journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 413-428, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 413 the developmental realization of ejectives by typically developing amharic speaking children fikre diress alamirew1 addis ababa university abebayehu messele mekonnen2 addis ababa university abstract the current study describes the developmental realization of ejectives by typically developing amharic-speaking children. it employed cross-sectional research method in order to collect the primary children’s speeches data within a given period. children’s speeches data were audio-recorded, using singlewords, sentence repetition, and spontaneous elicitation mode tasks. the audiorecorded data were transcribed using ipa and extipa and analyzed. the result obtained from, aged between 3; 0 a and 5; 0, 32 children indicated the different realizations of ejectives. majority of this age bound children under this study produced the ejective/p’/,/t’/,/k’/,/tʃ’/and/s’/properly and had a target realization when the consonants appeared as a singleton in a word but if they were clustered, they had a possibly to be dropped. on the other hand, there were some children, from different age groups, totally substituted these ejectives by their pulmonic counterparts as/p’/ [p],/t’/ [t],/tʃ’/ [tʃ],/k’/ [k] and/s’/ [s] and these developmental patterns detected in these children’s speeches were similar to ones, which have already been reported in other local languages (e.g. sidamuu affoo). however, the realization of the ejective /t’/ [th] and/tʃ’/ [th] or [t’] and /s’/ [tʃ’] were uniquely observed in aged between 3;10 and 5;0 three children’s production. such developmental patterns detected at later age might pose surmise whether they are typically language-related or a sign of delay and it may require a depth study including more participants and designing particular task. generally, this study confirmed that majority of amharic speaking children were able to master the production of ejective consonants before at age four. however, the complete target realization of such consonants is likely a time taking process, which goes beyond the age bound in some children language development. this implies that some children require continues exposure to these consonants in different word positions and need to have oral practice at school and at home to foster the acquisition process. keywords: language acquisition, language development, phonology, consonant realization, and ejectives 1 mrs. fikre diress is a phd candidate in the department of foreign language and literature at addis ababa university and instructor at ambo university. her research interests include language acquisition, language development and language learning. fikrediress@gmail.com 2 dr. abebayehu messele mekonnen is an assistant professor of clinical linguistics in the department of linguistics, addis ababa university, and ethiopia. his research interest includes phoneticsand phonology, typical and atypical speech/language development, co mmunication disorders, and language based learning disabilities. abebayehu.messele@aau.edu.et received : 28.10.2021 accepted : 01.12.2021 published : 29.12.2021 mailto:fikrediress@gmail.com mailto:abebayehu.messele@aau.edu.et the developmental realization of ejectives alamirew and mekonnen 414 1. introduction language is one of the defining human characteristics; children of all cultures acquire a native language, and they do so without a need of formal instruction. at first a new born child does not have any knowledge or experience when he/she comes to this world even if he/she is biologically ready to learn from the environment; his/her brain is just like a white paper on which nothing is spotted. however, a child is able to accumulate ideas, thoughts, and expertise through experience and the exposure he/she gets from the surrounding. it is believed that the interaction between nature and nurture plays an invaluable role in children’s all-round development in general, and in language development in particular (pinker, 2004; sabahat, 2012). language acquisition is a process by which children attain the capacity to perceive and understand sound systems, as well as develop different category of lexicons and sentences. language acquisition is one of a typical child behavior, which can be developed through time and enables he/she to make use of sophisticated means of communication when they grow old (ferguson, 1964). however, the regularity and speed in which a child acquires target language has prompted researchers to question whether a language is learned in any meaningful sense or not. this has built long standing theories, which describe the child’s language development and acquisition process. on first language acquisition, especially, various studies have been conducted for different reasons, in various approaches at the very depths to describe how the acquisition of language takes place without adults formally teaching them and without conscious learning. this debatable issue for many years has also posed many questions and still studies have been carried out on various features of the target languages to address whether the acquisition process is cross linguistically the same or different. in reference to this, lust (2006) noted that the growing studies of language acquisition have focused to answer several questions. some deal with phonological aspects of the language, whereas the others focus on lexicon or morphosyntactic features. however, from researchers’ different areas of focus on children’s language acquisition, child’s phonology has been the one, which has gained a great attention for many years. different studies (beckmanet al, 2009; ingram, 1974; rose & sharon, 2011) have described the acquisition of segmental aspects of language, such as the order of consonant acquisition, mastery of segmental features, like voicing and devoicing. other researchers have also focused on the development of various suprasegmental features such as syllable structure (dodd, 1995; watson, 1997; demuth et al, 2014), tone, stress/intonation patterns, etc. (kehoe, 2001) and studies have explained the different features of phonological development and designed different models and theories. as the theories and models have indicated, most of the phonological acquisition studies have focused for the last three decades in most european journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 413-428, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 415 and asian languages (ferguson 1964; ingram, 1989; wyatt, 1994).however, the acquisition of phonology in many african languages has not been addressed properly despite some studies’ reports. for example, demuth (2010) in the acquisition of sesseato passives; takeida (2011) on a significant role caregiver-infant interaction in children’s language development and deen, kamilud (2002) the acquisition of nairobi swahili: the morphosyntax of inflectional prefixes and subjects. the current study was conducted in ethiopian, which is one of east african countries where more than 80 languages are spoken. in spite of this fact, studies on the acquisition of ethiopian languages are very few. only few studies were traced during this study. in amharic, abebayehu (2013) has dedicated chapters of his ph.d. dissertation to a description of developmental speech sound realizations and ebenezer (2013) examined the nature of child language and baby talk. similarly, tariku (2019) has reported the acquisition of afaan oromo phonology and abebayehu and demeke (2017) described aspects of phonological acquisition in children speaking sidamuu afoo. these local researchers have made significant contributions towards the efforts to fill the gap in the area of languages acquisition. however, there are number of language acquisition issues, which have not been addressed yet. thus, the present study aims to contribute to filling the gap by describing the developmental realization of ejectives by aged between 3;0 and 5;0 typically developing amharic-speaking children. the following questions were also set to be answered in this ongoing research findings. 1.1. research questions this study was designed to answer the following questions. i. how does the developmental realization of ejectives look like in amharic? ii. what are developmental realization patterns of ejectives observed in aged 3;0 and5;0 years children? iii. what is the theoretical and the practical implications of the finding of the current study? 1.2. summary of phonological theories this study aims to describe the developmental realization of ejectives by typically developing children acquiring amharic language. the result from the current study is believed to contribute to the knowledge of language acquisition in general and the acquisition of amharic phonology in particular. therefore, this, the theoretical framework in this section is written as follows. it was also discussed based on the most common types of theoretical frameworks /approaches/ used in language acquisition research. in language acquisition research, the major theoretical argument is between the two frameworks, rationalists, and impressionists. in this regard, literature has tended to focus on the distinguishing between the two theoretical approaches that have proposed different accounts for the the developmental realization of ejectives alamirew and mekonnen 416 acquisition phonology bybee,2006). several researchers show domainspecific models to explain various features of phonological development like how the speech stream is segmented and word learning happens. along with this proposal, different ideas were suggested on how children identify the speech sounds and produce a word, what shape and representations of lexical entries have, and how they are acquired. different approaches and models are directly connected to phonological acquisition, which takes place in children’s language development process (renner, 2017). the general model of phonological development is one of the earliest endeavors; jackson designed it1968) and grounded his model on diary studies and took it as a paralinguistic period of babbling and a period of phonological acquisition. as his proposal, universal structures guide phonological acquisition; it means, most common sounds cross-linguistically are acquired first. jacobson’s effort was very central to the relatively short history of child phonology and considered as a good promoter for advanced research on child language acquisition and development (renner, 2017; stoel gamon, 2010). on the other hand, rule-based theory, which was proposed by chomsky and halle (1968), has taken into account the generative phonology. the attention of this phonological theory relied on the connection between abstract and surface forms: in other words, it was the only in its time for its’ rule-based account of phonology, which tried to show the rules of how phonemes or classes of phonemes were produced under a specified time. the theory is taken as one of the basic views, which examine a child’s speech production by applying a set of phonological rules. as applied to child phonology, generative rules were used to describe children’s simplifications of adult phonemes such as[+continuant] segments (fricatives) becoming [continent] (stops) in certain word positions (smith, 1973). similarly, stampe (1969) tried to show the theory of natural phonology which was established by describing a set of universal and native phonological processes. these were used to apply to adult and child speech. as the theory stated, to acquire adult-like phonology, a child needs to pass different processes to learn the sound systems that do not even occur in their language (stampe, 1972). in short, these approaches comprise levels of the phrase and prosodic words, going down to the grass root and syllable structures. it describes the order of phonological features (bernhardt & stumberger, 1998). on the other hand, optimality theory (ot) focuses on the view, which organized input to enhance certain output forms rather than being processoriented. ot is outcome-oriented theory; it leads child philologists to focus on the system of language acquisition and what is obtained in no adult-like changes in the output instead of focusing on errors (prince & smolensk, 2004). in this theory, the child’s phonology is described as an actively growing system, but it is not seen as a complete realization of adult phonology. ot proposal deals with a universal set of contradictory constraints of two basic types. the first one is nakedness constraints, which do not allow the existence of marked structures in the output a constraint journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 413-428, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 417 on final consonant and faithfulness constraints, which needs the requirement of matching between the input and output (rose, 2009). generally, meaningful language development is a multifaceted process. concerning phonological development, children must acquire the sounds system to produce words to match the adult targets; they must also understand the phonological forms of words in their native language. this complex process has two essential components. the first one is a biologically based component associated with the development of the speech motor skills required for the production of adult-like words and the second are a cognitive linguistic component associated with learning the phonological system of the ambient language. the cognitive aspect of phonological learning entails the mental representation of sounds, which are stored and accessed in the encoding and decoding of words. some type of mental representation is necessary for the perception and production of words. to pronounce the word cat, for example, an individual child must have a stored version of the sound sequence associated with the word; the individual child must be able to differentiate the word cat from related sounding words, such as hat, cap, cut, (clark, 2005; alqattan, 2015). in the same way, the production of the word cat requires knowledge of the target sound sequence and the articulatory movements that are necessary to distinguish it from other words with similar sound patterns. therefore, in children’s speeches, sound development can be seen from phonetic as well as phonological acquisition (winitz, 1969). the development of a phonological system is progressive and needs gradual change. however, the sequence of contrast affects smaller sound units due to the principle of extreme divergent form of the adult phonological systems. concerning this, gleason & nan (2009) tried to show the acquisition of sound systems in terms of the distribution of sound among the world’s languages. they have indicated that the most widely distributed sound is the earlier to be acquired. nasals, front, and stop consonants would be acquired earlier than orals, back consonants, and fricatives, respectively, as children’s language differ in certain features from adults. a good example of this is a phonological inventory of children’s language in english indicating that children use tore or sore for a store or a gig for pig. children are seen they are unable to produce certain sounds or sound combinations of the adult language; they simplify the sound system of language to make up the limitations. studies on a child’s phonology provided a certain process that can be seen in child language (ingram, 1978 &,1989; stampe, 1973; smith,1973; menn, 1971, 1977). the processes are often expressed as common changes that are seen in children's sound systems. children often create a suitable sound system for themselves so that they produce an output of their form until they can produce adult-like words. in other words, the processes described as the relations between the adult and the child form. the developmental realization of ejectives alamirew and mekonnen 418 as far as children’s phonological processes are concerned, different scholars (ingram, 1989; stoel-gammon, 2006) categorized the process as cluster reduction, omission, substitution and assimilation (consonant harmony). from different phonological features that children pass through, substitution of one consonant by others has divergent developmental patterns: stopping, fronting, devoicing, backing, gliding as well as deejectivisation (in some languages like amharic). in sum, children pass through certain phonological processes: especially, substitution, in general, de-ejectivisation in particular was the focus of this article. 2. methodology the main aim of this study was to describe the developmental realization of ejectives by typically developing amharic speaking. such a research in the area of language acquisition often follows longitudinal and/or cross-sectional research designs (clark, 2003; o’grady, 2006; ingram, 1989). however, in this study, cross-sectional research design was used. the researchers preferred to use a cross-sectional study designed to collect data at once in a given point of time across a sample population or a pre-defined subset (zoltan, 2007). cross-sectional research design is helpful to include a large representative sample and less demanding to recruit respondents. it also allows researchers to gather a large size of data within a short period. the method helps the researcher to see individual ability of producing various phonological elements. according to zoltan (2007) explanation, crosssectional data collection method is less exposed to detrimental factors like unexpected external events that are beyond the researcher control (e.g. children illness, drop out and other) 1.1. participants as part of the arrangement and for the choice of appropriate participants, it was made brief discussions with school chief principals on the objectives of the study and why the children get involved. having the school’s consent, 60 children, aged between 3;0 and 5;0 were selected from the two schools. 30 children were from st michael and 30 from mentor academy and the consent letter were sent to those children’s parents. the final selection was made by checking parent’s agreement and the appropriate information filled. based on the information collected from fifty returned sheets, thirty–two children who and their parents did not speak other local languages except amharic, were selected purposively. sixteen female and sixteen male children were grouped in to four places according to their age with five-month intervals as presented as follows. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 413-428, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 419 table 1 participants demographic data code name sex age code name sex age group 1 group 3 c1 tsn f 3;1;16 c17 bthy f 4;5;0 c2 hln f 3;2;5 c18 hna f 4;5;12 c3 amn f 3; 2;23 c19 idy f 4;5;19 c4 mkl f 3;2;14 c20 fkr f 4;5;2 c5 ntn m 3;3;15 c21 amn2 m 4;6;7 c6 els m 3;3:6 c22 kal m 4;5;21 c7 hry m 3;2;26 c23 ebn m 4;6;9 c8 eyb 1 m 3;3: 8 c24 epr m 4;5;0 group 2 group 4 c9 bln f 3;9:23 c25 sol.m f 4;11;10 c10 sol.g f 3;10:2 c26 smr f 4;11:6 c11 dgm f 3;11:28 c27 rdt 2 f 4;11;20 c12 rdt.b f 3;10 c28 ldy f 4;11;26 c13 eyb2 m 3;1017 c29 elnt m 4;11;23 c14 amn 1 m 3;9:24 c30 amr m 4;11;12 c15 mkys m 4;0:5 c31 nod m 4;11:21 c16 brk m 3;10:7 c32 eyb.g m 4;11;2 1.2. data collection and processing children’s speech data were collected using single-words, sentence repetition, and spontaneous elicitation modes. the speech data were audiorecorded using a modern audio recorder and transcribed using ipa and exist ipa. the transcription was done in elan linguistic annotator tools as it was easy for phonological segmentation and was helpful to display different words to see the developmental realization of various consonants. 1.3. data analysis the study had descriptive data analysis method. children’s speeches were transcribed, using analytical listening technique, following ashby et al. (1996). first, the analysis was done by classifying the different realizations of the target words. then, an error identification approach was used. next, the developmental realizations of different ejective consonants were identified and analyzed. finally, an attempt was made to forward a possible discussion and conclusion. 3. findings in this section, it was attempted to describe and discuss the developmental realizations of ejectives attested in children’s speeches production. due to spatial issue, the other substitution patterns were not included. however, de-ejectivisation of ejective consonants was taken here to refer to the developmental realizations of ejectives by non-ejective consonants. the developmental realization of ejectives alamirew and mekonnen 420 table 2 the realization of the ejective /p’/ [p] example process pattern realization target gloss de-ejectivisation /p’/ [p] etopa/ɨtopa etiopʼia name of country papas p’ap'a’s bishop tɘjɘpesa(amn) tɘrɘpesa(els,amn2) t’ɘlɘpeza(hln) t’ɘrɘp’eza table as the ejective /p’/ does not frequently appear in amharic word formation, the number of words detected in children’s speeches was also very limited. however, it occurred in some words and was realized differently. most of aged between 4;0 and 5;0 years children correctly produced the ejective /p’/ but there were still some from different age groups who substituted/p’/ [p] in this study. the realization of /p’/ [p] was also reported by abebayehu and demeke (2017) in typically developing sidamuu afoo children. table 2 developmental realization of /t’/ [t]or[th] process patterns word position children age respectively deejectivisation /t’/ [t]/[th] wi amn,els,eln,amn2 3;1,3;3,3;10,4;6 wm hln,els eln,amn2 3;2,3;3,3;10,4;6 examples de-ejectivisation pattern realizatio n target gloss /t’/ [t]/[ th] tota t’ot’a ape kɨtəl k’ɨt’əl leaf təntʃən t’ɨntʃəl rabbit tɨkul t’ɨk’ul black tɨlle t’ɨre cereals ajɨtuan ajɨt’uan the rat from thirty-two children,five of them realized/t’/differently. they substituted /t’/ [t]; for example, the word /t’ot’a/ meaning ‘ape’, which was detected in all children’s speeches, was consistently realized as [tota]. similarly, the word/t’ɨntʃəl/ ‘rabbit as [təntʃən]. these children also realized the target word process patterns word position children age respectively de-ejectivisation /p’/ [p] wi amn,els,amn2 3;1, 3;3,4;6 wm hln els,amn2 3;2,3;3, 4;6, journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 413-428, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 421 /k’ɨt’əl/‘leaf’ as [kɨtəl]. however, a 3;10 years old, eln had a different realizati on of the ejective /t’/ [th]. she totally replaced this ejective by aspirated [th] in different words. table 3 the realization of /tʃ’/ [tʃ] or[/ th] process patterns word position children age respectively de-ejectivisation /tʃ’/ [tʃ]or[th] wi amn,els,amn2 3;1, 3;3,4;6 wm hln,els,amn2 elt 3;2,3;3,4;6, &4;11 examples process pattern realization target gloss de-ejectivisation /tʃ’/ [tʃ]or[th] totutotʰ tʃ'atʃ'utotʃ chickens kutʃ kutʃ’ sit ɨtʃawətaləhu ɨtawotaləhu ɨtʃ’awətaləhu i play ʈʃamma ʈʃ’amma shoes tʰatutotʰ tʃ’atʃ'utotʃ chickens pɨta bɨtʃ’a yellow afɨtʃa afɨtʃ’a nose tʃɨla tʃ’ɨla tail like the ejective /t’/, the affricate-ejective/tʃ’/was also produced by most of the children who were under this study; they had matured realization. this enabled to say between aged 3;0 and 5;0 children were physiological mature enough to be able to produce the ejective/tʃ’/ in different word positions although there were still children who had different patterns. these few children realized the affricate-ejective/tʃ’/ [tʃ]or[th].for instance, in the word/ɨtʃ’awətaləhu/ ‘i play’ as [ɨtʃawətaləhu],/ʈʃ’amma/ ‘shoe’ as [ʈʃamma],the ejective /tʃ/ was realized as [tʃ] as indicated in the above examples whereas, the 3;10 year old eln realized /tʃ’/ [th] in her entire words like in the word /tʃ'atʃ'utotʃ/chickens’ as [thatutotʰ]. this girl had a unique realization of different consonants, which were not included in this article. indeed, children who were unable to produce this ejective had a tendency to substitute by its pulmonic counterpart [tʃ] or [th] but 4;11 years old boy elt substituted/tʃ’/by the other ejective /t’/ like in the word [afɨt’a] for the target /afɨtʃ’a/ mean ‘nose’. the developmental realization of ejectives alamirew and mekonnen 422 table 4 realization of /k’/ [k] process patterns word position children age respectively deejectivisation /k’/ [k] wi amn,hln,els, amn2 3;1,3;2,3;3,4;6 wm wf amn,hln,els,a mn2 3;2,3;3, 4;6, examples de-ejectivisation pattern realization target gloss /k’/ [k] kɨtəl k’ɨt’əl leaf tɨkul t’ɨk’ul black ɨjələkəmu ɨjələk’əmu sorting tɨlɨk tɨlɨk’ big kana k’ana tv channel bəkolo bək’olo corn kəj k’əj red kutɨl k’ut’ɨr number by the same token, like other ejectives, majority of the children were able to produce the ejective/k’/as singleton target consonant but if it was clustered, it might have a possibility to be dropped or substituted. from thirty-two children, who participated in this study, the realization of /k’/as [k] were detected in amn, hln, els and amn2. as depicted in the above table, these children substituted /k’/ by its pulmonic counterpart [k] in the initial, medial and final positions. for instance, the word /k’əj/ ‘red’ as [kəj] and /k’ut’ɨr/ ‘number’ as [kutɨl] indicated that substitution of /k’/ as[k] at the initial position. similarly, substitution of /k’/as [k] was also observed at medial position in the word /ɨjələk’əmu/ ‘sorting’ as [ɨjələkəmu], /bək’olo/ meaning ‘corn’ as [bəkolo] and at final positions it was found in the word /tɨlɨk’/ ‘big’ as [tlɨk] table 5 realization of /s’/ [s]or[tʃ’] process patterns word position children age respectively de-ejectivisation /s’/ [s]or[tʃ] wi amn,hln,els 3;1,3;2, 3;3,4;6 wm ,wf amn,hln,els 3;2,3;3, 4;6, examples de-ejectivisation pattern realization target gloss /s’/ [s]or[tʃ’] səj (els) s’əhaj the sun səɡul(hln) s’əɡul hair tʃ'aj (eln) s’ əhaj the sun tʃ'ɘlot(eln) s’ɘlot pray journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 413-428, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 423 it may not be surprising if a few children substituted fricativeadjective/s’/ by its pulmonic counterpart /s/ as it is age related phenomenon but the realization of/s’/ [tʃ’] was unique to amn’s production. as far as this fricative-ejective was concerned, it was difficult to reach to a firm conclusion due to its rare occurrence in most children’s speeches. words with fricative ejective /s’/ were only detected in ten children’s speeches, however, except amn, hln and els, the other children were able to produce it properly. hln and els realized /s’/as [s] in two words but amn had a different realization. she repeatedly produced the word /s’əhaj/ means ‘the sun’ and /s’ɘlot/ ‘pray as [tʃ’'aj] and [tʃ'ɘlot] substituting /s’/by the other affricate-ejective [tʃ']. 4. discussion this study was conducted by employing cross-sectional research method to take speech’s data within a short period. the data collected from different tasks were audiorecorded, transcribed, and analyzed. as the finding of the study in different tables indicated, majority of the children who participated in this study produced the target ejectives properly in different word positions. however, non-target realizations patterns were also detected within the same age group children’s speeches. the substitution of ejectives by their pulmonic counterparts like /p’/→[p] ,/t’/→[t] or[th], /k’/→[k], /ʧ’/→[ʧ] and /s’/→[s] were apparently common in some children' speeches in this study. abebayehu and demeke (2017) also reported such developmental patterns in sidamuu affoo speaking children. similarly, abebayehu (2008) also described the continuous de-ejectivisation of ejectives by their pulmonic counterparts in amharic speaking children with speech delay. in general, majority of three to five years old children, especially, who joined preschool education earlier than others did master the production of ejective as singleton consonants. on the other hand, there were children who substituted these consonants by their pulmonic counterparts. this may be taken as age-appropriate in aged 3;0-3;3 children’s speeches as similar patterns have already been identified in other local language (e. g. sidamuu affoo) the sin same age level. however, the realization of /ʧ’/→ [t’] or [th,] and /s’/→[ʧ’] were uniquely attested in three children’s (eln (3;10) amn2(4;6) and eln (4;11) speeches. these patterns of realization attested in aged three to five years children may be taken normal or a sign of delay in their acquisition process requires study in depth including more participants. 5. conclusion the development of children’s speech production and the realization of the target consonants are likely pre-determined by the amount of input children get from the families and school environment. the continuous oral practice made by the children in different age levels at the school and home fosters the acquisition of different consonants as whole and ejectives in particular. the developmental realization of ejectives alamirew and mekonnen 424 as researchers’ observation, children who had joined to preschool education earlier than others had better production of different consonants. especially, aged between four and five children pronounced the target ejectives properly. however, the non-target realizations were also attested in some children’s speeches and are likely taken as a sign that the complete acquisition of these consonants requires long period until age five or even later than this level. this may have different contributing factors. hence, in order to understand comprehensively, to come to a sound conclusion and profile the non-target realization of ejectives, large-scale study which include a large number of participants and specific target tasks on amharic consonant phonemes in general, ejectives in particular, 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(2007). research methods in applied linguistics. oxford: oxford university press. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 413-428, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 427 appendices appendix 1 amharic consonant phonemes bilabial labiodental dental alveol ar postalveola r palatal vela r glottal stops p b t d k k ɡ ʔ affricative ʧʤ nasal m n ɲ fricative f v s z ʃʒ h trill r approximates w j lateral l ejectives stops p’ t’ k’ ejecte ejective affricative ʧ’ ejective fricative s’ appendix 2 amharic vowels phonemes the developmental realization of ejectives alamirew and mekonnen 428 appendix 3 the frequency of the occurrence of different amharic consonant phonemes journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 2 284-287, 2021, june issn: 2148-1997 284 intonation patterns in children with learning disability h. n. shilpashri1 jss institute of speech and hearing mysore saraswathi2 jss institute of speech and hearing mysore abstract intonation is defined as the variation in pitch superimposed on the sentences. the aim of the present study was to understand intonation patterns used by children with a learning disability to express different types of kannada sentences (command, happy, request and sad) in comparison with typically developing children. this study also evaluated sentence duration. the recorded sentences were analyzed for intonation contours and sentence duration using praat software. the results of the study indicated a change in the terminal f0 pattern across the different sentence types used by children with learning disability in comparison to language age matched typically developing children. keywords kannada sentences, expressive intonation patterns, learning disability, typically developing children 1. introduction suprasegmental aspects, or prosody, are defined as the characteristics of speech that enhance and regulate the meaning of what is said (paul, augustyn, klin, & volkmar, 2005). acoustically, the prosodies of oral language involve variation in syllable length, loudness, pitch, and the formant frequencies of speech sounds. intonation is one of the suprasegmental aspects of speech refer to distinctive patterns of vocal melody. the melodies of speech are related to virtually all levels of verbal communication, including emotional expression, pragmatics, and syntactic structure. intonation is attributed with four main functions (roach, 2000): 1) the attitudinal function (affect), 2) the accentual function (focus), 3) the grammatical function (chunking); and 4) the discourse function (interaction). several research studies have been conducted in order to determine the role prosody plays in the organization of early language production in typically developing children (allen & hawkins, 1980; gerken & mcgregor, 1998). disordered expressive prosody is widely reported to occur in the speech of children with language disorders. weinert (1992) reported that children with specific language impairment (sli) did not use prosodic cues when learning rules of language, or in repeating sentences accurately, which suggested that prosodic deficits may be associated with language deficits. findings on intonation in children with autism suggest that, compared with typically 1 bio: dr. h. n. shilpashri is a lecturer in jss institute of speech and hearing, mysore 570004 karnataka state, india. corresponding author shilpashrihn@gmail.com 2 bio: mrs. saraswathi is a lecturer in jss institute of speech and hearing, mysore 570004 karnataka state, india. received : 05.10.2019 accepted : 08.04.2021 published : 30.06.2021 mailto:shilpashrihn@gmail.com intonation patterns in children with learning disability shilpashri, saraswathi 285 developing (td) controls, children with autism produce pitch contours with high f0 range and high pitch variability (diehl et al. 2009; bonneh et al., 2011). reilly, klima and bellugi (1990) reported abnormally high use of affective expressive prosody (pitch changes, vocalic lengthening and modifications in volume) by adolescents with william syndrome. catterall, howard, stojanovik, szczerbinski and wells (2006) evaluated prosody in children with william syndrome using the manual version of profiling elements of prosodic systems for children (peps-c) battery (wells and peppé, 2001). they reported that children had impaired expressive and receptive prosodic abilities and had pervasive difficulties, compared to chronological age (ca) matched controls. variation in f0 contours can lead to changes in prosodic patterns at various levels of linguistic units (e.g., word, phrase, sentence, and discourse). prosody play a role in language development, it serves to follow that children with deficits in language may also have difficulty with prosody. prosodic problems are not a diagnosis per se, but symptoms that occur at different levels of language. expressive intonation in children with learning disability is an under researched area. hence, the present study was undertaken. the aim of this study is to understand expressive intonation patterns, sentence duration to express different types of kannada sentences command, happy, request and sad, by children with learning disability in comparison with typically developing children. 2. methodology 1.1. participants ten children with learning disability (as per the diagnosis done by speech language pathologist) with normal intelligence (as per the diagnosis done by clinical psychologist) studying in v. vi & vii grade. ten language ages matched typically developing children studying in v. vi & vii grade participated in this study. all participants were from native kannada speaking families studying in english medium school. participants were evaluated for speech and language skills, reading / writing / mathematical skills, hearing ability, motor development and iq assessment. 1.2. stimuli four kannada sentences depicting four emotions command, happy, request and sad formed the stimuli. 1.3. procedure the participants were seated comfortably in a quiet room and were tested individually. each sentence was spoken by the examiner and the participants were instructed to repeat back the sentences using four different emotions command, happy, request and sad. the responses were recorded in praat software. 1.4. acoustic analysis intonation contours were analyzed using praat software, type of f0 contour, sentence duration for each sentence was noted. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 2 284-287, 2021, june issn: 2148-1997 286 3. findings the findings on expressive intonation patterns and sentence duration to express different types of kannada sentences command, happy, request and sad, by children with learning disability in comparison with typically developing children are as discussed below. table 1 fo contours pattern of typically developing children and children with learning disability for different type of sentences type of sentence intonation pattern typically developing children ld 1 command fall-rise-fall-rise-rise fall-fall-flat-fall-fall 2 happy rise-rise-rise-rise-rise rise-rise-rise-rise-fall 3 request fall-fall-rise-rise-rise rise-rise-rise-rise-fall 4 sad fall-flat-fall-fall-fall rise-rise-rise-fall-fall table 2 sentence duration type of sentence typically developing children ld sig mean (ms) sd mean (ms) sd 1 command 2022 372.86 2508 312.80 .005 2 happy 2277 323.38 2340 302.23 .657 3 request 2307 231.36 2551 311.87 .062 4 sad 2165 269.96 2314 360.81 .310 the intonation pattern for four different sentences are presented in table 1. in typically developing children the terminal pitch contour for command, happy and request sentence was a rising contour. for sad sentence type it was a falling contour. children with learning disability used falling contour for all the four type of sentences. table 2 shows the sentence duration for four types of sentences. there was a statistically significant difference at .05 level of significance for command type of sentence. for sentences – happy, request and sad there were no differences between the two groups. the results of the present study have indicated the possibility of change in intonation pattern used by children with learning disability in comparison to language age matched typically developing children. 4. discussion and conclusion the suprasegmental properties of speech play an important role in human communication. spoken language provides information about the intention and the emotional state of a speaker. linguistic prosody is used to mark the internal organization of sentence constituents or to convey the intonation contour of a sentence (lieberman, 1968). it is generally assumed that pitch errors will be seen in phonetic disorders of pitch. however, one must also intonation patterns in children with learning disability shilpashri, saraswathi 287 look into the pitch errors in phonological disorders with no evident organic lesions or neurological issues to account for it, where the use of pitch is abnormal. this information will be very important for speechlanguage pathologists in assessing and treating persons with speech and language disorders. future research on intonation patterns for different type of sentences and on large group of children with learning disability is warranted. acknowledgements we thank the almighty for giving us strength to carry out this study. we acknowledge with thanks the cooperation of our participants and their family members during this study. references allen, g., & hawkins, s. (1980). phonological rhythm: definition and development. in g. yeni-komshian, j. kingston & m. beckman (eds.), child phonology, vol. i: production. new york: academic press. bonneh, y. s., levanon, y., dean-pardo, o., lossos, l., & adini, y. (2011). abnormal speech spectrum and increased pitch variability in young autistic children, frontiers human. neuroscience. 19(4), 237-243. catterall, c., howard, s., stojanovik, v., szczerbinski, m., & wells, b. (2006). investigating prosodic ability in williams syndrome. clinical linguistics and phonetics. 20(7-8), 531-538. diehl, j. j., watson, d., bennetto, l., mcdonough, j., & gunlogson, c. (2009). an acoustic analysis of prosody in high-functioning autism, applied psycholinguistics. 30(3), 385-404. gerken, l. & mcgregor, k. (1998). an overview of prosody and its role in normal and disordered child language. american journal of speechlanguage pathology, 7(2), 38-48. lieberman, p. (1968). intonation, perception, and language. cambridge: mit press. paul, r., augustyn, a., klin, a. & volkmar, f.r. (2005). perception and production of prosody by speakers with autism spectrum disorders. journal of autism and developmental disorders, 35, 205–220. roach, p. (2000). english phonetics and phonology. cambridge: cup robin reilly, j., klima, e. s., & bellugi, u. (1990). once more with feeling: affect and language in atypical populations. development and psychopathology, 2(4), 367-391. weinert, s. (1992). deficits in acquiring language structure: the importance of using prosodic cues. applied cognitive psychology, 6(6), 545-571 wells, b., & peppé, s. (2001). intonation within a psycholinguistic framework. in j. stackhouse., and b. wells. (eds). children’s speech and literacy difficulties: identification and intervention. (pp. 366-395). london: whurr. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 136-143, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 136 translation and validation of modified checklist for autism in toddlers-revised version in tamil (t-mchat-r) perumal santhanam divya1 merfinstitute of speech and hearing (p) ltd jasmine lydia selvaraj2 merfinstitute of speech and hearing (p) ltd priscilla p3 merfinstitute of speech and hearing (p) ltd sai sreya r4 merfinstitute of speech and hearing (p) ltd abstract the modified checklist for autism in toddlers revised (mchat-r) (robin et al 2001) is a simple questionnaire for parents which improves discrimination between autism and other developmental disorders. this screening tool is currently available in more than 20 languages of the world. the aim of the current study is adaptation and validation of the modified checklist for autism in toddlers (m-chat-r) in the tamil language. a total of 450 children from both sexes between 16 to 30 months of age were taken, and those who have any comorbid serve chronic diseases were excluded. for the reliability of t-mchatr, statistical analysis was done by using spss version 20.0. the cronbach's alpha test found out that the tmchatr has an alpha score of 0.894 on a standardized item, which is categorized as excellent reliability. pearson's twotailed correlation was performed to compare t-mchat-r scores with isaa scores which reveal a positive correlation (r=0.01). the ‘p’ value for t-mchat-r and isaa for both the normal and abnormal groups was >0.001 indicating that the results are highly significant. our results yielded reliability and validity estimates similar to the values of the original m-chat validity study (robins et al. 2001). we have shown that the tamil version of m-chat-r has divergent validity. the tamil version of m-chat-r has shown satisfactory reliability. hence it is an effective tool for screening for asd in medium and high-risk children and should be regarded as the first official tamil version of the mchat-r to be applied in tamil nadu. keywords: tamil, screener, mchat-r, autism spectrum disorder 1. introduction autism spectrum disorder is a complex developmental disorder. it is most often a lifelong disorder, though there are more and more cases of children with asd who eventually function independently, leading full lives. autism differs from person to person in severity and combinations of symptoms. it usually begins in early childhood and eventually causes problems 1 bio: clinical supervisor p. s. divya’s area of interest covers child language disorder, neurogenic language disorder, motor speech disorders. c. a: divyapsmay14@gmail.com phone: +91 9566910570 2 bio: assist. prof. dr. selvaraj carries out research on fluency disorders, neurogenic language disorders, motor speech disorders. 3 bio: baslp, area of interest – fluency disorders, child language disorders) 4 bio: baslp, area of interest – child language disorders. received : 22.05.2020 accepted : 08.11.2020 published : 30.12.2020 mailto:divyapsmay14@gmail.com checklist for autism in toddlers-revised for tamil divya, selvaraj, priscilla p., sreya r. 137 functioning in society – socially, in school and at work. diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorder contains revised diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorder (asd). the dsm-v have 12 diagnostic criteria for pdd divided in to 3 domains of impairment: social interaction; communication and repetitive behavior or restricted interest. the onset of impairment must have occurred before age 3 years. diagnosing autism spectrum disorder (asd) can be difficult, since there is no medical test, like a blood test, to diagnose the disorders. doctors look at the child’s behavior and development to make a diagnosis. diagnosing an asd takes two steps; developmental screening and comprehensive diagnostic evaluation. screening plays a major role especially for those who are at a higher risk for developmental problems due to preterm birth, low birth weight, or having a brother or sister with asd. if a problem is suspected, a comprehensive diagnostic evaluation is needed. the increased prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (asd) and its detection during the first 3 years of life have substantial relevance for early intervention. autism is found in every country (diagnosed in one in every 115 people) (matthew j et al at september-12, 2012) and region of the world and in families of all racial, ethnic, regions, and economic backgrounds, making up roughly 1percent of the world population. diagnosing this wide range of prevalence points to a need for earlier and more accurate screening for the symptoms of asd. in 2010, overall estimated asd prevalence was 14.7 per 1000 (1 in 68) children age 8 years (u.s. centers for disease control and prevention [cdc], 2014). it is well known that delayed diagnosis and treatment of autistic spectrum disorders (asds) can worsen the prognosis (corsello 2005; dawson and osterling 1997; kasari et al. 2006). current u.s estimates suggest that 1out of 68 children carry an asd diagnosis (center for disease control, 2014). recent global asd prevalence estimates indicate 62 out of 10000 children meet criteria for asd. american academy of pediatrics (aap) recommends that asd –specific standardize screening should be performed at 18 – 24-month preventive check-ups; even though a 2009 survey among pediatricians found that only 28% routinely used it and most common barrier included lack of time and lack of familiarity with screening tools. the m-chat which stands for modified checklist for autism in toddlers – revised with follow up, is a screening tool for parents to assess their child is at risk of autism spectrum disorder (asd). this unique diagnostic tool was first developed in usa as a tool for detecting asd in children aged under 2 years in low-risk population, and does not require specialized direct observation. this tool was developed by diana robins, phd. m-chat-r tool may be administered as part of a child wellness visit with a health care provider, or it may be used by other professionals, such as a school psychologist or counselor. the ultimate goal of the m-chat-r is to accurately detect as many causes of autism spectrum disorder as possible in a timely manner. all m-chat studies have yield similar results and indicate that m-chat could be effective tool for early asd screening. (inada et al. 2010; pandey et al. 2008; robins et al. 2001; robins and dumontmathieu 2006; ventola et al. 2007). as tamil pediatricians have no detection tool for developmental screening in asd, the modified checklist for autism in toddlers (m-chat-r) was first translated in to and culturally adapted to journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 136-143, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 138 tamil. validity and reliability studies were carried out in two different geographical areas of tamil nadu. the aim of the current study is adaptation and validation of the modified checklist for autism in toddlers (m-chat-r) in the tamil language. 2. methodology 2.1. m-chat-r (robins et al., 2001) the m-chat-r is a parent-report screening tool to assess the risk of asd. initially, the parents have to answer 20 yes/no questions using the m-chatr form, which takes 5 minutes. if the child is screened positive, the parent is asked to follow-up for detailed evaluation. a total score of 0-2 is considered as low risk, 3-7 is considered as medium risk and 8-20 is considered as high risk. if the m-chat –r score remains at 2 or higher, the child is positive and if the score is 0-1, the child has screened negative. a total score of mchart-r of 8-20 shows a need to refer immediately for diagnostic evaluation. the t-mchat-r can be administered and scored and also can be used by other professionals to assess risk for asd. for all items except 2, 5 and 12 the response “no” indicates asd risk; for items 2, 5 and 12, “yes” indicates asd risk. 2.2. isaa (national institute for mentally handicapped. 2009) the indian scale for assessment of autism (isaa) is also another tool used for diagnosing and measuring the severity of autism. this tool was developed and was standardized in the indian population to diagnose the severity of autism. the ministry of social justice & empowerment, government of india constitute an expert committee comprising of professionals working in the field of autism and related developmental disabilities to standardize an indian tool for assessment of autism. isaa is an objective assessment tool for a person with autism which uses observation, clinical evaluation of behavior, testing by interaction with the subject and also information supplemented by parents or caretakers to diagnose autism. isaa consist of 40 items rated on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5(always). the 40 items isaa are divided into six domains. the domains are social relationship and reciprocity, emotional responsiveness, speech-language and communication, behavior patterns, sensory aspects, and cognitive components. a score of < 70 indicates no autism, 70106 (mild autism), 107-153 (moderate autism) and > 153 (severe autism). 