First Language

The field of first language acquisition (FLA) needs to take into account data from the broadest typological array of languages and language-learning environments if it is to identify potential universals in child language development, and how these interact with socio-cultural mechanisms of acquisition. Yet undertaking FLA research in remote field-based situations, where the majority of the world’s languages are spoken and acquired, poses challenges for best-practice methodologies assumed in lab-based FLA research. This article discusses the challenges of child language acquisition research in fieldwork contexts with lesser-known, under-described languages with small communities of speakers. The authors suggest some modified approaches to methodology for child language research appropriate to challenging fieldwork situations, in the hope of encouraging more cross-linguistic acquisition research.

An area in need of study in child language acquisition is that of complex multilingual contexts in which there is little language separation by interlocutor or domain. Little is known about how multilingual children use language to construct their identities in each language or in both languages. Identity construction in monolingual contexts has been examined closely using a community of practice model, with case studies of adolescents and teenagers. Language is viewed as social practice, as individuals use language to actively construct a shared community of practice. This study examines multilingual children’s (ages 6–12) lexical and phonological choices in two of their languages, Light Warlpiri and Warlpiri, that share many lexical items and most nominal morphology. The children’s choices contribute to language differentiation and in some instances drive language differentiation further than adult speech does. The motivation is captured in a community of practice model.

Linguists use the concept of diglossia to describe any sociolinguistic situation where a low-prestige dialect coexists with a high-prestige one and these dialects are used in different social spheres. Recent observations on Reunion Island have challenged this view because people mix French and Creole extensively in the same utterance and even in the same word. Prudent accounted for the flexibility of these intermediate linguistic forms through the concept of interlect. Children are exposed at an early age to such intermediate mixed forms and in an earlier study the author suggested five language profiles for young children’s use of mixing. The current study surveyed 110 five-year-old children on Reunion Island to further validate these profiles. The data analysis focuses on one variable, verb forms, which allow the identification of three production types: French, Creole and interlectal forms. Based on these data a language profile for each participant was identified. The children varied in their use of Creole and French, with the largest group of children being Creole ‘asymmetric’, whereby their speech was dominated by Creole but also included a significant amount of French. The majority of children aged 5 speak little or minimal French.

This article compares the communicative intentions observed in the speech addressed to children of 1;1 and 1;6 years old from three cultural communities: the Netherlands, rural Mozambique, and urban Mozambique. These communities represent two prototypical learning environments and a third hybrid: Western, urban, middle-class families; non-Western, rural, subsistence-farming families; and non-Western, urban learning environment. The results show that the Dutch CDS contains relatively more utterances with a cognitive intention than the Mozambican CDS. In Mozambique, CDS contains more imperatives, particularly in the rural environment. The CDS from urban Mozambique contains more socioemotional intentions. The findings suggest that these differences can be explained in terms of the different responsibilities and levels of autonomy expected from children of the three learning environments.

Southern Peruvian Quechua is an indigenous language spoken primarily in rural communities in the Peruvian Andes. The language includes a syntactic construction, ‘-paq’, that expresses purpose or function, thus providing an opportunity to trace how parents and children with little formal education express teleological concepts. The authors recorded parent–child dyads (N = 36; children aged 3–5 years) talking about items in a picture book, and coded uses of -paq (e.g., ‘What is that little [toy] bear for?’ [‘Chay usuchari imapaqtaq?’]. For younger children (3–4 years) and their parents, -paq was infrequent and equivalent across domains. For older children (5-year-olds) and their parents, -paq increased dramatically and differentially by domain (most commonly produced for artifacts, food, and animals). These results provide new evidence that speaks to existing developmental accounts regarding the domain-specificity vs. domain-generality of teleological concepts in development.

Although virtually all Inuit children in eastern Arctic Canada learn Inuktitut as their native language, there is a critical lack of tools to assess their level of language ability. This article investigates how mean length of utterance (MLU), a widely-used assessment measure in English and other languages, can be best applied in Inuktitut. The authors seek a measure that is suitable for the structural characteristics of Inuktitut as well as the practical realities of language assessment in the Inuit context. They compare five measures of mean length of utterance/word as well as five measures of longest utterance/word using three sets of data: spontaneous speech from eight children aged 1;8–3;6, frog story narratives from 12 older children and 6 adults, and spontaneous speech from one 5-year-old with specific language impairment and an age-matched peer. The authors conclude that mean length of word in syllables is the measure that provides the best balance of reliably assessing language level while also suiting Inuktitut structure and being relatively easy to calculate.

The MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventory (short form) was adapted for Samoan and Tongan speakers in New Zealand. The adaptation process drew upon language samples from Samoan and Tongan parent–child dyads with 20- and 26-month-old children and adult informants. The resulting 100-word language inventories in Samoan and Tongan, plus a single question about word combinations, were then administered to over 600 mothers of 2-year-olds in the Growing Up in New Zealand pre-birth longitudinal cohort study who identified their children as understanding Samoan or Tongan. Most mothers were able to complete the inventories without the help of an interpreter or interviewer. Important demographic correlates of children’s vocabulary and grammar were mothers’ country of birth, education, and deprivation level, and children’s birth order. Mothers’ birthplace was the single best predictor of children’s vocabulary development in Samoan and Tongan, with children of mothers who were born outside New Zealand having higher Samoan and Tongan vocabularies. Clinical implications are discussed, along with future analyses of the language development of these children from the Growing Up cohort.