in the name of progress

In Philosophy in a new key Susanne Langer (1942, p. 1) stresses the point that the questions posed by any interlocutor constrain and circumscribe the range of acceptable or palatable answers. Those who pose certain questions characteristically take for granted many assumptions that are open to dispute, or presuppose the truth of claims that may be false or problematic. Before I directly confront the substance of the paper by Voneche, I would like to commend him for his refusal to be suborned by the question-begging queries and assertions posed to him by the Editors of this volume.