2.3. study framework the tamil mchat-r study was undertaken in the following three phases: (i) translation and back translation (ii) the validity of the study itself and (iii) the reliability of the study checklist for autism in toddlers-revised for tamil divya, selvaraj, priscilla p., sreya r. 139 figure 1. m-chat study framework 2.4. translation and adaptation of mchat-r to mchat-r in tamil mchat-r was translated into the tamil language by one bilingual speech language pathologist (slp) who is proficient in tamil as well as the english language. this version was given to three slps and one linguist. then backtranslated by a native english speaker who was bilingual, who is fluent in english as well as tamil and the revised version was compared to the original m-chat-r. finally, the tamil m-chat-r was prepared. a slight adaptation of wordings was required, to match the cultural differences. [6] 2.5. participants this is a study to evaluate the validity of the tamil version of mchat–r. the study was conducted in tamil nadu. 420 children who fulfilled the inclusion and exclusion criteria were included for the study. the data was collected from kindergarten schools and day care centres. the inclusion criteria were children from both genders between 12 months to 46 months of age. children were excluded if they had known co-morbid conditions that had the potential to bias the mchat scores, such as hearing impairment, intellectual disability, downs's syndrome, and adhd. participants’ parents were required to sign an informed consent form. 2.6. procedure tamil-modified checklist for autism in toddlers revised (t-mchat-r) was prepared. this t-mchat-r was administered for 420 children. the children were divided based on their scores obtained in t-mchat-r. based on the scores, the children were categorized into 2 groups, group-a and group-b. group-a consists of the children who passed the criteria, and group-b included the children who fell into the asd criterion. we administered isaa for both of the groups to find the reliability of the t-mchat-r. translation validity relability study framework m-chat original version journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 136-143, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 140 figure 2. the categories in t-mchat-r 3. findings and discussion t-mchat-r was administered to 420 children. among the 420, 350 children (group-a) passed the criteria and 70 (group-b) had failed the m-chat-r criteria. table 1 mean, standard deviation and cronbach’s alpha values for t-mchat-r t-m-chat-r (n=420) pass(n=350)(nor mal group-a) isaa fail(n=70)(at risk for asd,group-b) isaa mean std. deviation corrected itemtotal correlation cronbach's alpha if item deleted 1 .08 .269 .559 .882 2 .02 .137 .260 .890 3 .25 .436 .295 .898 4 .04 .203 .374 .887 5 .05 .228 .541 .883 6 .07 .254 .631 .880 7 .08 .269 .683 .878 8 .09 .291 .662 .879 9 .09 .287 .732 .876 10 .05 .218 .448 .886 11 .04 .203 .548 .883 12 .05 .223 .519 .884 13 .01 .084 .215 .890 14 .04 .186 .511 .885 15 .06 .241 .634 .880 16 .11 .313 .798 .873 17 .13 .332 .327 .891 18 .07 .254 .606 .881 19 .16 .364 .575 .882 20 .05 .223 .387 .887 checklist for autism in toddlers-revised for tamil divya, selvaraj, priscilla p., sreya r. 141 table 2 mean, standard deviation and p value for t-mchat-r and isaa for both the groups. group a normal group b asd p value mean sd mean sd >0.001 t-mchat-r 0.39 .547 7.27 3.438 >0.001 isaa 41.33 2.744 124.44 33.137 >0.001 the group-b children passed the critical items, which indicates the risk for asd. in group-a for children who fall on low risk for asd, isaa was administered, which reveals no autism for group-a children. group b shows 55% of children in t-m-chat-r showed medium risk and isaa scores reveal 47% of those children have autism and 41% of children in m-chat-r showed high risk and isaa scores reveals 79% of those children got greater than 70. in tmchat-r the children who failed and fall in the medium and high risk they got greater than 70 scores in isaa. to check the internal consistency of the items, cronbach's alpha scores were calculated for the whole 20 items in the questionnaire. the cronbach's alpha test found out that the tmchatr has an alpha score of 0.894 on a standardized item, which is categorized as excellent reliability. each item of the questionnaire obtained an alpha value ≥ 0.6, thereby confirming higher internal consistency. an item-total correlation was also carried out and results are depicted in table 3. table 3 cronbach's alpha test scores. cronbach's alpha cronbach's alpha based on standardized items n of items .889 .894 20 for the reliability of t-mchat-r, statistical analysis was done by using spss version 20.0. pearson's two-tailed correlation was performed to compare t-mchat-r scores with isaa scores which reveal a positive correlation (r=0.01) and results are depicted in table 4. table 4 pearson two-tailed correlation group a group b m-chat-r isaa m-chat-r isaa pearson correlation sig. (2-tailed) n 1 350 .191** .000 350 1 70 -.085 .483 70 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 136-143, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 142 4. conclusion a the increased prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (asd) and its detection during the first 3 years of life have substantial relevance for early intervention. autism is found in every country (diagnosed in one in every 115 people) (matthew j et al at september-12, 2012) and region of the world and in families of all racial, ethnic, regions, and economic backgrounds, making up roughly 1 percent of the world population. diagnosing this wide range of prevalence points to a need for earlier and more accurate screening for the symptoms of asd. the m-chat-r is currently available in more than 20 languages of the world including many asian languages. tamil is a dravidian language spoken by the people of tamil nadu in south india and there is a need for a screening tool in this language to detect the presence of asd among the population of the state. this is the first study to validate the m-chat-r in the tamil language and the process involved were translation; validity and reliability analysis. the tamil version of m-chat-r has shown satisfactory reliability. children who fall under the medium and high risk category when m-chatr was administered on them, were also diagnosed to fall under the autism spectrum when assessed using the indian scale for assessment of autism (isaa). hence it is an effective screening tool to identify individuals who fall under the autism spectrum disorder in medium and high-risk children and should be regarded as the first official tamil version of the m-chat-r to be applied in tamil nadu. references albores-gallo l., roldán-ceballos o., villarreal-valdes g., betanzos-cruz b. x., santos-sánchez c., martínez-jaime m. m., lemus-espinosa i., & hilton c. l. (2012). m-chat mexican version validity and reliability and some cultural considerations. isrn neurology, july, 1. doi: 10.5402/2012/408694 boyd b. a., odom s. l., humphreys b. p., & sam a. m. (2010). infants and toddlers with autism spectrum disorder: early identification and early intervention. journal of early intervention. 32(2), 75-98. canal-bedia, r., garcía-primo, p., martín-cilleros, m. v., santos-borbujo, j., guisuraga-fernández, z., herráez-garcía, l., del mar herráez-garcía, m., boada-munoz, l., fuentes-biggi, j., & posada-de la paz, m. (2011). modified checklist for autism in toddlers: cross-cultural adaptation and validation in spain. journal of autism and developmental disorders. 41(10), 1342-1351. carakovac, m., jovanovic, j., kalanj, m., rudic, n., aleksic–hil, o., aleksic, b., villalobos i. b., kasuya, h., ozaki, n., lecic–tosevski, d., & pejovic– milovancevic, m. (v). serbian language version of the modified checklist for autism in toddlers, revised, with follow-up: cross-cultural adaptation and assessment of reliability. scientific reports, 6(1), 1-5. diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed., text revision). washington, dc: american psychiatric association. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425596 kara, b., mukaddes n.m., altınkaya, i., güntepe, d., gökçay, g., & özmen, m. (2014). using the modified checklist for autism in toddlers in a well-child https://dx.doi.org/10.5402%2f2012%2f408694 https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425596 checklist for autism in toddlers-revised for tamil divya, selvaraj, priscilla p., sreya r. 143 clinic in turkey: adapting the screening method based on culture and setting. autism. 18(3), 331-338. robins, d. l., casagrande, k., barton, m., chen, c. m., dumont-mathieu, t., & fein, d. (2014). validation of the modified checklist for autism in toddlers, revised with follow-up (m-chat-r/f). pediatrics. 133(1), 37-45. tsang, s., royse, c. f., & terkawi, a. s. (2017). guidelines for developing, translating, and validating a questionnaire in perioperative and pain medicine. saudi journal of anaesthesia, 11(1), 80-89. doi: 10.4103/sja.sja_203_17 https://www.researchgate.net/deref/http%3a%2f%2fdx.doi.org%2f10.4103%2fsja.sja_203_17 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 4 653-661, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 653 assessing pragmatic abilities in children with autism spectrum disorders mudra dudwadkar1 bhavani venkatachalam2 yasha chheda3 vrushali shinde4 ankita kale5 brajesh priyadarshi6 all india institute of speech and hearing abstract the aim of the study was to explore pragmatic skills in children with autism spectrum disorder (asd). six children with asd between ages 3 to 8 years were chosen as the participants. a pragmatic tool developed at the all india institute of speech and hearing (aiish), mysore as part of a dissertation was administered. pragmatics is a critical part of communication and is related to social skills, learning, and literacy skills in children with autism. several advanced and intermediate pragmatic skills like turn taking and joint attention were found to be affected in these children. the current study highlights the need to enhance pragmatic skills in children with asd as a component of communication, alongside language content and form. keywords: pragmatics, assessment, autism spectrum disorder, communication, language 1. introduction autism spectrum disorder (asd) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that interferes in one’s social communication or pragmatics, expressive communication especially verbal communication (thabtah & peebles, 2019). the domain concerned with the usage of the language across various social situations that allows an accurate understanding of the speaker’s intention is called pragmatics of language (gleason & berko, 2007). it requires the complex coordination of different skills like cognitive, social and linguistic skills (toe, mood, most, walker, & tucci, 2020). 1 mudra dudwadkar is a master’s student at the all india institute of speech and hearing. a passionate speech-language pathologist with research interests in the area of language pathology, adult language disorders and communication. corresponding author slpmudra@gmail.com 2 bhavani v is a master’s student at the all india institute of speech and hearing. an avid reader and a poet with a research inclination towards aac and communication) 3 yasha chheda is a master’s student at the all india institute of speech and hearing. a dedicated researcher and learner with her areas of interest being language pathology, feeding and dysphagia) 4 vrushali shinde is a master’s student at the all india institute of speech and hearing with an interest in the areas of phonology and child language. 5 ankita kale is a master’s student at the all india institute of speech and hearing with an interest in the areas of language pathology and aac. 6 dr. brajesh priyadarshi is an associate professor in linguistics. his research projects focus upon areas of language acquisition, applied linguistics and clinical linguistics. he has been actively involved in developing language assessment and therapeutic tools. received : 17.06.2022 accepted : 20.11.2022 published : 30.12.2022 mailto:slpmudra@gmail.com assessing pragmatic abilities dudwadkar, venkatachalam, chheda, shinde, kale & priyadarshi 654 children with asd often have difficulties in social communication or pragmatics of language (whyte & nelson, 2015).communication breakdowns occur frequently as a result of inadequate pragmatic skills. these skills also affect peer acceptance, perceptions of social competence in everyday interactions and selfesteem adversely (turkstra et al., 2017; whyte & nelson, 2015). the assessment of pragmatic skills is essential in identifying children who need extra mediation in the area of pragmatics. it is difficult in general; it is a socially driven behaviour and involves assessing a child in interaction with a peer or an adult and these observations are difficult to make in a clinical setting(toe et al., 2020). pragmatic deficits like turn taking, engaging in and initiation of conversation, comprehension of irony, metaphor, maxims and so on are difficult to measure on traditional tests as they focus mainly on linguistic structure and meaning instead of pragmatics of language ( bishop, 1998; adams, 2002; anderson et al.,2007.) this could be because of several reasons. firstly, the testing procedure is rigid and formal; hence, it fails to acknowledge the adjustments to changing situations and circumstances (adams, 2002). secondly, children with pragmatic deficits perform better in a structured environment, like a formal test as compared to a naturalistic situation (bishop & adams, 1989). 1.1. aim the aim of the present study was to explore the different pragmatic skills present in the communication of children with asd. 2. methodology the methodology of the research should be detailed very clearly referring to relevant theories. 2.1. participants for this study, participants with asd were selected from the all india institute of speech and hearing (aiish), mysore. six children with asd between ages 3 to 8 years were profiled and their case studies were made. the indian scale for assessment of autism (isaa) was used to determine the severity of autism. this tool was administered by the certified psychologist and speech-language pathologist jointly which diagnosed children as no autism, mild autism, moderate autism and severe autism. out of these participants, three were of mild severity and three were of moderate severity. participants with any other neuro-developmental disorders were excluded from the study, neither did any participant had sensory deficits like hearing or visual impairment. the study followed all the ethical guidelines given by all india institute of speech and hearing and informed consent was obtained from all the caregivers of the children assessed in the study. 2.2. data collection and processing the researchers gathered the case history and background information of the participants. the data was collected through an interview and observation of the child in free play and general interaction with the primary caregiver. this was done in 2–3 sessions at the clinic. in the absence of new journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 4 653-661, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 655 standardised tool, the language age was determined using the translated version of receptive and expressive emergent language skills (bzoch & league, 1991) and a pragmatic tool, which was developed at aiish as a part of a dissertation, was administered. this tool is divided into three levels beginner, intermediate & advanced. each level has 20 questions, each question was given a score of 0, 0.5 or 1 depending on the ability to perform the particular skill (as informed by the caregiver); where 0 indicated an inability to perform the skill, 0.5 indicated inconsistent ability to perform the skill and 1 indicated consistent ability to perform the skill. these questions were answered by the primary caregiver of the child. the sum of the scores of each level gives us a total score. 2.3. data analysis the data was analyzed qualitatively and represented in terms of percentages as it was a series of case studies. 3. findings in the six case scenarios considered for this particular study, the following are the results obtained. intentional communication using gestures/pulling caregiver towards desired object and attention-seeking through cry or vocalizations were present in 100% of the participants. quieting responses to speech, brief eye gaze and finding comfort by establishing physical proximity with caregivers were found in 83.33% of the participants and were emerging in 16.66% of participants. eye tracking, imperative pointing, requesting for object required skills were present in 66.66% of participants. alerting response to sight & sound follows caregiver with eyes and imperative pointing were emerging in 16.66% of the participants. awareness of unfamiliar situations, fixed eye gaze, response to name call, eye contact during play were present in 50% of the participants. awareness of unfamiliar situations, response to name call, eye contact during play were emerging in 50% of the participants. joint attention for objects at close distance was present in 33.33% and was emerging in 66.66% of participants. joint action, indicating negation, usage of two words/gesture combinations, eye contact during communication were present in 33.33% of participants. joint action, indicating negation, eye contact during communication were emerging in 33.33% of participants. usage of true words/gestures for requesting, turn taking during play/rhymes were present in 16.66% of participants. assessing pragmatic abilities dudwadkar, venkatachalam, chheda, shinde, kale & priyadarshi 656 table 1 profiling of pragmatic skills in children with asd sr. no. skills consistent (%) inconsistent (%) absent (%) beginner 1 alerting response to sight, sound. follows caregiver with eyes 66.66 16.66 16.66 2 quietens in response to speech 83.33 16.66 3 preference for child directed speech 50.00 50.00 4 awareness of unfamiliar situations 50 50 5 brief eye gaze 83.33 16.66 6 fixed eye gaze 50 16.66 33.33 7 response to name call 50 50 8 joint attention for object at close distance 33.33 66.66 9 finding comfort by establishing physical proximity with caregivers 83.33 16.66 10 eye contact during play 50 50 11 intentional communication 100 12 attention seeking through cry or vocalizations 100 13 imperative pointing 66.66 16.66 16.66 14 usage of true words/gestures for requesting 16.66 66.66 16.66 15 turn taking during play/rhymes 16.66 16.66 66.66 16 initiating interaction and waiting for response 50 50 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 4 653-661, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 657 17 joint action 33.33 33.33 33.33 18 indicating negation 33.33 33.33 33.33 19 requesting for object required 66.66 33.33 20 usage of two words/gesture combinations 33.33 16.66 50 intermediate 21 eye contact during communication 33.33 33.33 33.33 22 social greetings 50 50 23 usage of wh questions 100 24 eye contact during conversation 50 50 25 waits for turn during play 50 50 27 answering wh questions 16.66 83.33 30 usage of eye contact to signal turn during play 16.66 83.33 31 verbal turn taking 16.66 83.33 32 usage of sentences to express denial/dislike 16.66 83.33 39 usage of proxemics, kinemics 16.66 83.33 4. discussion a person’s effective functioning in his own community depends on pragmatic language skills because it is an amalgamation of social and language skills. it requires both of them which are central features of asd (volden & phillips, 2010). toddlers with asd are alert to and aware of new sounds in the environment. they also orient themselves towards it most of the time (adamson, bakeman, suma, & robins, 2019). in contrast to some previous investigations by klin et al (zwaigenbaum et al., 2007) which stated that children with asd showed lesser attention to child directed speech (cds) as compared to age-matched typically developing peers, the current study assessing pragmatic abilities dudwadkar, venkatachalam, chheda, shinde, kale & priyadarshi 658 showed that 50% of children with asd showed preference towards cds (watson, roberts, baranek, mandulak, & dalton, 2012). individuals with autism show limited ability to give eye contact and focus lesser on the faces of communicative partners (bar-haim, shulman, lamy, & reuveni, 2006). children with autism have been found to respond less to name call during early life (hatch et al., 2020). studies indicate children with asd have poor joint attention skills during parent-child interactions (adamson et al., 2019). some studies indicate that children with autism make minimal eye contact during play activities whereas some other studies indicate that children with autism make more eye contact, shifting gaze between play materials and their partner’s face during play. in individuals with asd, limited intentionality is considered to be a core deficit in their communication (maljaars, noens, jansen, scholte, & van berckelaer-onnes, 2011). experimental studies showed that children and adolescents with autism have severe difficulties in producing and in comprehending the declarative, but not the imperative pointing (baron-cohen, 1988). difficulties in initiating a conversation (baron-cohen, 1988) and in responding to others’ initiations (stone & caro-martinez, 1990) also have been reported. speakers with asd appear to have difficulty taking turns appropriately in a conversation (botting & conti-ramsden, 2003). children with autism have been seen to make lesser initiations to interact during conversations, comment lesser, take lesser conversational turns and respond less to others during conversations (jones et al., 2017), difficulties in initiating a conversation (baron-cohen, 1988) and in responding to others’ initiations(stone & caro-martinez, 1990) also have been reported. once engaged in a conversation, speakers with asd appear to have difficulty taking turns appropriately (botting & conti-ramsden, n.d.). deviant patterns of eye contact behaviour are found in individuals with autism, who suffer from severe social and communicative deficits. eye contact and modulation of gaze behaviour have been found to be difficult areas for individuals with asd (toth, munson, meltzoff, & dawson, 2006). children with asd, on the other hand, often rely on memorizing items in specific formats rather than analyzing questions into components and abstracting contextual cues from whquestions (goodwin, fein, & naigles, 2015).studies indicate children with asd have affected turn-taking abilities along with a lesser tolerance for waiting for turn during conversations (cardillo, mammarella, demurie, giofrè, & roeyers, 2020) children with asd have been found to have difficulty with ‘wh’ questions having words like ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘who’ (daar, negrelli, & dixon, 2015). avoidance of eye contact and difficulty with eye contact during early life have been observed to indicate autism spectrum disorder. these deficits have also been observed to persist through life (trevisan, roberts, lin, & birmingham, 2017). studies have shown a positive relation between turn taking and joint attention skills in children (toddlers) with autism (trevisan et al., 2017). studies have evaluated other areas of pragmatics such as extra-linguistic and para-linguistic pragmatic skills (angeleri, 2016) and documentation of frequency of us of skills and analysis of same in different contexts (baird & journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 4 653-661, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 659 norbury, 2016). the tool used in the current study has limitations in ability to assess these areas. the present study is a pilot study where only six participants were recruited for it. the authors wish to extend the study and recruit more participants for better generalizability. also, a longitudinal study should be conducted wherein the pragmatic abilities of children with asd, who are attending therapy, should be monitored. 5. conclusion pragmatic language is a critical part of communication and is related to social skills, learning, and literacy skills in children with autism. improvement of deficits in communication and social competency can also enhance a child’s self-image and sense of belonging in a family and a peer group. when children are diagnosed with asd, improving their pragmatic language and social interaction are important components of their therapy program. we conclude this article with a recommendation for healthcare professionals to monitor pragmatic developmental milestones in asd children, to refer them for pragmatic assessments, and to collaborate with researchers to develop valid, reliable tools that adequately capture the pragmatic strengths and weaknesses of asd children. the study highlights the need to teach children with asd pragmatic skills as a component of communication, alongside language content and form. acknowledgments the authors would like to extend their heartfelt gratitude to the director, aiish, mysore, the participants of the study and their caregivers. references adams, c. (2002). practitioner review: the assessment of language pragmatics. journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines, 43(8), 973–987. doi:10.1111/1469-7610.00226 adamson, l. b., bakeman, r., suma, k., & robins, d. l. (2019). an expanded view of joint attention: skill, engagement, and language in typical development and autism. child development, 90(1), e1–e18. doi:10.1111/cdev.12973 anderson, d. k., lord, c., risi, s., dilavore, p. s., shulman, c., thurm, a., . . . and pickles, a. (2007). patterns of growth in verbal abilities among children with autism spectrum disorder. journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 75(4), 594–604. doi:10.1037/0022-006x.75.4.594 angeleri, r., gabbatore, i., bosco, f. m., sacco, k., & colle, l. (2016). pragmatic abilities in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder: a study with the abaco battery. minerva psichiatrica, 57(3), 93– 103. baird, g., & norbury, c. f. 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(2021). longitudinal differences in response to name among infants developing asd and risk for adhd. journal of autism and developmental disorders, 51(3), 827–836. doi:10.1007/s10803-020-04369-8 maljaars, j., noens, i., jansen, r., scholte, e., & van berckelaer-onnes, i. (2011). intentional communication in nonverbal and verbal lowfunctioning children with autism. journal of communication disorders, 44(6), 601–614. doi:10.1016/j.jcomdis.2011.07.004 pratt, c., botting, n., & conti-ramsden, g. (2006). the characteristics and concerns of mothers of adolescents with a history of sli. child language teaching and therapy, 22(2), 177–196. doi:10.1191/0265659006ct301oa stone, w. l., & caro-martinez, l. m. (1990). naturalistic observations of spontaneous communication in autistic children. journal of autism and developmental disorders, 20(4), 437–453. doi:10.1007/bf02216051 thabtah, f., & peebles, d. (2019). early autism screening: a comprehensive review. in international journal of environmental research and public health. mdpi, 16(18). doi:10.3390/ijerph16183502 toe, d., mood, d., most, t., walker, e., & tucci, s. (2020). the assessment of pragmatic skills in young deaf and hard of hearing children. pediatrics, 146(suppl 3), s284–s291. doi:10.1542/peds.2020-0242h toth, k., munson, j., meltzoff, a. n., & dawson, g. (2006). early predictors of communication development in young children with autism spectrum disorder: joint attention, imitation, and toy play. journal of autism and journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 4 653-661, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 661 developmental disorders, 36(8), 993–1005. doi:10.1007/s10803-0060137-7 trevisan, d. a., roberts, n., lin, c., & birmingham, e. (2017). how do adults and teens with self-declared autism spectrum disorder experience eye contact? a qualitative analysis of first-hand accounts. plos one, 12(11), e0188446. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0188446 turkstra, l. s., clark, a., burgess, s., hengst, j. a., wertheimer, j. c., & paul, d. (2017). pragmatic communication abilities in children and adults: implications for rehabilitation professionals. in disability and rehabilitation (vol. 39, issue18, pp. 1872–1885). taylor & francis ltd., 39(18), 1872–1885. doi:10.1080/09638288.2016.1212113 volden, j., coolican, j., garon, n., white, j., & bryson, s. (2009). brief report: pragmatic language in autism spectrum disorder: relationships to measures of ability and disability. journal of autism and developmental disorders, 39(2), 388–393. doi:10.1007/s10803-008-0618-y watson, l. r., roberts, j. e., baranek, g. t., mandulak, k. c., & dalton, j. c. (2012). behavioral and physiological responses to child-directed speech of children with autism spectrum disorders or typical development. journal of autism and developmental disorders, 42(8), 1616–1629. doi:10.1007/s10803-011-1401-z whyte, e. m., & nelson, k. e. (2015). trajectories of pragmatic and nonliteral language development in children with autism spectrum disorders. journal of communication disorders, 54, 2–14. doi:10.1016/j.jcomdis.2015.01.001 zwaigenbaum, l., thurm, a., stone, w., baranek, g., bryson, s., iverson, j., sigman, m. (2007). studying the emergence of autism spectrum disorders in high-risk infants: methodological and practical issues. in journal of autism and developmental disorders (vol. 37, issue 3, pp. 466–480), 37(3), 466–480. doi:10.1007/s10803-006-0179-x journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 3 335-342, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 335 phonology acquisition in nepal: a preliminary study prabha dawadee1 institute of medicine, tu pratima dawadi2 chitwan fertility center abstract the process of speech and language development in children is an effortless and basic human skill. as the child acquires language, they acquire a sign system that bears an important relationship to both cognitive and social aspects of their life. every language has its own phonological system so it is necessary to develop language-specific articulatory skill acquisition norms. the aim of the study was to delineate the phonology acquisition in typically developing nepalispeaking children between the ages 3 and 7. forty children in 5 discrete groups as: 3.0-3.12 (mean= 3.4), 4.0-4.12 (mean= 4.4), 5.0-5.12 (mean= 5.5), 6.0-6.12 (mean= 6.4) years, each group consisting of 10 children was considered for the study. all the forty children were administered a picture articulation test in nepali (pat-n). the test consists of 79 colorful pictures, and analyses 6 vowels, 3 diphthongs, and 28 consonants in different positions: initial, medial, and final position. after the completion of recording, the recorded samples were transcribed in ipa after a few hours of recording on the same day and were analyzed all the vowels and diphthongs included in the study were acquired before the age of 3 years old. around 60% of consonants including in all the positions are developed by age 3.12. the result demonstrated that children acquire more speech and become more accurate as they get older. speech-language pathologists/ therapists can use this study to assess the speech sound errors, link with intelligibility, and know about the actual breakdown in speech sound development. keywords: speech sounds, phonology, articulation, misarticulation, acquisition, phoneme 1. introduction language refers to using sound (signs and symbols) systematically and conventionally for communication and expression (crystal, 1955). there are five basic components of language (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics) which are found across all the languages. all these component work together to create meaning for communication. the process of learning a language in children is usually through interaction with others which slowly they refine and improve the communication (brancalioni et al., 2018). it is an effortless and basic human skill. as the child acquires language, they acquire a sign system that bears important relationship to both cognitive and social aspects of their 1 ms. prabha dawadee, lecturer, masters in audiology and speech language pathology (maslp), maharajgunj medical campus institute of medicine, tu +9779865171778 corresponding author: prabhadawadee@gmail.com 2 ms. pratima dawadi, nursing supervisor, masters in nursing, chitwan fertility center received : 22.05.2021 accepted : 16.10.2021 published : 18.11.2021 mailto:prabhadawadee@gmail.com nepalese phonology acquisition dawadee, dawadi 336 life (fletcher & garman, 1986). this process follows certain pattern and rate in every language which is very complex to explain without any research. some of the most commonly quoted milestone for language development is the child must acquire the first word by 12 months, two-word phrase/ word combination by 24 months and sentences by 36 months which are used by parents and professional to monitor the normal pattern of language acquisition and to rule out whether the child is showing any delay or need intervention (lyons, 2013). one of the basic components of language is phonology which refers to the sound system of the language (edwards, 1997). acquisition of an individual sound/phoneme can be described as speech sound development and the organization of these speech sounds into patterns. the development of children’s speech sound can be analyzed in two ways: phonetic vs. phonemic acquisition. the term ‘phonetic’ refers to motoric skill of speech sound production. the term phonemic refers to the use of speech sounds and their organization. the child acquires speech when he/she masters in perception and production of consonants, vowels, clusters, and prosodic features of the language they speak. children learn an entire range of phoneme of their language gradually from simple to complex sound. for e.g. clusters are developed later in childhood. the acquisition of various speech sounds is closely related to a child’s overall language development (bauman-waengler, 2004) since the 1930s, there are many studies/researches that have been documented in the acquisition of speech sounds in different languages. till now it has been documented in more than 27 languages. in most of the languages of the world, the consonant is almost acquired by the age of 5 years, by this age almost 93% of consonants are produced correctly. sounds from the group of plosives, nasals, and non-pulmonic consonants are acquired earlier than trills, flap, fricatives, and affricates (mcleod & crowe, 2018). nepali language is a member of the indo-aryan branch of the indo-european language which is spoken by 12,300,300 in nepal (2011 census), 2,870,000 in india (2001 census) and 156,000 in bhutan. it is the national language of nepal. according to the 2011 national census, 44.6% of the population of nepal speaks nepali as the first language and 32.8 % speak as a second language. there are altogether 12 vowels, 33 consonants, and 3 clusters in the nepali language(assets, n.d.) every year more than 142 children with speech and language delay visit tertiary care hospital in nepal (shrestha & adhikary, 2020). due to less documentation on the acquisition of speech and language in typically developing children in nepal as a result many speech-language pathologists in the country are not able to set proper goals for the delayed speech and language. studying a whole set of language at a stretch is a very complex task and need lots of dedication. there has been a minimal study done in the acquisition of speech and language in typically developing nepali speaking. the first case study on language development was documented by pathak where he mentioned that the different component of language is developed at the different stage however there is no clear-cut phase for anything. in the same study he had discovered that around 7 vowels, 3 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 3 335-342, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 337 diphthongs and 11 consonants are acquired at 6 months of age (pathak 2015). however there no document on phonology acquisition in typically developing nepali speaking children according to age so this study can be a preliminary study to document the acquisition of one of the components of language. the aim of the study was to delineate the phonology acquisition in typically developing nepali-speaking children between the ages 3 and 7. 2. methodology 2.1. participants and data collection a cross-sectional study for which forty children from middle-class families that speak nepali at home and had english as the medium of instruction at school were considered for the study. they were further divided into 5 discrete groups: 3.0-3.12 (mean= 3.4), 4.0-4.12 (mean= 4.4), 5.0-5.12 (mean= 5.5), 6.0-6.12 (mean= 6.4) years, each group comprising of 10 children. the children with normal speech-language and motor histories were included in the study. however, children with hearing loss and slow learners were excluded from the study. table 1 age group and mean age all the forty children were administered picture articulation test in nepali (pat-n) (dawadee et al., 2016). the test consists of 79 colorful pictures and analyses 6 vowels, 3 diphthongs, and 28 consonants in different positions, initial, medial and final positions. out of 28 consonants, 27 consonants were able to assess in the initial position, 24 consonants were able to assess in the final position however only 19 consonants were able to assess in the middle position. table 2 total number of vowels and consonants in different position group mean age 3-3.12 3.4 4-4.12 4.4 5-5.12 5.5 6-6.12 6.4 initial medial final vowels |a|, |a:|, |i|, |o|, |u|, |e| diphthongs |ai|, |au|, |ang| consonants |k|, |kʰ|, |g|,| gʰ|, |ʧ|, |ʧʰ|, |ʤ|, |ʤʰ|, |t|,tʰ|, |d|, |dʰ|, |t̪|,|t ̪ʰ|, |d̪|, |d̪ʰ|, |n|, |p|, |pʰ|, |b|, |bʰ|, |m|, |j|, |r|, |l|, |s|, |h| |k|, |kʰ|,|g|, |ʧ|, |ʧʰ|, |ʤ|, |t|, |d|, ||t ̪|, |n|, |p|, |pʰ|, |b|, |m|, |j|, |r|, |l|, |s|, |h| |k|, |kʰ|, |g|, |gʰ|, |ʧ|, |ʧʰ|, |ʤ|, |t|, |tʰ|, |d|, ||t̪|, |t̪ʰ|, |d̪ʰ|, |n|, |p|, |pʰ|, |b|, |m|, |j|, |r|, |l|, |s|, |h|, |w| 6 vowels, 3 diphthongs 27 consonants 19 consonants 24 consonants total =79 nepalese phonology acquisition dawadee, dawadi 338 during response elicitation, the children were asked to sit on chairs comfortably and the pictures were presented. the responses were recorded and saved in hewlett-packard model hp envy 4 notebooks. in the case of a child not able to name the picture, an initial phoneme was provided as cues. if a phonemic cue was not enough syllabic cue followed by a question and the modeling of the word was done. appropriate reinforcements were provided. 2.2. data processing and analysis after the completion of recording, the recorded samples were transcribed in ipa after few hours of recording on the same day and were analyzed. in case of articulation errors, the words were analyzed for phoneme substitution, omission, distortion, or addition. the criterion of 80% for the entire phoneme in all positions was considered for them to be acquired? 3. findings 3.1. vowels and diphthongs all the vowels and diphthongs that were included in this study were achieved by the age 3-3.11 years of age. diphthongs |au| had the least percentage of acquisition i.e. 80% and the rest had 100% acquisition. all the vowels and diphthongs were assessed in only the initial position and were independent vowels. table 3 vowel and diphthongs development percentage 3.2. consonants 3.2.1. 3-3.12 years old group the velar plosive unaspirated voiceless sound like |k|, alveolar plosive unaspirated voiceless sound like |t|, bilabial plosive unaspirated voiceless sound like |p|, bilabial plosive unaspirated voiced sound like |b|, bilabial nasal unaspirated voiced sound like |m|, alveolar nasal unaspirated voiced sound like |n| and alveolar affricates unaspirated voiceless sound like |ʧ| are acquired in all the positions, initial, medial, and final positions with 80% acquisition criterion. whereas, other sounds, velar plosive aspirated voiced to sound like |kʰ|, dental plosive unaspirated voiceless sound like |t ̪|, palatal approximant unaspirated voiced sound like |j| and bilabial plosive aspirated voiced to vowels 3-3.12 yrs 4-4.12 yrs 5-5.12 yrs 6-6.12 yrs |a| 100% 100% 100% 100% |a:| 100% 100% 100% 100% |i| 100% 100% 100% 100% |o| 100% 100% 100% 100% |u| 100% 100% 100% 100% |e| 100% 100% 100% 100% |ang| 100% 100% 100% 100% |au| 80% 90% 100% 100% |ai| 100% 100% 100% 100% journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 3 335-342, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 339 sound like |pʰ| are acquired only in the initial and final position with an 80% acquisition criterion. alveolar lateral approximants unaspirated voiced sound like |l| is acquired at middle and final positions and alveolar plosive unaspirated voiced |g| is developed in initial and middle positions only with an 80% pass criterion. table 4 consonant development in percentage c o n so n a n t p o sitio n 3 -3 .1 1 4 -4 .1 1 5 -5 .1 1 6 -6 .1 1 c o n so n a n ts p o sitio n 3 -3 .1 1 4 -4 .1 1 5 -5 .1 1 6 -6 .1 1 |k| i* 100% 100% 100% 100% | d̪| i 60% 100% 100% 100% m 90% 90% 100% 100% m 100% 100% 100% 100% f 100% 100% 100% 100% | d̪ʰ| i 100% 100% 100% 100% |kʰ| i 80% 100% 100% 100% f 40% 60% 60% 70% m 60% 80% 100% 100% |n| i 100% 100% 100% 100% f 90% 90% 100% 100% m 100% 100% 100% 100% |g| i 100% 100% 100% 100% f 80% 90% 100% 100% m 100% 100% 100% 100% |p| i 100% 100% 100% 100% f 40% 40% 60% 80% m 100% 100% 100% 100% |gʰ| i 80% 90% 100% 100% f 100% 100% 100% 100% |ʧ| i 100% 100% 100% 100% |pʰ| i 100% 100% 100% 100% m 80% 90% 100% 100% m 70% 80% 90% 100% f 80% 100% 100% 100% f 80% 90% 90% 100% |ʧʰ| i 50% 60% 70% 70% |b| i 100% 100% 100% 100% m 60% 60% 60% 70% m 100% 100% 100% 100% f 30% 50% 70% 80% f 100% 100% 100% 100% |ʤ| i 70% 90% 90% 100% |bʰ| i 100% 100% 100% 100% m 60% 90% 90% 100% |m| i 100% 100% 100% 100% f 70% 80% 80% 100% m 100% 100% 100% 100% |ʤʰ| i 100% 100% 100% 100% f 70% 90% 100% 100% |t| i 80% 90% 100% 100% |j| i 100% 100% 100% 100% m 70% 80% 90% 90% f 100% 100% 100% 100% f 100% 100% 100% 100% |r| i 40% 60% 80% 90% |tʰ| i 100% 100% 100% 100% m 60% 80% 90% 100% f 30% 90% 100% 100% f 50% 80% 90% 100% nepalese phonology acquisition dawadee, dawadi 340 |d| i 70% 100% 100% 100% |w| f 70% 80% 90% 100% m 60% 80% 100% 100% |s| i 70% 80% 90% 100% f 50% 50% 80% 100% m 70% 90% 90% 100% | t̪| i 100% 100% 100% 100% f 60% 90% 90% 100% m 100% 100% 100% 100% |h| i 100% 100% 100% 100% f 70% 100% 100% 100% m 60% 70% 80% 80% |l| i 60% 90% 90% 100% f 70% 100% 100% 100% m 80% 90% 90% 100% |dʰ| i 100% 100% 100% 100% f 100% 100% 100% 100% *[i=initial, m=medial, f=final] similarly, velar plosive aspirated voiced to sound like |gʰ|, palatal affricates aspirated voiced to sound like |ʤʰ|, alveolar plosive aspirated voiceless sound like |tʰ|, alveolar plosive aspirated voiced sound like |dʰ|, dental plosive aspirated voiceless sound like | t̪ʰ|,| dental plosive aspirated voiced sound like| d̪ʰ|, bilabial plosive aspirated voiced to sound like |bʰ| and glottal fricative aspirated voiced to sound like |h| are acquired only in initial the position whereas dental plosive unaspirated voiced sound like |d̪| is acquired in middle position only. all are considered to be acquired with an 80% acquisition criterion. 3.2.2. 4-4.12 years old group the new sounds which are developed in this group are alveolar affricate unaspirated voiced sound like| ʤ| and alveolar fricatives aspirated voiceless sound like |s| which are acquired in all initial, middle and final positions sound like alveolar plosive unaspirated voiced sound like |d| is acquired in initial and middle position. other sounds like dental plosive unaspirated voiced sound like | d̪| and alveolar lateral approximants unaspirated voiced sounds like |l| are acquired in initial position only, velar plosive aspirated voiceless sound like |kʰ|, alveolar plosive unaspirated voiceless sound like |t| and bilabial plosive aspirated voiceless sound like |pʰ| are acquired in middle position only, and alveolar plosive aspirated voiceless sound like |tʰ|, dental plosive aspirated voiceless sound like |tʰ|, bilabial nasal unaspirated voiced sound like |m|, glottal fricative aspirated voiced sound like |h| and bilabial approximant unaspirated voice sound |w| are acquired in final position only. 3.2.3. 5-5.12 years old group alveolar tap unaspirated voiced sound like |r| is acquired in initial position only, glottal fricative aspirated voiced sound like |h| is acquired in the middle position only and alveolar plosive unaspirated voiced sound |d| is acquired in the final position only. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 3 335-342, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 341 3.3. 6-6.12 years old group velar plosive unaspirated voiced sound like |g| and alveolar affricatives aspirated voiced sound like |ʧʰ| are developed in final position only. 3.4. 6.12 years old group alveolar affricates aspirated voiceless sound like |ʧʰ| is developed in initial and middle position only and velar plosive aspirated voiced sound like |gʰ| is developed in final position only. 4. discussion and conclusions the responses elicited from 40 typically developing nepali speaking children were analyzed to obtain normative data. it was considered that the children master acquisition as the age increases which is supported by this study indicating some sounds are acquired earlier in life than other sounds. it was noted from the result that children’s speech becomes more accurate as they get older. almost all the vowels are acquired by the age of 3.12. around 60% of consonants including in all the positions are developed by the age 3.12 which increases to 89%, 93%, and 96% by the age 5, 6 and 7 respectively and rest are acquired after 7. this finding correlates with dodd et.al 2003 and k. ramandeep et.al 2015 which states the majority of error pattern resolve within 4 years. the most difficult sound to acquire are palatal affricatives |ʧ|, |ʧʰ| and tap |r| according to the percentage table. as the speech sound continue to develop even after 6.5 this study also indicates few sounds are not acquired even after 6.12 which is supported by the studies banik (1998), maya (1990), rao (2015), p. ravali (2016). table 5 summary of development of consonants in different position with age and their percentage of acquisition the result which is obtained from the study has a great clinical implication. as the results were obtained using most of the phoneme in age initial medial final total acquisition 3-3.12 |k|, |kʰ|, |g|, |gʰ|, |ʧ|, |ʤʰ|, |t|, |tʰ|, |dʰ|, |t̪|, |t ̪ʰ|, |d̪ʰ|, |n|, |p|, |pʰ|, |b|, |bʰ|, |m|, |j|, |h| |k|, |g|, |ʧ|, |t ̪|, |d̪|, |n|, |p|, |b|, |m|, |l| |k|, |kʰ|, |ʧ|, |t|, ||t̪|, |n|, |p|, |b|, |m|, |j|, |l|, |pʰ| 60% 4-4.12 |ʤ|, |d|, |d̪|, |s|, |l| |kʰ|, |ʤ|, |t|, |d|, |pʰ|, |r|, |s| |ʤ|, |tʰ|, |t ̪ʰ|, |m|, |r|, |s|, |h|, |w| 89% 5-5.12 |r| |h| |d| 93% 6-6.12 |g|, |ʧʰ| 96% >6.12 |ʧʰ| |ʧʰ| |gʰ| 100% nepalese phonology acquisition dawadee, dawadi 342 different positions this data can be used to differentiate between phonological disorders and normal children in a clearer way. speechlanguage pathologists/therapists can use this study to assess the speech sound errors, link with intelligibility, and know about the actual breakdown in speech sound development. this is one of the preliminary studies so this might be a small yet important milestone in knowing the phonological aspect of language development. the study was carried out with a limited sample size and there the lack of inter-rater reliability. references banik, a. (2003). development of articulation among normal and hearing impaired oriya children. (unpublished ph.d. thesis). university of bhubaneswar. bauman-waengler, j. (2004). articulatory and phonological impairments: a clinical focus. (4th ed.), allyn & bacon communication sciences and disorders. brancalioni, a. r., bogoni, a. p., silva, d. p., & da giacchini, v. (2018). a comparative study on phonological acquisition and performance in phonological awareness by children exposed to a bilingual or monolingual family environment. revista cefac, 20(6), 703–714. https://doi.org/10.1590/1982-021620182061018 crystal, d. (1995). the cambridge encyclopedia of the english language (2nd ed.). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. dawadee, p., prabhu,s., & bhattarai, b.(2016). wordlist in nepali language to assess articulatory. nepalese journal of ent, head & neck surgery errors, 7(2), 11-16. dodd, b., holm, a., zhu, h., & crosbie, s. (2003). phonological development: a normative study of british english speaking children. clinical linguistics and phonetics,17(8), 617-643 edwards, m. l. (1997). historical overview of clinical phonology. in barbara williams hodson, & mary louise edwards (eds.) perspectives in applied phonology. aspen publishers. maya (1990). an articulation test battery in malayalam. (unpublished master’s thesis). university of mysore. pathak, l. (2015). child language acquisition: a case study, paper presented at 24th annual conference, linguistic society of nepal, nov. 26-27, 2003, t.u., kirtipur, kathmandu. ravali p. m., & banik, a. (2016). development of phonological processes in typically developing 3 ½ to 6 ½ years hindi speaking children. international journal of multidisciplinary research and development, 3(4), 101-105. shetty, p., & prabhu, s. (2015). acquisition of speech sound in tulu language. journal of child language acquisition and development. 3(2), 98-109. shrestha, s., adhikary, a., & dangol, k. (2020). prevalence of speech and language disorders in tertiary care hospital: a retrospective study. nepalese journal of ent, head & neck surgery, 11(1), 21-24. