Toegepaste Taalwetenschap in Artikelen - Volume 7, Issue 1, 1979

These introductory remarks review some developments in Dutch applied psycholinguistic research during the last five years. Among them are the following:(1) Dutch psychologists show increased interest in child language, but still not enough to be of much help to the applied worker,(2) Interdisciplinary research in second language acquisition and bilingualism has blossomed up a great deal,(3) Reading and writing of Dutch, with special reference to Dutch morphology and spelling has become a field of much research activity,(4) Interactive research between psychologists, linguists and neuro-logists has rapidly developed over the recent years, in more or less institutionalized forms. It is of great potential importance for applications of various sorts.Applied psycholinguistics is often concerned with the promotion of successful communication. The paper stresses that natural languages are, in a critical way, more than just intelligent and effective communication systems. This is argued with reference to recent research in American Sign Language (versus chimp signing), in aphasia, and of a modern-day "wild child's" language. This critical distinction should be crucial for the applied worker as well.

An experiment is reported in which writing and drawing tasks of two different types are presented to 26 subjects in four different age groups. These types of task are supposed to represent 'pure-motor' writing and drawing, requiring very little perceptual and higher control on the one hand, and 'cognitive' writing and drawing, requiring considerable perceptual control without allowing automation or lower-level control to take over, on the other. The tasks were performed both with the left hand and with the right. The variable into which the present paper looks specifically is the preferred direction followed in the production of curves, loops and contours. On the basis of discrepancies between data in the literature and earlier findings by the present authors, it was expected that the two types of task might reveal different motor systems, each displaying its own development with age. This expectation was confirmed. Writing tasks of the 'cognitive' type in general replicated the findings reported in the literature, viz., an increasing preference from the age of 5 or 6 for the counter-clockwise production of curves, loops and contours in copying or drawing single symbols and geometric figures. This preference appears to be independent of the writing hand. Writing tasks of the 'pure-motor' type, however, show a hand-dependent preference, which seems te develop for the left hand from a clockwise to a counterclockwise preference, and for the right hand from a counterclockwise to a clockwise writing bias. The latter appears in continuously drawing circles at maximum speed and in rapid continued scribbling, especially in the youngest (4;5) and oldest (adults) age groups. The feasibility and the possible role of the two independent motor systems, hypothesized to describe the results, are briefly mentioned.

Charles Read described a spelling system for English created by some American preschool children. They represent English words with the standard alphabet and are thus compelled to classify distinct phones in some way. Read inferred from the children's spelling system aspects of their implicit categorization of speech sounds. He found that children related speech sounds( phonemes ) on a phonetic basis, represen-ting these phonemes with the same grapheme. These 'judgements' could be described in terms of phonetic features. The feature place of arti-culation appeared more important than any other feature.We studied the spellings of Dutch preschool children and first graders. We reached the same conclusions as Charles Read for the spellings of Dutch preschool children, but not for Dutch first graders. Moreover we found a pattern of clusterreduction ( spellings like SOM for 'storm' ) and a number of spellings that consisted of consonants only ( e.g. KT for 'kat'). We interpreted these consonantal spellings as syllabic spellings, analogue to Liberman's (1973) findings of speech segmentation by young children.

Dutch orthography has traditionally been described as a morphophonemic writing system, a set of morpheme preserving regularities superimposed on a predominantly phonemic substratum.Causes for complicating a strictly regular one-to-one phoneme-letter relationship in Dutch are isolated, and discussed in terms of the diffic-ulties they pose to children learning to write. Recent and older frequency counts of spelling errors substantiate the widespread view that deviations from a 1 - 1 phoneme-letter correspondence are highly conducive to error.However, on the basis of (psycho)linguistic considerations, morpheme preserving regularities have been claimed to exert facilitating effects in the reading process.A series of experiments is proposed to determine to what extent morpho-logically motivated deviations from a 1 - 1 phoneme-letter correspondence, as well as more arbitrary disturbances of these correspondences, contribute to visual word recognition and reading. Some recent results of analogous experiments on foreign orthographies are mentioned, and discussed with respect to their implications for Dutch orthography.

