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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2009

A Neglected Path to the Production of Word Combinations

Résumé

This paper presents evidence for a path to multi-word combinations that differs from the generally acknowledged sequence: single words, successive single words, two-word combinations,
longer constructions.
The assumption has been that the major skill that a child needs to develop is how to produce one word and then follow it with another, incorporating both words in a single contour (Dore et al 1976,
Branigan & Stokes 1981). However, a more detailed list of skills needed to combine words syntactically includes: 1) understanding the conventional nature of words; 2) learning a minimal number of
conventionalized lexemes (both comprehension and production); 3) understanding the utility of verbal communication and several of its functions; 4) sufficient articulatory skill to allow the distinction at least
some of these lexical items, although there will be transient homonymy; 5) the ability to produce coherent multisyllabic strings; 6) the ability to produce different prosodic contours. These skills eventually converge in the incorporation of two or more morphemes within a single intonational
contour.
In longitudinal data for one child we find a more convoluted path: there is a period of 1-2 months in which he produces multi-syllabic utterances with adult sounding contours that incorporate marginally
identifiable adult words. We call these Gestalts after Peters 1977, 1983. On a 15-minute tape at 1;5.06 he produces 22 different lexical items along with 10 "gestalty" utterances, all with conversational
intonation. The longest is 11 syllables; five contain possible words or phrases: dontcha know, xx shoes on, a gonna fit'chu, xx a went away. A month later, during a half-hour at 1;6.07 he produces 40 different
lexical items and 14 possible Gestalts, of which 12 seem to contain identifiable words or phrases, none of which he is "combining" in a conventional way.
This phenomenon is noteworthy because, although not all children take this particular path, it is probably not confined to one child. It is all too easy to ignore Gestalts, both because we haven't expected
them, and because there are neither tools nor theoretical frameworks for dealing with them. In the process of audiolinking and adding phonetics to a transcript at 18 months - one we had thought was
completely analyzed - we heard a number of Gestalts not previously noticed. One of us had an analogous experience many years ago listening to a Norwegian colleague's phonetic transcriptions: she
had noticed some extraneous uninterpretable vowels that she merely noted as V. From these and similar vowels in other languages we developed the notion of Filler Syllables (Peters 2001) Once a framework
had been developed for Fillers they have been observed in many languages. It is now time to create an analytical framework for Gestalts and to look for them more widely.
This talk will present audio examples of Gestalts, discuss how they change as more combinatorial language emerges, and explore how they could have been influenced by the input.

Domaines

Linguistique
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Dates et versions

halshs-00416142 , version 1 (12-09-2009)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : halshs-00416142 , version 1

Citer

Ann Peters, Edy Veneziano. A Neglected Path to the Production of Word Combinations. 33rd Stanford Child Language Research Forum., Jul 2009, Berkeley, CA., United States. ⟨halshs-00416142⟩
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