Frenette Southwood

Ratings of age of acquisition of 299 words across 25 languages: Is there a cross-linguistic order of words?

We present a new set of subjective age-of-acquisition (AoA) ratings for 299 words (158 nouns, 141 verbs) in 25 languages from five language families (Afro-Asiatic: Semitic languages; Altaic: one Turkic language: Indo-European: Baltic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Slavic, and Romance languages; Niger-Congo: one Bantu language; Uralic: Finnic and Ugric languages). Adult native speakers reported the age at which they had learned each word. We present a comparison of the AoA ratings across all languages by contrasting them in pairs. This comparison shows a consistency in the orders of ratings across the 25 languages. The data were then analyzed (1) to ascertain how the demographic characteristics of the participants influenced AoA estimations and (2) to assess differences caused by the exact form of the target question (when did you learn vs. when do children learn this word); (3) to compare the ratings obtained in our study to those of previous studies; and (4) to assess the validity of our study by comparison with quasi-objective AoA norms derived from the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDI). All 299 words were judged as being acquired early (mostly before the age of 6 years). AoA ratings were associated with the raters’ social or language status, but not with the raters’ age or education. Parents reported words as being learned earlier, and bilinguals reported learning them later. Estimations of the age at which children learn the words revealed significantly lower ratings of AoA. Finally, comparisons with previous AoA and MB-CDI norms support the validity of the present estimations. Our AoA ratings are available for research or other purposes.

INVESTIGATING THE IMPACT OF SMS SPEAK ON THE WRITTEN WORK OF ENGLISH FIRST LANGUAGE AND ENGLISH SECOND LANGUAGE HIGH SCHOOL LEARNERS

This study examined the impact of SMS speak on the written work of English first language (L1) and English second language (L2) grade 8s and 11s. The aim was to establish whether these learners make use of features of SMS speak in their English written work. The participants, 88 learners from an English-Afrikaans dual medium school, completed questionnaires from which the frequency and volume of their SMS use were determined, as well as the features of SMS speak they reportedly use while SMSing. In addition, samples of their English essays were examined for the following features of SMS speak: (deliberate) spelling errors; lack of punctuation; over-punctuation; omission of function words; and use of abbreviation, acronyms, emoticons and rebus writing. The questionnaires indicated that these learners are avid users of the SMS. All participants reported using features of SMS speak in their SMSes, and more than 40% reported using SMS speak in their written school work. Despite this, features of SMS speak infrequently occurred in the written work of the learners, which could indicate that the learners are able to assess when it is and is not appropriate to use a certain variety of language. That said, a number of SMS speak features were indeed present in the samples, which indicates that SMS speak had some impact on the written work of these learners. Not all of the nonstandard features of their written English could, however, necessarily be attributed to the influence of SMS speak; specifically some of the spelling and punctuation errors could have occurred in the written English of high school learners from before the advent of cell phones.

Bilingualism and psychosis: a linguistic analysis of a patient with differential symptom severity across languages

Abstract Several lines of evidence suggest important links between language and schizophrenia. Individuals with schizophrenia show numerous abnormalities related to language function, including disorganised speech and verbal memory impairments. Psychotic patients who communicate in two or more languages provide an opportunity to study the relationships between language and psychosis in more detail. This is a case report of a 27-year-old late bilingual male with a first psychotic episode who switched to his second language (English) during the psychotic episode and displayed more psychotic features, including prominent speech and thought disorder, when assessed in his first language (Afrikaans) compared to English. A language history was obtained and a language evaluation conducted, including analysis of a spontaneous language sample for the evaluation of structural and pragmatic aspects. Unexpectedly, the patient displayed more language abnormalities in English than in Afrikaans, suggesting a complex relationship between language and psychosis. One implication of these findings is that clinicians should assess bilingual psychotic patients in both languages in order to elicit the full spectrum of symptoms.