Language acquisitional processes are assumed to be interactional by nature: the language teacher (mother) and the language learner (pupil/child) influence each other's communicative behavior in such a way that linguistic input is optimalized for both the informational transfer and the acquisition of language. This viewpoint was developed on the basis of data obtained from younger children (1;0 - 4;0) and was restricted to the acquisition of new structures.It was questioned whether the interactional theory could be maintained for a developmental later stage (concrete operational; Piaget) and for the development of speech styles rather than for the acquisition of new struc-tures and whether the theory could be maintained in spite of the fact that children at age 5-8 restrict their attention to the mere formal (syntactic) aspects of language.The analysis of speech data in a first grade school (beginning and end of the year) suggest that1.) The teacher tries to treat the four groups of children (boys and girls; lower and middle class) equally in terms of number of utterances addressed to (the members of) these groups. At the end of the year it appears that she gave up this strategy during the year.2.) The children, however, differ remarkably with respect to the number of utterances they produce, but show initially only incidental differences with respect to the qualitative features (illocutional aspects, type of predicate, first, second, third person subject * first argument). 3.) The teacher differentiates qualitatively in her utterances in these terms between the four groups on the basis of quantitative differences of the groups .4.) At the end of the year the children differ qualitatively with respect to the features mentioned under 2.5.) The sequential analysis of semantic features confirmed that the teacher initiates the conversational differences in her dialogues with the children of each speech group.6.) Bandura's Social Learning Theory has to be rejected if we want to explain the development of speech styles, as the results ask for a directly steering and influencing theory.

Some preliminary results from a normative study on spontaneous speech from children between four and eight years are presented. The study is part of a project to develop a standardized and normalized method of analysis of spontaneous speech samples to be used in the assessment of developmental language disorders.From four groups of 30 4-, 5-, 6-, and 7-year olds respectively, spontaneous speech samples have been collected from adult-child conversations. The groups are heterogeneous but comparable to each other with respect to social background. The samples have been segmented into -units. To reduce interviewer-effects, a distinction was made between elliptical answers (answers to previous questions, without finite verb) and free utterances (all other utterances). 50 consecutive free utterances per child have been analyzed on several variables with regard to length (9), fluency (22), grammatical, semantic and pragmatic accept-ability (18) , and syntactic and semantic complexity (43) . The resulting frequency curves (mean frequencies per 50 free utterances per age group) have been analyzed with respect to the following questions:(1) do the groups differ in the relative frequencies for these variables?(2) if so, can these differences be fitted into a model of gradual increase or decrease?(3) or, if there are sudden decreases and/or increases in frequency, how can they be explained?Differences between the age groups were found on many of the variables, and several of these differences indeed do not fit the gradual model. Sudden dips and jumps in the frequency curves do occur. Examples of non-monotonic frequency curves are given for fluency (fig.3 and 4.), prono-minalization (fig.5), coordination and past tense (fig.7), and for adverbial phrases of time (fig.8). Some explanations are suggested for these non-gradual developments.The stability of these frequency patterns is now being tested on a second group of 120 children. If developmental frequency curves prove to be fairly stable, intensive frequency pattern analysis on both cross-sectional and longitudinal data, taking into account situational variability, might be a way to trace the more subtle developments in the later stages of language acquisition.