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 385-393, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 385 a comparative study of reaction time in children with learning disability and typically developing children raheela qudsiya1 all india institute of speech & hearing, mysore priyanka kashyap2 all india institute of speech & hearing, mysore brajesh priyadarshi3 all india institute of speech & hearing, mysore abstract this study aimed at addressing and comparing the linguistic tasks in children with learning disability (ld) and typically developing children (tdc). for this study, 10 children with ld and 10 tdc between eleven to fifteen years of age were administered two linguistic tasks through the dmdx software in order to measure reaction time. the children considered for the study were native speakers of kannada, the medium of instruction in their schools being english. there were two linguistic tasks namely non-words and cluster words. the analysis of the reaction time values has been carried out across groups and across tasks. the comparative results and findings have been depicted in the study. also, the accuracy with which both the groups responded has been analyzed and presented. keywords non-words, clusters, learning disability, linguistic task, kannada 1. introduction there are a variety of disorders that affect the way verbal and non-verbal information is acquired, understood, processed, organized, remembered and expressed. learning disability is one such disorder caused by a problem in the nervous system that affects how information is received, processed or communicated. the term ‘learning disability’ describes a neurological disorder in which a person’s brain is structurally or functionally different. these differences interfere with a person’s ability to respond quickly. their abilities in terms of the processing speed can be studied by adopting reaction time tasks. a simple reaction time task consists of a warning signal and a response stimulus. the period between the warning signal and the onset of the response stimulus is the preparatory interval (pi). the pi starts with the onset of the warning signal and alerts the subject to prepare for the presentation of the response stimulus. during this period, until the onset of the response stimulus, the child is required to maintain 1 ms. raheela qudsiya is a senior speech & language pathologist at sakra world hospital, bangalore 560103, india. slp.raheelabaksh@gmail.com 2 ms. priyanka kashyap is a research scholar at all india institute of speech & hearing, mysore 57006, india. priyankakashyap718@gmail.com 3 dr. brajesh priyadarshi is an associate professor in linguistics at all india institute of speech & hearing, mysore 57006, india. corresponding author: brajeshaiish@gmail.com received : 11.02.2021 accepted : 16.10.2021 published : 05.12.2021 mailto:slp.raheelabaksh@gmail.com mailto:priyankakashyap718@gmail.com mailto:brajeshaiish@gmail.com a comparative study of reaction time in children qudsiya, kashyap, priyadarshi 386 attention. with the onset of the response stimulus, the child is required to press a key or lever or switch as quickly as possible. in short, reaction time is the time between the presentation of the stimulus and motor response. this simple reaction time task is also referred to as a “speed of motor performance measure”. over the course of normal development, reaction times become faster, peaking in adolescence and young childhood and slows again as adults age (kail, 1991; cerella & hale, 1994). reaction time or brain time is very closely related to integration between the two hemispheres of the brain. successful integration between the two hemispheres of the brain requires an efficient brain to process information more efficiently; the processing speed must be faster. thus, reaction time is considered by some researchers as a reflection of global processing speed (cerella & hale, 1994). suppressions, rigidity, and uncoordinated movements are the result of bad timing and faulty integration, and are indicative of poor brain processing ability that can manifest itself in learning problems and learning disabilities, poor academic performance, and many other struggles in life. in a study conducted by sroufe (1971), it was found that children with learning disabilities showed a general decrease in physiologic reactivity, which improved with age. deficits observed were attributed to neurologic immaturity and reflected psychological problems in maintaining attention. these results were consistent with those of studies using simple reaction time tasks (sroufe et al., 1973). another study by hayes et al. (1986) examined reaction time in children with learning disability. the students demonstrated slower and more variable reaction times on certain tasks than did students without learning disability. the researchers argued that this “failure to automatize basic sub-skills” could relate to dysfunction in the central nervous system. it is interesting to note, however, that there was no difference between the two groups on simple visual reaction time. additionally, studies by larson and alderton (1990) and jensen (1992) concludes that lapses of attention and/or working memory led to longer reaction times and that, individuals with higher intelligence have generally better capacities of attention control, preventing such lapses. besides, there have been a swarm of studies that repeatedly show characteristics of reaction time distributions beyond any measures of central tendency that have been hypothesized and indicate attention towards important aspects of human cognition (heathcote et al., 1991; spieler et al., 2000) there have been numerous studies on reaction time measures and intelligence, but despite the growing body of literature on learning disability, there have been very limited research reports with reference to reaction time in children with learning disability, especially in the indian context. hence, a need was felt to provide further corroborative evidence to the existing research findings. therefore, this study was taken up. the present study aimed at determining whether there is any difference in the performances of the kannada speaking children with ld and the tdc on reaction time measures and also to find whether differences existed in the accuracy. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 385-393, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 387 2. methodology 2.1. participants two groups of 10 children each participated in the study. each group consisted of 4 boys and 6 girls who were monolingual native speakers of kannada ranging in age from 8 to 12 years. the experimental group consisted of children who were diagnosed as having learning disability by a multidisciplinary team of qualified specialists including speech-language pathologist and clinical psychologist. the children were profiled using a standardized diagnostic tool, early reading skills (rae & potter, 1981) adapted on indian children by loomba (1995). they were required to perform two grades or more below their expected grade. the control group consisted of children who exhibited no learning problems and were functioning well at academics. those children with no history of language, hearing, neurological, developmental, sensory, intellectual or emotional and oro-facial abnormalities were included in the study. they were screened for voice, articulation, fluency and language. oral mechanism examination and hearing screening was carried out to rule out any abnormality. six of the children with learning disability had previously received speech therapy and four of them were currently attending therapy. all the children were studying in english medium schools; were righthanded, from families of middle and upper socioeconomic status. the socioeconomic status was screened using the nimh socio-economic status scale developed by venkatesan (2009). the scale has sections of occupation, education, annual family income, property, and percapita income. interpretation on this scale showed middle and upper socio-economic status for the families of all participants for both the ld and tdc groups.both groups of children were matched further on their intelligence quotient (iq). all the participants’ mother tongue was kannada language who attended english medium schools within the city of mysore in the state of karnataka, india. ethical procedures were used to select the participants. the parents were explained the purpose and the procedures of the study and an informed verbal and/or written consent were taken. the tasks were carried out in the presence of the investigators. the participants were told that they will be given some tasks to perform and that they were required to respond to the tasks in accordance with the instructions provided for each task. the participants were also informed by the caregiver/investigators beforehand that they were being involved in a research experiment and as to what these tasks were eliciting from them. the participants were familiar with the investigators who were carrying out the tasks on them. also, these participants were not previously acquainted with tasks similar to the ones carried out in the current study. 2.2. description of tasks 2.2.1. non-word (nw) task non-words and words were displayed randomly and the participant had to judge whether the stimuli presented is a word or a non-word; for example, ‘drag’ is a word and ‘blauff’ is not. a comparative study of reaction time in children qudsiya, kashyap, priyadarshi 388 2.2.2. cluster word (cw) task the participant was asked to identify if the word displayed on the screen is a cluster or not; for example, ‘knife’ is a cluster; whereas, ‘cat’ is not. the stimuli for the non-word task was extracted from the non-word graded reading test (snowling et al., 1996); and the stimuli for cluster task was extracted from ers early reading skills (rae & potter, 1981). the description of the tasks is as follows: table 1 description of reaction time (rt) tasks tasks description example stimuli reaction time measurement (milliseconds) a) cw task press ‘yes’ key if the stimulus presented is a cluster word. ‘no’ key if not “rattle” and “rumble” words on the same screen one beside the other time from completion of one stimulus to key press. b) nw task press ‘yes’ key if the stimulus presented is a word, ‘no’ key if not “sit” and “bit” words presented simultaneously one below the other time from completion of one stimulus to key press. 2.3. data collection and processing all tasks were presented on a laptop computer using the dmdx software, and children responded by striking a key on the keyboard. for each task two trials were given, following which the actual ten stimuli were presented which were randomly ordered. for all the tasks, the child was expected to give a key press response, and the child pressed one key (marked “yes” in green color) for a yes or positive response and a different key (marked “no” in red color) for a negative response. the children were instructed well before the task had begun and later the trials were provided to make sure that they understood the task well. the environment was conducive for the children to maintain their focus and attention since the test was conducted in a silent environment with participants seated comfortably on a chair while the monitor distance from participant’s eyes was maintained at about 50 centimeters. the tasks were divided into two sessions; which required a total of twenty to thirty minutes to complete. both sessions contained two subtasks, each of linguistic and non-linguistic type. all the children performed the tasks in the same order. children were instructed always to respond as quickly as possible without affecting the accuracy. a set of practice trials as many times as necessary was administered to ensure that the child understood the task. for all tasks, the children were instructed to rest both their hands just above the keys to be used, which was marked by words “yes” and “no” in specific colors and respond appropriately. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 385-393, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 389 2.4. data analysis the mean reaction time and the accuracy of the tasks given were analyzed for both the groups for each of the tasks. this was later compared within tasks and across tasks for both groups. 3. findings the data were analyzed and statistically treated using the spss software (version 10) to determine if there was any significant difference in the reaction time of typically developing children and children with learning disability. the overall linguistic reaction time was calculated using mixed anova with group as an independent factor. linguistic tasks were the dependent variables within the subject factors. the descriptive statistics revealed the mean and standard deviation of the control and experimental group for linguistic tasks as shown in table 2. it is seen in the table 2 that the mean reaction times of children with learning disability was 5147 milliseconds while the reaction time in the typically developing children was 2661 milliseconds. this is depicted in the figure 1. table 2 mean and standard deviation of reaction times in typically developing children and children with learning disability for the tasks tasks group mean standard deviation cw tasks nw tasks td ld 1318.97 2503.09 459.69 727.68 tdtypically developing children, ld-children with learning disability tdtypically developing children, ld-children with learning disability figure1: average reaction time across groups and both tasks. 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 cw and nw td ld a comparative study of reaction time in children qudsiya, kashyap, priyadarshi 390 the means and standard deviation for each of the tasks for both the groups are depicted in table 3. it is evident from the table that the mean reaction times for all the individual tasks in children with learning disability are greater than the typically developing children. the same has been shown in the figure 2. table 3 the mean and standard deviation of typically developing children and children with learning disability for both the tasks tasks td ld mean sd mean sd cw tasks 1372.73 570.79 2360.00 894.67 nw tasks 1265.20 570.26 2420.61 808.44 tdtypically developing children, ld-children with learning disability tdtypically developing children, ldchildren with learning disability, cwcluster word task, nwnon-word task figure 2: average reaction times across groups and tasks an attempt was also made to determine the accuracy of responses in both the groups for linguistic and non-linguistic tasks using mixed anova. it is seen from the table 4 that there was no much difference between the accuracy of responses of both groups of children. table 4 accuracy of responses across groups tasks td ld mean sd mean sd cw tasks 8.9 1.1 8.1 0.7 nw tasks 8.4 1.3 7.5 1.5 tdtypically developing children, ldchildren with learning disability 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 cw nw td ld journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 385-393, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 391 tdtypically developing children, ldchildren with learning disability, cwcluster word task, nwnon-word task figure 3: average correct responses (accuracy) across groups and tasks these findings are in good agreement with the findings of dykman et al. (1970), spring (1971), czudner and rourke (1972), sroufe (1971, 1973) and hayes et al. (1986) which suggested that children with learning disabilities processed information at a slower rate than children without learning disabilities. in a paper presented by spring et al. (1972), 22 poor readers were matched on sex, age and iq with normal readers on a simple reaction time task. it was found that the reaction time was found to be longer for poor readers on the task. this result was interpreted by the authors as a support for a theory that some children with a certain learning disability respond to laboratory tasks with sub-optimal levels of arousal compared to their age matched typically developing peers. partially supporting this theory, there is another study by boydstun et al. (1968) and satterfield et al. (1971) in which electro dermal measures of arousal were longer for children with learning disability than for normal controls. these results have implications with respect to intervention programs of children with learning disability. it is recommended that reaction time assessment should be a part of the diagnostic protocol. emphasis should also be placed on such reaction time tasks being incorporated in the therapy schedule so as to facilitate increase in their overall processing speed. the results also strongly suggest the need for proper recommendations for appropriate accommodations, consistent with identified areas of weakness particularly in their classrooms. for example, extra time should be provided especially with respect to linguistic tasks. the information regarding the reaction time should be incorporated in the counseling process too; where the caregivers could be counseled about the importance of reaction time and to provide more weightage to the accuracy of the child’s responses rather than the speed; especially in the initial stages of training, thereby reducing the pressure and stress on the child. the difficulty with the linguistic tasks in both the groups of children can be attributed to their overall proficiency in the language. hence, the linguistic tasks must be given greater importance during the intervention program. 6,5 7 7,5 8 8,5 9 9,5 cw nw td ld a comparative study of reaction time in children qudsiya, kashyap, priyadarshi 392 it can be concluded from the present study that the children with learning disability have longer reaction times in comparison with the typically developing children, but the accuracy with which they respond is identical. the investigators of the present study do realize that the age range considered for the study was wide (8-12 years). this could have influenced the results obtained with respect to the reaction time and accuracy. further work can be undertaken using tasks that are carefully chosen for the processes and knowledge that the subjects require, and difficulty is graded across task domains. in addition, the reaction time on other domains such as motor tasks also can be assessed. this may provide a better picture of overall performance of such children across various tasks. longitudinal studies may reveal information about the changing patterns of reaction times across the groups. also, carrying out the study in a larger group of participants will aid in understanding the underlying mechanisms in children with learning disabilities with greater clarity. similar studies can also be carried out on children with learning disability before, during and after the intervention program which may reveal the effect of therapeutic treatments. references boydstun, j. a., ackerman, p. t., stevens, d. a., clements, s. d., peters, j. e., & dykman, r. a. (1968). physiologic and motor conditioning and generalization in children with minimal brain dysfunction. conditioned reflex. 3, 81–103. cerella, j., & hale, s. (1994). the rise and fall in information-processing rates over the life span. acta psychologica, 86, 109–197. czudner, g., & rourke, b. p. (1972). age differences in visual reaction time of “brain damage” and normal children under regular and irregular preparatory interval conditions. journal of experimental child psychology, 13, 516–526. dykman, r.a., walls, r., & suzuki, t. (1970). children with learning disabilities: conditioning, differentiation, and the effect of distraction. american journal of orthopsychiatry, 40, 766–781. hayes, f. b., hynd, g, w., & wisenbaker, j. (1986). learning disabled and normal college students' performance on reaction time and speeded classification tasks. journal of educational psychology, 78, 39–43. heathcote, a., popiel, s.j., & mewhort, d. j. k. (1991) analysis of reaction time distributions: an example using the stroop task. psychological bulletin, 109, 340–347. jensen, a.r. (1992). the importance of intraindividual variation in reaction time. personality and individual differences, 13,869–881. kail, r. (1991). processing time declines exponentially during adolescence. developmental psychology, 27(2), 259–266. larson, g. e., & alderton, d.l. (1990). reaction time variability and intelligence: a ‘worst performance’ analysis of individual differences. intelligence, 14, 309–325. lima, s.d., hale, s., & myerson, j. (1991). how general is general slowing? evidence from the lexicon domain. psychology of ageing, 6, 416–425. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 385-393, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 393 loomba, m. (1995). descriptive analysis of the sequential progression of english reading skills among indian children. an unpublished master’s dissertation submitted to university of mysore, mysore, india. rae, g., & potter, t.c. (1981). early reading skills. informal reading diagnosis – a practical guide for the classroom teacher, prentice hall, new jersey. satterfield, j.h., & dawson, m. e. (1971). electrodermal correlates of hyperactivity in children. psychophysiology. 8, 191–197. snowling, m. j., stothard, s. e., & mclean, j. (1996). graded nonword reading test. london: thames valley test company. spieler, d.h., balota, d.a., & faust, m.e. (2000). levels of selective attention revealed through analysis of reaction time distributions. journal of experimental psychology: human perception and performance, 26, 506– 526. spring, c. (1971). perceptual speed in poor readers. journal of educational psychology, 62, 492–500. spring, c., hopkins, & john, b. (1972). reaction time in learning disability and normal children. paper presented at the meeting of the american educational research association, chicago. sroufe, l.a. (1971). age changes in cardiac deceleration within a fixed fore period reaction-time task: an index of attention. developmental psychology, 5(2), 338–343. sroufe, l.a., sonies, b.c., & west, w.d. (1973). anticipatory heart rate deceleration and reaction time in children with and without referral for learning disabilities. child development, 44, 267–173. venkatesan, s. (2009). readapted from 1997 version. nimh socio-economic status scale. national institute for the mentally handicapped, secunderabad, india. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 208-218, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 208 aspects of phonological acquisition in children speaking sidaamu afoo abebayehu messele mekonnen1 addis ababa university demeke loje2 addis ababa university abstract this study tries to describe aspects of phonological developments in children speaking sidaamu-afoo, a cushitic language spoken in ethiopia, east africa. data were collected from six children aged between 3;6 and 4;9 years. the data were first recorded orthographically and then transcribed using ipa. results showed the speech production patterns noted in the children studied here appear to be varied in type. some of them can be taken as age appropriate, as similar patterns have already been reported crosslinguistically for the same age rages, while others are language specific. there are still some developmental realisations, which do not appear to be age appropriate for the children studied. whether the occurrence of these patterns at such late ages is typical in the language or signs of delayed phonological development needs to be verified with comprehensive data taken from larger sample size. keywords: language acquisition, phonology, phonological delay, crosslinguistic, sidaamu afoo 1. introduction child language acquisition has been studied for a long time in different disciplines using various theoretical approaches. however, it is reasonable to state that systematic study of the acquisition of segmental aspects of phonology by children began with roman jacobson (jacobson, 1941, 1963) who claimed that segments that are typically unmarked are acquired before more marked segments irrespective of language. validating such claims has been a challenge partly because of the insufficiency of crosslinguistic data on language acquisition, and partly due to the fact that one child differs from the next in various aspects of language acquisition (e.g., bloom, 1970; nelson, 1981), particularly in the acquisition of phonology (e.g., stoel 1 dr. abebayehu messele mekonnen is an assistant professor of clinical linguistics in the department of linguistics, addis ababa university, ethiopia. his research interests include phonetics and phonology, typical and atypical speech/language development, communication disorders and language-based learning disabilities. correspondence: abebayehu.messele@aau.edu.et 2 demeke loje completed his graduate study in linguistics in the department of linguistics, addis ababa university, ethiopia and has been working as a teacher at a college of teachers education. received : 10.10.2017 accepted : 18.12.2017 published : 26.12.2017 doi: 10.5281/zenodo.7697171 mailto:abebayehu.messele@aau.edu.et phonological acquisition in sidaamu afoo mekonnen and loje 209 gammon, 1985; vihman and greenlee, 1987; vihman, 1993). with the advance in crosslinguistic research, it has become apparent that although most of the phonological acquisition patterns attested in children across languages are similar (e.g., locke, 1983; ferguson, et al. 1992), there are also language-specific features that are increasingly being reported in the literature. these differences often arise from variations, for example, in phonetic inventories, phonotactic constraints, and phonological system of individual languages. most of the studies conducted on phonological developments of children manly focus on the acquisition of segmental aspects of language such as order of consonant acquisition, mastery of segmental features, e.g., voicing contrasts, and acquisition of phonological processes. other studies have studied acquisition of various suprasegmental features such as syllable structure (e.g., dodd, 1995; watson & skucanec, 1997; xu rattanasone & demuth, 2014), tone, stress/intonation patterns, etc (e.g., kehoe, 2001). the majority of these studies have been conducted in well-known european and asian languages. this has made it difficult to make generalizations about patterns of language acquisition. in ethiopia, an east african country, where the current study was conducted, more than 80 languages are spoken. however, there is only very few sketchy study of language development on amharic, the federal working language (abebayehu, 2008, 2013). very recently, graduate students of the department of linguistics at addis ababa university started to show interest in pursuing various aspects of language acquisition in another ethiopian language, afaan oromo (alemayehu & abebayehu, forthcoming). apart from these attempts, no other studies have been found on child language development in other ethiopian languages. lack of normative date on child language on ethiopian languages has made it very difficult for various professionals, such as speech language therapists, to objectively determine what is typical in which language. consequently, such professionals working with clients speaking less-known languages have been forced to use normative data from major european or asian languages (e.g., grunwell, 1981) to assess and manage, for example, communication and literacy issues. examining various dimensions of language development not only helps us better understand “atypical” patterns of language development, but also enables us to learn more on how we as adults process language, by understanding how children acquire language, which in turn enriches theories and practices in disciplines dealing with language and cognition. hence, it is hoped that the present study, which focuses on examining aspects of phonological development in children speaking sidaamu afoo3, can be considered a contribution to the efforts being made to narrow down the research gap in language acquisition, particularly in ethiopian context. 3 it is common to come across in the literature the term “sidaama” being used to refer to both the language and the ethnic group speaking the language. however, the term actually refers to the ethnic group or the people, whereas the language, as it is referred to as by the people, is “sidaamu afoo”, which literally means “the mouth of the sidaamas”. the sidaama people reside in the southern nations, nationalities and peoples regional state (snnprs), the most ethnically diverse regional state in ethiopia. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 208-218, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 210 2. methodology 2.1. participants six participants, balanced for gender, were drawn from a nursery school, using purposive sampling. they were between the age of 3;6 to 5;0 years. both the participants and their parents were all monolinguals in the language and had no apparent speech or hearing issues. table 1 demographic data on the six children selected for the study participants gender age md f 3;6 br m 4;1 ms f 3;10 tb m 3;8 mw f 4;9 sl m 3;7 2.2. data collection and processing data were recorded in three contexts: single words, sentence repetition tasks, and spontaneous continuous speech. the data were first written orthographically and then transcribed in ipa. sets of words and sentences were devised to collect data, using picture naming and picture description tasks. the audio data were recorded using sony pcm-m10® portable audio recorder, while footages of the children’s speech were captured using sony ccd-tr380e® video camera recorder to supplement the audio data. 2.3. data analysis the research took a descriptive design, employing perceptual phonetic and phonological analysis. the childrens’ productions were transcribed, using analytical listening technique, following ashby et al. (1996). perceptual phonetic and phonological analysis was used to analyse the data. specifically, the analysis of the data was first done by identifying differences of realizations from the target productions, i.e., following error identification approach. then, realizations of the children were grouped and analysed in terms of phonological processes. following that, attempts were made to draw possible generalizations from the data. 3. findings in this section, the various developmental speech production features attested in the speech of the children studied here are described and discussed below in turn. in this article, only the phonological processes occurred on consonants are covered. due to spatial limitations, other aspects of phonological developments such as acquisitions of vowels, syllable structures, and other suprasegmental features are not covered here. phonological acquisition in sidaamu afoo mekonnen and loje 211 3.1. fronting fronting refers here to the replacement of a target phoneme for one produced further back in the oral cavity. four of the children studied exhibited fronting patterns. consider the following data and examples. (1) process pattern word position children age respectively fronting /k/→[t], /ɡ/→[d] wi & wm md, tb, mw 3;6, 3;8, 4;9 /k’/ → [t’] wi & wm mw, tb 3;8, 4;9 /ɲ/→ [n] wi & wm md, br, mw 3;6, 4;1, 4;9 /s/→ [ð] wm br, sl 4;1, 3;7 /ʧ’/→ [t’] wi & wm mw 4;9 examples pattern target realization gloss /k/→[t] /kila/ [tila] armpit /ɡ/→[d] /ɡoʧ’o/ [dot’o] sheep /k’/→[t’] /k’as-i/ [t’aʃ-i] he/it pierced /ɲ/→[n] /ɲammo/ [nammo] taste /s/→[ð] /kisi/ [kiði] he/it touched /ʧ’/→ [t’] /hoʧ’o/ [hott’o] cloth fronting is one of the developmental phonological processes commonly reported cross-linguistically. ingram (1974), for example, reported the realization of [t] for /k/ and [d] for /ɡ/ by a 1;9 year old english speaking boy. abebayehu (2008, 2013) provided data from amharic. these studies reported some fronting patterns in the speech of 2;0 to 3;11-year-old amharic-speaking children who realised /k/ as [t] and /ɡ/ as [d], in such words as /kənfər/ ‘lip’ realized as [tətəj]; and /ɡəbəja/ ‘market’ realised as [dəbəja]. as can be seen from the above data, some of the fronting patterns noted in the current study are rather uncommon, which may partly be due to the phonological system of the language. the patterns: /k’/→ [t’], /ʧ’/→ [t’], for example, are not commonly reported in the literature because the development of non-pulmonic consonants has not well been studied. while /k/→ [t], /ɡ/→[d] are common fronting patterns reported in several previous studies, /ɲ/→ [n] and /s/→ [ð] are rare patterns. it is interesting however to note that the ages of three of the four children who exhibited fronting patterns in sidaamu afoo are older than the age at which fronting patterns are normally expected to be eliminated, i.e., 3;6 (grunwell, 1997; bowen, 1998; hegde, 2001). this may suggest a degree of phonological delay in these children, which of course needs confirmation by considering crosslinguistic data, as the majority of the normative data come from endoeuropean-speaking children. 3.2. backing in this study backing is taken to refer to the substitution of a consonant for one produced further forward in the vocal tract. in this study, four children exhibited backing patterns. consider the data and examples below. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 208-218, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 212 (2) process pattern word position children age respectively backing /s/ → [ʃ] wi & wm md, ms, mw 3;6, 3;10, 4;9 /f/→[ʃ] wi & wm ms 3;10 examples pattern target realization gloss /s/ → [ʃ] /sima/ [ʃima] seedling of weese /f/→[ʃ] /fani/ [ʃani] he/it opened backing of the alveolar fricative /s/ to post-alveolar place [ʃ] is not commonly reported in the literature. in contrast, abebayehu (2008) noted that such pattern is one of the most frequent backing processes observed in amharicspeaking children aged between 2;00 and 3;4 years. a rather similar pattern has also been observed in japanese-acquiring children, who substitute the more posterior [ɕ] for target /s/ (nakanishi et al., 1972; beckman et al., 2003; li et al., 2009; li et al., 2011). however, a converse process is common in children acquiring english, where /ʃ ʒ/ are fronted to alveolar place and realised as [s z], respectively (weiner, 1979). as can be seen from the data, in sidaamu afoo, as it is the case in amharic, /s/ → [ʃ] is a common processes observed in the children as old as 4;9 years. whether the occurrence of this process at such late age is typical in the language needs to be confirmed by considering more data. crosslinguistic comparison is rather difficult as some scholars (e.g., dean et al., 1990) label backing as an ‘unusual’ or ‘atypical’ process, while others (e.g., weiner, 1979; shriberg and kwiatkowski, 1980; ingram, 1981; grunwell, 1985) do not even include it in their classifications of typical phonological processes in child speech. 3.3. gliding gliding refers to the substitution of liquid by glide, such as /l/ or /r/ → [w] or [j]. this process was noted in four of the children studied here. consider the data and examples below. (3) process pattern word position children age respectively gliding /l/ → [j] wi & wm br sl 4;1, 3;7 /r/ → [j] wm md mw 3;6, 4;9 examples pattern target realization gloss /l/ → [j] /lalo/ [jajo] cattle /r/→ [j] /risa/ [jisa] hawk the literature (e.g., grunwell, 1997; bowen, 1998) generally suggests that gliding should typically be gone by the age of five years. hence, it can be taken that the gliding patterns exhibited by the children studied here were age appropriate, as the children were all under the age of five. 3.4. deaffrication following o’grady (2003), de-affrication is taken here to broadly refer to the process in which affricates are replaced by non-affricate sounds. dephonological acquisition in sidaamu afoo mekonnen and loje 213 affrication of fricatives was noted in the speech of three of the children studied. see the data and examples below. (4) process pattern word position children age respectively deaffrication /ʧ/→ [t] /ʤ/→[d] wi & wm md, tb, mw 3;6, 3;8, 4;9 /ʧ’/→ [t’] wi & wm md, mw 3;6, 4;9 /ʧ’/→ [t] wi & wm tb 3;8 examples pattern target realization gloss /ʧ/→[t] /kinʧo/ [kinto] stone /ʤ/→[d] /ʤaala/ [daala] friend /ʧ’/→[t] /ʧuuʧ’i/ [tuut’i] feed oneself/another person studies (e.g., bleile, 1995; bowen, 1998; hegde, 2001) state that deaffrication should be gone at the age of three, implying that the deaffrication patterns noted in the children studied here may be manifestations of phonological delay, which again needs to be checked with more data. the case of one of the children (i.e., mw) appears to be rather different in that she exhibited three of the four identified deaffrication patterns at the age of 4;9, which further suggests that she, in particular, could be phonologically delayed. 3.5. de-ejectivisation de-ejectivisation is taken here to refer to realizations of ejectives as nonejective consonants such as pulmonics, implosives or clicks. in almost all cases, the children studied here de-ejectivised the ejectives of the language and realized them as pulmonic consonants. see the examples below. (5) process pattern word position children age respectively de-ejectivization /p’/ → [p] wi & wm br, ms, tb, sl, mw 4;1, 3;10, 3;8, 3;7, 4;9 /p’/ → [b] wi ms, tb, mw 3;10, 3;8, 4;9 /t’/ → [t] wi & wm br, ms, tb, sl 4;1, 3;10, 3;8, 3;7 /tʃ’/ → [tʃ] wi & wm br, ms, tb, sl 4;1, 3;10, 3;8, 3;7 /k’/ → [k] wi & wm br, ms, tb, sl 4;1, 3;10, 3;8, 3;7 /k’/ → [ɡ] wi & wm sl 3;7 examples target realization gloss /p’/ → [p] /k’uupp’e/ [k’uuppe] eggs /t’/ → [t] /wot’e/ [wote] money /tʃ’/ → [tʃ] /ʧ’affa/ [ʧaffa] swamp /k’/ → [k] /k’as-i/ [kas-i] he/it pierced /k’/ → [ɡ] /maakk’e/ [maaɡɡe] pot realizing ejectives as their pulmonic counterparts is seen often in the speech of children with speech delayed (abebayehu, 2008). however, there is also evidence, from amharic, (abebayehu, forthcoming) that a child as young as journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 208-218, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 214 eleven months old produces ‘adult-like’ /t’/. this suggests that all the children studied here must have been physiological mature enough to be able to produce ejectives. it is not surprising therefore that the children (br, ms, tb, sl) who were not able to produce /t’/ could not produce the other ejectives as well, again suggesting some degree of phonological delay. a rather unusual realization was noted in the speech of sl, aged 3;7, who sometimes realized /k’/ as [k], when the target is singleton, and as [ɡ] when it is geminated. this may have happened as a result of the child’s effort to make perceptual distinction between the singleton and geminated /k’/. this could clearly have phonological implications, as /ɡ/ is also contrastive in the language. 3.6. de-implosivisation in this study, de-implosivisation refers to a replacement of the implosive /ɗ/ with non-implosive consonants such as pulmonics, ejectives and clicks. such realizations were noted in four of the children studied here. consider the examples below. (6) process pattern word position children age respectively implosive to pulmonic stops /ɗ/ → [t] wi & wm br, ms 4;1, 3;10 /ɗ/ → [d] wi tb, sl 3;8, 3;7 implosive to ejective /ɗ/ → [t’] wi mw 4;9 /ɗ/ → [t’] wm md 3;6 implosive to glottal stop /ɗ/ → [ʔ] wm sl 3;7 examples pattern target realization gloss /ɗ/ → [t] /ɗibba/ [tibba] illness /ɗ/ → [d] /ɗibba/ [dibba] illness /ɗ/ → [t’] /ɗibba/ [t’ibbba] illness /ɗ/ → [ʔ] /woɗa/ [woʔa] calves given that implosives present more aerodynamic and articulatory challenges than other groups of consonants (ladefoged and maddison, 1996), it may not be surprising that the children replaced /ɗ/ with its simplified counterparts: [t], [d], [t’] and [ʔ]. however, even the youngest child studied here appears to be mature enough to produce /ɗ/, as children acquiring another closely related cushitic language, afaan oromo, are able to produce /ɗ/, as early as at the age of 2;3 (alemayehu & abebayehu, forthcoming). this could further imply phonological delay. 3.7. devoicing devoicing is the only assimilation process noted in the children studied, vowel harmony is disregarded in this study, as the focus is only on the acquisition of consonants. three children demonstrated devoicing patters. in two of these children, devoicing was not context sensitive, while in the phonological acquisition in sidaamu afoo mekonnen and loje 215 speech of the third one, the process was noted only word-initially. examples are presented below. (7) process pattern word position children age respectively devoicing /d/→ [t] wi & wm br, ms 4;1, 3;10 /ʤ/→ [ʧ] wi sl 3;10 examples target realization gloss /d/→ [t] /kadi/ [kati] he/it kicked /ʤ/→ [ʧ] /ʔaʤa/ [ʔaʧa] young studies (e.g., grunwell, 1997) suggest that devoicing of consonant in children often gets eliminated by the age of 3;0, which is not the case in the children studied here, again suggesting a delayed phonological development, particularly so with the child who is over 4 years old. 4. conclusions the speech production patterns noted in the children studied here appear to be varied in type. some of them can be taken as age-appropriate, as similar patterns have already been reported crosslinguistically for the same age rages, while others are language-specific. for example, the fronting patterns such as /k’/→ [t’], /ʧ’/→ [t’], /ɲ/→ [n] and /s/→ [ð] are not commonly reported in the literature and may be considered as features specific to the language. the realisation of /k’/ by one of the children as [k] and [ɡ] when the target is singleton and geminated, respectively, may also be dictated by the phonotactics of the language. there are still some developmental realisations, which do not appear to be age-appropriate for the children studied. the fact that the ages at which the children exhibited some of the fronting patterns could, for example, be indicative of a degree of phonological delay (bowen, 1998; grunwell, 1997). similarly, the occurrence of backing of the alveolar fricative to its post-alveolar counterpart and deaffrication at the age of 4;9 could also suggest some level of phonological delay. moreover, the de-ejectivisation and de-implosivisation patters noted in this study do not seem to be age-appropriate, as evidence from other ethiopia languages suggests otherwise. of course, if the occurrence of these patterns at such late ages is typical in the language or signs of delayed phonological development needs to be verified with comprehensive data taken from larger sample size. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 208-218, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 216 references alemayehu, t. & abebayehu, m. m. (forthcoming). phonological development in afaan orom-speaking children. abebayehu, m. m. (2008). variants of the alveolar trill /r/ and other developmental realizations in amharic-speaking children. paper presented at the 20th annual conference of the institute of language studies, 18-20 june, 2008, addis ababa, ethiopia. abebayehu, m. m. (2013). speech production in amharic-speaking children with repaired cleft palate. unpublished ph.d dissertation, the university of sheffield, uk. ashby, m. g., maidment, j. a., & abberton, e. r. m. (1996). analytic listening: a new approach to ear-training. speech, hearing and language, 9, 1-10. beckman, m. e., kiyoko, y., & edwards, j. (2003). language-specific and language-universal aspects of lingual obstruent production in japanese-acquiring children. journal of the phonetic society of japan, 7, 18-28. bleile, k. m. (1995). manual of articulation and phonological disorders. san diego, ca: singular. bloom, l. 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(1997). profiling the phonological abilities of 2year-olds: a longitudinal study. child language teaching and therapy, 13, 3-14. weiner, f. (1979). phonological process analysis. baltimore: university park press. xu rattanasone, n., & demuth, k. (2014). acquisition of linguistic tonal systems. in p. brooks & v. kempe (eds.), encyclopedia of language development (pp. 352-353). journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 208-218, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 218 appendices consonant phonemes of sidaamu afoo bilabial labiodental dental alveolar palatoalveolar palatal velar glotal plain stop b t d k g ʔ ejective p’ t’ k’ implosive ɗ fricative f s ʃ h affricate tʃ dʒ ejective tʃ ‘ nasal m n ɲ liquids lateral trill l r approximant (glides) w j adapted from kawachi (2007) vowel phonemes of sidaamu afoo short vowels long vowels front central back front central back high i u ii uu mid e o ee oo low a aa adapted from anbessa (1987) journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 176-188, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 176 macrostructural and microstructural discourse abilities in children with hearing impairment maria jayaseelan1 merf institute of speech and hearing (p) ltd, chennai kowsika devi baskar2 merf institute of speech and hearing (p) ltd, chennai akshay krishnan3 merf institute of speech and hearing (p) ltd, chennai abstract hearing loss can hinder a child’s growth of speech and language skills. earlier research has emphasized that children with hearing loss have hitches in narrative development relative to their hearing peers both in terms of macrostructure and with micro-structural devices. the present study aims at comparing the discourse abilities under macro and micro structural aspects in children with hearing impairment (hi) who have been receiving instruction in english at school and tamil as their mother tongue with age matched typically developing children (tdc). picture description narrative sample from a total of 20 children (10 hi and 10 tdc) were collected and the discourse abilities were calculated based on the protocol prepared. macrostructure of the narrative is descriptively documented using qualitative analysis and the microstructure elements are documented using quantitative analysis. the results revealed significant difference in most of the discourse domains in which the children with hearing impairment performed poorer than their age matched peers. keywords: macrostructure, microstructural discourse, picture description, narration, hearing impairment 1. introduction a complex system of cognitive and linguistic process that underlies everyday language use is termed ‘discourse’. language can be witnessed and examined on various levels, one among of which is “language in use” (frattali & grafman, in press), or discourse. discourse analysis or discourse studies, understood over analysis of language in its comprehensive sense (including face-to-face talk, non-verbal interaction, images, symbols and documents), is a general term for various methods to analyzing written, spoken or signed language use. it is typically measured using two factors such as macrostructure and microstructure of the discourse. the macrostructure level includes exploring the ability to make an initiating event, the internal response to achieve the goal (attempt and cause), and the 1 ms. maria j, assistant professor, merf-ish. motivated towards the area of child and adult language assessment and intervention to improve the impacted language abilities. exploring more in discourse abilities in various clinical population. maria.aslp@gmail.com 2 ms. kowsika devi baskar, maslp student, merf-ish, emerging researcher in the field of adult and child language disorders. 3 mr. akshay krishnan, maslp student, merf-ish, upcoming researcher who is dedicated in providing his utmost contributions to the field of speech and language, to help further in developing the assessment and management processes in everyday clinical practice. received : 20.01.2021 accepted : 02.03.2021 published : 30.03.2021 mailto:maria.aslp@gmail.com discourse abilities in children with hearing impairment maria j., baskar, krishnan 177 reaction (stein & glenn, 1979). it appraises speaker’s skill to impart the central idea of the story and synthesize its core by stating the moral of the story. macrostructures are global meanings of discourse, typically welldefined in terms of topic, gist, or upshot. semantic macrostructures or topics define what is termed the global coherence of discourse. it refers to the overall coherence and organization of the narrative. oral and written fictional narratives include a variety of elements that create a framework for a story. these elements are referred to as the macrostructure of the narrative (hughes et al., 1997). story grammar, one of the most well-known narrative macrostructure concepts, includes the elements of setting, initiating event, internal response, a plan or attempt to solve the initiating event, consequence, and resolution (stein and glenn, 1979). these components are frequently examined for their presence or absence in a story. complex narratives comprise all of the elements and oftentimes, several of each element. the microstructure level discourse investigates fine-grained features of narrative elements, comprising referential cohesion, lexical diversity, and sentence structure (e.g., bloom et al, 1994). microstructures are the local structures of words, clauses, sentences or turns in conversation. macrostructures may be derived from microstructures by acts such as abstracting, which is, leaving out or to the point specific details. in other words, microstructures are the actually and directly ‘expressed’ structures of the discourse. it refers to measures of productivity and complexity at the sentence level. narrative microstructure refers to linguistic features of language that are present in a narrative, such as: the length of the narrative in words and morphemes, the different types of words used—including words marking time and causal connections, and the inclusion of dialogue. these features fine-tune the stylistic presentation of the narrative (hughes et al., 1997) and also the lexical diversity of the narrative. there are four different types of discourse among which, narrative discourse plays an imperative role in the development of discourse, literacy, and socialization abilities (mccabe, 1996). it embraces the ability to communicate a story containing sequential information generally about a past or future event (gleason, 2002), and is considered a keystone of children’s language development. narratives provide a rich linguistic context and have been used to evaluate the linguistic development of individuals with different health conditions that may be associated with language disorders. children’s emerging narrative ability is crucial for developing social skills (miller, 1994) and has been shown to foretell later literacy skills (griffin, hemphill, camp & wolf, 2004; roth, speece & cooper, 2002). children with hearing impairment in spite of advances in hearing technologies, they continue to lack full auditory access to the spoken language that surrounds them, and so consequently persist with communication delays (marschark & spencer, 2015). typically developing children, at about 22 months (eisenberg, 1985; sachs, 1982), initiate referring real past events, at first with much aid from adults. at 2 years, their narratives often contain negative past events, especially injuries (miller & sperry, 1988). between 3 and 5 years of age, children communicate each other longer and more complex personal narratives, and progressively journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 176-188, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 178 respond to narratives from peers (umiker-sebeok, 1979). narration functions as a predecessor for literacy development. several contemporarily developing, higher-level language and cognitive skills are crucial to form cohesive, coherent, and structured narratives (bamberg & damrad-frye, 1991). reviews put forward that children with hearing impairment, regardless of spoken language delays, are able to convey the main elements of content and structure in narrative but have greater effort in using grammatical devices more dependent on finer linguistic and pragmatic abilities. in routine exchange of ideas, children as young as 2–3 years naturally retell stories or recount a sequence of events, and as they grow up children increasingly become able to deal with the discourse-pragmatic necessities that support narrative. having this importance, narrative assessment is a must to be carried out and further treatment should be intended accordingly. discourses of children with developmental language disorders are impaired in terms of their language content. these children produce shorter, less cohesive stories that are syntactically simple and contain frequent errors of syntax, semantics, and morphology. with respect to the information content and information structure, some authors report a comparative lack of difficulty with discourse production by such children. norbury et al (2003) quoted in their article that children with specific language impairment and autistic disorder made more syntactic errors, and children with autism were significantly more likely to provide ambiguous references in the story. alexandra et al (2010) showed that hearing-impaired children have abnormalities in all aspects of language: form, content, and use. the abnormalities seem to be related with these children's failure to convert oral language-speech, as described in the literature. he concluded that hearing-impaired speakers have inadequate narrative competence regarding the rate of proposition use, narrative scores, narrative cohesion, cohesion measurements and overall narrative scores. jones et al in 2016 reported that children with hearing impairment, regardless of the spoken language delays, were able to convey the main elements of content and structure in narrative, however, have greater trouble using grammatical devices more dependent on finer linguistic and pragmatic skills. discourse is any natural form of language embracing utterances or phrases (wright and capilouto 2012) and may be ‘the supreme elaborative linguistic activity’ (ska et al. 2004: 302). owing to the intricacy of discourse processing, quantifying discourse production in clinical population is essential narrative discourse should be a chief element of assessment and treatment programs for school-age children with language disorders. a narrative sample is a means of language development assessment. however, the available standardized data for hearing impaired population are limited. here comes the need to compare the narrative performance between hearing-impaired and normal-hearing children especially in indian scenario. the current study aimed at comparing the narrative discourse ability in terms of macrostructure and microstructure domains in children with hearing impairment fitted with appropriate amplification device and age matched typically developing children age ranging 4 years to 8 years. discourse abilities in children with hearing impairment maria j., baskar, krishnan 179 2. methodology 2.1. participants to document the macrolinguistic and microlinguistic discourse abilities in children with hearing impairment, a total of 20 children (10 children with congenital hearing impairment and 10 typically developing children) were included in the study. the children between the age ranges of 4 to 8 years participated in the experiment. the children were divided into two groups: group i included hearing impaired children fitted with appropriate amplification devices with a minimum interventional age of 3 years and group ii included age matched typically developing children with no identified learning disability in both the groups. children with multiple disabilities or other associated conditions and children intervened using sign language and other alternate mode of communication were excluded from the study. 