Noun and verb knowledge in monolingual preschool children across 17 languages: Data from cross-linguistic lexical tasks (LITMUS-CLT)

ABSTRACT This article investigates the cross-linguistic comparability of the newly developed lexical assessment tool Cross-linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT). LITMUS-CLT is a part the Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings (LITMUS) battery (Armon-Lotem, de Jong & Meir, 2015). Here we analyse results on receptive and expressive word knowledge tasks for nouns and verbs across 17 languages from eight different language families: Baltic (Lithuanian), Bantu (isiXhosa), Finnic (Finnish), Germanic (Afrikaans, British English, South African English, German, Luxembourgish, Norwegian, Swedish), Romance (Catalan, Italian), Semitic (Hebrew), Slavic (Polish, Serbian, Slovak) and Turkic (Turkish). The participants were 639 monolingual children aged 3;0–6;11 living in 15 different countries. Differences in vocabulary size were small between 16 of the languages; but isiXhosa-speaking children knew significantly fewer words than speakers of the other languages. There was a robust effect of word class: accuracy was higher for nouns than verbs. Furthermore, comprehension was more advanced than production. Results are discussed in the context of cross-linguistic comparisons of lexical development in monolingual and bilingual populations.

A comparison of proficiency levels in 4-year-old monolingual and trilingual speakers of Afrikaans, isiXhosa and South African English across SES boundaries, using LITMUS-CLT.

ABSTRACT This study investigated how trilinguals fare on the cross-linguistic lexical tasks (CLT)-Afrikaans, -isiXhosa and -South African English (SAE) (cf. Haman et al., 2015) compared to monolingual controls, and whether the CLT-Afrikaans renders comparable results across socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. The LITMUS-CLTs were administered to 41 low SES 4-year-olds (11 trilinguals; 10 monolingual speakers of Afrikaans, isiXhosa and SAE) and the LITMUS-CLT-Afrikaans to 11 mid-SES 4-year-old monolinguals. Results (a) indicate that trilinguals’ proficiency in their exposure-dominant language did not differ significantly from monolinguals’ proficiency, but their proficiency in their additional two languages was significantly lower than monolinguals’ proficiency; (b) reflect the extent, but not current amount, of exposure trilinguals had had over time to each of their languages; and (c) show that low and mid-SES monolinguals differed significantly on noun-related, but not verb-related, CLT measures. Possible reasons for and the clinical implications of these results are discussed.

Child language assessment and intervention in multilingual and multicultural South Africa: Findings of a national survey

Research world-wide suggests that service delivery by speech-language therapists (SLTs) to bilingual children is problematic and largely unsatisfactory. In multicultural South Africa, the majority of SLTs speak either only English or only Afrikaans and English. The current state of service delivery to bilingual children, including those with first languages other than English or Afrikaans, is not known. This study was undertaken to ascertain how SLTs in South Africa adapt their assessment and intervention practices to cope with the multilingual and multicultural nature of the local child population. A questionnaire was completed by 243 practising SLTs who had children on their caseloads. 71% of respondents reported treating children with English as first language, 51% Afrikaans, and 53% an indigenous African language. Less than 2% reported not treating bilingual children. Almost all respondents could assess clients in English, three-quarters in Afrikaans, and 15% in an African language. A quarter could treat clients in one language only; 11% could do so in more than two languages. Only 7% reported that 90-100% of their bilingual clients receive intervention in their first language. 70% of respondents needed intervention material in English, 57% in Afrikaans, and 33% in an African language. 78% considered the underlying linguistic base when selecting a language assessment instrument; only 6% considered its linguistic and cultural appropriateness for use locally. The use of translations of English-medium instruments when assessing Afrikaans-speaking children was widely reported, as was dissatisfaction with standardised English- and Afrikaans-medium instruments. The findings supply essential information on the state of service delivery to bilingual children: After almost two decades of official multilingualism in South Africa, SLTs’ practices remain a poor reflection of the multilingual and multicultural realities of the population. Steps toward improving the situation would include training more multilingual SLTs, specifically speakers of African languages, and expanding research leading to linguistically and culturally appropriate assessment and intervention material.