The language ability of children (age range: 4;0 - 10;0) was rated by their teachers on 35 scales. Separate factor analyses of the scales were done for the 741 Kindergarteners and the 1034 pupils of Primary Schools. Both analyses gave 5 identifiable factors : "disorderliness", "speaking ability", "defective listening ability", "defective speech** and "taciturnity". That the factors were almost the same for two groups of children being in different stages of development suggest that these judgments are influenced by an implicite theory about dependencies in language behaviour that is common to both groups of teachers:Therefore, one needs to be cautious in the use of this kind of judgment in psycho-logical assessment as well as in the interpretation of the relation between the factors and the other variables. Some of these relations are discussed. Girls appeared to score better than boys on three of the factors, in contrast to the conclusion of a review of research on sex differences that the verbal superiority of girls doesn't show in this age range. In line with the findings of many others, it was found that the higher the occupational level of the parents, the better the scores of their children on three of the factors. On four factors dialect speaking children did worse than children speaking the standard language, as expected. The lack of difference in "taciturnity" suggests that - at least in the opinion of these judges - the speakers of a dialect are not put to silence by the standard language of the school, as they are claimed to be. The low correlations between the factors and scores for reading and spelling raise doubts as to the diagnostic and prognostic value of this kind of judgments.

For a correct understanding of the causes of errors made in the interlanguage (IL2) system by a L2 student, a knowledge of (contrastive) linguistics and language (learning) psychology is essential. Error analysis as an a posteriori approach of IL2 has only a heuristic function.IL2 expressions (correct and incorrect) can be viewed as the product of either IL2 rules or IL2 strategies. The application of IL2 rules is an unconscious or automatic process; the use of strategies, conversely, is a conscious or controlled process, aimed at solving as efficiently as possible problems caused by TL2 deficiences, and experienced as such.An explanation can be seen as a cause only when the alternative explanations have been disqualified by means of hypotheses-testing research.Since IL2 errors are the result of a IL2 production process, language production mechanisms should be taken into account in the explanation of IL2 expressions as well.In the German (L2) of Dutch and American students, errors in case marking occur often in passive sentences. A few examples:(1) Es wird bei ihnen einen Fall erwähnt, wo es kaum anzunehmen wäre. (2) Dies geschieht indem einen Glottisschlag gebildet wird.(3) Er werde ... wie einen Hirsch oder als Hirsch erlegt.There are three possible explanations (hypotheses) for these errors. They have been tested experimentally as rule-hypotheses.From this it became apparent that the case errors in the IL2 expressions (1), (2) and (3) have to be explained on the basis of a language production mechanism which Kempen (1977) calls 'partial parallelism'. The errors in case marking - which appear to occur particularly often at the end of passive sentences - can only be explained when one assumes that case marking of the actual subject-NP at the end of the passive sentence is determined on the basis of the semantic relationship between this NP and the main verb. That the passive form of the sentence here has less influence on case marking is the result of the fact that the process of case marking on this NP, and the realisation of the passive form, do not run parallel. That there are no serious problems at the beginning of the passive sentence can be explained by the fact that subject selection and case marking can already take place before the choice of a predicate is determined. Here, the subject-NP determines (the form of) the predicate, while at the end of the passive sentence it is the semantic relationship NP-main verb which ensures that an accusative case is conferred on the actual subject-NP.

Starting-point for the two pilot studies reported here was the question whether systematicity in interlanguage is the same for different types of L2 behavior. We hypothesized that:1. If L2 learners know the correct L2 rule they make more errors (deviations from that particular L2 rule) in an oral production task in which they are pressed for time than in a task where they can speak as slowly as they want, provided that they have not yet reached the level of complete automatic mastery of the rule. In other words, under these conditions L2 learners show variability.2. If L2 learners do not know the correct L2 rule, they make the same number of errors in the + time limit as in the - time limit task. In this case their interlanguage is invariable.These hypotheses are consistent with both skill theory (Levelt 1976) and with an early version of the Monitor Theory, which predicts that, with increasing processing time, L2 output will improve due to the monitor. In both studies we analysed word order errors in Dutch (L2) made by adult speakers of English (LI) who live in Holland and are learning Dutch. The first pilot study consisted of two longitudinal case studies (fig. I). In the second pilot study 18 Ss where scored on 3 tests:1. A knowledge test for the L2 word order rules under investigation. Ss had to correct sentences containing word order errors. This test yielded a criterion for classifying Ss as having + or - knowledge.2. An oral production test (retelling in L2 of passages of LI speech) with restricted time. Response length was the same as the length of the stimulus passage, i.e. about 24 seconds.3. The same test as under 2, the difference being that Ss had ample time for their responses.Each group (+ and - knowledge according to test 1) made as many errors in test 2 as in test 3 (+ and - time limit): table 3. Thus no evidence was found for hypothesis I , which, however , does not mean that it has been falsified. Two possible explanations are offered, both in accordance with a later version of the Monitor Theory (Krashen 1979). First, Ss may have concentrated on communication rather than on grammatical correctness, in both oral tests. Second, word order rules may be so hard for most learners that their performance does not improve even when they have plenty of time for planning their utterances.

