Language, Interaction and Acquisition - Volume 4, Issue 1, 2013

This study examined lexical development from an interactionist perspective. More specifically, we investigated student gains in seven specific vocabulary words as a function of their frequency of occurrence and the type and amount of focus on form episodes related to them. Pretests and posttests were given to an intact class of second-year Spanish students to assess their gains for the seven words. Each day of class was recorded and transcribed to enable corpus- and interaction-based analyses of target word use whether in isolation or within focus on form episodes. We present the results of overall (quantitative) and more finely-grained, word-by-word (qualitative) analyses, both of which indicate the insufficiency of any single variable to predict lexical development, thus providing support for multifaceted and mixed-method approaches to the understanding and research of vocabulary acquisition. Finally, the results are discussed in relation to models of L2 vocabulary learning, within the interactionist framework in particular.

The present study focuses on the acquisition of subject–verb agreement in number in spoken French. We compare production and comprehension of singular and plural verb forms in French monolingual and French-Swedish bilingual children (n = 58) aged five to ten. Overall, the results demonstrate that subject–verb agreement in number is a challenge to all French-speaking children, be it monolingual or bilingual, due to its heterogeneous, partial and lexically restricted nature. Furthermore, in production, bilingual children omit plural verb forms significantly more often than monolinguals. However, in comprehension, they pattern with their monolingual peers. The data also illustrate an asymmetric pattern: Plural verb forms are more easily comprehended than produced whereas singular verb forms are more easily produced than comprehended. The reasons for this asymmetry are discussed from a usage-based perspective, focusing on the frequency of verb forms and agreement patterns in the French input.

Functional aspects of infant-directed speech (IDS) in face-to-face interaction play a central role in infant development (Venuti et al. 2012b) and are important in shaping infant responsiveness (Goldstein et al. 2003), yet have rarely been examined and there is little consensus on specific infant outcomes. Infant siblings of children with autism are at increased risk of developing this disorder characterised by socio-communicative impairments and present particular challenges for parents in interaction. Using a prospective video analysis design, we had two objectives: to investigate maternal functional speech styles in interaction with these infant siblings, and to analyse the relationship between maternal functional style and infants’ cognitive, language and socio-communicative development. We found significantly lower rates of maternal responsive-contingent utterances to the infant siblings and significant associations between maternal IDS and infant test scores only for the typical dyads.

The “optional infinitive” phenomenon, i.e. the existence of an early developmental phase in which children show a strong preference for using bare non-finite verb forms, has been the subject of many studies and much controversy. The aim of this study is to assess the role of distributional characteristics of the input for children’s early production of bare infinitives in two languages, German and French. For this purpose, three different input variables are investigated: the frequency, informativeness and salience of infinitives in child-directed speech. Results show that salience is the best predictor for the distribution of bare infinitives in the very early phase of development. Furthermore, lexical effects of individual verb forms on the patterning of bare infinitives in child speech are found which further support the constructivist idea that bare infinitives reflect the child’s learning of verb forms from compound finite verb constructions in the input.

According to the thinking-for-speaking (TFS) hypothesis, speakers of different languages think differently while in the process of mentally preparing content for speech. The aim of the present paper is to critically discuss the research carried out within the TFS paradigm, against the background of the basic tenets laid out by the proponents of this framework. We will show that despite substantial progress in the investigation of crosslinguistic differences in the organisation of information in discourse, the studies that actually examine the cognitive aspects of speech production are, to date, vanishingly few. This state of affairs creates a gap in our knowledge about the thought processes that co-occur with speech production during language use and acquisition. We will argue that in order to reach a more comprehensive picture of the cognitive processes and outcomes of speech production, methodologies additional to the analysis of information organisation must be used.