2.2. data collection and processing ‘the umbrella sequence picture card’ (appendix 1) and an audio recorder was used to collect picture description samples from children. the children were instructed to look at the picture and narrate a story in sequence. the children were comfortably seated in a distraction free environment and was shown the picture sequence and was explained about the picture and was instructed to tell a story using the picture sequences presented in front of them. the samples were audio recorded and the recorded samples were orthographically transcribed. the transcribed sample were subjected to macrostructural analysis and microstructural analysis which had three and seventeen subdomains respectively as listed in table 1 and are explained following the table. table 1 subdomains of macro and microstructure analysis s.no. domains subdomains 1. macrostructure i) topic maintenance ii) event sequencing iii) explicitness (includes 3 analysis) • informativeness • elaboration • completeness journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 176-188, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 180 2. microstructure i) total number of words ii) total number of different words iii) total number of content words iv) total number of functional words v) number of bound morphemes vi) number of free morphemes vii) total number of morphemes viii) proportion of content words ix) proportion of functional words x) proportion of morphemes xi) complex structure per utterance xii) relevant pieces per utterance xiii) total number of mental state words xiv) mazes per utterance xv) number of pronouns xvi) number of ambiguous pronouns xvii) cohesion percentage topic maintenance: topic maintenance refers to how well are the utterances in a narrative relate to a central topic. utterances may be connected to a central theme by expansion, continuation, or contradiction. topic maintenance skills develop in preschool and are become proficient during the school years (brinton & fujiki, 1984; ervin-tripp, 1979; foster, 1986). in contrast, utterances that do not maintain a topic may be irrelevant, tangential, vague, or ambiguous. event sequencing: it represents the presentation of events in chronological or logical order. generally, there should be a correspondence concerning the order of events produced by a speaker and the real-life ordering of events unless the narrator specifies to the listener that a violation of ordering will befall. violated forms comprises leap-frogging sequences, characterized by an achronological arrangement of events and/or lapse of critical events (mccabe & rollins, 1994). they weaken discourse coherence since a listener cannot keep track of events that have been described. children below five years of age tend to construct leap-frogging types of narratives (peterson & mccabe, 1983). by the age five they are able to sequence events chronologically and bit by bit order multiple events if their culture values this type of discourse (peterson & mccabe, 1983). explicitness: it is the sense-making process of discourse coherence; it encompasses three traits of the completeness and elaboration of a narrative. the first dimension is called informativeness which describes whether a narrator represent sufficient information for a listener to make sense of a narrative. exclusions of essential information compromise discourse coherence. the second dimension of explicitness includes some degree of elaboration. elective details help make a text coherent. unelaborated narratives will be hardly coherent; the listener will comprehend the gist of an experience but will be unable to fill in all of the details. finally, a wholly explicit, coherent narrative encompasses all the basic narrative ingredients. it is essential that it is complete. description, action, and evaluation are the discourse abilities in children with hearing impairment maria j., baskar, krishnan 181 three key narrative components that are mandatory for a good narrative (labov, 1972). descriptions entail attributions of people and objects (e.g., “the little boy”). actions denote to events (e.g., “he drenched in rain”). evaluation states to the significance of an event for a speaker (e.g., “he felt sorry because he did not listen to his mother”). mccabe and rollins (1994) explained in detail several kinds of evaluation seen in children’s narratives (e.g., internal states, exclamations, repetitions, and negatives). evaluation is vital because it apprises the listener of the speaker’s state of mind about an event. the aspect of evaluation has interpersonal implications. lacking the evaluation, a speaker may give the impression of being aloof and unfeeling. without evaluation or description, the narrative will be unexciting to the listener. the development of explicitness emerges increasingly (peterson & mccabe, 1983). preschool children omit information that can be effortlessly retrieved by context or topic, such as setting information (peterson & mccabe, 1983). evaluation develops at two years of age and becomes more common in the narratives of older children (miller & sperry, 1988; peterson & mccabe, 1983). a failure in explicitness may be due to a limited awareness of the communication requirements of the listener. total number of words: this is a productivity measure that facilitates comparison of the size of samples and / or cross individuals. it plays an important role and is one of the first steps in discourse analysis. this was calculated by transcribing the entire picture description sample and counting the number of utterances the child produced throughout the discourse. total number of different words: various word types, like nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, carry significant and inimitable semantic information that distinguish them (neville 2014). based on previous research that production of modifiers manifested qualitative changes in language usage in language disorder (sarno et al. 2005), it would be worth developing core lexicon lists for different word types as an exploratory purpose. the number of different words uttered delivers a more sensitive and informative appraisal of lexical diversity. this measure is every so often denoted to as a metric of productive vocabulary for the reason that it indicates how well children can integrate items in their lexicons into the language they produce (pérez-leroux et al. 2012). the number of different words the child produced was calculated. the word segments repeated were calculated as one word despite being uttered twice or thrice. this is further divided into content words and functional words. total number of content words: content words hold semantic content and add to the meaning of the sentence. this comprises the nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. total number of functional words: functional words are words that exist to explain or create grammatical or structural relationships into the content words may fit. this includes articles, auxiliaries, demonstratives, quantifiers, prepositions, pronouns and conjunctions. total number of morphemes: a morpheme is the smallest meaningful part of a word. morphemes, which constitute prefixes, suffixes and base words, are the smallest meaningful units of language. morphemes are vital for phonics in both reading and spelling, and also in vocabulary and comprehension. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 176-188, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 182 number of free morphemes: free morphemes can stand alone as a word and cannot be broken down further into other word elements. number of bound morphemes: a bound morpheme is a word element that cannot stand alone as a word. proportion of content words: this was calculated by dividing the total number of content words by the total number of words. proportion of functional words: this subdomain was measured by dividing the total number of function words by the total number of words. proportion of morphemes: this parameter was calculated by dividing the total number of morphemes by the total number of total words. complex structure per utterance: these are utterances which include passive constructions, relative clauses, complement clauses, adverbial clauses or infinite clauses embedded in a sentence. children with language impairment, made less complex sentences than their age peers (sarah, 2010). as children grow, research highpoints specific variances in use of complex syntax both over time and amid children with and without language impairments. as typically developing school-age children grow, their sentences show increased clause density (loban, 1976), improved mean length of t-unit, and usage of relative clauses more frequently (nippold, hesketh, duthie, & mansfield, 2005). relevant pieces per utterance: it is the number of relevant pieces that can be broken from an utterance. e.g., ‘the mother gave the umbrella’ – one relevant piece; ‘the mother gave the umbrella to the boy who was leaving the house’– three pieces per utterance. total number of mental state words: mental state talk is defined as that is the set of words used by children to attribute thoughts, feelings, emotions, and desires to people, when referring to either themselves or other people (bretherton and beegley, 1982). mazes per utterance: elin et al (2002) reported that linguistic non-fluencies known as mazes have been used to draw inferences about processing hitches associated with the production of language. in typically developing children, maze occurrence in general increases as the linguistic complexity increases, being greater in narrative than conversational contexts and in longer utterances. an identical tendency has been observed in children with sli. the children with sli used considerably more content mazes than the typically developing children. loban (1976) described mazes as a chain of words (or initial parts of words), or free fragments which do not constitute a communication unit and which are not essential to the communication unit. levelt (1989) classified mazes as revisions, filled pauses, or repetitions that occur as a result of uncertainty. levelt (1989) reported that the production of mazes reveals the speaker's reaction to the demands of language. number of pronouns: a pronoun takes the place of a noun, but a pronoun must always refer clearly to its antecedent, which is the noun that the pronoun replaces. documented by calculating the total number of pronoun referrals the child has uttered. number of ambiguous pronouns: if the antecedent of the pronoun is unclear, then the sentence will be unclear as well. an ambiguous pronoun occurs when more than one probable antecedent exists. discourse abilities in children with hearing impairment maria j., baskar, krishnan 183 cohesion percentage: it is the percentage of ambiguous pronouns used in comparison to total number of pronouns. 2.3. data analysis macrostructural aspects were descriptively documented using qualitative analysis and the raw data obtained for microstructural aspects were entered in excel sheets and was subjected to statistical analysis using mann-whitney test. 3. findings 3.1. macrostructural analysis 3.1.1. topic maintenance descriptions of superfluous routine events (e.g., scripts), allied information such as descriptions of plans, likes, dislikes, capabilities, and possibilities epitomize deviances in topic maintenance that are often found in specific language impaired children (miranda, 1995). some school-age children with language disorder add irrelevant material to the ends of their narratives (merritt & liles, 1987; miranda, 1993, 1995). in the present study, in contrast to the results obtained from children with sli, it was observed that in both the experimental and the control group majority of the utterances were appropriate and related to the topic. 3.1.2. event sequencing event sequencing was also observed to be appropriate in both hearing impaired and typically developing children. it was observed that majority of events were organized in the chronological order of occurrence. however the previous research evidences that few children with language disorders will have trouble marking temporal ordering of events (johnston, 1982; liles, 1985a; olley, 1989). they would have not become skilled at temporal terms or concepts (lucas, 1980) or may not be talented to use them to signal the order of events in narratives. for example, past the age of four, children with sli continue to produce incoherent leap-frogging narratives in which events are not presented sequentially and essential ones are omitted altogether (miranda, 1993, 1995). in addition, they may repeat events as a stratagem to escape sequencing additional actions 3.1.3. explicitness (1). among 10, 8 kid’s discourse were found to have adequate information; this may be attributed to the fact that they have undergone early intervention comparatively. (2). among 10, 6 kid’s discourse was found to be elaborative. (3). all the 10 kid’s action and evaluation skills has been found to be sparse; in typically developing children, it was found that they all had adequate information and their discourse was elaborative and complete. earlier findings document that children with specific language impairment, traumatic brain injury, and hearing impairment are likely to omit information that refer to individuals, plans, actions, internal states, and orientation (biddle, mccabe, & bliss, 1996; liles, 1987; merritt & liles, 1987; roth & spekman, 1986; sleight & prinz, 1985; yoshinaga-itano, 1986). narratives of children with language disorders might also lack journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 176-188, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 184 elaboration. though the text can be understood, the deficiency of optional information makes it challenging for a listener to fulsomely understand the text. 3.2. microstructural analysis among the seventeen subdomains significant difference were obtained in total number of utterances, number of different words, functional words, free morphemes, total number of morphemes, number of complex utterances, relevant pieces per utterance, mazes per utterance, number of pronouns and cohesion between the experimental group (group i) and the control group (group ii). the p value is less than 0.05 for the above mentioned elements of microstructural discourse abilities. the typically developing peers outperformed the hearing impaired individuals except in mazes per utterances. the above findings of the present study shall be supported by few pieces of evidence from the literature. ruth et al (1996) revealed that the children with sli also used significantly fewer different words than their age-equivalent counterparts. children with language impairment, made less complex sentences than their age peers (sarah, 2010). comparing with typically developing peers in the same grade, school-age children with specific language impairment used less complex sentences in conversation, and these complex sentences be likely to have scarcer clauses (marinellie, 2004), and very less total words (scott & windsor, 2000) than their peers’ complex sentences. summer (2020) proposed that children with hearing impairment produced utterances containing complex syntax with limited errors and their complex syntax density is increasing with time. elin et al (2002) reported that the children with sli used considerably more content mazes than the typically developing children. research has documented that more maze use may be reflective of language learning difficulty (levelt, 1989; levelt, 1999) and may often be measured a red flag for language impairment. the production of pronouns in spontaneous language was investigated by gerard in 2008 in three groups of children with developmental language disorders (dld): children with specific language impairment (sli), children with hearing impairment (hi), and children with down's syndrome (ds). the results were compared to the production of pronouns in typically developing children, matched on mlu. the number of pronouns used did not differ considerably between the groups. in the order of production of pronouns, more commonalities than variances were observed between the three developmental language disorder groups and compared to normally developing peers. the number of errors in all the groups seemed to be very low and all groups presented a significant correlation between the increase in mlu and the production of pronouns. masitha et al reported that the descriptive and narrative writing produced by the hearing-impaired students used very limited cohesive devices. other subdomains though showing a difference in the mean score and mean rank, does not show a significant difference in number of content words, number of bound morphemes, proportion of content words, proportion of functional words, proportion of morphemes, total number of mental state words and number of ambiguous pronouns. the mean average, the mean discourse abilities in children with hearing impairment maria j., baskar, krishnan 185 rank, and the significant values for each of the subdomains are tabulated in table 2. table 2 mean average, mean rank and significant value of microstructure elements s.no. subdomain mean average mean rank sig. value group i group ii group i group ii 1. total number of words 45.1 65.7 7.75 13.25 0.037 2. total number of different words 23.1 34.2 7.70 13.30 0.034 3. total number of content words 16.8 23.3 8.00 13.00 0.057 4. total number of functional words 6.3 10.8 7.70 13.30 0.033 5. number of bound morphemes 4.6 5 9.05 11.95 0.271 6. number of free morphemes 25.1 37 7.80 13.20 0.041 7. total number of morphemes 29.7 42 7.90 13.10 0.049 8. proportion of content words 0.745 0.682 11.90 9.10 0.289 9. proportion of functional words 0.533 0.401 10.90 10.10 0.762 10. proportion of morphemes 1.23 1.252 8.70 12.30 0.173 11. complex structure per utterance 2.5 5.1 7.45 13.55 0.020 12. relevant pieces per utterance 7 12.1 7.40 13.60 0.019 13. total number of mental state words 0.6 2.5 10.00 11.00 0.676 14. mazes per utterance 5.1 2.3 14.40 6.60 0.003 15. number of pronouns 4.7 9.3 7.20 13.80 0.012 16. number of ambiguous pronouns 0.7 0.2 11.60 9.40 0.300 17. cohesion percentage 47 98 7.30 13.70 0.008 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 176-188, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 186 figure 1. mean average of group i (hearing impaired) and group ii (normal children) 4. discussion and conclusion it is comprehensible from this study that there is evident difference in discourse development between typically developing children and children with hearing impairment. the experimental group lacks majorly in explicitness and majority of the microstructural aspects of discourse. other skills such as topic maintenance and event sequencing were developed adequately. on a qualitative comparison, macrostructures are comparatively better than the microstructural elements. there are variations within the experimental group. this arises due to other factors such as the age at which the child had sort intervention (early intervention), parental interaction at home, variation in the degree of hearing loss and other environmental factors. narration is one aspect which involves literacy knowledge that usually emerges during pre-school. it is essential for a child to effectively narrate that his early literacy skills should be developed adequately. hearing impairment causes serious breakdown which makes the children to lag behind. so, it is important to provide appropriate intervention at the earliest evaluate narrative skills at early stage and to provide appropriate intervention. narrative is a virtuous way of assessing linguistic skill in older children with communication impairments. core language abilities rather than pragmatic skill or diagnostic status are likely to have an effect narrative development. evident differences in discourse skills between typically developing children and children with hearing impairment have been documented in the present study. narration serves as a precursor for literacy development and usually 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 total number of words total number of different words total number of content words total number of functional words number of bound morphemes number of free morphemes total number of morphemes proportion of content words proportion of functional words proportion of morphemes complex structure per utterance relevant pieces per utterance total number of mental state words mazes per utterance number of pronouns number of ambiguous pronouns cohesion percentage mean average group i mean average group ii discourse abilities in children with hearing impairment maria j., baskar, krishnan 187 emerges during preschool. hearing impairment causes serious breakdown which makes children to lag behind. therefore, it is important to evaluate narrative skills at early stage and providing appropriate intervention will enhance entry to mainstream. 5. future directions it is important to consider a large sample group across various age ranges and therefore as a future direction, it will be beneficial to consider a larger population analyzing both the macrostructural and microstructural aspects quantitatively. references bol, g. w. (2009). the production of pronouns in dutch children with developmental language disorders: a comparison between children with sli, hearing impairment, and down's syndrome. clinical linguistics and phonetics, 23(9), 631-646. jones. a. c. (2016). narrative skills in deaf children who use spoken english: dissociations between macro and microstructural devices. research in developmental disabilities, 59, 268-282 soares, a. d. (2010). narrative competence among hearing-impaired and normal-hearing children: analytical cross-sectional study. sao paulo med. j. [online], 128(5), 284-288. botvin, g. n., & sutton-smith, b. (1977). the development of structural complexity in children’s fantasy narratives. developmental psychology, 13, 377–388. castaldo, m. (2020). complex syntax acquisition in children with hearing loss. (master's thesis). retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/5996 hemphill, l. (1989). topic development, syntax, and social class. discourse processes, 12, 267-286 protocol pictures. (2021). retrieved from https://aphasia.talkbank.org/protocol/pictures/?c=n;o=d kim, h. (2019) measuring word retrieval in narrative discourse: core lexicon in aphasia. international journal of language communication disorders, 54(1), 62–78. doi:10.1111/14606984.12432. liles b. z., dufgy, r. j., merritu, d. d., purcell, s. l. (1995). measurement of narrative discourse ability in children with language disorders. journal of speech and hearing research, 38, 415-425. lynn, s. b., mccabe, a., & miranda, e. (2017). narrative assessment profile: discourse analysis for school age children. journal of communication disorders, 31, 347-363. macrostructure (linguistics). (2021). retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/macrostructure_(linguistics)#:~:text =macrostructures%20of%20discourse%20are%20distinguished,out %20or%20summarizing%20specific%20details. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 176-188, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 188 mcconnell, s. a. (2010). sentence complexity in children with autism and specific language impairment. ma thesis, university of iowa, retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.17077/etd.jswmmxnf norbury c. f., & bishop d. v. (2003). narrative skills of children with communication impairments. international journal of language & communication disorders, 38(3), 287-313. syukri, m. a. (2021). cohesion and coherence in the descriptive and narrative writing of hearing-impaired students. retrieved from http://sastra.um.ac.id/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/066masitha-a.s.-unair-kohesi-dan-koherensi-.-.-..pdf what is an ambiguous pronoun? definition & examples. (2021). retrieved from (study.com) https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-an-ambiguouspronoun-definition-examples.html word morphology. (2021). retrieved from https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresou rces/discipline/english/literacy/readingviewing/pages/litfocuswor dmorph.aspx appendix 1 the umbrella story source: https://aphasia.talkbank.org/protocol/pictures/?c=n;o=d journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 193-207, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 193 subject realization in bilinguals: a comparative study of german-turkish and russian-turkish bilingual children çiğdem sağın şimşek1 middle east technical university elena antonova-ünlü2 hacettepe university abstract the aim of this study is to examine the vulnerability of subject realization in turkish as an interface structure at the syntax-pragmatics interface. the study compares subject realization of four turkish monolingual, three germanturkish bilingual and two russian-turkish bilingual children. the language combinations investigated in the study were determined by the fact that russian is a partially null-subject language, while german is a non-null-subject one and turkish is a null-subject language. thus, focusing on the comparison of two different language combinations, the study aims to provide new insights about bilinguals’ subject realization patterns and their possible relation to crosslinguistic influence. the data for the study were collected by recording the natural language production of the three groups of children. analysis of the data revealed that both the german-turkish and the russian-turkish bilingual children overused overt subject pronouns in their turkish more than their monolingual counterparts. hence, we hypothesized that the inappropriate subject realizations of the bilingual children cannot merely be explained as evidence for cross-linguistic influence but also as a language processing problem. keywords subject realization, syntax-pragmatics interface, germanturkish, russianturkish, turkish 1. introduction sorace and filiaci (2006) proposed the interface hypothesis (ih) according to which structures involving interface between syntax and other cognitive domains are more prone to fossilization and incomplete acquisition in l2 end-states. initially, this hypothesis was suggested for the very advanced level of ultimate attainment in l2 acquisition, however, later it was expanded to bilingual first language acquisition (bfla) and to initial stages of l1 attrition. several studies (müller & hulk, 2001; paradis & navarro, 2003; tsimpli, sorace, heycock & filiaci, 2004; belletti, bennati & sorace, 2007; haznedar, 2010) validated the ih demonstrating that at the syntax-discourse interface, language behavior of l2 learners as well as that of children 1 bio: çiğdem sağın-şimşek is an associate professor at middle east technical university, department of foreign language education. her domains of research include aspects of bi-multilingualism, language contact, second and third language acquisition, turkish linguistics and sociolinguistics. contact: sagin@metu.edu.tr 2 bio: elena antonova-ünlü is an associate professor at hacettepe university, department of translation and interpreting. her domains of research include biand multilingualism, bilingual first-language acquisition, secondand third-language acquisition and sociolinguistics. received : 17.11.2017 accepted : 13.12.2017 published : 26.12.2017 doi:10.5281/zenodo.7697213 mailto:sagin@metu.edu.tr subject realization in bilingual turkish children sağın-şimşek, antonova-ünlü 194 acquiring languages in bfla differs from monolingual acquisition. of all the domains that have been examined in relation to the ih, subject realization in null-subject and non-null-subject languages is probably the most representative one. in the bfla context, the findings of the studies that examine subject realization were consistent with the l2 research (for instance, see hacohen & schaeffer, 2007 for hebrew–english bilinguals; müller, kupisch, schmitz & cantone, 2006 for italian–german bilinguals; paradis and navarro, 2003 for spanish–english bilinguals; pinto, 2004 for italian–dutch bilinguals; serratrice, sorace & paoli, 2004 for italian–english bilinguals), indicating that bilingual children who acquire a null subject language and a non-null subject language from birth tend to overuse overt pronouns in their nullsubject language. these results were interpreted in favor of the ih as evidence that the interface conditions on the use of subject pronouns are susceptible to developmental delays and cross-linguistic influence in bfla. regarding the possible sources of vulnerability of interface structures, sorace (2011) suggested two plausible explanations: (1) differences between bilinguals and monolinguals at the level of knowledge representation that occur due to the interaction of two competing grammatical systems and, (2) differences in processing resources and strategies between monolinguals and bilinguals. while numerous studies demonstrated that the process of subject realization in null-subject languages is affected by other non-null-subject language in bilingual acquisition, which can be attributed to cross-linguistic influence, several other studies provided a piece of evidence that even in cases when both languages of bilinguals are non-null-subject languages, their subject realization might be different from that of monolinguals (lozano, 2006; margaza & bel, 2006; sorace, serratrice, filiaci, & baldo, 2009). in this respect, sorace and serrtrice (2009) and sorace (2011) suggested that differences between monolinguals and bilinguals at the syntax-pragmatic interface seem to reflect differences in processing rather than cross-linguistic influence. within this framework, the aim of this study is to contribute to the debate about the possible sources of vulnerability of interface structures by comparing the subject realization of russian-turkish and german-turkish bilingual children, who have been exposed to both languages from birth and to examine the extent to which their dominant russian or german languages may account for non-monolingual-like subject realization in their non-dominant turkish language. we believe that the comparison of two groups of bilinguals having different subject realization patterns will allow us to speculate on the role of cross-linguistic influence and potential differences in processing between monolinguals and bilinguals at the domain of syntaxpragmatic interface. the choice of the russian and german languages as dominant languages of the bilingual participants has been determined by the fact that russian is a partially null-subject language, while german is a non-null-subject one and turkish is a null-subject language. regarding these differences between the languages and assuming potential cross-linguistic influences that might take place between the languages as a possible source of vulnerability of interface structures, it can be hypothesized that the russian-turkish bilingual journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 193-207, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 195 children will reveal a better overall performance in the realization of nullsubjects in turkish and their performance is expected to be unmarked or less marked with overuse of overt subjects, if compared with the germanturkish bilingual children. as for the subject realization of german-turkish bilingual children, it can be hypothesized that their acquisition would be more prone to overuse of overt subjects in turkish for two reasons. first, even though overt subjects are realized in both turkish and german, turkish as a null-subject language that allows omission of subjects, while german is a non-null subject language that relies only on overt subjects. second, null-subject realization in turkish is restricted not only by syntactic but also by pragmatic constraints. the study is structured as follows. first, in order to provide a framework for the study, studies that focused on subject realization among bilinguals will be reviewed. next, a brief overview of subject realization in the turkish, russian and german languages will be described to be able to estimate possible cross-linguistic influences of russian and german languages on the turkish language. then, the present study, the participants and the method will be introduced. finally, the results of data analysis will be presented and discussed. 1.1. studies on bilingual subject realization several studies focusing on subject realization of simultaneous bilingual children who acquire a null-subject and a non-null subject language have suggested that the topic is vulnerable to cross-linguistic influence. the important research in this respect was conducted by paradis and navarro (2003) who investigated the subject realization of a spanish-english bilingual child between the ages 1;9-2;6. the data collected during the natural speech production of the simultaneous bilingual child revealed that the child used more overt subjects in his spanish than his spanish monolingual counterparts, which according to the researchers indicated possible cross-linguistic effects from english to spanish. similar results were also reported by serratrice and sorace (2003) and serratrice et al. (2004), who collected data from one italian-english bilingual child, and by hacohen and schaeffer (2007), who collected data from one hebrew-english bilingual child. based on the inappropriate overuse of overt subjects in italian of the italian-english bilingual child and in hebrew of the hebrew-english bilingual child, the researchers discussed the vulnerability of the pragmatic constraints resulting from cross-linguistic influence. these studies, in common, suggested that if a null-subject language is acquired together with a non-null subject language, bilingual children would be inclined to use more overt subjects in their null-subject language than their monolingual counterparts. if the development of syntactic and pragmatic knowledge in coordination with each other is a demanding task for young children (avrutin, 1999), then it would not be wrong to assume that bilinguals who acquire two languages having different subject realization patterns (requiring the acquisition of syntactic parameters and the pragmatic constraints of their languages) will experience more difficulties than monolinguals and that the difficulties may subject realization in bilingual turkish children sağın-şimşek, antonova-ünlü 196 be related to cross-linguistic influence. in fact, the above studies validated this assumption. nevertheless, if language combination is an essential factor for the existence of cross-linguistic influence, an interesting question would arise how bilinguals who acquire two null-subject languages both of which require syntactic parameters and pragmatic constraints to be developed acquire the appropriate realization of subjects. to our knowledge, very few studies examined the above question. in one of such studies schmitz, patuto and müller (2011) examined three different language combinations german-italian, german-french and italian-french, two of these combinations contained both a null-subject (italian) and a nonnull-subject language (french and german), all of which have different pragmatic characteristics. the study highlighted the importance of the language combinations and demonstrated that while german-italian bilingual children produced too many subject pronouns (which they interpreted as evidence for cross-linguistic influence), such overuse patterns were not observed in italian-french bilingual children, although french is a non-null-subject language, like english and german. the researchers argued that not all diverse forms can be explained due to cross-linguistic influence. as for the studies examining subject realization among bilinguals whose language combinations include the null-subject turkish language, not much has been revealed yet. in one of the studies, haznedar (2010) investigated subject realization in turkish in spontaneous data collected from one simultaneous turkish-english bilingual child and one turkish monolingual child. the researcher reported that the bilingual child made use of overt subjects in turkish at a rate more than 10 times higher than the monolingual child and the bilingual child’s use of overt subjects was pragmatically inappropriate. the results of the study were interpreted as evidence for cross-linguistic influence from english regarding the realization of overt subjects in the context of turkish-english bilingual acquisition. similar results were also reported by sağın şimşek (2009), who compared the subject realization of four turkish monolingual and four turkishgerman bilingual children aged between 5 and 7;3. the study reported high percentage of inappropriate use of overt subjects and subject pronouns by the turkish-german bilinguals in turkish in comparison to their turkish monolingual counterparts who had the tendency to use null-subjects. accordingly, the study also suggested cross-linguistic influence as the main source of difficulty in acquiring the pragmatic constraints of turkish with regards to subject realization. this study focusing on the comparison of two different language combinations, one of them containing a null-subject and a non-null-subject language (german-turkish) and one containing one partially-null-subject and one null-subject languages (russian-turkish) might allow us to provide new insights about bilinguals’ subject realization and its relation to crosslinguistic influence. 1.1.1. subject realization in turkish turkish is a null-subject language with subjects that are identified via agreement morphemes on verbs as exemplified in (1a) and (1b) (kornfilt, journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 193-207, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 197 1997; enç, 1986; özsoy, 1987). in turkish, subjects can be omitted when their interpretations are discourse or context predictable and when there is an overt agreement marker on the predicate. in examples (2a) -(2c), ali is introduced as the subject of the event (2a) and in the following utterances, (2b) and (2c), it is possible to drop the subject (ali) since it is discourse predictable (1a) ben kitab-ım-ı oku-yor-um. i book-poss-acc read-prog-1.sg ‘i’m reading my book.’ (1b) ø kitab-ım-ı oku-yor-um. book-poss-acc read-prog-1.sg ‘i’m reading my book.’ (2a) ali ev-e erken gel-di. ali home-dat early come-past-3.sg ‘ali came home early.’ (2b) önce ev-i temiz-le-di. first house-acc clean-caus.-past-3.sg ‘first, he cleaned the house.’ (2c) sonra yemeğ-i piş-ir-di. then meal-acc cook-caus.-past-3.sg ‘then he cooked the meal.’ the realization of subjects in turkish is mainly determined by pragmatic considerations of the speaker such as expressing new and/or old information, contrast, subject change or indicating emphasis/focus (erguvanlı, 1984; kornfilt, 1984; 1997; enç, 1986; özsoy, 1987). as presented in (3a)-(3c) in order to indicate new information, contrasting, changing the subject and emphasizing a constituent, subjects are overtly stated. (3a) ödev-i ben yap-tı-m ali yap-ma-dı. homework-acc i do-past-1.sg ali do-neg-past-3.sg ‘i did the homework, ali didn’t do it.’ (3b) ali ev-de uyu-yor-du. ali home-loc sleep-prog-past-3.sg ‘ali was sleeping at home.’ (3c) o uyu-rken, ayşe ev-e gel-di. he sleep-con ayşe home-dat come-past-3.sg ‘while he was sleeping, ayşe came home.’ subject realization in bilingual turkish children sağın-şimşek, antonova-ünlü 198 1.1.2. subject realization in german german is considered to be a non-null-subject language in which the use of subject realization is mainly restricted by syntactic rules. nevertheless, only rarely, german allows the use of null-subjects. however, the use of nullsubjects is not regulated by pragmatic rules rather it only entails informal speech. for instance, both (4a) and (4b) present the same information with a difference in the level of formality. while example (4a) with a null-subject indicates informal speech, example (4b) with an overt subject indicates formal speech style. thus, subject omission it is not pragmatically but syntactically determined pattern (müller, 2007). (4a) ø hab das schon gemacht. have that already done. ‘i have already done that.’ (4b) ich hab das schon gemacht. i have that already done ‘i have already done that.’ 1.1.3. subject realization in russian russian is a partial-null-subject language which means that russian allows null-subjects but under more restricted conditions than consistent nullsubject languages. subject omission is determined by syntactic and discourse conditions in russian and is limited to the 1st and 2nd person in finite clauses, and 3rd person pronouns “bound by a higher argument” (a context that holmberg (2005: 539) stated is “rather poorly understood”). generic pronouns are also not realized overtly. to illustrate, examples (5a) and (6a) define the context, making the subjects in the following examples of (5b) and (6b) discourse predictable and therefore in example (5b) and (6b) the subjects can be omitted. (5a) ты что делаешь? you what do-2.sg-prog ‘what are you doing?’ (5b) ø доклад готовлю report-acc prepare-1.sg-prog ‘i am preparing a report.’ (6a) где олег? where oleg-nom ‘where is oleg?’ (6b) ø работает в библиотеке. work-3.sg-prog ‘he is working in the library.’ journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 193-207, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 199 1.2. the study this study aims to compare the subject realization of russian-turkish and german-turkish bilingual children in their non-dominant turkish language. precisely, the study aims to answer the following research questions: 1. does the subject realization in turkish of the german-turkish bilingual children differ from that of turkish monolingual children? 2. does the subject realization in turkish of the russian-turkish bilingual children differ from that of turkish monolingual children? 3. does the subject realization in turkish of the german-turkish and russian-turkish bilingual children differ from each other? 2. methodology 2.1. the participants the participants of this study include three groups of children (table 1). group 1 is a control group consisting of four normally developing monolingual turkish children with the age range of 4;2 to 8;0 (mean=6;5). the monolingual data examined in the study is taken from sağın şimşek (2009). group 2 consisted of three german-turkish bilingual children with the age range from 6;5 to 8;7 (mean=7;5). the german-turkish participants had been raised in the german-dominant environment and had been exposed to both languages from birth. the children were all born in germany in families where mothers were native speakers of german and fathers were native speakers of turkish. the german-turkish participants had been living in germany but they had regular contacts with their turkish relatives and had been visiting turkey twice a year. due to the german-dominant context of the language acquisition, the german language of the participants developed as dominant in their linguistic repertoire. group 3 consisted of two russian-turkish bilingual children whose ages were 7;0 and 8;6 (mean=7;8). the russian-turkish children had been raised in the russian-dominant environment and had been exposed to both languages from birth. the children had both been raised in russia from birth in families where mothers were native speakers of russian and fathers were native speakers of turkish. the russian-turkish participants had regular contacts with their turkish relatives and had been visiting turkey two-three times a year. due to the russian-dominant context of the language acquisition, the russian language developed as dominant in their linguistic repertoire. subject realization in bilingual turkish children sağın-şimşek, antonova-ünlü 200 table 1 information about the participants turkish monolingual controls german-turkish bilinguals russian-turkish bilinguals age age age c1 4;2 6,5 7;0 c2 6;8 7,3 8;6 c3 7;2 8,7 c4 8 mean 6,5 7;5 7;8 2.2. data collection taking into consideration the young ages of the participants, the data were collected recording their natural language production. the participants’ utterances were recorded while they were describing their past experiences such as their summer holidays and school experiences and while they were in interaction with their parents. 3. results 3.1. subject realization of the turkish monolinguals the results regarding the subject realization of turkish monolinguals were obtained from sağın şimşek (2009). table 2 presents the distribution of nullsubjects and overt subjects in the monolingual data referring to their functions and the frequency of use. as can be seen, the turkish monolingual children used both null-subjects and overt subjects in their language production and most of their usage was considered accurate and appropriate. the monolinguals used null-subjects when the same subject was used within the same discourse and when the subject was discourse predictable and there were very few instances of misuse of null-subjects. the use of overt subjects was preferred in cases when subjects presented new information, when they were contrasted and/or emphasized. as for the inappropriate use of overt subjects, they were few in number. table 2 distribution of subject realization in the turkish monolingual data distribution of null-subject distribution of overt subjects age utterance same subject context recoverable misuse new info. contrast emphasis overuse c1 4;2 118 46 24 2 15 16 15 0 c2 6;8 173 40 72 0 44 3 13 1 c3 7;2 149 53 54 2 22 3 9 6 c4 8 133 45 33 3 41 4 5 2 the analysis of the turkish monolinguals’ use of null and overt subjects allowed us to conclude that the turkish monolingual children had acquired the syntactic and pragmatic constraints of subject realization in turkish around the age of seven and use both null and over subjects accurately and appropriately. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 193-207, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 201 3.2. subject realization of the german-turkish bilinguals analysis of the german-turkish bilingual data revealed differences between the subject realization of the turkish monolingual and german-turkish bilingual children. the results presented in table 3 demonstrate that the german-turkish bilingual children also used patterns of null-subject for the same functions as their monolingual counterparts did although with relatively higher number of misuses. table 3 distribution of subject realization in the german-turkish bilingual data distribution of null-subject distribution of overt subjects age utterance same subject context recoverable misuse new info. contrast emphasis overuse c1 6,5 96 39 15 5 7 8 4 18 c2 7,3 101 36 18 6 11 2 9 19 c3 8,7 97 29 21 5 21 6 13 22 when the distribution of the overt subjects was examined, it was observed that the german-turkish bilinguals used overt subjects in order to indicate their pragmatic intentions like turkish monolingual children. however, the data revealed that the frequency of the inaccurate use of overt subjects was considerably higher in the german-turkish bilingual data than the turkish monolingual data. these findings were in line with our expectations. since turkish is a null-subject language with syntactic and pragmatic constraints and german does not allow subject omission in general, acquisition of german and turkish demanded the bilingual children to acquire different constraints of different domains. examples (7a-7i) illustrate one of the bilingual participants’ tendency to overuse overt subjects, specifically the first person pronoun, though the use of overt subject is not syntactically obligatory (as recoverable via the person marker on the verb) and pragmatically necessary. (7a) ben yaz tatil-im-de türkiye’ye git-ti-m. i summer holiday-poss-loc turkey-dat go-past-1.sg ‘i went to turkey last summer.’ (7b) orada akraba-lar-ım var. there relative-3.pl-poss exist ‘there i have relatives.’ (7c) #biz onlar-ı ziyaret et-ti-k ve beraber çok eğlen-di-k. we they-acc visit-do-past-3.pl and together very fun-past-3.pl ‘we visited them and we had fun together.’ (7d) #ben kuzen-ler-im-le oyun oyna-dı-m, deniz-de yüz-dü-m. i cousin-3.pl-poss-ac game play-past-1.sg sea-loc swim-past-1.sg subject realization in bilingual turkish children sağın-şimşek, antonova-ünlü 202 ‘i played gamed with my cousins and swam in the sea.’ (7e) #biz büyük kuzen-im için düğün yap-tı-k. we old cousin-poss for wedding make-past-3.pl ‘we gave a wedding party for my elder cousin.’ (7f) akşam düğün-de eğlen-di-k, dans et-ti-k. evening wedding-loc fun-past-3.pl dance-past-3.pl ‘we had fun and dance at the wedding that evening.’ (7g) #ben mutlu bir tatil yap-tı-m. i happy one holiday make-past-1.sg ‘i had a happy holiday.’ (7h) sonra aile-m-le almanya’-ya geri dön-dü-m. then family-poss-ac germany-dat back return-past-1.sg ‘then i came back to germany with my family.’ ve #ben burada tatil yap-tı-m. and i here holiday make-past-1.sg ‘and i made a holiday here.’ (7i) #ben tekrar türkiye’-ye git-mek isti-yor-um. i again turkey-dat go-inf want-prog-1.sg ‘i want to go to turkey again.’ it is possible to hypothesize that the inappropriately use of overt subjects in null-subject turkish observed in the german-turkish bilingual data can be attributed to cross-linguistic influence from german, since the latter is a non-null-subject language. 3.3. subject realization of the russian-turkish bilinguals analysis of the data obtained from the russian-turkish bilingual children revealed that the russian-turkish bilingual children use both null-subjects and overt subjects in their utterances. only in one instance one of the bilingual children misused the null-subject in turkish. this result was not unexpected as both russian and turkish languages are null-subject languages. table 4 distribution of subject realization in the russian-turkish bilingual data distribution of null-subjects distribution of overt subjects age utterance same subject context recoverable misuse new info. contrast emphasis overuse c1 7;0 86 36 2 1 6 0 0 41 c2 8;6 72 24 18 0 11 0 0 19 however, when the distribution of the overt use of subjects were examined, as presented in table 4, unexpected results were revealed. we predicted that journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 193-207, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 203 the combination of russian-turkish would not display observable differences between the turkish monolinguals and the russian-turkish bilinguals regarding the subject realization patterns because both turkish and russian are null-subject languages allowing the omission of subjects. thus, we expected more or less similar subject realization patterns to be used by the turkish monolingual and russian-turkish bilingual children. however, contrary to our expectations the russian-turkish bilinguals’ overt subject realization patterns were quite different from those of the turkish monolinguals. the bilinguals had the tendency to make use of overt subjects more extensively than the use of null-subjects. in cases when the subject that was introduced in the discourse was also the doer of the following utterances and therefore, discourse-recoverable via the agreement markers on the verbs, the russian-turkish bilingual children preferred using overt subjects rather than omitting them. the overt use of the subjects when they were syntax and discourse predictable was an unexpected pattern. as presented in table 4, of the 158 utterances of the two russian-turkish bilingual children, 60 included overused, inappropriate overt subjects. (8a) i̇lk önce #ben git-ti-m konya’-ya. first i go-past-1.sg konya-dat ‘first i went to konya.’ (8b) konya’-da #ben çok güzel vakit geçir-di-m akraba-lar-ım-la konya-loc i very good time spend-past-1.sg relative-pl-poss-with ve arkadaş-lar-ım-la. and friend-pl-poss-with ‘i spent good time with my relatives and friends in konya.’ (8c) her gün #ben ve benim aile-m bir yere gid-iyor-du-k. every day i and my family-poss a place-dat go-prog-past-3.pl ‘every day we used to go somewhere with my family.’ (8d) sonra #ben ve #benim aile-m kapadokya’ya git-ti-k. then i and my family-poss kapadokya-dat go-past-3.pl ‘then we went to kapadokya with my family.’ (8e) her gün #biz orada güzel gez-di-k. every day we there nice visit-past-3.sg ‘everyday we visited nice places there.’ (8f).sonra #ben rusya’-ya dön-dü-m. then i russia-dat return-past-1.sg ‘then i came back to russia.’ the inappropriately overuse of overt subjects in turkish that are exemplified in the examples (8a-8f) observed in the russian-turkish bilingual data cannot be attributed to the cross-linguistic influence from russian since the subject realization in bilingual turkish children sağın-şimşek, antonova-ünlü 204 latter is also a null-subject language. moreover, contrary to our expectations, the similarities between russian and turkish regarding subject realization seemed to have no facilitating effect on subject realization in turkish. 4. discussion and conclusions the analysis of the data revealed that the language behaviour of the german-turkish and the russian-turkish bilingual children was different from the turkish monolingual children in that both the german-turkish and the russian-turkish bilingual children overused overt subject pronouns in their turkish. these results are consistent with the findings of the studies that examined subject realization in null-subject languages of bilinguals suggesting that the bilinguals tended to overuse subjects notwithstanding the fact that their other language is a non-null or null-subject one. research on the issue commonly presented cross-linguistic influence as a factor that accounts for vulnerability of subject realization as a syntax-pragmatics interface phenomenon. this vulnerability is related to the defined conditions of cross-linguistic influence (hulk & müller, 2000; müller & hulk, 2000; 2001) according to which a grammatical property is a vulnerable grammatical phenomenon when it is similar at the surface level in both languages and when it is at the interface between syntax and pragmatics in one language. however, our findings cannot be merely explained on the basis of cross-linguistic influence since both the german-turkish and russianturkish bilingual children demonstrated similar subject realization patterns; namely, they both overused overt subjects. if cross-linguistic influence were the only factor that might account for the deviations in subject realizations, different patterns would be expected from the two bilingual groups in their realization of subjects in turkish; with the russian-turkish participants performing better in using the null-subjects. however, our data revealed that similar to the german-turkish bilinguals, the russian-turkish bilingual children overused overt subjects and subject pronouns, particularly the 1st person pronoun, even though both turkish and russian are null-subject languages allowing subject omission. hence, the inappropriate subject realizations of the russian-turkish bilingual children cannot be explained as evidence for cross-linguistic influence only but conceivably as a language processing problem. serratrice et al. (2004) in their article where they compared subjects and objects in the english-italian bilingual and monolingual acquisition suggested that languages with pragmatic constraints can be considered more complex than others which do not have any pragmatic constraints and that “the coordination of syntactic and pragmatic knowledge is a demanding task for young children in general” (p.201). similarly, we believe that the russianturkish bilingual children who use null-subjects in their russian had to figure out the extent of null-subject realization in their turkish as the choice between whether to use or to omit the subjects is not only regulated by syntactic but also pragmatic constraints in turkish. therefore, it may be hypothesized that if the acquisition of pragmatic constraints in addition to the invariant syntactic rules required additional demand from the bilinguals, and therefore perceived as more complex, then the bilingual children might have preferred to rely on the underlying syntactic structure of turkish. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 193-207, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 205 turkish is syntactically a sov language but due to pragmatic intentions of the speakers it is possible to use other word orders with or without omitting subjects. it might be assumed that in cases when a language of bilinguals necessitates acquisition of pragmatic constraints which are context-bound and require appropriate evaluation of the context, a tendency to use the default option in the languages might be a solution for overcoming the processing difficulty. accordingly, it is possible to assume that inappropriate subject realizations might not only characterize subject realization of bilingual children, but also monolingual children. however, the monolingual data analysed in the present study and in the other studies that compared subject realization of the turkish monolinguals with the turkish-english bilingual children (haznedar, 2010) provided evidence that turkish monolinguals acquire pragmatic constraints of their languages quite early and start using subject omission at very early ages. therefore, the inappropriate subject realizations should be interpreted as a peculiarity of the bilingual language use and most probably is related not only to the availability of two different linguistic systems in the repertoire but also to the limited input bilinguals might receive in one of their languages. however, our data do not allow us to draw conclusions in this respect. unquestionably, considering the number of children involved in the study, we accept that our results are not indisputable and further research with more participants is needed to verify our data. references avrutin, s. 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(2004). first language attrition and syntactic subjects: a study of greek and italian near-native speakers of english. international journal of bilingualism, 8, 257–277. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 2 519-533, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 519 procedural discourse production in children with specific learning disorder (sld) maria j.1 merf–institute of speech and hearing anusha m. n. 2 merf–institute of speech and hearing sathveeka k. s.3 merf–institute of speech and hearing yuva yoga shree b.4 merf–institute of speech and hearing abstract background: the term ‘specific learning disorder’ which is commonly used in federal and state law, the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (dsm) interferes with a student’s ability to listen, think, speak, write, spell, or do mathematical calculations. procedural discourse can be defined as a goal-oriented monologue in which a series of steps are involved in a specifiable manner (conceptual or chronological). aim: the present study aims at investigating the macro and micro structural production of discourse elicited through a procedural task using a video given lemonade preparation. method: 10 individuals with specific learning disorders ages ranging from 7 to 12 years and 10 agematched typically developing children who has tamil as their native mother tongue and whose medium of instruction is english were enrolled in the study. to assess their discourse skills, participants were engaged in a procedural task on ‘preparation of a lemonade procedure”. all the samples were transcribed orthographically and divided into communication units following which the macro and microstructural analyses were carried out. the comparison of raw scores between both the groups was subjected to statistical analysis for obtaining significant values. results: the individuals with specific learning disorders underperformed neuro-typical individuals in complex structures per utterance, relevant pieces per utterance, and information adequacy. conclusion: it is evident from the present study that specific learning disorder has an effect on procedural performance and this, in turn, has an effect on the language performance in an individual. key words: specific learning disorder, procedural, discourse, macro, micro-structural 1. introduction discourse is the use of language in the social context in either written or spoken form. a narrowed definition refers to discourse as language beyond the simple sentence (ulatowska et al., 1983). the genre of discourse can be broadly classified as interactive and non-interactive. one such example of interactive is the conversational discourse, which requires aspects such as topic shift rules, eye contact, turn-taking, etc. on the other hand, noninteractive discourses such as monologues include narrative and procedural discourse (snow et al., 1997). typically, procedural discourse can be defined as a goal-oriented monologue in which a series of steps are involved in a 1 associate professor (slp), corresponding author: mj.aslpofficial@gmail.com 2 b. aslp student, anushanagamalai2000@gmail.com 3 aslp student 4 maslp student received : 22.06.2022 accepted : 10.08.2022 published : 28.08.2022 mailto:mj.aslpofficial@gmail.com mailto:anushanagamalai2000@gmail.com procedural discourse in sld maria, anusha, sathveeka, yuva 520 specifiable manner (conceptual or chronological). it involves a task that tells how something is done. the individual information units are known as steps (cannito et al., 1988). these steps are classified as essential, optional, and target steps. essential steps consist of the action required to complete the task, whereas optional steps add more clarity to the procedure with better clarification and details. finally, completion of a procedure is indicated by the target step. (ulatowska et al., 1983). the degree to which information is judged is classified as explicit or implicit. steps that are implied within explicit steps are called implicit steps. even though a simplified classification system is basic for the purpose of analysis, the hierarchical differentiation of steps is not distinctive in typical individuals. similarly, there are unexplored analyses of discourses in children with specific learning disorders, especially using a procedural task. compromised procedural learning has been proposed as one of the possible causes of developmental dyslexia (dd) and specific language impairment (sli). specific learning disorder (sld) is a neurological disorder in which basic psychological processes involved in the use of language are deficient. it is formerly known as learning disability. these children may have difficulty in understanding and learning academic skills such as reading, writing, and mathematics. a few general characteristics include inattentiveness, language problems, and auditory perceptual problems such as poor auditory memory, recall, recognition, and sequential memory (rachamalla, 2016). they have a poor procedural memory but an intact declarative and non-sequential memory (west et al., 2019). one of the risk factors widely known to be present in language learning disorders is impaired procedural learning (west et al., 2018) the procedural memory system controls the acquisition, consolidation, and atomization of motor, perceptual and cognitive skills (lum, gelgic, & conti‐ramsden, 2010). repetitive skills learned through sensorimotor and cognitive habits embody procedural memory. in language, it underpins the literacy of a ‘mental grammar’, which is concerned with the rule‐grounded procedures that govern the discrepancies of language (chomsky, 1980; ullman, 2004). the procedural deficit hypothesis suggests that it is a deficit in procedural sequence learning that is a critical cognitive risk factor for dyslexia and language impairment (nicholson & fawcett, 2010). age-related changes that happen for better declarative and procedural memory vary in children. neuroimaging data suggest subtle differences in development may be observed after late childhood, as its stable until then. however, procedural memory stabilization occurs at a point during maturation although accurately uncertain (bouyeure & noulhiane, 2020). procedural tasks manifest the use of long-term memory and its prime importance lies around “how to do”, rather than “what to do” or “who does it”. this ability to understand and produce steps is crucial for these children, in order to carry out basic procedural activities this has great implicature of linguistic markings in many languages that serve as communicative functions. unlike the declarative memory systems, procedural memory https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc5888158/#desc12552-bib-0037 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc5888158/#desc12552-bib-0014 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc5888158/#desc12552-bib-0073 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc5888158/#desc12552-bib-0047 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 2 519-533, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 521 incorporates sensorimotor and cognitive skills and regulates the process of atomization. the deficit in sequential procedural learning is remarkably a cognitive risk component in specific learning disorders (west et al., 2018). discourse analysis is the study of human communication using various models and constructs. a very few procedural discourse studies exist with sld children and therefore, this study applies new constructs to study the microstructure and macrostructure language abilities of children with specific learning disorder via a procedural task. 2. methodology 2.1. participants a total of 20 children [10 typically developing children (tdc); 10 children with specific learning disorder] were included in the crossectional study. the study aimed in investigating the macro linguistic and micro linguistic aspects using procedural discourse tasks in children with learning disabilities strictly adhering to the age range 7 12 years. 2.2. materials the samples and data required were collected using, 1. a general demographic data form including name, age/gender, contact number, name of the school the child is attending, current grade/ class the child is studying, medium of instruction in school, age of identification of learning disability, nature of learning disability and the other rehabilitative services attended were also documented. 2. a 10item checklist with options ‘yes’ or ‘no’, adapted from dsm-v criteria for specific learning disorder (table 1), was obtained from the parents. 3. an informed consent was obtained from all the parents of sld. 4. a pre-recorded “lemonade” preparation video was used to elicit the procedural discourse. table 1. parental checklist for specific learning disorder 1. the child exhibits poor eye contact and is inattentive. yes no 2 the child has difficulty to follow multiple commands. yes no 3. the child exhibits difficulty to remember things. yes no 4. the child exhibits difficulty to follow the lines and read. yes no 5. the child has difficulty in pronouncing multi syllabic words. yes no procedural discourse in sld maria, anusha, sathveeka, yuva 522 6. the child exhibits reversal of letters when writing. yes no 7. the child jumbles the words and do not space them appropriately. yes no 8. the child has a very poor hand writing. yes no 9. the child has difficulty to recall the instances from past and narrate them cohesively. yes no 10. the child has difficulty in using the language to communicate effectively. yes no 2.3. procedure the entire procedure was carried out on an online video communication platform. initially, informed consent were collected from parents. the parents were asked to fill the demographic data form to acquire all the necessary general details about the child. then, the close-ended checklist was administered to the parents to document the children’s academic and communication abilities. after obtaining all the data, discourse sample collection was carried out. the children were shown a pre-recorded video of lemonade preparation without verbal information. after the lemonade video was played, every child was asked by the clinician to “tell me all the steps involved in making a lemon juice”. the samples were audio and video recorded with the consent of the parents. the recorded samples were transcribed later for analyzing their macrostructural and microstructural linguistic abilities in procedural discourse. table 2. domains and subdomains of macrostructure and microstructure s. no domains subdomains 1. macrostructure i. total number of steps ii. content a) objects required for the procedure b) actions required for the procedure c) level of detailing iii. clarity of the narration iv. topic management v. information 2. microstructure i. total number of words (tnw) ii. total number of different words (tdw) iii. total number of content words (ncw) iv. total number of functional words (nfw) v. number of bound morphemes (nbm) journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 2 519-533, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 523 vi. number of free morphemes (nfm) vii. total number of morphemes (tm) viii. proportion of content words (pcw) ix. proportion of functional words (pfw) x. proportion of morphemes (pm) xi. complex structure per utterance (csu) xii. relevant pieces per utterance (rpu) xiii. mazes per utterance (mpu) xiv. number of pronouns (np) xv. number of ambiguous pronouns (nap) xvi. cohesion percentage (cp) 2.4. macrostructural analysis the macrostructural analysis is subjected to analyzing the ability to initiate the topic and maintain it. it also focuses on the ability of the individual to convey the intended message. overall organization and delivery of the message is explored. these parameters are examined mainly for their presence or absence in each discourse. four main domains namely “number of steps involved, content, clarity of the narration, topic management, and information adequacy” were analyzed from the sample we obtained. a total number of steps involved to narrate the procedure was counted. three subdomains “objects required for the procedure, actions required for the procedure, and level of detailing” in content was analyzed using a 4point rating scale. the domain “clarity of the narration” was analyzed using a 3-point rating scale. topic management and information adequacy were analyzed using a 5point rating scale as provided (ulatowska et al., 1983). the scales of each domain are mentioned in the appendix 1. rating basis and instructions for each domain are explained in table 3. table 3. rating of the macrostructural discourse based on the instructions for each domain microstructural analysis s. no domain instructions for rating 1 total number of steps involved the total number of steps it took for the child to narrate the procedure 2 content a. objects required for the procedure b. actions required for the procedure naming all the essential ingredients and properties. describe all the essential actions involved in the activity. procedural discourse in sld maria, anusha, sathveeka, yuva 524 c. level of detailing narrating the procedure with explicit detailing is sufficient for the listener to understand. 3 clarity of the narration the language of the child while narrating the procedure is rated. 4 topic management narration of the procedure while maintaining a topic without any deviations. 5 information adequacy length of utterances it took for the child to convey the information 2.5. microstructural analysis the microstructural analysis is more focused on the fine-drawn elements of the discourse such as lexical diversity, the structure of the sentence, and referential cohesion. in a discourse, linguistic features of the language are represented as the narrative microstructure such as the usage of morphemes, and different types of words (content and functional words). the diversity of the discourse is achieved by the fine usage of microstructural features. a total number of words, different words, content words, functional words, pronouns, mental state words, bound morphemes, and free morphemes were manually counted from the transcribed sample. the proportion of content words, functional words, and morphemes were acquired by dividing the domain of interest by different words. ambiguous pronouns, mazes (disfluencies), complex structure, and relevant pieces per utterance were determined based on their languagesentence formation, mean length of utterance, and the overall comprehensibility. the cohesion percentage was calculated by dividing the number of ambiguous pronouns by the total number of pronouns. 2.6. statistical analysis the raw data obtained for macrostructural and microstructural aspects were documented in microsoft excel 2010 and were subjected to statistical analysis using spss version 21. mannwhitney test, wilcoxon w test, and z test were carried out. 3. results the mean age of 10 children with specific learning disorder was 8.9 years. from the parental checklist for learning difficulty characteristics, 7 (70%) of them exhibit difficulty in following the lines, reading, and reversal of letters journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 2 519-533, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 525 when writing. 6 (60%) of them have difficulty pronouncing multi-syllabic words and 5 (50%) have difficulty following multiple commands and jumbling words and not spacing them appropriately. 3 (30%) of them have difficulty using the language to communicate effectively. 1 (1%) of them exhibit poor eye contact, is inattentive, and have very poor handwriting. the mean and standard deviation of each domain has been listed in the tabular column from both macrostructural and microstructural analysis. in macrostructural parameters, the mean for total number of steps involved for carryout out the task for sld group were 6.7 and 6.8 for tdc. though the children with sld underperformed in their macrostructural aspects, the domains except for the information adequacy did not show a significant difference. the value of p exact is less than 0.05 indicates that there is a statistical significance between the tdc and children with sld on information adequacy. table 4. macrostructural statistical analysis group n mean sd p value objects required for the procedure tdc 10.00 4.00 0.00 .317 sld 10.00 3.90 0.32 actions required for the procedure tdc 10.00 3.40 0.52 .796 sld 10.00 3.30 0.67 level of detailing tdc 10.00 3.10 0.74 .744 sld 10.00 3.20 0.79 clarity of the narration tdc 10.00 2.60 0.52 .084 sld 10.00 2.00 0.82 topic management tdc 10.00 4.40 0.52 .796 sld 10.00 4.30 0.67 information adequacy tdc 10.00 4.60 0.52 .001* sld 10.00 3.40 0.52 note: *p= <0.005 significant difference procedural discourse in sld maria, anusha, sathveeka, yuva 526 figure 1: mean average of macrostructural domains in typically developing children and in children with specific learning disorder in microstructural analysis, the value of p<0.05, rejects the null hypothesis this indicates that there is a significant statistical difference between the typically developing children and specific learning disorder groups for the domains “complex structure per utterances” with a quantitative value of 3.0 and 1.01 and “relevant pieces per utterances” with the value of 3.3 and 1.10 respectively. the values for each domain are documented in table 5. table 5. microstructural statistical analysis group n mean sd p value tnw tdc 10.00 33.60 13.33 0.60 sld 10.00 30.50 12.35 tdw tdc 10.00 19.80 3.91 0.36 sld 10.00 18.60 7.06 ncw tdc 10.00 12.90 2.64 1.00 sld 10.00 14.20 7.15 nfw tdc 10.00 6.50 2.88 0.13 sld 10.00 4.40 2.12 nbm tdc 10.00 0.50 0.71 0.20 sld 10.00 0.40 1.26 nfm tdc 10.00 32.20 14.75 0.85 sld 10.00 30.50 12.35 tm tdc 10.00 32.70 15.15 0.82 sld 10.00 30.90 13.30 pcw tdc 10.00 0.66 0.11 0.10 sld 10.00 0.75 0.11 pfw tdc 10.00 0.34 0.11 0.17 sld 10.00 0.30 0.21 pm tdc 10.00 1.02 0.02 0.16 0 0,5 1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 4 4,5 5 objects required for the procedure actions required for the procedure level of detailing clarity of the narration topic management information adequacy 4 3,4 3,1 2,6 4,4 4,6 3,9 3,3 3,2 2 4,3 3,4 typically developing children children with sld journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 2 519-533, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 527 sld 10.00 1.01 0.02 csu tdc 10.00 3.00 1.15 0.01* sld 10.00 1.10 1.52 rpu tdc 10.00 3.30 1.77 0.01* sld 10.00 1.30 1.57 mpu tdc 10.00 3.40 2.22 0.28 sld 10.00 5.30 3.97 np tdc 10.00 1.60 1.17 0.50 sld 10.00 1.20 1.03 nap tdc 10.00 0.00 .000 1.00 sld 10.00 0.00 .000 cp tdc 10.00 1.00 0.000 1.00 sld 10.00 1.00 0.000 figure 2: mean average of microstructural domains in typically developing children and in children with specific learning disorder 33,6 19,8 12,9 6,5 0,5 32,2 32,7 0,66 0,34 1,02 3 3,3 3,4 1,6 0 1 30,5 18,6 14,2 4,4 0,4 30,5 30,9 0,75 0,3 1,01 1,1 1,3 5,3 1,2 0 1 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% total number of words total number of different words total number of content words total number of functional… number of bound morphemes number of free morphemes total number of morphemes proportion of content words proportion of functional words proportion of morphemes complex structure per utterance relevant pieces per utterance mazes per utterance number of pronouns number of ambiguous pronouns cohesion percentage typically developing children children with sld procedural discourse in sld maria, anusha, sathveeka, yuva 528 4. discussion procedural analysis using microstructural parameters revealed significant differences for complex structure per utterance and relevant pieces per utterance. children with sld have fewer words with a small proportion of pronouns. however, the lemonade preparation task did not involve many uses of pronouns and thus, no significant differences are noted. they also have few units of ideas with less syntactically complex sentences. studies also suggest that the explanations provided by these children were inadequate and not explicit enough for the listener’s needs. in fact, the use of conjunctions hinders the cohesiveness that is used to link pieces together (ripich & griffith, 1988). nevertheless, these children did not have big significant differences for other parameters as they exhibit many intact learning systems that allow them to perform on par with the non-disabled children. one such reason that’s widely quoted is an intact visual shortterm memory and long-term memory (my & mj, 2008). this is in support of the studies that proved the rate of learning on visual-visual paired associates learning was equivalent to age-matched peers. our findings results have a very strong correlation with this fact, as the stimuli were presented in the visual mode, in the form of a video. however, they have a poor verbal short-term memory and the rate of learning is slow compared to age-matched peers with verbal-visual and verbal-verbal mappings (krishnan et al., 2016). there were similar findings for macrostructural analysis as information adequacy showed the statistical difference. studies support that sld children demonstrated problems with the organization of events and formulation of structures. some of the reasons hypothesized were due to inefficient processing and organizational abilities. however, the parameters such as content, clarity, and topic management did not have statistical differences as tdc performed marginally better. the ability to recall a gist of information was significantly less than non-disabled children (fp & nj, 1986). a series of embedded episodes places more demands on the cognitive system and this has resulted in more sequential and detailed steps. the episodic memory is more responsible for the number of information differences. in addition to these, children with sld are intervened using various approaches with collaboration and many instructions (bulgren & carta, 1992). as these children receive special education services, who use more of an instructional approach, has made them follow each step from the video. 5. conclusion specific learning disorder (sld) is a neurological disorder in which basic psychological processes involved in the use of language are deficient. one of the risk factors widely known to be present in children with sld is impaired procedural learning. in procedural discourse analysis done between typically developing children and sld children, a very discernible difference was seen between the two groups in almost all the domains of microstructural and journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 2 519-533, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 529 macro structural features. out of the common, children with specific learning disorder performed on par with typically developing children in all the macrostructural domains except information adequacy as there is difficulty with the organization of events and formulation of structures. in microstructural domains, complex sentences per utterance and relevant pieces per utterance were the two domains that the typically developing children outperformed the children with sld. this infrequent result was due to the fact that children with sld have good visual short-term memory and an intact declarative and non-sequential memory. 6. future directions the current study has focused on eliciting discourse using a visual stimulus which has shown very few differences between the children without sld and children with sld. the uncommon findings between the two groups instigate the reasons behind the differential data as there is a customary trend of belief for the sld population to perform poorer. considering the underlined factors responsible for the outperformance, there is a greater quest for undertaking far-fielded research to explore other strengths that would help them to fill in for their deficient areas. thus, future studies could be done based on this premise, using a larger sample size with added aims and objectives. to be more precise, the comparison can be done using video-only and audio-only stimuli shown to the children. the recall gap can also be varied with timed intervals as the memory recall would also be tapped. studies can be done by emphasizing the outcomes and documentation of the procedural discourse with stimulus given in both visual and verbal modalities. references bouyeure, a., & noulhiane, m. (2020). memory: normative development of memory systems. in handbook of clinical neurology (vol. 173, pp. 201–213). elsevier b.v. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-44464150-2.00018-6 bulgren, j. a., & carta, j. j. (1992). examining the instructional contexts of students with learning disabilities. exceptional children, 59(3), 182–191. https://doi.org/10.1177/001440299305900302 cannito, m., hayashi, m., & ulatowska, h. (1988). discourse in normal and pathologic aging: background and assessment strategies. seminars in speech and language, 9(02), 117–134. https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0028-1082459 fp, r., & nj, s. (1986). narrative discourse: spontaneously generated stories of learning-disabled and normally achieving students. the procedural discourse in sld maria, anusha, sathveeka, yuva 530 journal of speech and hearing disorders, 51(1), 8–23. https://doi.org/10.1044/jshd.5101.08 krishnan, s., watkins, k. e., & bishop, d. v. m. (2016). neurobiological basis of language learning difficulties. trends in cognitive sciences, 20(9), 701–714. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2016.06.012 my, k., & mj, c. (2008). memory functioning in children with reading disabilities and/or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder: a clinical investigation of their working memory and long-term memory functioning. child neuropsychology : a journal on normal and abnormal development in childhood and adolescence, 14(6), 525–546. https://doi.org/10.1080/09297040701821752 rachamalla, s. a. & rafi, m. (2016). learning disabilities: characteristics and instructional approaches. international journal of humanities, social sciences and education, 3(4). https://doi.org/10.20431/2349-0381.0304013 ripich, d. n., & griffith, p. l. (1988). danielle n. ripich and penny l. griffith. learning disabilities, 21(3), 165–173. snow, p., douglas, j., & ponsford, j. (1997). procedural discourse following traumatic brain injury. aphasiology, 11(10), 947–967. https://doi.org/10.1080/02687039708249421 ulatowska, h. k., doyel, a. w., stern, r. f., haynes, s. m., & north, a. j. (1983). production of procedural discourse in aphasia. brain and language, 18(2), 315–341. https://doi.org/10.1016/0093934x(83)90023-8 west, g., clayton, f. j., shanks, d. r., & hulme, c. (2019). procedural and declarative learning in dyslexia. dyslexia (chichester, england), 25(3), 246–255. https://doi.org/10.1002/dys.1615 west, g., vadillo, m. a., shanks, d. r., & hulme, c. (2018). the procedural learning deficit hypothesis of language learning disorders: we see some problems. developmental science, 21(2), e12552. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12552 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 2 519-533, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 531 appendices macrostructure analysis rating scale for procedural discourse: i. the total number of steps involved for the child to narrate the procedure ii. content: a. are the objects necessary for performing the task clear? 4 yes 3 for the most part 2 not for the most part 1 no b. are the actions necessary for carrying out the task clear? 4 yes 3 for the most part 2 not for the most part 1 no c. was the amount of information given detailed enough to complete to perform the task? 4 yes 3 for the most part 2 not for the most part 1 no iii. how comprehensible is the language of the procedure? 3 ready, effortless 2 to a great extent; language presented with some difficulties 1 not at all; language presented extreme difficulties iv. topic management 1. provides no elaboration of the topic 2. provides very minimal elaboration with the rapid shift from the given topic 3. provides minimal elaboration with a gradual shift from the given topic procedural discourse in sld maria, anusha, sathveeka, yuva 532 4. provides minimal elaboration still staying within the given topic 5. provides adequate elaboration and stays within the given topic v. information adequacy 1. completely inadequate 2. word level 3. two-word phrases 4. single sentences 5. uses complex and multiple sentences discourse sample analysis lemon juice…first we must squeeze lemon and then some sugar….some sugar add some salt mix water…mint put and drink /lɛmən//ʤus/..... /fərst//vi//məst//skwiz//lɛmən//ænd//ðɛn//səm//ʃugər//səm//ʃugər//æd //səm//sɔlt//mɪks//wa:tər/..../mɪnt//pʊt//ænd//drɪŋk/ 1. macrostructure total number of steps (squeeze lemon, some sugar, add some salt, mix water, mint put and drink) 6 content objects required for the procedure 4 actions required for the procedure 3 level of detailing 2 clarity of the narration 2 topic management 4 information 3 2. microstructure total number of words (lemon, juice, first, we, must, squeeze, lemon, and, then, some, sugar, some, sugar, add, some, salt, mix, water, mint, put, and, drink.) 22 total number of different words (lemon, juice, first, we, must, squeeze, and, then, some, sugar, add, salt, mix, water, mint, put, drink) 17 total number of content words (lemon, juice, squeeze, sugar, add, 11 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 2 519-533, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 533 salt, mix, water, mint, put, drink) total number of functional words (first, we, must, and, then, some) 6 number of bound morphemes 0 number of free morphemes (lemon, juice, first, we, must, squeeze, lemon, and, then, some, sugar, some, sugar, add, some, salt, mix, water, mint, put, and, drink.) 22 total number of morphemes (lemon, juice, first, we, must, squeeze, lemon, and, then, some, sugar, some, sugar, add, some, salt, mix, water, mint, put, and, drink.) 22 proportion of content words (no. of content words/ no. of different words = 11/17) 0.64 proportion of functional words (no. of functional words/ no. of different words = 6/17) 0.35 proportion of morphemes (total no. of morphemes/ total no. of words = 22/22) 1 complex structure per utterance (lemon juice first we must squeeze lemon and then some sugar some sugar add some salt mix water mint put and drink) 1 relevant pieces per utterance (lemon juice first we must squeeze lemon and then some sugar some sugar add some salt mix water mint put and drink) 5 mazes per utterance (pauses) 3 number of pronouns (we) 1 number of ambiguous pronouns 0 cohesion percentage 100% journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 162-175, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 162 trajectory of liquid production in typically developing children: european portuguese1 clara amorim2 universidade do porto abstract dependence relationship between segmental and syllabic acquisition has been described in several languages phonological acquisition. in european portuguese, there are only two segments (/l/ and /ɾ/) licensed in all syllabic position: onset, onset cluster and coda. this paper describes cross-sectional data for /l/ and /ɾ/ in all syllable position in typically developing children aged 3 to 5 years old, contributing with empirical data from european portuguese to the dependence relationship between segmental and syllabic acquisition. a native speaker audiorecorded and transcribed single words in an original spontaneous picture naming task, allowing eliciting words in connected speech. results show a dependence relationship between segmental and syllabic acquisition consistent with previous research on european portuguese. onset /l/ and /ɾ/ were in advance of /l/ and /ɾ/ clusters and coda. both segments have different paths in acquisition: /l/ stabilizes first in onset cluster and later in coda, whilst the rhotic stabilizes first in coda and later in onset cluster. besides the syllable constituent, along with the syllable position in the word, was relevant for the stabilization of liquid consonants: contrary to lateral coda, rhotic coda acquisition stabilizes first in word-final position and only later within word. finally, the prosodic variable tonicity was also relevant for the acquisition of within-word rhotic coda: it is acquired earlier in stressed syllable and later in unstressed syllable. keywords: phonological acquisition, liquids, syllable constituents, monolinguals, portuguese 1. introduction studies about european portuguese (ep) phonological acquisition are relatively recent, having begun with freitas’s work about syllable structure acquisition (freitas, 1997). after this seminal work, further research has been conducted either on syllable structure acquisition (correia 2004; almeida 2011) or on segmental acquisition (mendes et al. 2009/2013; costa 2010; amorim 2015; ramalho 2017). following brazilian portuguese (bp) phonological acquisition research, ep works have used nonlinear phonology to describe and account for data collected, focusing mainly on segmental acquisition and its relationship with syllable, foot and prosodic word (freitas 1997; costa 2010; almeida 2011; amorim 2015; ramalho 2017). in this theoretical framework, segmental acquisition description is based on distinctive features, which are inherent to segmental roots, and on distinctive features co-occurrences. 1 this research was financed by portuguese funds through fct – fundação para a ciência e a tecnologia (sfrh/bd/69856/2010). 2 bio: clara amorim is a research associate in centro de linguística da universidade do porto. her research focuses on phonological acquisition. corresponding author: cfamorim@gmail.com received : 27.01.2021 accepted : 24.02.2021 published : 30.03.2021 mailto:cfamorim@gmail.com liquid production in typically developing children amorim 163 in portuguese, liquid consonants /l/ and /ɾ/ are the only segments licensed in all syllable positions: onset3, onset cluster and coda (mateus & andrade, 2000). it is known that even though the segments are already available in the child's system, they do not appear in all positions of the syllable structure simultaneously (fikkert 1994; miranda 1996; freitas 1997; lamprecht et al. 2004; almeida 2011, amorim 2015; ramalho 2017, among others). in brazilian portuguese (bp), the sequence for the acquisition of liquids in onset cluster (ccliqv) and in coda (cvcliq) is cvcl final > cvcl medial > cvcɾ final > cvcɾ medial > ccɾ/lv medial / final (lamprecht et al. 2004). according to ribas (2004), the liquids in onset cluster are dominated only after 5 years old and there is not a temporal sequence in mastering different onset clusters (ccɾv and cclv), unlike coda. the position in the word also is not considered determinant in the acquisition of this constituent. the existing data for ep are scarcer. the main study on ep syllable structure acquisition (freitas 1997) shows that liquids are not used immediately in all syllable constituents, although they are already present in children’s system. therefore, although children used liquids in onset position, lateral coda acquisition occurs at a later stage, following the acquisition of onset cluster (freitas 1997). the relationship between segment and syllabic constituent is also confirmed by nogueira (2007). on her research about phonological development of very low birth weight infants between the ages of 3;6 and 4;6, a group of 15 very low birth weight children was compared to the control group, consisting of 15 children with the same ages. the results show that liquids stabilize first in onset, then in coda, and finally in onset cluster. in coda position, nogueira (2007) points out that /ɾ/ has a more stable behavior than /l/, a fact already mentioned by freitas (1997), who hypothesizes that the stabilization of /ɾ/ is faster than that of /l/ because it is more prominent in the system. in a cross-sectional longitudinal study on the acquisition of rhyme in ep, correia (2004) analyzes the productions of 6 children aged 2;10 and 4;7, attesting the following sequence: cvcɾ final (stressed > unstressed) > cvcl final (stressed) > cvcl medial (stressed and unstressed) > cvcɾ medial (stressed > unstressed). regarding the acquisition of the onset cluster in ep, santos (2013) reports that at the beginning of the first year of basic education, the syllable ccɾv is produced incorrectly more frequently than the syllable cclv. lousada et al. (2012) indicate that the stabilization of the liquid in the most complex syllabic constituents follows different pathways: coda > onset cluster, in the case of the rhotic; onset cluster > coda, in the case of the lateral, as suggested by nogueira (2007) and santos (2013). the aim of this paper is to provide additional empirical evidence for the dependence relationship between segmental and syllabic acquisition (among 3 there is a theoretical discussion about the existence of one or two rhotic phonemes in portuguese (câmara jr. 1953/1970; harris 1983; mateus & andrade 2000; amorim & veloso 2018). at the phonetic level, there are two rhotics ([ɾ] and [ʀ]) in complementary distribution at word borders: only [ʀ] can occur at word initial position and only [ɾ] can occur at word-final position. nevertheless, only [ɾ] can occur in all syllabic constituents (except in word initial position), therefore we are not analyzing rhotic productions at word initial position. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 162-175, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 164 others, miranda 1996; freitas 1997; lamprecht et al. 2004; nogueira 2007; almeida 2011). for that purpose, data of 80 ep northern dialects native speakers aged between 3;0 and 4;11 years old will be analyzed, namely all productions of liquid consonants in onset, onset cluster and coda. in addition to the syllabic constitution, word position of the syllable (initial/ medial) and stress will also be analyzed. 2. methodology 1.1. participants the speech data analyzed in this paper were collected from a sample of 80 normally developed children aged between 3;0 and 4;11. all the children live in north of portugal and acquire portuguese as their first language. the sample was divided into four age groups, each with twenty children (3;0-3;5, 3;6-3;11, 4;0-4;5 and 4;6-4;11 months). 1.2. data collection and processing the speech samples were collected in an original spontaneous picture naming task, built on the basis of the criteria used in yavas, hernandorena & lamprecht (1992). in a single session, each child was invited to tell a story from a book with a sequence of five colored thematic drawings forming a narrative. the target words were, therefore, mainly elicited in connected speech. the selection of target words had into account children’s age as well as linguistic factors: the list includes at least three words of each liquid consonant (/l/ and /ɾ/) in all syllable constituents and word positions. the only exception is cclv at word medial position. the distribution of the target segments in stressed and unstressed syllables is uneven because of the difficulty to find words that are present in the vocabulary of young children. the word list is presented in table 1. table 1 the list of target words /l/ /ɾ/ stressed unstressed stressed unstressed initial cv lágrima, lápis, livro, lobo lagarto, lavar ___ ___ medial cv bolacha, relógio, zoológico bola, cabelo, camisola, castelo, cavalo, estrela, janelas, vela chorar, girafa, nariz, orelha, árvore, bandeira, banheira, cadeira, claro, pinheiro initial ccv placa, bloco, blusa, claro, globo, flor plasticina, braço, branco, brinco, creme, fralda, frita, grande, grua, dragão, gravata, presente, trator, triciclo liquid production in typically developing children amorim 165 praia, prato, preto, três medial ccv bicicleta, triciclo abrir, soprar, estrela zebra, escrever, pedra, quadro, vidro, lágrima, tigre, quatro, livro medial cvc balde, calças, fralda golfinho árvore, barco, gordo, guarda-chuva, lagarto, verde dormir, vermelho final cvc azul, pincel, sol ___ abrir, colher, coser, chorar, dormir, escrever, flor, lavar, mar, nadar, pintar, rasgar, soprar, tomar, trator ___ the speech data were recorded in a sony minidisc mz-nh900 digital recorder with a lifetech unidirectional microphone (model lf 65) and later saved in a laptop asus n43sl and phonetically transcribed by the author. all doubtful transcriptions were reviewed by an experienced phonetician–transcriber. whenever the transcriptions were not coincident, the productions were not analyzed. the productions considered motivated by assimilation or that suffered vowel epenthesis were also not analyzed, as these reconstruction strategies are not motivated by the internal structure of the segments, but the result of the effect of the sequence, either syllable structure or influence of adjacent sounds. 