The challenge of linguistic and cultural diversity : does length of experience affect South African speech-language therapists’ management of children with language impairment

Background South African speech-language therapists (SLTs) currently do not reflect the countrys linguistic and cultural diversity. The question arises as to who might be better equipped currently to provide services to multilingual populations: SLTs with more clinical experience in such contexts, or recently trained SLTs who are themselves linguistically and culturally diverse and whose training programmes deliberately focused on multilingualism and multiculturalism? Aims To investigate whether length of clinical experience influenced: number of bilingual children treated, languages spoken by these children, languages in which assessment and remediation can be offered, assessment instrument(s) favoured, and languages in which therapy material is required. Method From questionnaires completed by 243 Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA)-registered SLTs who treat children with language problems, two groups were drawn: 71 more experienced (ME) respondents (20+ years of experience) and 79 less experienced (LE) respondents (maximum 5 years of experience). Results The groups did not differ significantly with regard to (1) number of children (monolingual or bilingual) with language difficulties seen, (2) number of respondents seeing child clients who have Afrikaans or an African language as home language, (3) number of respondents who can offer intervention in Afrikaans or English and (4) number of respondents who reported needing therapy material in Afrikaans or English. However, significantly more ME than LE respondents reported seeing first language child speakers of English, whereas significantly more LE than ME respondents could provide services, and required therapy material, in African languages. Conclusion More LE than ME SLTs could offer remediation in an African language, but there were few other significant differences between the two groups. There is still an absence of appropriate assessment and remediation material for Afrikaans and African languages, but the increased number of African language speakers entering the profession may contribute to better service delivery to the diverse South African population.

A comparison of the responses to three comprehension and three production tasks assessing the morpho-syntactic abilities of Afrikaans-speaking preschoolers

The lack of standardised assessment instruments for assessing the morpho-syntactic abilities of Afrikaans-speaking children often leads to the use of informal assessment tools and/or spontaneous language samples. The question that this paper addresses is how best to assess these morpho-syntactic abilities when using nonstandardised assessment instruments of this kind. The general aim of the present study was to answer this question. Eight typically developing, monolingual children (one boy and one girl of 3, 4, 5, and 6 years) from monolingual Afrikaans-speaking homes participated. Tasks were administered to assess comprehension and production of grammatical features related to number, person, case, and tense, as well as questions forms, binding relations and passive constructions. The comprehension tasks entailed picture selection, judging the (in)correctness of utterances produced by the researcher, and question answering, whereas the production tasks consisted of sentence completion, question asking and a language sample. A specific aim of the study was to determine which method(s) rendered the highest number of (i) correct responses and (ii) usable responses (i.e., responses strictly related to the aspect under assessment) by these typically developing participants. The results indicate that picture selection elicited the highest number of both correct and usable responses in the comprehension tasks. The production task that provided the highest number of both correct and usable responses was language sample elicitation. This suggests that these tasks should receive precedence when assessing the morpho-syntactic abilities of Afrikaans-speaking preschool children.

An investigation of the morpho-syntactic abilities of Afrikaans-speaking preschoolers

A lack of standardised assessment instruments for use with Afrikaans-speaking children compels those who need to assess their expressive morpho-syntactic abilities to either devise their own informal assessment tools or make use of spontaneous language samples. However, to interpret the results of these, normative data on the language development of Afrikaans-speaking children are needed. At present, no such data are available on the morpho-syntactic abilities of Afrikaans-speaking children. The present study aimed at gathering such data. Eight typically-developing monolingual children (one boy and one girl of three, four, five and six years) from Afrikaans-speaking homes participated. Tasks were administered to assess comprehension and production of grammatical features related to number, person, case and tense as well as questions forms, binding relations and passive constructions. Increased correct responses with increased age were observed for genitive case and tense comprehension, simple wh-question production, comprehension and production of binding relations, and comprehension of passive constructions, but not for number comprehension and production, person and case comprehension and production on pronouns, tense production, comprehension of question forms, and production of passive constructions. The results indicate that the morpho-syntactic abilities of Afrikaans-speaking six-year-olds do not yet resemble those of adult speakers of the language; the implication is that, in Afrikaans, morpho-syntactic development continues after the age of 6.

Specific language impairment as a syntax-phonology (PF) interface problem: evidence from Afrikaans

A theoretical account of specific language impairment (SLI) – one which places the locus of the impairment at Spell-Out at the syntax-phonology interface – is proposed and then tested against utterances from Afrikaans-speaking children with SLI. Drawing on Minimalism, our account offers a unified explanation for the seemingly diverse phenomena found in the Afrikaans data: omission of certain lexical material, double articulation of other lexical material and word order deviations. Based on our data, we conclude that the language problem of children with SLI appears to lie neither in the mapping from lexicon to syntax (thus in the selection of a lexical item as a member of the numeration) nor in the computational system, but in the mapping of an adult-like syntactic representation onto a proper sound representation.