Foreign language teaching implies learning an enormous number of words. The learning methods which are commonly used for this purpose, are still far from ideal. Serious psychological objections can be raised to learning isolated words. Presenting words in texts, however, does not guarantee that pupils will pay sufficient attention to the forms of the new words and to the ways in which these words are related to the text. A good retention of the new words requires that the traces of the words in memory are embedded in one or more meaningful memory systems. So there has to be created a situation in which the pupils will pay more attention to the relations between the new words and the text.In an exploratory investigation which was carried out by Prof. Eikeboom and the author, we have tried to obtain this situation by asking the pupils to guess the meaning of new words from the context. A hundred and six second and third grade pupils of a large suburban High School served as subjects in this study. They worked at a Dutch story in which a number of words had been replaced by quasi-words. Half of the subjects had to guess the meaning of the quasi-words from the context, the other half could look up the meaning of the words in the margin and in a word-list. The subjects were submitted to an immediate and a postponed vocabulary test.The hypothesis was that in particular in the postponed test the subjects in the guessing condition would have memorized more or at least as many words as the subjects in the'margin condition. This hypothesis was founded on the supposition that the guessers would have to work actively on the new words and their context, whereas the subjects in the margin condition would "substitute" the meaning of the new words whithout paying attention to the forms or the context of the new words. This hypothesis was partly confirmed, that is to say for the third grade classes, by means of an analysis of variance with repeated measures. An unexpected but interesting result was that the second grade classes differed significantly from the third grade classes in the guessing condition, but not in the margin condition. This may point to the instructability of using the context to guess the meaning of new words.Finally the three methodological difficulties which occurred in this investi-gation, are discussed. These difficulties refer to: 1) the guessing ability of the subjects, 2) the necessity of confirmations in the guessing condition, and 3) the factors which influence the possibility to guess the meaning of words correctly .

In the comprehension of spoken language verbs play a very important part. Hence it is imperative for research on listening comprehension in a foreign language to find out what problems the FL student has with the processing of verb forms. Since a research instrument was not yet available an experiment was carried out with processing verb forms in the mother tongue. The most important questions were: are stem and affix processed independently, are there any differences with different types of verbs (strong or weak), and is the processing linear or holistic.Subjects were given pairs of verb forms and then had to decide whether stem and verb tense were the same by pressing a button which stopped an R T counter.The analysis of the results seem to show that stem decision is faster than tense decision, that type of verb (strong and weak) only'has an effect in tense decisions and that there are no clear arguments to be found either for linear or for holistic processing. These analyses are based on two reaction time measurements, one from the onset of the second verb form, the second from the end. Neither measurement seems to be satisfactory. The results will have to be submitted to a reinterpretation in which allowance is made in the reaction time measurement for the place in the word where the critical information lies (e.g. in "gespeeld" tense information lies in the beginning, in "speelde" at the end). Moreover, it is possible that the subjects in the experiment occupy themselves with two processes, word recognition followed by an analysis.We hope that reinterpretation will give a clear picture of the processing of verb forms and that it may form a basis for research in foreign language processing.