1.3. data analysis a total of 6068 tokens were analyzed, with the following distribution in the syllable. bold is used to signal the liquid consonant. table 2 number of tokens by segment and syllable constituent cv ccv cvc /l/ 1508 455 615 /ɾ/ 837 2653 1735 in order to obtain the frequency counts and factor weightings concerning the significance of linguistic factors (syllable constituent, stress, number of syllables), the data were analyzed using goldvarb x (sankoff, tagliamonte & smith 2005). this is a logistic regression factor-analysis software that performs a step-wise regression analysis presenting an ordered selection of the factors. a value greater than 0.5 means that factor favors use of a particular variant (in this case, substitution or omission of the target journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 162-175, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 166 segment); on the contrary, a value less than 0.5 means that use of the variant is disfavored. the criteria adopted for determining if a segment is acquired is the same used in recent research on ep phonological acquisition (costa 2010; almeida 2011; amorim 2015): target-like productions ≥ 80%: segment is acquired; target-like productions between 50% and 79%: segment is being acquired; target-like productions ≤ 50%: segment is not yet acquired. 3. findings 3.1. onset although there is a small decrease in medial /l/ in 3;6-3;11 group age, the target-like productions of /l/ in onset position surpasses the level of 80% at 3;0-3;5 years, which means that segment is already acquired at that age. the rhotic is acquired later, at 3;6-3;11. figure 1. liquids in onset target-like productions per age when children do not produce the target segment, they use different strategies: they tend to substitute [l] by another sound, although deletion of the segment is also present at younger ages: 3;0-3;5 (8.3%) and 3;6-3;11 (9.4%); whilst they prefer not to produce any sound to target /ɾ/. this is, in effect, the main strategy in almost age groups, although it decreases as children are older (36.9% of deletion at 3;0-3;5; 12.0% and 6.7% at 3;6-3;11 and 4;0-4;5 age groups). post-tonic syllable favors substitution of /l/ in onset position. the preferred production to substitute [l] is the glide [w], which is used in 69% of the nontarget-like productions and by 25% of the children. when target /ɾ/ is substituted, the preferred sound produced is the homorganic sonorant [l]. 87.7% 85.5% 58.5% 82.2% 75.2% 81.5% 91.5% 91.7% 91.4% 98.4% 97.2% 95.7% 0,0% 20,0% 40,0% 60,0% 80,0% 100,0% initial /l/ medial /l/ medial /ɾ/ 4;6-4;11 4;0-4;5 3;6-3;11 3;0-3;5 liquid production in typically developing children amorim 167 some examples of non-target-like productions for both liquids are provided in (1). (1) /l/>> ø lágrimas (tears) /ˈlagɾimɐʃ/ → [ˈaɣɨmɐʃ] (m.ª francisca 3;9.0) bola (ball) /ˈbɔlɐ/ → [ˈbɔɐ] (leonor 4;2.17) /l/ >>[w] estrela (star) /iʃ'tɾelɐ/ → [iʃ'tɾewɐʃ] (rafaela 3;11.4) janelas (windows) /ʒɐˈnɛlɐʃ/ → [ʒɐˈnɛwɐʃ] (bernardo 4;8.11) /ɾ/>> ø nariz (nose) /nɐ'ɾiʃ/ → [nɐ'iʃ] (leonor 3;3.9) bandeira (flag) /bɐ̃ˈðɐjɾɐ/ → [bɐˈðejɐ] (marco 4;4.3) /ɾ/ >>[l] chorar (to cry) /ʃuˈɾaɾ/ → [ʃuˈlaɾ] (rodigo 3;9.24) cadeira (chair) /kɐˈðɐjɾɐ/ → [kɐˈðejlɐ] (afonso 3;10.7) 3.2. onset cluster the acquisition of /l/ in onset cluster is completed only after 4 years old, as target-like productions surpass 80% only in 4;0-4;5 age group, both in initial and medial position. the consonant /ɾ/ is acquired later, surpassing 80% at 46;1-4;11 at initial position, as shown in the next figure. figure 2. target-like onset cluster productions per age when children do not produce the target segment, they use different strategies for each consonant: they tend to substitute the lateral and to delete the rhotic, as shown in figure 3. 60.4% 71.6% 87.8% 96.0% 45.8% 60.0% 80.0% 88.7% 18.4% 36.0% 62.4% 82.8% 14.9% 35.0% 61.5% 78.6% 0,0% 20,0% 40,0% 60,0% 80,0% 100,0% 3;0-3;5 3;6-3;11 4;0-4;5 4;6-4;11 initial clv medial clv initial cɾv medial cɾv journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 162-175, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 168 figure 3. substitution and deletion of liquids in onset cluster the results found in the production of ccɾv confirm what has been reported in phonological development research: children tend to simplify the syllable structure (among others, fikkert 1994; miranda 1996; freitas 1997; bernhardt & stemberger 1998; morales-front 2007). therefore, what is particularly difficult to children is the syllable format and not the segment (which is acquired at 3;6-3;11). there is no linguistic factor, such as adjacent sounds, stress or word extension, favoring the substitution of the lateral consonant in onset cluster. that means that the only relevant factor that favors the substitution of this consonant in onset cluster is age: younger children are expected to use this strategy more than older ones. deletion, though, is favored in unstressed syllables. the analysis of the substitutions reveals the same pattern found for /l/ in onset: the glide [w] is the preferred production. the predominant substitution type affecting /ɾ/ is rhotic → glide [j]. some examples in (2) illustrate the non-target-like productions for liquids in onset clusters. (2) /l/ >> ø plasticina (plasticine) /plɐʃti'sinɐ/ → [pɐʃti'sinɐ] miguel (3;1.6) bloco (notepad) /'blɔku/ → ['bɔku] afonso (3;0.23) /l/ >>[w] bicicleta (bicycle) /bisi'klɛtɐ/ → [bisi'kwɛtɐ] teresa (3;9.28) triciclo (tricycle) /tɾi'siklu/ → [ti'sikwu] m.ª vitória (3;4:3) /ɾ/ >>ø abrir (to open) /ɐ'bɾiɾ/ → [ɐ'biɾ] joão f. (3;8.4) brinco (earring) /'bɾĩku/ → ['bĩku] lourenço (3;8.16) /ɾ/ >>[j] zebra (zebra) /ˈzebɾɐ/ → [ˈzebjɐ] ana rita (3;1.25) livro (book) /ˈlivɾu/ → [ˈlivju] m.ª francisca (3;9.0) 31.5% 5.6% 1.3% 81.7% 25.8% 3.0% 1.4% 62.9% 8.4% 1.9% 38.0% 1.8% 0.9% 19.0% 0,0% 20,0% 40,0% 60,0% 80,0% 100,0% substitution deletion substitution deletion /l/ /r/ 3;0-3;5 3;6-3;11 4;0-4;5 4;6-4;11 liquid production in typically developing children amorim 169 3.3. coda in coda position, we found different results for both consonants, depending on the position of coda in the word. in fact, /l/ in word-final coda is acquired at 3;0-3;5 years, although a regression was found in the following age group, which does not accomplish 80% of target-like productions. on the contrary, within-word coda is not acquired until 4;11 years old, which reveals a greater difficulty on the stabilization of /l/ in this position. a similar behavior was found for /ɾ/ in coda: it is acquired first in word-final position, at 4;0-4;5 and only later within the word, at 4;6-4;11. figure 4. target-like coda productions per age these results show a bigger difficulty in the production of both liquids when they are in within-word coda position. while in onset cluster, lateral is the first liquid stabilizing; in coda position the first liquid being mastered is the rhotic. coda acquisition of the rhotic is affected by tonicity: in within-word stressed syllable, it is acquired at 4;6-4;11, whilst in unstressed syllable the acquisition is stabilized later (after 5 years old). nevertheless, it should be emphasized that there were only two targets words with unstressed cvr, both in medial position, which means that coda acquisition of the rhotic may also be affected by word position, and not only tonicity. figure 5. target-like coda productions in stressed and unstressed syllables 68.6% 89.1% 30.0% 49.0% 36.7% 76.0% 38.0% 71.0% 74.4% 90.0% 70.0% 81.0% 79.1% 90.5% 83.0% 88.0% 0,0% 20,0% 40,0% 60,0% 80,0% 100,0% medial cvl final cvl medial cvɾ final cvɾ 4;6-4;11 4;0-4;5 3;6-3;11 3;0-3;5 35% 43% 74% 91% 26% 31% 65% 73% 0% 50% 100% 3;0-3;5 3;6-3;11 4;0-4;5 4;6-4;11 stressed cvɾ unstressed cvɾ journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 162-175, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 170 these results reiterate the importance of tonicity in phonological acquisition, as stated in other works (freitas 1997; correia 2004; lamprecht et al. 2004; vigário, frota & martins 2007; jordão 2009; among others). nevertheless, the reduced number of target words with unstressed cvcɾ (only two and in medial position) has to be taken into account. coda position is relevant for the selection of reconstruction strategies used in non-target-like productions: word-final /l/ is preferably deleted, whilst it is mainly substituted by another sound when it occurs in within-word coda. figure 6. strategies adopted in /l/ non-target-like productions on the contrary, deletion is the main strategy used for final-syllable /ɾ/, either in word-final or medial position, as described for onset and onset cluster position. figure 7 shows the reconstruction strategies used for both liquids in coda position. figure 7. substitution and deletion of liquids in coda position as previously reported for other syllable constituents, the glide [w] is the main substitute for [l], no matter whether it occurs in a stressed or an unstressed syllable. on the contrary, substitution by another sound is barely used for 0,0% 20,0% 40,0% 60,0% 80,0% 100,0% medial cvl final cvl 66.1% 30.0% 33.9% 70.0% substitution deletion 31.5% 5.6% 1.3% 81.7% 25.… 3.0% 1.4% 62.9% 8.4% 1,9% 38.0% 1.8% 0.9% 19.0% 0,0% 20,0% 40,0% 60,0% 80,0% 100,0% substitution deletion substitution deletion /l/ /r/ 3;0-3;5 3;6-3;11 4;0-4;5 4;6-4;11 liquid production in typically developing children amorim 171 final-syllable /ɾ/. nevertheless, a different substitution pattern was found for the rhotic, depending on coda position: in within-word position, only a glide (mainly [j]) is used; in word-final position other substitute sounds ([l] and [d]) can be found, although palatal glide is also the most used sound. some examples of non-target-like productions for both liquids are provided in (3). (3) /l/ >> ø golfinho (dauphin) /goɫ'fiɲu/ → [go'fiɲu] rafaela (3;11.4) azul (blue) /ɐ'zuɫ/ → [ɐ'ʒu] lourenço (3;8.16) /l/ >>[w] calças (trousers) /'kaɫsɐʃ/ → ['kawsɐʃ] hugo (3;8.25) fralda (diaper) / 'fɾaɫdɐ/ → ['fɾawdɐ] joão f. (3;8.4) /ɾ/ >>ø árvore (tree) /'aɾvuɾɨ/ → ['avɨɾɨ] tirso (4;1.10) gordo (fat) /'goɾdu/ → ['godu] mariana m. (3,8:20) /ɾ/ >>[j] trator (tractor) /'tɾatoɾ/ → [ta'toj] m.ª francisca (3;5.2) barco (boat) /'baɾku/ → ['bajku] leonor (3;4.22) 4. discussion and conclusions the data analyzed in the previous section show that children master both liquids earlier in onset and later in other syllable positions. in fact, although the distinctive feature [+approximant] and its co-occurrence with [±continuous, coronal] are already acquired at 4 years old (the lateral is acquired before the rhotic), allowing the contrast between /l/ and /ɾ/, both liquid consonants are not mastered in all syllable positions until much later. when alveolar lateral in onset is not produced target-like, it has a different substitution pattern from the one described for bp. in the data analyzed, the lateral is mainly substituted by the glide [w], although occurrences of [g] are also found, while brazilian children prefer the glide [j] or coronal consonants [n] and [ɾ] (mezzomo & ribas, 2004). (4) substitution pattern for [l] in ep and bp glidization pe: [l] >> [w] cabelo (hair) /kɐˈbelu / → [kɐˈbewu] (hugo 3;8.25) pb: [l] >> [j] → [kɐˈbeju] (mezzomo & ribas, 2004) substitution pe: [l] >> [g] lápis (pencil) /ˈlapiʃ/ → [ˈgapiʃ] (francisca 4;0.25) pb: [l] >> [n, ɾ] → [ˈnapiʃ] (mezzomo & ribas, 2004) calo (callus) /ˈkalu/ → [ˈkaɾu] (mezzomo & ribas, 2004) the difference found between the two substitution patterns may be explained by the different articulation of the lateral in the two language varieties. articulatory and acoustic research has shown that, differently from bp, in journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 162-175, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 172 contemporary ep, /l/ is velarized in all syllable positions (although in varying degrees) and not only in coda (among others, andrade 1998, 1999; martins et al. 2010; oliveira et al. 2011; monteiro, 2012). therefore, maintenance of the secondary point of articulation ([dorsal]) of lateral /l/ in contemporary ep may account for the preferred use of a dorsal segment by portuguese children for target /l/. although both liquid consonants are already in children’s phonological systems at 4 years old, only later they emerge in other syllable positions. lateral coda in word-final position stabilizes earlier (at 3;0-3;5 years old); when it occurs in within-word position it presents more difficulties to children. in this position, it stabilizes only after 4;11 years old. this result confirms the greater instability of lateral coda when compared to rhotic coda (freitas 1997; nogueira 2007), which freitas (1997) assigns to the greater prominence of rhotic coda in the system. acquisition of the lateral consonant in onset cluster stabilizes at 4;0-4;5 years old in both word positions. the results show that the lateral stabilizes first in onset cluster and only later in coda position, which corroborates lousada et al. (2012). in non-target-like productions, lateral in cclv is mainly substituted by another sound (mainly [w]), although deletion is favored in unstressed syllables. the acquisition path of the lateral in all syllable positions in provided in (5). (5) acquisition path of /l/ in all syllable constituents clv >> final cvcl >> initial cclv >> medial cclv >> medial cvcl 3;0-3;5 4;0-4;5 after 5;0 contrary to lateral coda, rhotic coda acquisition stabilizes first in final-word position and only later within word, which is also described in other phonological acquisition research either on ep (freitas 1997; correia 2004) either bp (among others, miranda 1996; mezzomo 2004). the earlier acquisition of final coda may be explained by tonicity (miranda 1996), as the majority of cvcɾ syllables are stressed in portuguese4, and, on the other hand, by the relationship between phonological and morphosyntactic factors, as proposed by freitas (1997): [...] the confluence of distinct grammatical (phonological, and morpho-syntactic) factors define the coda at the end of the word, whether associated with fricative or liquid, as a structural point in focus in the acquisition, making its early stabilization in relation to the coda in an inner syllable of a word, of an exclusively lexical nature (p. 253).5 we should note, though, that morphological coda does not present, in this research, higher accuracy rates. in onset cluster, rhotic acquisition stabilizes first in word-initial position and later in within-word position. therefore, path acquisition for the rhotic is 4 in this research, there was no target word with final-word /ɾ/ in unstressed syllable. 5 own translation. liquid production in typically developing children amorim 173 different from the lateral, as it stabilizes first in coda position and only later in onset cluster. similar results are found by lousada et al. (2012). the main strategy in non-target-like productions for /ɾ/ in onset cluster is deletion. production of another sound may be found, although barely used. the most used sound is glide [j], both in withinand final-word position. the acquisition path of /ɾ/ in all syllable positions in provided in (6). (6) acquisition path of /ɾ/ in all syllable constituents cɾv >> final cvcɾ >> medial cvcɾ + initial ccɾv >> final ccɾv 3;6-3;11 4;0-4;5 4;6-4;11 after 5;0 in this paper, we have provided additional empirical evidence for the dependence relationship between segmental and syllabic acquisition (among others, fikkert 1994; miranda 1996; freitas 1997; lamprecht et al. 2004; nogueira 2007; almeida 2011). this was demonstrated by the fact that although /l/ and /ɾ/ are used contrastively before 4 years old, only later they are mastered in either onset cluster and coda. besides the syllable constituent, also the syllable position in the word has been found important in the stabilization of liquid consonants. tonicity has been found relevant in the acquisition of within-word rhotic coda. the results have shown that liquid consonants acquisition has different paths: the lateral stabilizes first in onset cluster (cclv >> cvcl), whilst the rhotic stabilizes first in coda (cvcɾ >> ccɾv). the same path is attested by lousada et al. 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(eds.), aquisição fonológica do português: perfil de desenvolvimento e subsídios para a terapia, 151-164. porto alegre: artmed. sankoff, d., tagliamonte, s., & smith, e. (2005). goldvarb x: a variable rule application for macintosh and windows. department of linguistics. university of toronto. santos, r. (2013). aquisição de grupos consonânticos e seu impacto nos desempenhos escritos no 1º ciclo do ensino básico. lisbon portugal: university of lisbon dissertation. url: https://repositorio.ul.pt/handle/10451/12194 vigário, m., frota, s., & martins, f. (2007). frequência de unidades e padrões fonológicos no português europeu e no português do brasil uma prospectiva. invited talk given at the workshop domínios: prosódia e sintaxe, april 16-17, state university of campinas. yavas, m., hernandorena, c. l., & lamprecht, r. r. (1991). avaliação fonológica da criança. porto alegre: artmed. http://rdpc.uevora.pt/handle/10174/23564 https://repositorio.ul.pt/handle/10451/12194 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 3 557-571, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 557 the acquisition of noun inflection by oromo speaking children alemayehu tafese gebre1 addis ababa university abstract the primary objective of this study was to describe how typically developing oromo-speaking children acquire noun inflection. specifically, it seeks to examine how nominal inflections for number and case are acquired. the oromo language has been extensively described linguistically, but there is no study on how children learn the language in general or how they acquire noun inflection in particular. a descriptive, cross-sectional research design was employed for the study. a total of thirty oromo-speaking children between the ages of 3;0 and 7;11 participated in the study. the study predominantly used the picture naming and description method to elicit children’s production. the voice samples were first written down orthographically (in oromo script) and then phonetically (using ipa symbols). the findings revealed that various morphological processes were present in children's productions. these are incorrect naming of the pictures. in this process, the children employed a substitution, overgeneralization, or overextension strategy in naming the pictures. the majority of the children omitted noun inflectional morphemes, even at the age 6 through 7. furthermore, the omission of some inflectional morphemes on the locative case marker was observed. but, the lexical morphemes are retained for this item. the study found no significant difference between sexes when comparing children's performance at the same age. to conclude, in the process of the acquisition of noun inflection by oromo speaking children, the error patterns identified were errors of overextension, errors omission and errors of substitution. in general, the study findings are merely an attempt to describe and document the acquisition of noun inflection by the children in issue. keywords: oromo, language acquisition, child language, inflectional morphology, noun inflection 1. introduction language acquisition refers to the process by which children learn to speak and understand their native language (timothy, 2003). it is a subconscious process that implies language acquirers are not usually aware of the fact that they are acquiring language, but they are using the language forcommunication (soltanieh, 2014). 1 bio: mr. alemayehu tafese is a phd candidate in the department of linguistics addis ababa university and instructor at wollega university, ethiopia. his research interests include language acquisition, language development and language learning. contact: aletafege@gmail.com received : 08.03.2022 accepted : 12.11.2022 published : 22.12.2022 mailto:aletafege@gmail.com the acquisition of noun inflections in oromo tafese 558 language acquisition has long been an important topic of study (johnson, et al., 2005). it is investigated in psycholinguistics as well as in other related scientific disciplines such as developmental psychology (tatsumi, 2017). it has been studied primarily by linguists, developmental psychologists, and psycholinguists, suggesting that it is a multidisciplinary field (hoff, 2009). in addition, (sibanda, 2006; friedline, 2004) also note that language acquisition is an area which attracts attention from disciplines, such as education and communication disorders, which results in different approaches to this subject matter. scholarssuch as (al ghazali, 2006; guasti, 2002; and sinha, 2009) noted that language acquisition is one of the most impressive, fascinating, amazing feat and remarkable achievements of early childhood. for over a century, people have been studying child language acquisition for various reasons, in various ways and at varying length. but it is a topic without a discipline (ingram, 1989), which may suggest that child language acquisition has not received as much attention as it should be. the fact that children acquire language without adults formally teaching them has been a mysterious matter for many educators.hence, this special endowment of nature poses a lot of questions that researchers have to address. in line with this idea, lust (2006:3), for example, posed several questions, such as the following: what is it about the human mind that makes it possible to acquire language? which aspects of the language program are biologically programmed? what specifically linguistic knowledge is evident at early periods? what underlies apparent differences between language acquisition in children and adults? how do children ‘project’ from the finite data to which they are exposed out to the knowledge of the grammar? are there universal specific stages in the acquisition of sounds and structures of language? what determines the change in children’s linguistic knowledge as they develop? these questions have been investigated by different researchers on children from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds. these topics are investigated in psycholinguistics as well as in other related scientific disciplines such as developmental psychology (tatsumi, 2017). one of the most investigated topics in this area is the acquisition of inflectional morphology, i.e., focusing on how children learn various inflectional categories and individual inflected words (tatsumi, 2017). in this regard, penke (2012, p.2) notes, “the acquisition of inflectional morphology has been a central topic in language acquisition research since the seminal works of berko (1958), cazden (1968), and brown (1973) on the acquisition of english”. penke (2012), in support of this, stated that a lot of researches have been studying the acquisition of inflectional morphology in languages all over the world in the last 30 years. however, as most of these studies have been conducted on european languages, little is known about children acquiring non-european languages (lust, 2006). as deen (2005:4) points out, “every study of the acquisition of language contributes to the discussion of the nature of human language in some way or another”. therefore, the present research aims to contribute to the effort of filling the huge gap that exists in language acquisition studies in ethiopia journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 3 557-571, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 559 by investigating the acquisition of noun inflection in children learning the oromo language as their first language. scholars have looked into language acquisition from various perspectives. demirezen (1988) discusses the major theories about how language is acquired and taught. these theories of language acquisition include behaviorism theory, innateness theory, cognitive theory, and social interactionism theory. behaviorism was dominant in the 1950s and 1960s, most closely associated with skinner, originally known with pavlov’s wellknown classical conditioning experiments with dogs (tavakoli, 2012). skinner argued that children are conditioned by their environment to respond to certain stimuli with language. according to skinner, language is also shaped through operant conditioning or reinforcement. for example, when we respond to a baby’s babbling with a smile or some vocalization of our own, babies babble even more. the theory disregards the existence of any internal processes that might be responsible for these changes and the child is viewed only as a passive object receiving input (zahradníková, 2011). the nativist theory /approach/ is originated as a direct antipode to behaviorism in the late 50s of the 20th century and dominated the field until the last decade (mashhadi, 2012). it is associated with noam chomsky who developed the theory that all humans are born with an innate capacity and a knowledge system specifically designed for language and language acquisition (tavakoli, 2012; cruz, 2015). according to this theory, children rely on certain innate structures and mechanisms to acquire language (clark, 2009). the theory proposes that speakers have a universal grammar (ug) of their language (cruz, 2015), which is an innate linguistic knowledge that constrains the shape of the particular language system being acquired. on the other hand, there is another theory known as cognitive theory.the advocate of this theory is jean piaget who is famous for his four stages of cognitive development for children, which included the development of language.according to piaget language is both a social and a cognitive phenomenon which implies that language acquisition is thus dependent upon cognitive development. for piaget the child’s level of language was determined by whether it had acquired certain fundamental concepts and by the complexity of the processing operations of which it was capable (tavakoli, 2012). studies (e.g., van patten and benati, 2010) shown that cognitive theory is one in which psychologists attempt to understand how humans create and use knowledge. for cognitivists, there are no special places in the mind for language, math, or any other knowledge system. cognitive researchers are thus interested in learning processes, and a good deal of cognitive research centers on learning styles, understanding (i.e., how people make sense of something), aptitude, information processing, and other areas. cognitivists claimed in opposition to behaviorists that learning does not come from outside or environment; it comes from mental activities. they propose knowing rather than responding is important, which implies the child is passive in the language acquisition process. this view ignores the interaction of the child and environment, which are crucial in the process of language acquisition. still there is another theory termed as social-interactionist theory. the theory is an explanation of language the acquisition of noun inflections in oromo tafese 560 development emphasizing the role of social interaction between the developing child and adults. it is based on vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development, and made prominent in the western world by bruner, who is the other influential researcher who elaborated and revised the details of the theory over a number of years and also introduced the term ‘language acquisition support system’(lass), (buckley, 2003). the theory proposes that the child’s biological readiness to learn language interacts with the child’s experiences with language in the environment to bring about the child’s language development. sibanda (2014, p.73) also explicates, “despite the child being biologically designed to acquire language, constraints determine the linguistic aspects that develop at any given period that are at play in child language acquisition come from the mental capacity, physical maturity and input from the environment”. in general, the major theories on child language acquisition which are relevant to the current research have been reviewed. depending on its concern, the theory deemed suitable for this study is the social-interactionist theory, because social interactionist theory reaches a compromise between nature and nurture by suggesting that children acquire first language by established cognitive structures. 1.1. statement of the problem there is a consensus among scholars that there are a range of differences in terms of approach and focus among the studies already conducted on child language acquisition. despite this fact, language acquisition research is important because both second language research and second language teaching have been influenced by changes in our understanding of how children acquire their first language. to show the importance of this issue, in ethiopia, only a few studies are available in the field of language acquisition. these are a study on amharic-speaking children by abebayehu (2013); a phd dissertation on the acquisition of oromo phonology by tariku (2019) and an ma thesis on sidamu afoo by demeke (2015). apart from these attempts, to the best of the author’s knowledge, no other work on the acquisition of ethiopian languages, including oromo, could be found. this calls for studies on acquisition of various aspects of ethiopian languages. along the same line, this study therefore aimed to describe patterns of the acquisition of noun inflection by children learning oromo. the study will in effect fill the knowledge gap that exists on the topic, particularly in ethiopia context. the main objective of this research is therefore to identify noun inflection by typically developing oromo-speaking children. the study is devoted to the following research questions: 1. what strategies do the children use to learn morphemes that are difficult to them master at their age? 2. what are the percentages of correct morphemes produced by the children at different ages? 3. what language patterns in the acquisition of noun inflection by these children at different age and sex? journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 3 557-571, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 561 2. methodology 2.1. research design this study used a descriptive cross-sectional research design to document and describe the status of the acquisition of noun inflection of the thirty oromo-speaking children, aged between 3; 0 and 7; 11. by taking a crosssectional design, the study aimed at comparing findings across the group at a single point in time and examining how much the children differ in acquiring various morphemes. the data used in this study have been collected in two phases (phase i and ii)2. 2.2. setting and participants the children were all from east wollega zone, guto gida woreda (nekemte and its surrounding). these children were attending gadisa mati and ask kindergartens and were reached their homes. all of them live with both parents. this study used a purposive sampling method to select the participants. this technique was used with the assumption that it would allow the researcher to obtain the necessary data for this study. accordingly, the speech samples were obtained from an equal number of male and females subjects; 30 children (15 males and 15 females) aged between 3; 0 and 7; 11 years. 2.3. methods of data collection and analysis the study relied chiefly on elicitation, which was accomplished through the use of picture naming tasks and various elicitation questions. in this method, the child is shown a picture and asked to name and describe it, which is useful for eliciting individual words to determine a child's grammatical knowledge (ingram, 1989). this implies that the researcher has to devise a suitable method to collect the required data. following this some tasks have been designed to elicit children’s productive language performance. these include structured interviews with an intended purpose (for example, ma:l arga: ʤirta?/ ‘what do you see in the picture?’). picture naming tasks using familiar objects (such as mule and mules, student and students, etc.) were used for elicitation to see if the required inflections (such as singular and plural) were used. data was collected using audio and video recordings. after recording the utterances, the researcher transcribed them orthographically (using oromo script) and then using the international phonetic alphabet (ipa). following data collection and transcription, the descriptive method was used to analyze the collected data. based on this, the study compared the responses of children of different ages and both genders at the same age under investigation. since morphemes are the focus of this study, the data was analyzed by dissipating their utterances into separate morphemes. the 2 the second phase data collection was done based on examiners comment, the number of participants should be incresed, before the oral defense. the acquisition of noun inflections in oromo tafese 562 language technology software packages audacity and elan were used to filter data for this purpose. 3. findings and discussion in this research, an attempt was made to identify the acquisition of noun inflection in typically developing children. to do this, nominal inflection for number and case were the target of this research. the data were collected in two phases. the results obtained from these data were explained using tables (1&2) below. 3.1. inflection of nominals for number (pluralization) the acquisition of plural nouns was first investigated using data collected from the children. as a result, certain well-known pictures have been utilized, including /nama/ ‘man’, /barata:/ ‘student’, / ga:ŋge:/ ‘mule’, /sare:/ ‘dog’, /sa’a/ ‘cow’, /ʤabbi:/ ‘calf’, and /harre:/ ‘donkey’ and their plural counterparts. the results of the children's productions in this case are s summarized in table 1. table 1 results of the children’s productions in picture naming and pluralization tasks s/no. number target correctly produced % incorrectly produced % item asked gloss result of phase i data 1. sg / ga:ŋge:/ ’mule’ 0 0 20 100 2. pl /ga:ngoli:/ota/ ’mules’ 0 0 20 100 3. sg /nama/ ’man 16/203 80 4/20 20 4. pl /namo:ta/ ‘men’ 4/20 20 16/20 80 result of phase ii data 7. sg /sa’a/ cow 3 30 7 70 8. pl /sa:wwan/ cows 6 60 4 40 9. sg /ʤabbi:/ calf 7 70 3 30 10. pl /ʤabbi:le:/o:ta/ calves 2 20 8 80 11 sg /sare: / dog 10 100 0 0 12 pl /saro:ta / dogs 6 60 4 40 13 sg /harre: / donkey 10 100 0 0 14. pl /harro:ta / donkeys 5 50 5 50 15 sg /barata:/ student 10 100 0 0 16 pl /baratto:ta / students 8 80 2 20 the results obtained from phase i data revealed that, all of the children (20) responded incorrectly /farda/ ‘horse’ instead of /ga:ŋge:/, ‘mule’). when 3 the details are indicated in appendix 2. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 3 557-571, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 563 naming the picture, the children used an overs implication or overextension method. this, according to (ambridge, et al., 2013), is one of the earliest errors that occur when a child extends a particular word to other referents (e.g., doggie to all animals) that share some visual or conceptual similarity. in other option, had it been the substitution of ‘horse’ instead of ‘mules’ acceptable, the plural form. 3.2. acquisition of locative case the oromo preposition /gara/, along with the suffixes /-tti/ and /irra/, designate the locative case. based on this, the results of the children's productions in the two phases are summarized in the following table. table 2 summary of children’s acquisition of locative case (phase i and ii data) s / n o target correctly produced % incorrectly produced % item asked gloss result of phase i data 1 gara mana:tti towards home 6 30 14 70 result of phase ii data 2 waraqatarra on the paper 8 80 2 20 the result of the first phase data revealed that, out of the total of 20 children, only 6 (30%) of them supplied the correct morpheme (-tti), while 14 (70%) of them did not supply this morpheme. though further investigation is needed, the morpheme is late-acquired in increasing in age after 7;0. in contrast, different realizations are observed in the second phase data. that is, of the total of 10, majority of them (8, 80%) supplied the morpheme /rra/4 correctly, while only 2 (20%) did not supply the morpheme correctly. this indicates that the morpheme /-rra/, is easier and could be acquired around 3; 0 years of the age. 4. conclusions and recommendation based on the findings of this study, the following conclusions have been drawn. the findings of phase i demonstrated that the acquisition of plural formation revealed that very few children correctly supplied the required morphemes. here, the children employed one of the morphological processes known as omission strategy. in addition, the result of this study revealed that most of the children employed an overextension strategy (an error where, in early acquisition a child denotes different things with a single label not used by adults). on the other hand, from the data gathered in phase ii, the majority of the children correctly supplied the targeted plural morphemes. furthermore, in the acquisition of locative case, in phase i data collections, majority of the children did not correctly supply the required locative marker. in this process the children employed another omission 4 /-i-/ was deleted from /irra/ by vowel deletion rule of oromo in word boundary. the acquisition of noun inflections in oromo tafese 564 strategy. to the contrary, the result of phase ii data revealed that, all children (except one) have correctly supplied the required morphemes. generally, the findings o f this study revealed that there are individual differences between the children and among different types of inflections. the error patterns identified in this study were errors of overextension, errors of omission and errors of substitution. in light of the current study's findings, future research should attempt to address the following issues: the research discovered a gap in the children's understanding of inflectional morphemes. the current study, as a pioneering study in oromo, was unable to cover all of the important linguistic aspects of the language. this is to say that the study may be incomplete because it was conducted with a small number of data collected over a short period of time, only a few aspects of language were discussed, and only a small number of children were used. this means that, while the findings shed light on some aspects of morphological acquisition in oromo, the researcher is hesitant to use the findings to formulate acquisition rules for the language. furthermore, comparative research on oromo children's languages is important because it has the potential to fill empirical and theoretical gaps. while this study focused on noun inflection acquisition, more research is needed to investigate the development of other linguistic aspects such as derivational morphology, morphosyntax, morphophonology, syntax, and so on. besides that, extensive natural and experimental data collection and analysis is recommended in to add knowledge in the area. moreover, it is suggested that a large sample of children be used in this type of study to allow for greater representation and accuracy of results. it is also suggested that future researchers consider broadening the upper and lower age limits as some morphemes were found to be acquired before the age of 3;3 and others were not acquired until the age of 7;5. it would also be advantageous to increase the size of the speech sample of words to be investigated. references abebayehu, m. (2013). speech production in amharic-speaking children with repaired cleft palate (phd dissertation). sheffield, uk: university of sheffield. al ghazali, f. (2006). first language acquisition vs second language learning:what is the difference?. the university of birmingham. ambridge, b., pine, j. rowland, chang, f. & bidgood, a. (2012). the retreat from overgeneralization in child language acquisition: word learning, morphology, and verb argument structure. wires cogn. sci. 2013, 4:47– 62. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1207. john wiley & sons, ltd. berko, j. (1958). the child's learning of english morphology. dissertation presented to radcliffe college. brown r (1973). a first language: the early stages. cambridge: harvard university press. buckley, b. (2003). the children’s communication skills–from birth to five years. london: rutledge falmer. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 3 557-571, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 565 clark, e. (2009). first language acquisition: second edition. cambridge, cambridge university press. cruz, z. (2015). first language acquisition: is children’s knowledge of language innate? (ba thesis). deen, k. (2005). the acquisition of swahili. john benjamins b.v., john benjamins publishing. demeke, l. (2015). aspects of phonological development in sidamu afoo (ma thesis). addis ababa: addis ababa university. demirezen, m., (1998). behaviorist theory and language learning. hacettepe universitesi eğitim fakültesi dergisi yıl: 1 sayı 3 i ss. 135 – 140. friedline, b. (2004). challenges in the second language acquisition of derivational morphology: from theory to practice (unpublished phd dissertation). university of pittsburgh, guasti, m. (2002). language acquisition: the growth of grammar.usa: pittsburgh, hoff, e. (2009). language development at an early age: learning mechanisms and outcomes from birth to five years: encyclopedia on early childhood development. usa: florida atlantic university. ingram, d. (1989). first language acquisition: method, description and explanation. cambridge: cambridge university press. johnson, s. p., hannon, e. e., & amso d.(2005). perceptual development. in hopkins b.(ed.).the cambridge encyclopaedia of child development. new york: cambridge university press. lust, b. (2006). child language: acquisition and growth. new york: cambridge university press. mashhadi, d. h. (2012). first language acquisition: phonological considerations. theory and practice ion language studies, v.2. n. 2, pp.411-416. penke, m. (2012). the acquisition of inflectional morphology .university of cologne. sibanda, c. (2006). the acquisition of morphology by children acquiring shona as a first language (mphil dissertation).university of zimbabwe. sibanda, c. (2014). a constraint-based approach to child language acquisition of shona morphosyntax (phd dissertation).university of south africa sinha, a., banerjee, n., sinha, a. & shastri, r.(2009). interference of first language in the acquisition of second language. academic journal of psychology and counselling, 1(7), 117-122. soltanieh, sh. (2014). parental attitudes to bilingualism and parental strategies for developing first and second language skills in bilingual children (unpublished ma thesis). university of stavanger. tariku, n. (2019). acquisition of oromo phonology by typically growing children (phd dissertation). addis ababa: addis ababa university. tatsumi, t. (2017). children’s acquisition of verb inflection in japanese: contrasting generativist and constructivist approaches (phd dissertation).university of liverpool. the acquisition of noun inflections in oromo tafese 566 tavakoli, h. (2012). a dictionary of language acquisition: a comprehensive overview of key terms in first and second language acquisition. new york: oxford university press. timothy, b. (2003). the psychology of language. pearson education upper saddle river, new jersey. vanpatten, b., & benati, a. (2010). key terms in second language acquisition. new york: great britain by the mpg books group. zahradníková, m. (2011). first language acquisition and socialization (ba thesis). university of masaryk. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 3 557-571, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 567 appendices appendix 1 names of the children & code (phase i) s.no. name participant (child) code gender age 1. kenawak tesfaye ketp f 3;3 2. bebi oljira beop f 3;5 3. moti werkachew mowp m 3;8 4. latera gemechu lagp m 3;9 5. latu gemechu lugp f 4;0 6. motuma gemechu mogp m 4;0 7. bekan teshome betp m 4;4 8. lidiya tola litp f 4;6 9. kena getu kegp f 5;0 10. keku/ meseret etana meep f 5;4 11. yoseph feyera yofp m 5;2 12. mizanu abraham miap m 5;0 13. hawi wagari hawp f 6;2 14. ruhama solomon rusp f 6;2 15. segni temesgen setp m 6;4 16. ashenafi abebe asap m 6;1 17. nimona desalegn nidp f 7;4 18. oguma abebe ogap f 7;5 19. eba abebe ebap m 7;3 20. debisa dinkisa dedp m 7;0 (phase ii) 21. ephrem tadese ephtp m 3,5 22. oromiya tesfaye ortp f 3;4 23. dibora gudina digp f 4;3 24. bilisuma getahun bigp m 4;0 25. nahime girum nagp f 5;1 26. hundaol gizachew hugp m 5;0 27. kayo mamo kamp f 6;0 28. solomon dawit sodp m 6;2 29. sinan feyera sifp f 7;2 30. ketoran tolesa ktop m 7;0 the acquisition of noun inflections in oromo tafese 568 appendix 2 summary of the productions of pluralization by each child child ats atp gloss production in sg/pl gloss comment asap (m, age, 6; 1) /ga:nge:/ ga:ngoli: ‘mule’/‘mules’ [farda/ farda] ‘horse’ oe& om /nama/ namo:ta ‘man’/’men’ nr beop(f, age,3;5) /ga:nge:/ ga:ngoli: ‘mule’/‘mules’ [farda/ farda] ‘horse’ oe& om /nama/ namo:ta ‘man’/’men’ nr betp(m, age , 4;4) g/a:nge:/ ga:ngoli: ‘mule’/‘mules’ [farda/ farda] ‘horse’ oe& om /nama/ namo:ta ‘man’/’men’ nr dedp (m, age, 7; 0) /ga:nge:/ ga:ngoli: ‘mule’/‘mules’ [farda/ farda] ‘horse’ oe& om /nama/ namo:ta ‘man’/’men’ [nama/nama] ‘man’ om ebap (m, age ,7;3) /ga:nge:/ ga:ngoli: ‘mule’/‘mules’ [farda/ farda] ‘horse’ oe& om /nama/ namo:ta ‘man’/’men’ [nama/nama] ‘man’ om hawp (f, age, 6;2 ) /ga:nge:/ ga:ngoli: ‘mule’/‘mules’ [harre:*/ harre:/] ‘donkey’ oe& om /nama/ namo:ta ‘man’/’men’ [nama/nama] ‘man’ om meep (f, age, 5;4 ) /ga:nge:/ ga:ngoli: ‘mule’/‘mules’ [farda/ farda] ‘horse’ oe& om /nama/ namo:ta ‘man’/’men’ [nama/nama] ‘man’ om ketp f, 3;3) /ga:nge:/ ga:ngoli: ‘mule’/‘mules’ [farda/ farda] ‘horse’ oe& om /nama/ namo:ta ‘man’/’men’ [nama lama] ‘two man’ sp kegp (f, age, 5;0) /ga:nge:/ ga:ngoli: ‘mule’/‘mules’ [har:e:*/ har:e:/] ‘donkey’ oe& om /nama/ namo:ta ‘man’/’men’ [nama/nama] ‘man’ om lagp (m, age, 3;9) /ga:nge:/ ga:ngoli: ‘mule’/‘mules’ [farda/ farda] ‘horse’ oe& om /nama/ namo:ta ‘man’/’men’ [nama/nama] ‘man’ om lugp (f, age, 4;0) /ga:nge:/ ga:ngoli: ‘mule’/‘mules’ [ho:la:*/ ho:la:] ‘sheep’ oe& om /nama/ namo:ta ‘man’/’men’ [nama/nama] ‘man’ oe& om litp ( f, age, 4;6 ) /ga:nge:/ ga:ngoli: ‘mule’/‘mules’ [farda/ farda] ‘horse’ oe& om /nama/ namo:ta ‘man’/’men’ [nama/nama] ‘man’ om miap (m, age, 5;0) /ga:nge:/ ga:ngoli: ‘mule’/‘mules’ [farda/ farda] ‘horse’ oe& om /nama/ namo:ta ‘man’/’men’ [nama/nama] ‘man’ om mowp (m, age 3;8) /ga:nge:/ ga:ngoli: ‘mule’/‘mules’ [re:tti:*/ re:tti:] ‘goat’ oe& om /nama/ namo:ta ‘man’/’men’ nr mogp (m,age 4;0) /ga:nge:/ ga:ngoli: ‘mule’/‘mules’ [farda/ farda] ‘horse’ oe& om /barata:/ baratto:ta ‘student’/‘students’ [barata:/ baratto:ta] student’/ ‘students’ sp nidp (f, age, 7;4 ) /ga:nge:/ ga:ngoli: ‘mule’/‘mules’ [farda/ farda] ‘horse’ oe& om /nama/ namo:ta ‘man’/’men’ [nama/nama] ‘man’ om journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 3 557-571, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 569 ogap (f, age,7;5) /ga:nge:/ ga:ngoli: ‘mule’/‘mules’ [farda/ farda] ‘horse’ oe& om /barata:/ barat:o:ta ‘student’/‘students’ [barata:/ barat:o:ta] ‘student’/ ‘students’ sp rusp (f, age,6;2) /ga:nge:/ ga:ngoli: ‘mule’/‘mules’ [farda/ farda] ‘horse’ oe& om /nama/ namo:ta ‘man’/’men’ [nama/nama] ‘man’ om setp ( m, age , 6;4) /ga:nge:/ ga:ngoli: ‘mule’/‘mules’ [farda/ farda] ‘horse’ oe& om /nama/ namo:ta ‘man’/’men’ [nama/nama] ‘man’ om yofp (m, age, 5;2) /ga:nge:/ ga:ngoli: ‘mule’/‘mules’ [farda/ farda] ‘horse’ oe& om /barata:/ baratto:ta ‘student’/‘students’ [barata:/ baratto:ta] ‘student’/ ‘students’ sp where, ats indicates: adult target singular, atp represents target plural; oe represents overextension; sp represents supplied properly; om represents plural marker morpheme omitted (picture naming is correct), sg/pl represents singular & plural, nr represents, no response (the child does not respond) appendix 3 productions of locative case by the children (phase i data) child g e n d e r g r o u p a g e target → gara manaa tti/ manat ti ‘to’or ‘toword s’ realization gloss c o m m e n t s tr a te g y e m p lo y e d b y th e c h il d 1. ketp m 1 3;3 ‘’ ‘’ [balbalak’abaʧ: u:f] ‘it is to touch the door’ iap om 2. beop f 3;5 ‘’ ‘’ none 3. mowp m 3;8 ‘’ ‘’ [kanarukute: ʤira] ‘ he is hitting this’ iap om 4. lagp m 3;9 ‘’ ‘’ [manat:i] ‘towards home’ sp no 5. lugp f 2 4;0 ‘’ ‘’ [de:ma: ʤira] ‘he is going’ iap om 6. mogp m 4;0 ‘’ ‘’ [ømana ‘house hut’ iap om the acquisition of noun inflections in oromo tafese 570 where ‘sp’ indicates the locative morpheme is supplied properly; iap represents locative morpheme is not supplied properly, ‘none’ none is supplied (the child does not respond to picture description task) appendix 4 productions of locative case by the children (phase ii data) øgo:ʤ:e:] 7. betp m 4;4 ‘’ ‘’ [manaila:la] ‘he is looking at home’ iap om 8. litp f 4;6 ‘’ ‘’ [de:ma: ʤira] ‘he is going’ iap om 9. kegp f 3 5;0 ‘’ ‘’ [manak‘abu:fi] ‘to touch home’ iap om 10. miap m 5;0 ‘’ ‘’ [gala: ʤira] ‘he is going’ iap om 11. yofp f 5;2 ‘’ ‘’ [manat:i] ‘towards home’ sp no 12. meep f 5;4 ‘’ ‘’ [fi:ga: jira] ‘he is running’ iap om 13. asap m 4 6;1 ‘’ ‘’ [ømanaø] ‘home’ iap om 14. hawp f 6;2 ‘’ ‘’ [garamana:t:i] ‘towards home’ sp no 15. rusp f 6;2 ‘’ ‘’ [ømana øde:ma:] ‘going home’ iap om 16. setp m 6;4 ‘’ ‘’ [manat:i] ‘towards home’ sp no 17. dedp m 5 7;0 ‘’ ‘’ [nama:fimana] ‘somebody and home’ iap om 18. ebap m 7;3 ‘’ ‘’ [mana kanat:i] ‘towards home’ sp no 19. nidp f 7;4 ‘’ ‘’ [manat:i] ‘towards home’ sp no 20. ogap f 7;5 ‘’ ‘’ [ømana øde:ma:] ‘going home’ iap om s / n o c h il d g e n d e r a g e ta r g e t g lo s s r e a li z a ti o n g lo s s c o m m e n t 1. ephtp m 3;5 /warak’a:rra/ ‘on the paper’ [warak’a:rra] ‘on the paper’ ✓ 2. ortp f 3;4 /warak’a:rra/ ‘on the paper’ [warak’a:rra] ‘on the paper’ ✓ 3. digp f 4;3 /warak’a:rra/ ‘on the paper’ [warak’a:rra] ‘on the paper’ ✓ 4. bigp m 4;0 /warak’a:rra/ ‘on the paper’ [waraqata[ paper x 5. nagp f 5;1 /warak’a:rra/ ‘on the paper’ error 6. hugp m 5;0 /warak’a:rra/ ‘on the paper’ [lu:ki:rra] ‘on the paper’ ✓ 7. kamp f 6;0 /warak’a:rra/ ‘on the paper’ [lu:ki:rra] ‘on the paper’ ✓ 8. sodp m 6;2 /warak’a:rra/ ‘on the paper’ [warak’a:rra] ‘on the paper’ ✓ journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 3 557-571, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 571 where, ✓represents correct production; x represents incorrect production; error, represents erroneously jumped when asking. 