It is only quite recently, among other things as a result of the increasing demands for learner-centered education, that, particularly in the field of foreign language teaching to adults, an interest in the use of self-assessment techniques has begun to emerge.However, for an appropriate use of self-assessment as a means of evaluation of foreign language proficiency, an insight into the validity and reliability characteristics of the learners' judgements is needed.This paper discusses some findings of an experiment in which Dutch adult learners were asked to assess their proficiency in French by filling in two evaluation forms. In one form, the questions included aim at a global assess-ment of the learners' command of the French language both with regard to each of the four skills and to pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and orthography.The other form used covers only the four skills. The questions included in this form present, for each skill, a number of specific situations of language use. The learner is asked to indicate how well he thinks he can handle the French language in each situation described.In order to determine the reliability of the self-ratings the learners were asked to fill in, after an interval of about two weeks, the latter forra a second time. Criteria for the validity of the learners' judgements were based on their scores on language-proficiency tests. Besides this, data on a number of personal characteristics were obtained.The relationships between all these variables were analyzed. The research findings indicate among other things1. that self-ratings which are based on a specification of language proficien-cy in terms of language activities are reliable to a fairly high degree;2. that these self-ratings are better predictors of the test-scores than the ratings obtained by means of a global evaluation form;3. that self-ratings of listening comprehension are less valid than self-ratings of speaking or reading comprehension.

Aggrammatism is a disorder of sentence production which is typically observed in the context of Broca's aphasia. This paper does two things. First, a model of normal sentence production, proposed by Garrett (1975), is described and it is demonstrated how two phonological and two syntactic hypotheses of agrammatism can be deduced from this model. Three of these appear to correspond with hypotheses already proposed in the literature, while one of them - a syntactic one - is new. Second, a new experimental paradigm is described that seems to be capable of discriminating between at least a number of these approaches. The technique involves training patients to produce sentences of a particular form (e.g. the lion is able to kill, the child is anxious to drink) and then testing them on sentences of the same form but of a different underlying syntactic structure (e.g. the lion is easy to kill, the book is pleasant to read).Results obtained from American patients do not support a phonological type of approach to agrammatism. Furthermore, an analysis of errors appears to provide a basis for choosing between the two hypotheses.

The problem of the communication of the deaf is a fascinating one because both acquisition and use of the language of the hearing environment are extremely difficult for an otherwise normally intelligent group of people. From the beginning, tvo opposing philosophies have markedly influenced the education of deaf children and the consequent behaviour of deaf adults. The first favoured the use of the communicative means with which the deaf are familiar and at ease, viz. the manual sign, and, furthermore, promoted the development of good reading and writing skills in the language of the country. The second was opposed to all manual signing and favoured concentration on speech and lipreading. The first philosophy has since accepted the incorporation of speech and speechreading for those who can master these skills; the second one has not changed its stand-point. After a few decades of growing approval, the second philosophy nowadays meets with growing criticism, especially from newly developed disciplines like developmental psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. The first philosophy presents itself as the better approach under the new term 'total communication'. The paper gives a short evaluation of what this total communication implies.

Two recently developed language programs for the mentally retarded are discussed:1. A program aiming at the improvement of syntactic skills.2. A program designed to teach locative expressions with the prepositions 'in', 'on' and 'under'.In addition, the results of a training study that incorporates the syntax program are reported. In this study, two groups of 17 MR children were given training on Dutch subject-verb-object sentences. During the first half of the training period, experimental group I was trained on the use of SOV word orders which, while grammatically incorrect, are very common in the language of young Dutch children; during the second half of the training period, the subjects were trained on (correct) SVO orders. Exp. gr. II was trained only on (correct) SVO orders.The aim of the study was to see whether training on the incorrect 'child model' (SOV) sentences would facilitate the later learning of the correct 'adult model' sentences. Pre- and posttests included a sentence imitation task, a picture description task and a video-description task. Pretest results showed that the children indeed had a marked preference for the OV-word order.Pretest-posttest comparisons showed significant gains for both experimental groups when compared with a control group (no training) on a sentence complexity score. The two experimental groups did not differ from each other in this respect. With respect to the use of word order, experimental groups showed an increase in the use of the VO order. The increase was, however,much more pronounced in exp. gr. II. These results are discussed in the light of possible implications for speech therapy with the mentally retarded.