9. sifp f 7;2 /warak’a:rra/ ‘on the paper’ [warak’a:rra] ‘on the paper’ ✓ 10. ktop m 7;0 /warak’a:rra/ ‘on the paper’ [warak’a:rra] ‘on the paper’ ✓ journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 3 321-334, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 321 early trilingual language acquisition of spanish, english, and french by a two-year-old american child paul de nijs1 university of massachusetts boston abstract several factors have been shown to be important to trilingual language acquisition and active trilingualism including language exposure (chevalier, 2015), input load (arnaus gil, müller, sette, & hüppop, 2021), interlocutor language (wang, 2008), use of the minority language in the household (arnaus gil, müller, sette, & hüppop, 2021), and parental language strategies (ronderos, castilla-earls, & ramos, 2021). this case study investigates the language development of a two-year-old american toddler who has grown up since birth in a trilingual language environment of spanish, english, and french. the child’s language use was observed in his natural environment from age 2;0 to age 2;4. particular attention was given to the influence of language exposure patterns and parental language strategies on trilingual language development. the findings indicate that the child is growing up with rich exposure to all three languages and that his parents are following practices that promote language development. additionally, the findings suggest that he is developing active trilingual language abilities, though he does seem to favor english over french and spanish for spontaneous language production. keywords case study, language acquisition, multilingualism, trilingual, trilingualism, active trilingualism, language exposure, parental language strategies 1. introduction being bilingual or even multilingual is common in many parts of the world. how languages are acquired or learned varies greatly. language acquisition can result in various levels including native-like, competent, or working knowledge (barnes, 2006), and it can result in active trilingualism in which the individual can actively use all languages in question or passive trilingualism in which the individual can understand but not necessarily produce all languages (chevalier, 2015). there are multiple contextual factors that influence trilingual language acquisition such as language exposure (chevalier, 2015), input load (arnaus gil, müller, sette, & hüppop, 2021), interlocutor language (wang, 2008), grandparent language (braun, 2012), and parental language strategies (quay, 2012; ronderos, castilla-earls, & ramos, 2021). 1.1. influence of language exposure patterns language exposure encompasses such elements as home languages (quay, 2012), number of sources and exposure to language (chevalier, 2015), 1 bio: paul de nijs has a m.a. in spanish and a m.a. in applied linguistics. his research interests include child language acquisition, multilingualism, and heritage language development. corresponding email: paul.denijs001@umb.edu received : 09.06.2021 accepted : 14.10.2021 published : 16.11.2021 mailto:paul.denijs001@umb.edu early trilingual language acquisition de nijs 322 interlocutors and interactions (wang, 2008), and status of the language (chevalier, 2012). the amount of exposure can affect the level of trilingualism achieved (chevalier, 2015). a rich exposure with consistent input to a language can promote active language use (döpke, 1992) with consistent output from a child (arnaus gil, müller, sette, & hüppop, 2021). conversely, a dearth of language input in the minority language can impede that language’s lexical development (mieszkowska, luniewska, kolak, kacprzak, wodniecka, & haman, 2017). the language or languages used in the home, both child-directed language (quay, 2012) and parent-to-parent language (barnes, 2006), can greatly affect language development. speaking the minority language in the home has been shown to promote active language use (chevalier, 2015) even when a bilingual context is provided by caregivers (quay, 2012). not using the majority (community) language in the home has shown to have a positive impact on active multilingual development by children (arnaus gil, müller, sette, & hüppop, 2021). in her study, chevalier (2012) found that the child who did not use the community language at home developed active trilingualism, while the child who did use the community language at home with one of her parents showed a low level of active trilingualism. it is not just parents, however, that play a role in language development. grandparents can also play an important role in language acquisition (cantone, 2019; zhan, 2021). although trilingual children will not always conform to the monolingual code of grandparents (zhan, 2021), grandparents who do not speak the community language can serve as motivation for trilingual language practices (braun, 2012; braun & cline, 2010) as well as an important source of home language exposure and input (braun, 2012). 1.2. influence of parental language strategies parental language practices also play a role in trilingual language acquisition and can contribute to language maintenance of home language (ronderos, castilla-earls, & ramos, 2021). one popular practice is the one-parent-onelanguage (opol) approach in which a child will acquire one language from one parent, a second language from another parent, and a third language from the community (chevalier, 2015). consistency with opol seems to produce output in children that is consistent with the language of the parent (chevalier, 2015; wang, 2008). however, this strategy is not always successful, and children often develop varying levels of multilingualism (chevalier, 2015; döpke, 1992). it seems that only speaking may not be enough for the development of active language abilities, and if a parent does not insist on the child using the language, the result may be passive language ability (volterra & taeschner, 2007). another practice that affects language acquisition is parental discourse style (chevalier, 2015; döpke, 1992). an instructive approach to communication and interaction seems to support language development (chevalier, 2015). that is, parents who are aware of their role as language instructors seem to enhance the language acquisition of their children. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 3 321-334, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 323 döpke (1992) found in one instance that a bilingual child was more apt to use english, her father’s native language (nl), and not german, her mother’s nl. in the study, the child’s father used more child-centered discourse and played, read, and sang frequently, seeming more cognizant of his function as language teacher. her mother mainly employed commands and refusals. in this case, child-centered language appears to have promoted language acquisition as it was correlated with more accelerated language growth and increased language production. 1.3. significance of this study although the study of trilingual language acquisition and development has received more attention over the years (e.g., albin & gershkoff-stove, 2016; arnaus gil, müller, sette, & hüppop, 2021; brito, sebastián-gallés, & barr, 2015), it is still not as robust as the study of monolingual or bilingual language acquisition and development (mieszkowska, luniewska, kolak, kacprzak, wodniecka, & haman, 2017). while there are similarities between bilingualism and trilingualism, trilingualism is not equivalent to bilingualism (brito, sebastián-gallés, & barr, 2015) and should be investigated as a phenomenon in its own right (braun & cline, 2014; wang, 2008). this study examines the early trilingual language acquisition of david (all names are pseudonyms), a two-year-old american child who has had consistent exposure to three languages since birth: spanish, english, and french. even though the circumstances, details, and factors of multilingualism vary greatly by individual, this topic is significant because multilingualism is a reality for children the world over. this case study is grounded on several questions related to david’s nascent language development. what are the language exposure patterns that david experiences on a daily basis? what are the parental discourse strategies used by his parents? how do they influence his trilingual language acquisition? is his language development indicative of future active or passive trilingualism? 2. methodology in this case study, david’s language exposure patterns were examined through his daily interactions with his father, his mother, his older sibling, and his grandparents. parental discourse strategies were also examined from his interactions with his father and mother. david was videotaped nearly every day in naturalistic settings. each video lasted from two minutes to 15 minutes. audio recordings of david’s language were also made using the voice memos program on a smartphone. finally, field notes were taken when spontaneous moments did not allow for the camera or audio recorder to capture the language incident. daily journal entries were made to describe the researcher’s observations, reflections, thoughts, and perceptions. david is the middle child of three. he was born in the united states and has been naturally acquiring english, spanish, and french since birth. he traveled to honduras as a baby (age 0;6 to 0;8). other than his one trip out of early trilingual language acquisition de nijs 324 the country, he has remained in the united states. david was age 2;0 when the study began. david has had exposure to several language environments including the home (english, spanish, and french), his paternal grandparents’ home (english), church (english and portuguese), and his maternal grandparents’ home (spanish). his mother is 29 years old. she was born in honduras. she is a native spanish speaker with limited english proficiency. david’s father is 32 years old. he is a native english speaker who speaks english, spanish, and french. the family has three children in total including the oldest son (8;8), david (2;0), and the youngest son (0;4). david’s older brother, antonio, is a native spanish speaker born in honduras. he speaks both spanish and english. his paternal grandmother is a native english speaker. his paternal grandfather is a native dutch and english speaker. his maternal grandparents are both native spanish speakers. david’s father speaks exclusively in french with david. he mainly speaks in english with his older sibling but does use spanish at times. his mother speaks mostly spanish but usually includes some basic english in her communication with david. his mother speaks spanish and some limited english with his older sibling. together, david’s mother and father generally use spanish to communicate and interact with each other. david’s paternal grandparents speak only english with him and with his parents. david’s maternal grandparents speak only spanish with him and with his parents. speaking another language beside the community language is viewed by all as a positive and something to be valued; all the family members are encouraging and supportive of the bilingual and trilingual abilities of the family. table 1 information about the subject child david age 2;0 to 2;4 data video recordings, audio recordings, field notes, journal entries. parents follow opol yes/no. father is consistent with opol; though the mother consistently uses spanish, she is prone to use some english in communication quantity of input input in all languages. more input from community language (i.e., english) which includes the older sibling and parental grandparents parents communicate in community language no array of sources in minority languages yes/no. father is the sole exposure to french. mother and the older sibling, interactions between mother and father, and interactions with mother’s family provide exposure to spanish the researcher in this case study was also the father of the subject. the researcher can, therefore, be considered a participant observer in this case journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 3 321-334, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 325 study. while there may be inherent bias in the fact that the researcher is both the observer and parent, as wang (2008) emphasizes, parents, because they live with their children, have greater access to spontaneous speech and can provide a valuable perspective to the context of language use of their children. this case study used triangulation protocols in that the same linguistic events were examined from multiple points of observation (e.g., observations, field notes, audio, and video recordings). the video recordings were an important component of the data collection for the case study as video offers an effective means for studying those whose linguistic abilities are still developing (stake, 1995). they also allowed for validation of personal observations and corroboration of consequent analysis. 3. findings 3.1. language exposure patterns the language exposure that david received varied greatly by language. while his exposure to french was quite limited, being only that of his father, his exposure to both english and spanish was quite robust (see table 2). english was the community language, the language of his paternal grandparents, and the preferred language of his older sibling. spanish was the language used by his mother, in parent-to-parent communication, in parent-to-older-sibling communication, and the language used by his maternal grandparents and other family members. table 2 sources of language exposure source of exposure language mother → child mostly spanish, some english father → child french older sibling → child mostly english, some spanish older sibling ← → mother mostly spanish, some english older sibling ← → father mostly english, some spanish mother ← → father almost all spanish, occasional english maternal grandparents → child spanish paternal grandparents → child english community english language exposure was not always a monolingual event. at times, several interlocutors of various languages spoke with david in the same interaction, providing input in two or three languages. this exposure to multiple languages was seen one day when david (2;4) was at his paternal grandparents’ house. he was playing with a homemade goo while seated at the kitchen table. however, it was getting late, and it was time to leave. mother: [to david] david, ¿estás listo? ¿ya nos vamos? (david, are you ready? let’s go?) david: [to mother] no! mother: [to grandmother] tell him in english. early trilingual language acquisition de nijs 326 grandmother: [to david] david, are you ready to go? david: [to grandmother] no, i doh wanna. (no, i don’t want to.) mother: [to father] dile en francés. (tell him in french.) father: [to david] david, t’es pret? on va partir? (david, are you ready? are we going to go?) david: [to father] no! here, david heard the interlingual synonyms for “are you ready?” first in spanish, then in english, and finally in french. while language exposure from his father and grandparents were monolingual in nature, david’s mother, in addition to spanish, provided some input in english. these language exposure patterns from his father, grandparents, and mother were the norm, that is, only french from his father, only english from his grandparents, and mostly spanish with some english from his mother. typically, the english provided by his mother was only a few basic utterances before switching to spanish or codemixing by adding a few english words to her spanish. one day, for example, david (2;3) and his parents were sitting at the kitchen table looking at ads for the supermarket. his mother asked him if he loved certain foods as she pointed to the pictures. david then found a picture of a rotisserie chicken. david: [to mother and father. he holds up the ad for both to see] chicken! mother: [to david] ¿hay chicken allí? (is there chicken there?) david: [to mother] no, chicken est là! [points to fridge] (no, the chicken is there!) mother: [to david] esto es chicken también. [points to ad and begins singsong] pollo, pollo, pollo! diga, “pollo.” (this is chicken, too. chicken, chicken, chicken! say, “chicken.”) father: [to david] dis, “poulet.” (say, “chicken.”) david: [points to chicken in newspaper ad] dat poulet. (that’s chicken.) father: [to david] oui! c’est un poulet! (yes! that’s a chicken!) david: [smiling, points once again to the picture of the chicken] poulet! (chicken!) mother: [to david] ¿y la gallina? ¿dónde está la gallina? (and the hen? where is the hen?) david: [crosses arms] n’est pas là! (it’s not there!) father: [to david] ce n’est pas là? où est la poule? (it’s not there? where is the hen?) david: [to father] il est là! ouside! [points to window] (it is there! outside!) journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 3 321-334, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 327 here, in the typical exposure pattern, we can see that david received a great deal of exposure to spanish from his mother, even though she did use some english in the beginning. david only received exposure to french from his father. interestingly, david responded to both his mother and father with a mixture of french and english. 3.2. parental language strategies 3.2.1. one-parent-one-language david’s father was very purposeful in his language practices and strictly adhered to the opol approach. all input in the interactions with david was in french. in addition, his father began insisting that david also use french to speak with him. at times, when david spoke in english or spanish, his father simply repeated the utterance in french. other times, his father pretended not to understand in an attempt to elicit a response in french. david’s father occasionally spoke french to the older sibling, antonio, when david was present even though he does not speak french. this can be seen one day when david (2;3), his father, and antonio were playing on the trampoline in the backyard. david seemed frightened when antonio, who was much taller than david, jumped next to him on the trampoline. whenever antonio jumped higher and closer to david, david gave him directives in french. david: [to antonio] saute pas! saute pas, antonio! (don’t jump! don’t jump, antonio!) antonio: [to david] ok, ok. [continues jumping] david: [to father] say, “saute pas, antonio!” (say, “don’t jump, antonio!”) father: [to antonio] saute pas, antonio. (don’t jump, antonio.) antonio: [to david] ok, saute pas, antonio. [stops jumping] (ok, don’t jump, antonio.) here we can see that david started speaking to antonio in french. david’s father also spoke in french. interestingly, antonio, who is bilingual in english and spanish, started to respond and even speak in french to david. he also subsequently started using french to start a game on the trampoline by saying, “un, deux, trois, commence!” (one, two, three, start!) after hearing it several times from his father. in general, david’s mother provided language input in spanish, but she did, at times mix english and spanish. however, because of her limited english proficiency, she often switched to spanish. one day david (2;1) was trying to open a package of muffin snacks. mother: [to david] good morning, david. david: [trying to open a snack] hep me. (help me.) mother: [to david] ¿qué quieres, cariño? early trilingual language acquisition de nijs 328 (what do you want, dear?) david: [to mother] abi. (abrí.) (open.) mother: [to david] ¿quieres que te lo abra? (you want me to open it?) david: [to mother] yes. mother: [opens package] here david’s mother greeted him in english but then switched to spanish. david followed her lead and switched from english to spanish. while his mother did not explicitly use spanish, her limited english meant that she only provided a small amount of english input. 3.2.2. parental discourse styles david’s mother and father seemed to have different parental discourse styles when interacting with david. his mother acknowledged herself as the caretaker, saying it was her job to take care of the kids. during the day, she took care of the infant son and david. she also cared for david’s older brother when he arrived home from school. david’s mother gave him a bath, let him help with the cleaning and other household chores, listened to music, and watched television with him. she did not frequently engage in play or literacy activities, using more directives than play language. david’s father was more instructive in his interactions, seeing himself as a collaborator in play and learning. with david, he read, played games, jumped on the trampoline, did puzzles, ran around the yard, told stories, drew, painted, and played pretend. this view as a collaborator in play is seen one day when david (2;4) was playing pretend with his father. david had just told his father ven (come) and brought him by the hand to his bedroom. david: [to father] ven. (come.) father: [to david] d’accord. (ok.) [david leads his father to his bedroom] david: [to father] go sleep. please, papá. father: [to david] je ne te comprends pas. (i don’t understand you.) david: [to father] s’il te plaaaaît! go sleep! (please! go to sleep.) father: [to david] ah! dors, papá? (ah! sleep, daddy?) david: [to father] yes, dors! (yes, sleep!) [father pretends to sleep. david laughs] here, his father insisted on french. david began his interaction in english, but his father forced him to use french. when he said he could not understand, david then switched to french to say “please” but continued in journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 3 321-334, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 329 english. when his father asked him in french if he meant sleep (dors), david affirmed and then repeated in french without being asked to do so. it appears the insistence of david using french did not inhibit their playtime together. 3.3. language production as evidence of language development during this case study, david’s language development progressed in complexity and magnitude, from a one-word stage (age 2;0) to a multi-word stage (age 2;4) in spanish, english, and french. at age 2;0, david was still in the one-word stage. he also produced many nonsense words and sounds. he pointed to many of the things that he wanted. examination of the video recordings and field notes revealed that he used more french at this stage than english or spanish. at age 2;1, david was frequently communicating with one-word utterances, but he had begun to produce multi-word sentences in english and french. david demonstrated comprehension in all three languages by pointing to the objects and following commands when prompted. for example, when asked in english, french, or spanish where a certain animal or object was located, he correctly pointed to it. he also correctly followed commands in english (e.g., come here, wait, don’t hit your brother), spanish (e.g., siéntete (sit), abre la boca (open your mouth), dámelo (give me it), ven (come here)), and french (e.g., arrête (stop), bouge pas (don’t move), bouge (move), viens (come here). at age 2;2, david was counting to three in english and french (un, deux, fois [un, deux, trois] (one, two, three)). he also started increasing his use of multiple-word utterances, stringing words together in short phrases. he began to ask where someone had gone in english by adding the person’s name and “go” after the word “where.” for example, “where daddy go?” “where antonio go?” “where mommy go?” at this age, david also began to speak more english than spanish or french. at age 2;3, david spoke predominantly in english with not only his older brother and grandparents but also with his mother. he continued to consistently demonstrate comprehension in all three languages by pointing to objects and following commands. his linguistic output continued to show preference for english. at age 2;4, he was answering yes/no questions and consistently using multiword utterances. he also repeated all words in whichever language that someone prompted him to speak. analysis of the video recordings revealed that david used more english than french and more french than spanish in spontaneous speech. in addition, the english used appeared to be more complex and developed (i.e., using more questions, commands, and subjectverb sentences) than his french which consisted of many more noun phrases and fewer questions or commands. early trilingual language acquisition de nijs 330 table 3 words used in spontaneous speech according to language age spanish english french 2;0 ven aquí agua sí oto [otro] bebé mamá papá daddy my turn all done cookie outsai [outside] choos [shoes] open please baby whatayadoin? [what are you doing?] bubble hep me [help me] milk fall where go? [where did it go?] where are you? stop it! juice fire ça ça va là plus un deux fois [trois] manteau écureuil manger bleu jaune pas là bébé pas ça chocolat paille lait cerf mouche froid chaud merci l’eau ot [autre] loup où est? 2;1 abi agua [abre agua] otro cushara [cuchara] uno caho [carro] más boken [broken] car whahappen? [what happened?] i dohwannit [i don’t want it] go daddy sowi [sorry] daddy open agua gain [again] open door all done baby fryin [crying] feu le bébé là viens mechant loup cochon bonjour froide chaude ici sale oui, ça va paille pas là 2;2 leche abi leche [abre leche] dos shusha [escucha] gato chuchara [cuchara] pelo out please gimme [give me] open door papá please he no wannit [he does not want it] i see you baby do it daddy turn car coming now you do it ot fois [autre fois] s’il plaît [s’il te plaît] rouge chat piquant chien bleu paille journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 3 321-334, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 331 i love blue lelo [yellow] black geen [green] 2;3 antonio fue luz cuchara fue la luz eshusha [escucha] deci no sorry dinosaur dinosaur is sleepin papá, where you go? where antonio car go? go trampoline help me! baby no wannit [baby doesn’t want it] antonio boke [broke] it where shoes go? mechant ribbit [mechant grenouille] ça, ça, et ça. bleu ciseaux oiseau pas là saute pas ai-moi! [aide-moi!] s’il te plaît! not all utterances fit into a single column following a single linguistic code. david codemixed (hoffmann & stavans, 2007) several utterances, blending linguistic elements from different languages within a sentence. he mixed english and french (le bébé fryin [le bébé crying], where est ça, papá?, glasses à moi, chaud milk, where is hibou go? [where did the owl go?], and where aller?), english and spanish (está rainin [está raining] and glasses ah mia [glasses son mias]), and spanish and french (où est agua?). in all, there were more instances of codemixing english and french than any other combination. throughout the study, david continued to demonstrate comprehension by pointing to objects and following more complex commands. he also began to demonstrate language development and comprehension by asking and answering questions in all three languages. david started the study with an apparent preference for french and ended up showing a preference for english. despite his apparent preference for english, by the end of the study he was able to change his language depending on the interlocutor and the context of the interaction. 4. discussion this study examined the language exposure patterns and parental language strategies encountered by david, a nascent trilingual two-year-old child, and his subsequent trilingual language development. in the beginning of the case study, david had an apparent preference for french. a list of words used in spontaneous speech (see table 3) reveals that he had acquired more french than english or spanish by age 2;0. he was even recorded using french with non-french-family members (e.g., his mother, his grandparents, his older sibling). this noticeable prevalence of french may have been since his father, the french-speaking parent, was home on paternity leave for three months starting when david was age 1;11 (cantone, 2019). for three months, his father was constantly interacting and playing the entire day with him in french. this increased input, exposure, and interaction could be the cause of accelerated french development (arnaus gil, müller, sette, & hüppop, 2021; early trilingual language acquisition de nijs 332 chevalier, 2012). this development may also be in part due to his father’s role as an instructor in interactive communication (chevalier, 2015) and the amount of child-centered discourse and play language used (döpke, 1992). not only does his father play more than his mother, but he interacts with david in a variety of contexts (e.g., waking up, eating, taking a bath). in addition, his father adheres to the opol approach which could reinforce future active language ability (chevalier, 2015). david seemed to develop a preference around the age of 2:2 for english, at least in initiating his interactions. his english also seemed to contain an abundance of multi-word utterances, verbs, and questions suggesting that his english was becoming the most developed of his languages. notwithstanding, he also did produce complex language (i.e., multi-word utterance, questions, verbs) in spanish and french. this apparent growth of english may be, at least in part, due to the exposure and input to english from multiple sources and interlocutors (wang, 2008) and the fact that it was the community language (döpke, 1992). whereas his father was the sole source of french and david’s mother and maternal grandparents (and sometimes his older brother) were the only sources of spanish, david received input in english from a myriad of sources (e.g., paternal grandparents, his older brother, community, radio, tv, movies). even though he had more input and interlocutors with whom to speak, he consistently produced less spanish or mixed spanish with one of the other two languages. this may be a result of the fact that his mother frequently mixed spanish and english with him. in addition, she almost always accepted instances of language mixing instead of offering an interlingual synonym or forcing spanish by pretending not to understand english which could result in passive language ability (volterra & taeschner, 2007). nonetheless, david readily repeated words in spanish. for example, when his mother told him, “dile a papi que te abra.” (tell your dad to open it for you), he ran to his father and said, “abi” [abrí] (open). examining the evidence, david is clearly developing language abilities in all three of his nls. he may prefer one or two languages (i.e., english, french), but he progressed from a one-word stage to a multi-word stage in all languages over the course of the case study. in addition, his demonstration of comprehension in spanish, english, and french also developed, moving from pointing and following simple commands to asking and answering questions and following complex commands. therefore, even though david produced more english than french and more french than spanish in spontaneous speech, the data suggest that, while david is becoming more dominant in english, he is developing active trilingualism. the extent to which his language abilities and knowledge will continue to develop into active trilingualism or result in passive trilingualism remains to be seen. there are many questions that could be of interest to further study of david’s trilingual language acquisition. how will his trilingualism develop in the future? will future language exposure and parental language strategies be sufficient to continue developing active language abilities in the minority languages? will his mother’s acceptance of codemixing without forcing him to produce spanish hinder his spanish acquisition? will lack of interlocutors journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 3 321-334, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 333 and varied input in french negatively affect future development? how will the start of school affect his trilingual language development? there were limiting factors to this case study. one such limitation was the brief nature of this study. though it was a start, to fully appreciate the complexity and nuances of david’s language acquisition and development, more time would need to be devoted to observation and recording of data. extending the study would most certainly reveal more information about david’s language acquisition and development. also, because of his age and lack of metalinguistic awareness and expressive ability, the motives of his individual language choices were an enigma. it could not be known, for example, if his lack of linguistic production was based on a lack of awareness of linguistic equivalents, because of strong contextual cues overriding his previous knowledge, or simply because of personal choice. as his linguistic and metalinguistic knowledge increases, david will be more capable of explaining his motives and reasons for his language choices. 5. conclusion the data showed a rich exposure to language input in all three languages and an adherence to the use of the minority language either by language strategies (opol by david’s father) or a linguistic necessity (monolingualism of david’s mother). the findings indicate that david is on his way to successfully acquiring three languages. although he demonstrated an apparent preference for english and ended up using english more than french and spanish in spontaneous speech, he was able to understand and use english, spanish, and french. this would seem to suggest that plentiful exposure coupled with consistent input in addition to parental language practices do indeed play an important role in trilingual language development. references albin, a., & gershkoff-stove, l. (2016). rapid word learning in trilingual children: one spurt or three? in d. stringer, j. garrett, b. halloran, & s. mossman (eds.), proceedings of the 13th generative approaches to second language acquisition conference (pp. 14-30). somerville, ma: cascadilla proceedings project. arnaus gil, l., müller, n., sette, n., & hüppop, m. (2021). active biand trilingualism and its influencing factors. international multilingual research journal, 15(1), 1-22. doi:10.1080/19313152.2020.1753964 barnes, j. d. (2006). early trilingualism: a focus on questions. tonawanda, ny: multilingual matters. braun, a. (2012). language maintenance in trilingual families a focus on grandparents. international journal of multilingualism, 9(4), 423-436. doi:10.1080/14790718.2012.714384 braun, a., & cline, t. (2010). trilingual families in mainly monolingual societies: working towards a typology. international journal of multilingualism, 7(2), 110-127. doi:10.1080/14790710903414323 braun, a., & cline, t. (2014). language strategies for trilingual families: parents’ perspectives. tonawanda, ny: multilingual matters. early trilingual language acquisition de nijs 334 brito, n. h., sebastián-gallés, n., & barr, r. (2015). differences in language exposure and its effects on memory flexibility in monolingual, bilingual, and trilingual infants. bilingualism: language and cognition, 18(4), 670-682. doi:10.1017/s1366728914000789 cantone, k. f. (2019). language exposure in early bilingual and trilingual acquisition. international journal of multilingualism, 1-16. doi:10.1080/14790718.2019.1703995 chevalier, s. (2012). active trilingualism in early childhood: the motivating role of caregivers in interaction. international journal of multilingualism, 9(4), 437-454. doi:10.1080/14790718.2012.714385 chevalier, s. (2015). trilingual language acquisition: contextual factors influencing active trilingualism in early childhood. philadelphia, pa: john benjamins publishing company. döpke, s. (1992). one parent one language: an interactional approach. philadelphia, pa: john benjamins publishing company. hoffmann, c., & stavans, a. (2007). the evolution of trilingual codeswitching from infancy to school age: the shaping of trilingual competence through dynamic language dominance. international journal of bilingualism, 11(1), 55-72. mieszkowska, k., luniewska, m., kolak, j., kacprzak, a., wodniecka, z., & haman, e. (2017). home language will not take care of itself: vocabulary knowledge in trilingual children in the united kingdom. frontiers in psychology, 8, 44-54. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01358 quay, s. (2012). discourse practices of trilingual mothers: effects on minority home language development in japan. international journal of bilingual education and bilingualism, 15(4), 435-453. doi:10.1080/13670050.2012.665828 ronderos, j., castilla-earls, a., & ramos, g. m. (2021). parental beliefs, language practices and outcomes in spanish-english bilingual children. international journal of bilingual education and bilingualism, 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2021.1935439 volterra, v., & taeschner, c. (2007). the acquisition and development of language by bilingual children. in l. wei (ed.), the bilingual reader (pp. 301320). new york, ny: routledge. (reprinted from “the acquisition and development of language by bilingual children,” 1978, journal of child language, 5[2], 311-326. wang, x. (2008). growing up with three languages: birth to eleven. buffalo, ny: multilingual matters. zhan, y. (2021). the role of agency in the language choices of a trilingual twoyear-old in conversation with monolingual grandparents. first language, 41(1), 21-40. doi:10.1177/0142723720923488 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 144-161, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 144 acquisition of complex coda and sonority among selected bilingual nigerian children grace boluwatife olarewaju1 university of ibadan adesina b. sunday2 university of ibadan abstract this study examined the role of sonority in the acquisition of complex coda by yoruba-english bilingual children with a view to determining the way children rank constraints to arrive at their outputs. the study adopted optimality theory as the theoretical framework. a wordlist of about 100 words, complemented by relevant pictures, was used to collect the data for analysis. spontaneous speeches were also collected. ten yoruba-english bilingual children made up the population. the data got were phonologically and acoustically analyzed. the children’s grammar showed a preference for less sonorous consonants over highly sonorous consonants in coda clusters through deletion and substitution of segments. they also showed a preference for single consonants that are not highly sonorous at the coda. they violated *complex-coda and sometimes nocoda. the grammar of the yoruba-english bilingual child does not allow for the formation of coda clusters. this may be as a result of the influence of the indigenous language. keywords: sonorous consonants, coda clusters, yoruba-english bilingual child, optimality theory, children’s grammar 1. introduction effective communication, which is a necessity in any human society, is made possible through the use of language. language cannot be divorced from human interaction and society. this necessitates the need to acquire language. human beings have the innate ability to acquire language as proposed by noam chomsky (chomsky, 1975; sunday, 2020). this inborn ability has made the process of language acquisition easy for normally developing children. human beings acquire language at various stages of life but this study focused on bilingual first language acquisition. language acquisition deals with the processes involved in language development. it refers to a natural process whereby children develop language ability in their first language effortlessly, as they do not need to 1 bio: grace boluwatife olarewaju is a phd student in the department of english, university of ibadan, ibadan, nigeria. her research interests cover child language acquisition and english phonology and phonetics. 2 bio: adesina bukunmi sunday is a senior lecturer in the department of english at university of ibadan, ibadan, nigeria. he specializes in neurolinguistics, english phonology and phonetics, and pragmatics. he has published in reputable journals, like english today, journal of pragmatics, humour: international journal of humor research, and skase journal of theoretical linguistics. corr. author: sinadaybuk@gmail.com received : 03.12.2020 accepted : 25.12.2020 published : 30.12.2020 mailto:sinadaybuk@gmail.com acquisition of complex coda and sonority olarewaju, sunday 145 deliberately learn the grammar of the language (adegbite, 2009; meisel, 2011). in the study of language acquisition, children have been discovered to be able to learn as many languages as they are exposed to. as a result of this, children become bilinguals/multilinguals at a very young age. this produces what is called bilingual first language acquisition (bfla). this is the subconscious simultaneous acquisition of two languages by children who have been consistently exposed to both languages (itani-adams, 2007; ramirez and kuhl, 2016). the phonological repertoire of bilingual children is determined by the languages that they are exposed to (gildersleeveneumann et al., 2008). there is no limit to this repertoire. in discussing the phonology of any language, the syllable is germane, particularly when speech is the focus. this is because it gives insights into the phonotactics of the language. syllables are made up of speech sounds or phonemes; the arrangement of the phonemes is determined by the language. languages vary as to which type of speech sounds are allowed to occur in which position of the syllable. the syllable is made up of onset, nucleus/peak and coda. only the nucleus/peak is obligatory. at times, the nucleus/peak and coda are collapsed to form rhyme, in which case, the syllable now has two components, namely onset and rhyme (gussenhoven and jacobs, 2005; clark, yallop, and fletcher, 2007; gut, 2009). to determine how bilingual children acquire a language that permits the production of complex coda, this study investigated the production of complex coda by yoruba-english bilingual children. the yoruba syllable does not permit consonant cluster. conversely, english permits optional consonants of up to four in the coda position. the way a yoruba child acquires english coda will reveal some insights on cluster acquisition and the manipulation of two different syllable systems by a child. the purpose of this study is to unravel how children rank and re-rank constraints in their production of complex coda and their judgement of sounds based on the level of sonority. for ease of understanding, there is a need to briefly examine the english and yoruba phonological systems. 1.1. phonology of yoruba yoruba phonology has been greatly studied by language scholars over time (oyebade, 2010). yoruba, like every other language, has its sound system. the yoruba sound system contains eighteen consonants, seven oral vowels, and five nasal vowels. the consonant sounds in yoruba are /b, t, d, k, ɡ, kp, ɡb, f, s, s̩, h, m, n, r, l, w, j/. the yoruba vowel system consists of seven oral vowels and five nasal vowels. the oral vowels are /i, e, e̩, a, o̩, o, u/. the nasal vowels are /i͂, ɛ͂, a͂, õ, u͂/ (oyebade, 2010; arokoyo, 2012; ogundepo, 2015). yoruba does not distinguish between long and short vowels. the yoruba sound system does not permit clusters (ogundepo, 2015). according to wachuku (2008:131), “the syllable structure refers to the way vowels and consonants are arranged to form a syllable.” that is the specific arrangement of consonants and vowels to form a syllable with adherence to what is permissible in the language. the grammar of yoruba permits only open syllables. this means that it does not permit syllables to have codas. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 144-161, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 146 by implication, yoruba disallows consonant clusters. the yoruba syllable structure permits v, vcv, cv, and cvn structures. the syllable bears the tone in the language. the language has monosyllabic, disyllabic and polysyllabic words (abiodun, 2010; orie, 2012; arokoyo, 2012). 1.2. phonology of english the english language has twenty-four consonants and vowels. the vowels comprise twelve monophthongs, eight diphthongs and five triphthongs (ladefoged, 2001; osisanwo, 2012). the consonant sounds in english are /p, t, k, b, d, ɡ, f, v, ɵ, ð, s, z, ʃ, ʒ, h, m, n, ŋ, r, l, w, ʧ, ʤ, j/. the english vowel system consists of twelve monophthongs /i, i:, e, u, u:, a, æ, ͻ, ͻ:, ˄, ɜ:, ə/. these monophthongs are further classified into long and short vowels. it also contains eight diphthongs /ei, iə, eə, ai, au, əu, uə, ͻi/ and five triphthongs /eiə, aiə, ͻiə, əuə, auə/ (roach, 1997; mccully, 2009). 1.3. syllable and sonority as noted by gut (2009), the phonotactic structure of syllables is usually described with reference to the sonority of the phonemes involved. the sonority of a sound refers to the relative loudness of one sound in comparison to other sounds and speech sounds are often described in terms of their degree of sonority (giegerich, 1992; ladefoged, 1993). the sonority of english speech sounds is represented on a sonority scale (gut, 2009). in the formation of syllables, speech sounds are organized based on two criteria, which are sonority sequencing principle and sonority distance. the arrangement of segments on the sonority scale ranges from the sounds with a high degree of sonority to sounds that are less sonorous. oral stops fricatives nasals liquids semi-vowels vowels voiceless voiced voiceless voiced high low p b f v m t d t ð n j ¡ a k ɡ s z ŋ l r w u ɑ s o n o r i t y figure1. sonority scale source: adapted from giegerich (1992:133) the sonority scale presented above reveals the role of natural classes in the description of sonority. these natural classes have distinctive features that make it easy to describe them in any phonological analysis. according to chomsky and halle (1968), distinctive features are the minimal elements of which phonetic, lexical, and phonological transcription are composed, by combination and concatenation (sunday, 2014). some of the distinctive features relevant to this study are examined here. the classification is based acquisition of complex coda and sonority olarewaju, sunday 147 on the works of scholars such as chomsky and halle (1968), and schane (1973) and giegerich (1992): i. sonorant: vowels, nasals, liquids and semi-vowel are [+sonorant] while stops, fricatives, affricates and laryngeal glides are [-sonorant]. ii. continuant: [+continuant] are approximants and fricatives while stops and affricates (oral and nasal) are [-continuant]. iii. consonantal: the sounds that are [+consonantal] are stops, fricatives, affricates, nasals and liquids while laryngeal glides, vowels, and semi-vowels are [-consonantal]. iv. syllabic: this feature is needed to differentiate syllabic nasals and liquids from their non-syllabic counterparts. vowels, syllabic nasals, and syllabic liquids are [+ syllabic] while obstruents, non-syllabic nasals, glides, and non-syllabic liquids are [-syllabic]. v. vocalic: [+vocalic] are vowels and liquids while [-vocalic] are glides, nasal, obstruents, devoiced vowels and devoiced liquids. vi. nasal: nasal consonants are [+nasal] while oral consonants are [-nasal]. 1.4. theoretical framework: optimality theory optimality theory (ot) is a theory that accounts for the workings of every language. it assumes that constraints, which are violable, are essentially universal; as such, are present in every language. in other words, constraints are universal. however, the point of divergence in languages is the order in which the constraints are ranked in each language. this theory, as proposed by alan prince and paul smolensky (1993), reflects the resolution of conflicts among competing constraints (kager, 1999; oyebade, 2008; sunday, 2013a; 2013b; 2013c; sunday and oyatokun, 2016; sunday and olarewaju, 2020). there are core mechanisms in ot. these are generator (gen) and evaluator (eval). gen generates output forms based on the linguistic input. eval evaluates the candidates generated by gen to choose the most harmonic candidate. it selects the optimal candidate by considering a set of ranked, violable constraints. the role of eval is to assess the harmony of outputs with respect to a given ranking of constraints. some constraints are considered to be more important than others as a result of domination (dominance relation). these mechanisms are interrelated (mccarthy and prince, 1995; kager, 1999). constraints (con) are used to test the well-formedness of the set of candidates in relation to what is acceptable in the grammar of each language. constraints are hierarchically ordered from the highest to the lowest and they can be violated. there are two major types of constraints: faithfulness and markedness. faithfulness constraints require the mapping of the input form to the output form, while markedness constraints forbid grammatically ill-formed structures (mccarthy, 2002). journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 144-161, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 148 2. methodology the methodology of the research should be detailed very clearly referring to relevant theories. 2.1. participants the data used for analysis were collected from ten yoruba-english bilingual children between the ages of one year, seven months (1;7) and five years (5;0) at the start of the data collection. yoruba is predominantly spoken in the south-western part of nigeria. the participants were selected from different schools across different local government areas in ibadan, the capital of oyo state, south-western, nigeria. 2.2. socio-demographic analysis of the participants the participants were three males and seven females. they were in the age range of 1 year, 7 months and five years. all of them were yoruba-english bilinguals. the participants were put in five groups, made up of two participants each (1; 7, 2, 3, 4, and 5). the first group was for children that were one year, seven months old. the second group was for the respondents who were two years old. the third group catered for the respondents who were three years old. those children who were four years old formed the fourth group. the last group consisted of the children who were five years old. each of the groups comprised two children. table 1 demography of the participants subject age (at the outset) languages group s1 1 year, 7 months english and yoruba 1 s2 1 year, 7 months english and yoruba s3 2 years, 3 months english and yoruba 2 s4 2 years, 1 month english and yoruba s5 3 years, 1 month english and yoruba 3 s6 3 years english and yoruba s7 4 years english and yoruba 4 s8 4 years english and yoruba s9 5 years english and yoruba 5 s10 5 years english and yoruba 2.3. data collection and processing the respondents were visited three times a week for data collection. the entire study lasted eight weeks. age and simultaneous bilingualism were the criteria employed in grouping the participants. for accuracy and reliability of data, strictly simultaneous bilingual children were sampled; they were bilingual in yoruba and english before the age of three years. the study employed both longitudinal and cross-sectional designs. a wordlist of about 100 words, complemented by relevant pictures, was used to elicit the data for analysis from the participants. additional data were collected from spontaneous speech of the respondents. the words were tested across the different age groups to know the structures that each group had acquired at acquisition of complex coda and sonority olarewaju, sunday 149 their different ages. for each word, two tokens were got from two subjects across all age groups. the forms presented were chosen based on the age of the subject who produced it and the similarity between the two tokens got from the subjects who represented a particular group. the subjects’ renditions are generally presented under each tableau to show the progressive nature of the grammar of the children. 2.4. data analysis perceptual and acoustic analyses were carried out, with optimality theory used for explanation of the observable patterns. the syllable patterns made by the children were grouped into stages in line with to the available age groups. instances of occurrences of each syllable were then identified. the items that were repeated by the participants were not considered for analysis, except if there was variation in their renditions. phonetic transcription was done for the sake of accurate description. 2.5. realization of coda clusters this section captures the analysis and interpretation of the data collected. both regular patterns and variations in the renditions of the participants were identified. nineteen english words were used to test the acquisition of coda clusters by the children: drink, translation, instruct, aspect, point, hand, thank, jump, translation, strange, want, socks, round, front, branch, flask, plant, task, and strength. only one category of coda clusters was tested: twoconsonant clusters. different structures were considered in order to test if onset clusters affect the production of coda clusters in words that have coda clusters. for the ot analysis, the following constraints were deployed: a) onset: this constraint was suggested by prince and smolensky (1993) and it stipulates that every syllable must have an onset. a syllable must begin with a consonant. this constraint captures the universal preference of language for cv syllables (mccarthy, 2008). b) nocoda: this constraint was also proposed by prince and smolensky (1993) and it prohibits closed syllables while maximizing open syllables. a syllable must not end with a consonant sound. it stipulates that syllables do not have codas. c) max (or max-io): this requires the input segments to appear in the output. it forbids deletion of segments (kager, 1999). d) *complex-onset: it does not permit clusters at onset (mccarthy, 2008). e) *complex-coda: it forbids complex stringing of sounds at coda (mccarthy, 2008). journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 144-161, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 150 3. findings 3.1. cc-clusters the section presents the analysis of english words with two final-consonant clusters. the analyses of four of these words are presented below. 3.2. analysis of ‘jump’ jump is phonemically represented as /ʤᴧmp/. it is graphically represented based on the hierarchy of the sounds on the sonority scale as: figure 2. sonority scale of jump the sonority scale shows that /ʤ/ is less sonorous than /ᴧ/, which is more sonorous than /m/ and /p/. with respect to the acquisition of the cvcc-cluster, the children in groups 1, 2, and 3 (60% of the participants) could not properly articulate jump as [ʤᴧmp] but as [ɛʃ] while the other four subjects pronounced it as [ʤͻmp]. those who pronounced /ʤᴧmp/ as [ɛʃ] reduced the entire syllable into something different from the input, thereby reducing it from its original cvcc structure to a cv type. the syllable was replaced with two new sounds: the open-mid front unrounded vowel /ɛ/ and the voiceless postalveolar fricative /ʃ/. the latter sounds are sonorous sounds; as such, this may be responsible for the replacement. it also shows that only the subjects who were between ages three and five have acquired the cvcc syllable type. the ot account of jump as pronounced by the participants is shown below: tableau 1 the emergence of /ɛʃ/ input / ʤᴧmp/ → output / ɛʃ/ / ʤᴧmp/ *complex-coda *max onset nocoda (i) ʤͻmp *! *! (ii) ʤᴧmp *! *! (iii) ɛʃ * * constraint ranking: *complex-coda>> *max >> onset >> nocoda optimal candidate: /ɛʃ/ acquisition of complex coda and sonority olarewaju, sunday 151 tableau 1 above presents the analysis for the production of /ʤᴧmp/ with respect to the emergence of the optimal candidate for the majority of the participants. the constraints involved in the analysis are *complex-coda, *max, onset, and nocoda. the grammar showed a preference for nonclusters over clusters. and this is essentially the same in levelt, schiller, and levelt’s (2000) study. the participants also simplified the word using both deletion and substitution. there is actually no correlation between the output form and the input form. the constituents are entirely replaced with other sounds. candidate (i) and candidate (ii) are similar except for difference in the vowel used. they violate the highest ranked constraints, thus incurring a fatal violation for each of the constraints. however, they both obey onset and nocoda. candidate (iii), which is the optimal candidate, obeys the two highly ranked constraints and violates the two constraints that are lowly ranked. the voiced palato-alveolar affricate /ʤ/ in the onset position and the open central neutral vowel /ᴧ/ are replaced with the halfopen front spread vowel /ɛ/ with the features [+ vocalic, + sonorant, consonantal], while the bilabial nasal /m/, with features [-continuant, + sonorant], and the voiceless bilabial plosive /p/, with features [+obstruent, continuant, +consonantal, -voice], that made up the /-mp/ cluster were replaced with the voiceless palatal-alveolar fricative /ʃ/ with features [+ continuant, -sonorant]. the production shows the constraint ranking as: *complex-coda >> *max >> {onset >> nocoda}. below is the praat image of /ɛʃ/: figure 3. praat image of jump this praat image shows the frequency and intensity values for jump as pronounced by a year, seven months old subject which is a representation of the production of the subjects in groups 1, 2, and partly 3. this monosyllabic word has an intensity value of 67.1 db and a frequency of 190.8 hz. the values are given to guide in the interpretation of the spectrogram. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 144-161, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 152 3.3. analysis of ‘translation’ • • • • • • • • • • /t r æ n z. l ei. ʃ ə n/ figure 4. sonority scale of translation the scale is a graphical representation of the level of sonority of each of the speech sounds that make up the syllables in translation. the sonority scale reveals that /t/ is less sonorous than /r/, which is less sonorous than /æ/, which is more sonorous than /n/ and /z/. in the second syllable, /l/ is less sonorous than /ei/. in the third syllable, /ʃ/ is less sonorous than /ə/, which is more sonorous than /n/. it can be deduced that plosives and fricatives are lowly ranked on the sonority hierarchy, nasals are ranked higher than plosives and fricatives, while glides and vowels are highly ranked. the first syllable in the word translation has the ccvcc structure. in the production of translation, five (50%) participants realised it as [tʰӕleɪʃən], one (10%) participant pronounced it as [tʰӕnleɪʃən] and four (40%) participants produced it as [tʰrӕnzleɪʃən]. tableau 2 the emergence of /thæ.lei. ʃən / input /trænz.lei. ʃən/ → output /thæ.lei. ʃən / /trænz.lei. ʃən/ *complex ons et *complexcoda nocod a max ☞ (i) thæ.lei. ʃən * * (ii) trænz.lei. ʃən *! *! ** constraint ranking: *complex-onset >> *complex-coda >> nocoda >> max optimal candidate: /thæ.lei. ʃən / tableau 2 above shows the constraint ranking for the production of translation by the majority of the participants. particular focus is on the first syllable, which has a complex coda. the constraints involved are *complex-onset, *complex-coda, nocoda, and max. they are hierarchically ranked as: *complex-onset >> *complex-coda >> nocoda >> max. acquisition of complex coda and sonority olarewaju, sunday 153 these participants prefer unmarked structure in the onset position. candidate (i) violates highly ranked constraints: *complex-onset and *complex-coda. the former forbids clusters in the onset, while the former bans clusters from appearing in the coda position. the first syllable in translation has an initial ccvcc structure which is simplified in the optimal output form to a cv structure. in onset position, the voiced alveolar trill /r/ is deleted, while the voiceless alveolar stop, which is the least sonorous of the pair, is retained. similarly, the alveolar nasal /n/, with features [continuant, +sonorant], and the voiced alveolar fricative /z/, with features [+ continuant, -sonorant, +voice], were deleted in coda position. candidate (i) emerged as the optimal candidate despite its violation of nocoda and max. candidate (ii) fatally violates highly ranked constraints *complex-onset and *complex-coda. consequently, it is outright eliminated from further evaluations. figure 5. the spectrogram of translation this image above is a spectrogram of translation as produced by a participant in group 1 and it is a representation of most of the children’s rendition of the word. 3.4. analysis of ‘front’ front is phonemically represented as /frᴧnt/ and it is graphically represented on the sonority scale as: • • • • • /f r ᴧ n t/ figure 6. sonority scale of front journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 144-161, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 154 the sonority scale shows that /f/ is less sonorous than /r/, which is less sonorous than /ᴧ /. while /n/ is less sonorous than /ᴧ/, it is more sonorous than /t/. /ᴧ/ has the highest degree of sonority. four (40%) out of the children used for this research pronounced front as [thͻt], while another two (20%) pronounced it as [frͻt] and others (40%), who were older, with almost adult proficiency, pronounced it as [frͻnt]. those who pronounced it as [thͻt] were between ages of 1 years, 7 months and 2 years, 3 months at the time of data. those who pronounced the word as [thͻt] reduced the entire syllable into something different from the input, thereby reducing it from its original ccvcc structure to a cvc type. the syllable was replaced with new sounds at onset and coda. for the complex coda [-nt], the voiceless alveolar stop /t/, with features [+obstruent, +consonantal, sonorant], which is the less sonorous sound, is retained while the alveolar nasal /n/, with features [-obstruent, +consonantal, +sonorant, +continuant, +nasal], is deleted. the ot account of front is shown below: tableau 3 the emergence of [thͻt] input / frᴧnt / → output [thͻt] / frᴧnt / *complexonset *complexcoda onset nocoda max ☞ (i) thͻt * ** (ii) frᴧnt *! *! * (iii) frͻnt *! *! * * constraint ranking: *complex-onset >> *complex-coda >>onset>> nocoda >> max optimal candidate: [thͻt] tableau 3 above presents the constraint ranking for the emergence of [thͻt] as the optimal candidate. the constraints involved are *complex-onset, *complex-coda, onset, nocoda, and max. the subjects, in simplifying the coda cluster /-nt/, deleted the sound with high sonority /n/ while retaining the one that is less sonorous /t/. this nasal-stop cluster obeys the sonority condition which prescribes that the first consonant in a complex coda must be less sonorous than the second. the grammar of the children in these age groups (1; 7 2; 3) selects the sound that is least sonorous in a cluster situation at coda position. this phenomenon is observed in the works of levelt et al. (2000) and kappa (2002). the subjects’ preferred means of satisfying *complex-coda is through deletion. in the bid to obey *complex-coda, the production is unfaithful to the input form and, as such, violates max. any attempt by the subjects to preserve both consonants at the coda position will result in the violation of the highest ranked constraint *complex-coda, which will lead to the disqualification of the candidate. this is the case with candidates (ii) and (iii). by violating *complex-coda, candidates (ii) and (iii) are knocked out of the competition. candidate (i) emerges as the optimal candidate, having obeyed acquisition of complex coda and sonority olarewaju, sunday 155 the highest ranked constraint, but violates constraints *nocoda, onset, and max. figure 7. praat image of front the waveform illustrates the production of front as enunciated by one of the subjects and it represents the production of the majority of the participants, especially those in groups 1, 2, and 3. 3.5. analysis of ‘branch’ this is the phonemic representation of /brɑːnʧ/ and it is graphically represented on the sonority scale as: • • • • • /b r ɑ: n ʧ/ figure 8. sonority scale of branch the sonority scale shows that /b/ is less sonorous than /r/, which is less sonorous than /ɑ:/. while /n/ is less sonorous than /ɑ:/, it is more sonorous than /ʧ/. in the rendition of branch, two of the groups (40%) pronounced it as [th:t], while the production of the word by those in the third group (20%) was not clear, thus could not be presented. the other two groups (40%) pronounced it as [brɑ:nʧ] because they can be said to have attained adult-like use of the language. those who pronounced it as [thɑ:t] reduced the entire syllable into something different from the input form, thereby reducing it from its original journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 144-161, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 156 ccvcc structure to a cvc type. they simplified the structure through deletion and substitution. for the complex coda [-nʧ], the alveolar nasal /n/ with features [+consonantal, +sonorant, +nasal], which is the more sonorous sound, is deleted, while the post-alveolar affricate /ʧ/, with features [+obstruent, +consonantal, -continuant, +coronal, -voice], is deleted and replaced with /t/, with features [+obstruent, +consonantal, -voice]. the subjects’ grammar shows a preference for less sonorous sounds over sounds that are highly sonorous. the ot account of branch is shown below: tableau 4 the emergence of [thɑ:t] input /brɑ:nʧ/ → output [thɑ:t] /brɑ:nʧ/ *complexcoda *complexonset onset nocoda max ☞ (i) thɑ:t * ** (ii) brɑ:nʧ *! *! * constraint ranking: *complexcoda >> *complex-onset >>onset>> nocoda >> max optimal candidate: [thɑ:t] tableau 4 above shows how [thɑ:t] emerged as the optimal candidate. the constraints involved are *complex-coda, *complex-onset, onset, nocoda, and max. in order to simplify the cluster /-nʧ/, the alveolar nasal /n/, with features [+consonantal, +sonorant, +continuant, +nasal], and the voiceless post-alveolar affricate /ʧ/, with features [+obstruent, +consonantal, -sonorant, -continuant, +coronal, -voice], were deleted and replaced with a less sonorous sound /t/, with features [+obstruent, continuant, -voice]. this is in accordance with the sonority condition, which states that the first consonant in a complex coda must be less sonorous than the second. in the bid to obey *complex-coda, the subjects’ output is unfaithful to the input form, thereby violating max. figure 9. praat image of branch acquisition of complex coda and sonority olarewaju, sunday 157 the image in figure 9 is a waveform of branch as produced by the subjects in group 1 and group 2, which is a reflection of the children’s speech production. 3.6. analysis of ‘socks’ the phonemic representation of socks is /sͻks/; it is graphically illustrated on the sonority scale as: figure 10. sonority scale of socks the sonority scale shows the sonority hierarchy of each sound that make up the word. going by the graphical representation above, the voiceless alveolar fricative /s/ is less sonorous than /ͻ/, which is often described as open back rounded vowel. the voiceless velar stop /k/ is lowly ranked on the sonority scale. socks was pronounced as [thͻk] rather than /sͻks/. the participants who pronounced it as [thͻk] simplified the word by deleting one of the sounds that make up the cluster at coda [-ks]. the voiceless velar stop /k/, with features [+obstruent, +consonantal, -sonorant, -voice], which is the less sonorous sound of the two, is retained, while the voiceless alveolar fricative /s/, with features [+consonantal, -sonorant, +continuant, -voice], is deleted and replaced with /t/, which has features [+obstruent, +consonantal, -sonorant, -voice]. the subject’s grammar shows a preference for less sonorous sounds over highly sonorous sounds. the ot account of socks is shown below: journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 144-161, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 158 tableau 5 the emergence of [thͻk] input /sͻks/ → output [thͻk] /sͻks/ *complexcoda *complexonset onset nocoda max (i) sͻks/ *! * ☞ (ii) thͻk * ** constraint ranking: *complexcoda>>*complex-onset>>onset>> nocoda >> max optimal candidate: [thͻk] as seen in tableau 5, candidate (i) violates the highest ranked constraint, thereby incurring a fatal violation. conversely, candidate (ii) violates two lowly ranked constraints, nocoda and max, but did not violate the highly ranked constraints. however, in spite of the violation of two constraints, candidate (ii) emerges as the optimal candidate. in the bid to simplify the coda cluster /-ks/, the voiceless velar stop /k/, with features [+obstruent, +consonantal, -sonorant, -voice], was retained, while the voiceless alveolar fricative /s/, with features [+consonantal, +continuant, -voice], was deleted. this is in tandem with salami’s (2004) study that establishes the fact that children employ different phonological processes, such as deletion, to reduce existing structures into their preferred structures. in the bid to obey *complex-coda, the subject’s output is unfaithful to the input form, thereby violating max. below is the spectrograph of socks: figure 11. praat image of socks acquisition of complex coda and sonority olarewaju, sunday 159 the waveform indicates that each segment is produced with a different degree of prominence with the nucleus of the syllable having the highest degree of prominence. 4. conclusion this paper examined the production of consonant clusters at the coda position in relation to sonority by yoruba-english bilingual nigerian children. the analysis revealed that the grammar of the children is quite different from that of adults, in that it does not permit complex stringing of consonants at the coda position. the children showed a preference for single consonants at the coda. this choice is made based on the levels of sonority of the sounds. the children constantly violated *complex-coda, which forbids the existence of more than one consonant at the coda (kager, 1999), and sometimes violated nocoda. they were able to do this through constraint re-ranking. the subjects also showed a preference for less sonorous consonants over highly sonorous ones. the observed pattern changes as the children mature physiologically. however, some differences may occur as a result of other factors, like speech deficiency, interference and lack of exposure to novel words in english. the findings of this study have implications for early childhood education, as they reveal the kinds of words that are suitable for teaching bilingual children, the findings could also assist speech therapists in designing rehabilitation materials suitable for addressing speech disorders that affect consonant clusters. references abiodun, m. 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(2008). an introduction to the phonetics and phonology of english. 2nd edition. owerri: alphabet nigeria publishers. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 71-85, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 71 processing and acquisition of coreference: an investigation on binding principles development in brazilian portuguese josé ferrari-neto1 federal university of paraíba ruth elisabeth vasconcellos lopes2 university of campinas/cnpq abstract this article discusses the processing and acquisition of coreference by monolingual children acquiring brazilian portuguese (henceforth bp). more specifically, it is about the development of the coreferential relations established in the scope of the sentence, which are ruled by the principles defined by the binding theory. by using a version of the cross-modal picture decision task, we investigated how children acquiring bp process the input, in order to identify the coreferential relations present in the sentences and what role the binding principles play in this process. the results showed that binding principles pose different processing costs, and they also revealed a main effect of age, with adults being faster than children... to sum up, the results of this study showed that, as expected, both children and adults know the binding principles, however, the cost of processing them effectively increases with age. the results also revealed that each binding principles poses different processing demands, as reflected in the reaction times shown in our results. keywords: binding principles, coreference, language acquisition, brazilian portuguese, language processing 1. introduction coreference is the phenomenon in which two linguistic elements refer to each other within a sentence and both refer to the same being in the extralinguistic universe. within the generative framework, the study of coreferential relations, especially anaphoric ones, has been the object of study by a specific module, the binding theory (chomsky, 1981). it has sought, basically, to determine the syntactic factors that rule the establishment of coreferential relations, through the formulation of formal principles concerning each type of resumption considered by the theory, namely, anaphors, pronouns and referential expressions. 1bio: associate professor i of linguistics and portuguese language, and researcher in the laboratory of linguistic processing (laprol), today carrying out studies in the fields of language acquisition and language processing. the present paper was made possible with the support of the brazilian national research council (cnpq). corresponding author: joseferrarin1974@gmail.com 2bio: associate professor ii of linguistics, and researcher in the fields of the acquisition of syntax and the semantic-syntax interfaces mainly on brazilian portuguese. received : 09.09.2020 accepted : 16.11.2020 published : 30.12.2020 mailto:joseferrarin1974@gmail.com binding principles development in brazilian portuguese ferrari-neto, vasconcellos lopes 72 in general lines, binding poses three different principles, each related to one specific kind of proform: principle a, which concerns with the constraints on the reference of anaphors, such as reflexives and reciprocals, principle b, which defines constraints on pronouns, and principle c, which defines constraints on other referring expressions. the following sentences can be seen as examples of each proposed principle: (1) james thinks that george likes himself. (2) james thinks that george likes him. (3) james thinks that george hates paul. a brief description of these three principles is shown below: principle a: an anaphor must be bound in its domain. principle b: a pronoun must be free in its domain. principle c. a r-expression must be free in any domain. in (1), principle a allows george, but not james, to be an antecedent for the reflexive anaphor himself. on the other hand, in the sentence (2), principle b allows james but not george to be the antecedent of the pronominal him. principle c is related to the reference of nouns like paul in the sentence (3), which are called r-expressions. as sturt (2003) says, and applying the principles above, the explanations for the contrasts among these sentences is purely syntactic: the noun george and the anaphor himself are in the same local domain (in this case, a clause), and, in according to binding theory, the noun george is c-commanding himself, since it is placed in a position of syntactic prominence in relation to the himself, and c-command is enough to establish a syntactic domain be bound. in your turn, james and the pronoun him are not in the same syntactic domain (because they are in different clauses), so, james is not c-commanding him, leaving the pronoun free in its domain. then, principle a allows the reflexive anaphor himself to refer to george, but not to james, and the principle b allows him to refer to james, but not to george. it must be said that such principles are relevant to the functioning of these forms of resumption only when inserted in a sentencing context, not going beyond the limits of the sentence. this fact implies that the binding principles apply to cases of intrasentential correspondence, but do not apply to cases in which the correspondence is established beyond the sentence, at the level of the text / speech. regarding the acquisition of the binding principles, studies have focused, more often than not, on the characterization of the child mastery of the binding principles defined within the scope of generative linguistic theory (chien & wexler, 1990; mckee, 1992, with data from english, grolla, 2012, bertolino & grolla, 2012, with data from bp), as well as in the domain of the coreferential and anaphoric use of pronouns and reflexives (grodzinsky & reinhart, 1993). however, there are studies in which it was attempted to determine at what stage of children's linguistic development the binding principles would emerge (mustafawi & mahfoudhi, 2002; kiguchi & thornton, 2004; kim & you, 2000), as well as discussing whether this journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 71-85, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 73 acquisition would have a universal shape among human languages (iglesias, 2007). other studies aim to investigate possible extralinguistic factors that could influence the linguistic processing of children involved in the acquisition of principles, such as the context of enunciation and knowledge of the world (gordon & hendricks,1997). the study of the acquisition of the binding principles has proved to be of great importance not only for the increment of the research on binding itself, but also for the empirical evidence brought about that supports the propositions of the formal model in which they are inserted. indeed, since these principles are considered innate, within the framework of the language model suggested by the generative linguistic theory, it is expected that the restrictions of referential interpretation imposed by them will be operative from the initial stages of linguistic development, with the child mastering them as soon as exposed to the sentences in which they appear (guasti, 2002, thornton & wexler, 1999). furthermore, some others studies have addressed some factors that must be taken into account when knowledge of innate principles are considered, such as lexical learning (wexler & manzini, 1987), maturation of grammar (grimshaw & rosen, 1990) and the role of non-specific components, as working memory (araújo & ferrari-neto, 2020). thus, the investigation regarding the acquisition of binding principles seems to be fundamental to the so-called innate hypothesis on which the theoretical generative model has been based. studies in this field have shown that, crosslinguistically, children seem to master the principles around 3 to 4 years of age (guasti, 2002). such studies have focused, in most cases, on the interpretation given by children to pronouns, anaphors and referential expressions, using offline experimental paradigms. the evidence obtained in such studies suggests that the mistakes made by children in this age group in tasks of interpreting coreferential forms (proforms) are not due to the unavailability of the principles at a given moment in the acquisition process, but probably to difficulties in experimental procedures. with regard to the acquisition of each principle, specifically, some interesting results can be reported. chien & wexler (1990), researching the acquisition of principle a, claim that children acquiring english demonstrated knowledge of this principle at around 5 years of age. mckee (1992) found that children had acquired principle a around 3 years of age. regarding principle b, the studies by chien & wexler (1990) and mckee (1992) showed that this principle is acquired later than principle a (so called principle b delay effect), which shows a certain difficulty for children acquiring english in processing reflexive elements. the acquisition of binding principles in bp has also been presented in a series of papers (grolla, 2009; grolla, 2012, bertolino & grolla, 2012). in these studies, it was evidenced that children around 4 years of age show knowledge of principle c, recognizing the sentences in which there is a violation of this principle (grolla, 2009). in addition, children acquiring bp seem to have difficulties in establishing the correct referent of reflexive expressions, like himself (grolla, 2012) and that children around 6 years of binding principles development in brazilian portuguese ferrari-neto, vasconcellos lopes 74 age, who speak bp, presented a performance similar to that of bp adult speakers (bertolino & grolla, 2012). the common feature of all these studies is the fact that they used offline methodologies, focusing, especially, on the infantile use of the binding principles in the interpretation of the correct antecedent of pronouns, anaphors and referential expressions. this particular manner to look at the problem of acquisition of binding principles is related to child’s capacity to use grammatical knowledge in the process of identification of the correct antecedents of pronouns and anaphors as well as the recognition of possible violations. in other words, this view is concerned to binding, here considered as the establishment of a link between the referring expression and one or more possible antecedents (sturt, 2003). although it is possible to extract from them a very well delineated picture in which the linguistic development related to coreference can be seen, especially with regard to the mastery of binding principles and the recognition of their violations, some questions seem to need further elaboration. it seems to be necessary to investigate the process of resolution, defined as the stage in which the link made in the binding process is evaluated, recomputed and integrated into the semantic interpretation, as well as the factors that can be related to this process (sturt, 2003). specifically, some of these factors may be the (probable) relation between the development of working memory, which is fundamental for maintaining possible antecedents in memory and later recovery, is not considered. the role of contextual and semantic information in the processing is considered only tangentially, which prevents them from being isolated from the performance of the principles and from being analyzed as possible resources that the child in the early acquisition stage uses to establish the correct coreferentiality. still, given that each form, whether pronoun or anaphor, or even referential expressions, has its semantic, contextual and even structural specificities, carrying information of different natures, it is reasonable to assume that they make specific demands on processing systems, which can entail different procedural costs, which, in turn, would be reflected in the way and order in which they are processed and acquired. finally, the type of information that is presented to the child in the input, and from which the child recognizes both a certain proform and the principle linked to it, and becomes able to establish the correspondence, is neither clear nor determined. in short, the acquisition of principles has been studied so far, notably with regard to its maturation, and not in its relation with the processing systems that support them. the present article can be considered as a first attempt to address these questions and understand them better. here, it is considered that the task of the child when it comes to acquire coreference is, at the first moment, to identify the nouns that represent external entities as possible antecedents, and store them in working memory. previous works do not deal with this question directly, since their focus is the identification of antecedents at the moment the retrieval is recognized. secondly, the child must recognize proforms and classify them into anaphor or pronoun, identifying its grammatical properties. for this, the ability to process the linguistic primary input to which the child is exposed is required, alongside the development journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 71-85, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 75 and maturation of the binding principles. so far, the process deals with the grammatical knowledge required, its development and use in the processing of coreferential relations present in sentences in a certain language (in our case, bp). but, in a broader psycholinguistic approach, some additional steps should be taken into account. under this view, a child must establish the coreferential relations with the nouns stored in the working memory by applying the correct binding principle, which is supposed to be linked with the development of the working memory capacity, as the child develops and the maturation of the working memory is complete. eventually, the use of other kind of information (semantic, pragmatic) in order to determine the correct antecedent of a proform can occur in this process. by using the experimental methodology described below, it is believed that these issues can be addressed. an experimental factor, type of binding principle, has been controlled, since each principle is represented by a specific kind of retrieval, based on the hypothesis that the binding principles pose different processing demands for their identification, with main effects of type of principle being expected. in addition, subjects already know principles a and b, despite of principle b showing a delay, when compared to principle a in tasks of interpretation of the correct antecedent (principle b delay chien and wexler, 1990, among others). assuming this hypothesis, a main effect of matching can be expected, with the matching conditions being faster than the mismatching conditions. such a scenario can be taken as an evidence of the subjects’ intuition of the grammaticality of the sentences. last, results can indicate that the knowledge of the binding principles increases with age, since it is part of the development of the linguistic competence (see sekerina et al., 2004), as well as it can suggest distinct stages of working memory’s maturation. a main effect of group can be expected with the adults being faster than children in both age ranges analyzed, and with the older children being faster than the younger ones. 2. methodology this study uses a modified version of the cross-modal picture decision task experimental paradigm (mckee et al., 1993), in a version adapted for brazilian portuguese. it consists of the presentation of auditory stimuli (in this case, sentences previously recorded) and, in a certain point of the stimuli, a word or a picture is shown on a screen. the subjects are asked to decide about the word or picture that they were exposed to, such as, for instance, whether the word or picture they were exposed to represents an animate or inanimate entity. the point in which the visual stimuli are shown is considered the critical point and, in the case of coreference or binding processing, it marks the position of the proforms in the sentence. the basic idea here is that the reaction times are differently affected by the kind of proform, so that the response times for the different proforms can be taken as a reliable measure of their processing cost. binding principles development in brazilian portuguese ferrari-neto, vasconcellos lopes 76 so, this paradigm is based on the priming effect3, which has been used in many psycholinguistic experiments in order to reveal some aspects of sentence processing, as well as some important issues about lexical processing. regarding coreference and binding principles, some studies using priming effects have revealed differences in response times in sentence processing tasks involving different kinds of proforms (fodor, 1988; nicol and swinney, 1989; mckee et al.,1993), thus suggesting the reliability of priming. last, but not least, experimental paradigms based on priming effects can be used to build on-line studies, since the responses are collected at the exact moment of the presentation of the stimuli, then increasing the reliability of the registered measures. in the case of the present study, this means that the processing cost of the proforms analyzed here will be measured in a very precise way. 2.1. experimental design the experiment has two independent variables: type of binding principle and matching between the picture and the antecedent of the proform. the former contains three levels: principle a1 (represented by the bp anaphora se), principle b (represented by the personal pronouns ele(a) (he/she), and the principle a2 (represented by another type of reflexive anaphora existing in bp, ele(a) mesmo(a) (he/she himself/herself). the latter has three conditions as well: matching, mismatching and control. in the matching condition, the picture that appears on the screen is related to the antecedent correctly licensed by the correspondent principle, i.e., in the principle a condition, the picture is related to the closest np, whereas in the principle b condition, the picture is related to the furthest np. in the mismatching condition, the opposite occurs: the picture is related to the antecedent not licensed by the correspondent principle. thus, in the principle a condition, the picture is related to the furthest np, whereas in the principle b condition, the picture is related to the closest np. in the control conditions the picture is not related neither to the furthest np, nor the closest np, but something not present in the sentence. these variables were crossed in a 3 x 3 factorial design, with 9 experimental conditions overall. a group factor (age of subjects) was included, and it has three levels too: 5-7 years old, 8-10 years old4, and adults, thus forming a withinsubjects design, as can be seen in table 1 below: 3 priming is an effect in which the previous exposure to a stimulus affects the processing of a subsequent stimulus. for example, the word nurse is recognized faster following the word doctor than following the word milk. in general, in studies that explore this effect in experimental paradigms, the stimuli are the same kind (a pair of writing words, or a pair of sounds, for example). in the cross-modal priming tasks, the stimuli are not the same kind – in our case, we used pictures and recorded sentences. 4 the choice of this age range was due to the fact that grolla (2012) shows that the bp anaphor “ele mesmo” is harder for brazilian children up to 6 years of age. besides, according to gathercole (2003), the development of working memory shows qualitative changes from infancy until around 7 years of age, when its function is more adult‐like in organization and capacities, but showing a gradual quantitative increasing. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 71-85, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 77 table 1 the list of stimuli groups (by age) conditions 5-7 years old principle a1 (matching and mismatching) principle b (matching and mismatching) principle a2 (matching and mismatching) 8-10 years old principle a1 (matching and mismatching) principle b (matching and mismatching) principle a2 (matching and mismatching) adults principle a1 (matching and mismatching) principle b (matching and mismatching) principle a2 (matching and mismatching) a yes-no control question was included at the end of each experimental sentence, in order to verify if the subjects paid attention to the task. reaction times for the appearance of the picture consist of the dependent variable. 2.2. experimental conditions examples of each experimental condition can be found below. the word in brackets indicates the picture that is shown, as well as the point of the sentence in which the picture appears: principle a1 matching a professora falou que a aluna de olhos azuis se [aluna] penteou na aula. a aluna se penteou? “the teacher said that the student with blue eyes brushed herself [student] during class. did the student brush herself?” principle a1 mismatching o policial avisou que o menino de cabelo longo se [policial] pintou na escola. o menino se pintou? “the policeman said that the boy with long hair had painted himself [policeman]. did the boy paint himself?” principle a1 control a bailarina percebeu que a menina de vestido verde se [mulher] feriu na cozinha. a menina se feriu? “the dancer realized that the girl in the green dress hurt herself [woman] in the kitchen. did the girl hurt herself?” principle b matching a borboleta contou que a galinha de bico afiado arranhou ela [borboleta] na fazenda. a galinha se arranhou? binding principles development in brazilian portuguese ferrari-neto, vasconcellos lopes 78 “the butterfly said that the sharp beaked chicken scratched it [butterfly] in the farm. did the chicken scratched itself?” principle b mismatching a dançarina contou que a formiga com boca grande mordeu ela [formiga] na perna. a formiga se mordeu? “the dancer said that the ant with a large mouth bit her [ant] in the leg. did the ant bit itself?” principle b control a mulher percebeu que a barata de asas escuras sujou ela [abelha] em casa. a barata se sujou ? “the woman realized that the dark winged cockroach messed her [bee] up at home. did the cockroach mess itself up?” principle a2 matching o leão contou que o urso de pelo marrom assustou ele mesmo [cobra] no mato. o urso se assustou? “the lion said that the brown haired bear scared itself [snake] in the bush. did the bear scare itself?” principle a2 mismatching a vovó percebeu que a filha de cabelo louro beijou ela mesma [vovó] em casa. a filha se beijou? “grandma realized that her blonde haired daughter kissed herself [grandma] at home. did her daughter kiss herself?” principle a2 control o papai disse que o homem de braço forte cortou ele mesmo [menino] no trabalho. o homem se cortou? “dad said that the strong man cut himself [boy] during work. did the man cut himself?” 2.3. materials nine lists of stimuli were used, as seen in table 1 above. the stimuli were recorded using a female volunteer, through the specialized software audacity, version 2.0, and equalized and adjusted in volume, pitch, tone and level of noise. each list had 6 experimental sentences, two per condition, and these sentences were all built following the structure [np1[vp that [np2...], with the proform always placed in the second clause of the sentence. all the np´s were controlled in frequency and familiarity through a familiarity test which subjects were submitted to, in order to avoid possible effects of unfamiliarity that could have caused delay in response times. between the second np and the second verb, the experimental sentences had a pp modifying np, placed there to separate away the np from the proform, thus avoiding effects of recency. besides that, a pp was added at the end of the experimental sentences, so that subjects could continue to process the sentence normally even after they had seen the picture. both the gender of nps and of the proforms that agree with them were counterbalanced. in addition to experimental sentences, 20 fillers sentences were included in each list as distractors. among these fillers, there were 7 sentences, so called pseudo-experimental, which were similar in structure to experimental sentences. in addition, 13 filler sentences were included, whose structure were quite different from the experimental ones. this procedure was required journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 71-85, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 79 in order to avoid possible sentence structure effects, which could reflect in a strict correlation between sentence type and response type (cf. mckee et al, 1993). all the pictures used were controlled in size and type. the experiment was build using the software paradigm, version 2.5, in a notebook computer hp pavillion x360. 2.4. participants children of two age ranges will be analyzed: 5-7 years old and 8-10 years old. a group of adults will also be analyzed. these three groups will be divided into three other subgroups. each subgroup will have 10 subjects at least, totalizing 90 subjects. all the children were selected in schools in the cities of joão pessoa/pb and campinas/sp, and adults, ranging from 18 to 40 years old, were selected among undergraduate students of the federal university of paraíba and university of campinas, both located in brazil. 2.5. data collection subjects were first submitted to a pre-test, in order to verify whether the nouns used in the experiment were familiar to them. this pre-test consisted of the presentation of the pictures in the computer screen. for each picture, subjects were asked to point out if the picture was familiar or not, through pressing the correspondent key on the keyboard (previously selected). the list was composed of 80 words, among which 24 proved more familiar and were chosen to build the experimental sentences. secondly, subjects were submitted to a test that consisted of pointing whether the pictures represented an inanimate or an animate being. the pictures used here were the same used in the experiment, so that the possibility to commit errors in the task was decreased. in the experiment properly, subjects seated in front of the computer and with the hands on the keyboard, were submitted first to a training session, in order to correctly learn the task. the task consisted of pressing either the yellow key every time the picture represented an animate being, or the green key, otherwise. after that, they listened to the sentences one by one, pressing the correspondent key (yellow key in the case of “yes” response, or green key, in the case of “no” response.). the computer collected and stored all the given responses, as well as their respective times. the training session was formed by six sentences, 2 using the pronoun ele(a), 2 using the reflexive anaphor se, and 2 using the reflexive anaphor “ele(a) mesmo(a)”. 3 sentences required a “yes” response, and 3 required a “no” response. the experimental session was composed of 26 sentences, with all the 6 experimental sentences requiring a “yes” response plus 7 pseudoexperimental filler sentences that required “no” responses, and 13 filler sentences that required either “no” responses (7 sentences) or “yes” responses (6 sentences), as to counterbalance the number of responses of each type. the complete session, including the animate-inanimate pre-test, the training session and the experimental session lasted around 20 minutes. 3. findings data was submitted to a normality test (shapiro-wilk test), in order to check their normal distribution. since this distribution was found in the data, a binding principles development in brazilian portuguese ferrari-neto, vasconcellos lopes 80 parametric test was chosen to be applied to them. an analysis of variance with three factors (three-way anova), factorial design 3 (type of principle) x 3 (age) x 2 (matching) was carried out. the results revealed a main effect of type of principle (f(17, 1063) = 26,18, p<0.05). a 2x2 comparison test (tukey test) was also carried out, in order to reveal differences among the levels of this experimental factor, according to the figure 1 and table 2 below: figure 1 a 2x2 comparison test (tukey test) table 2 2x2 comparisons (tukey test) factor means p.value a1 349,7 0,142883608 a2 334,3 1,18446e-09* b 296,2 2,55765e-05* the results showed that principle b was processed faster than both principle a1 and a2, which is in accordance with the predictions assumed here. besides, principle a2 was faster than principle a1, as expected. in addition, the anova also revealed a main effect of age (f(17, 1063) = 96,10, p<0.05), with adults being faster than children, thus confirming the second prediction, according to the following figure 2 and table 3. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 71-85, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 81 figure 2 reaction times based on the age of the participants table 3 2 x 2 comparisons tukey test factors means p.value 5-7 years old 362,4 2,43051e-09* 8-10 years old 314,1 2,07565e-10* adults 257,6 6,74275e-10* no main effect of matching was found, but an interaction effect between principle and matching was found (f(17, 1063) = 9,18, p<0.05). the match conditions made the processing of principle b faster than principle a1, and the mismatch conditions made the processing of principle a1 faster than principle b, as shown in the figure 3 below. figure 3 interactions principle x matching binding principles development in brazilian portuguese ferrari-neto, vasconcellos lopes 82 the significant difference observed in the reaction times in each binding principle goes in the direction of the hypothesis assumed here, that the principles impose different processing costs. principle b, which is related to full pronouns, presented a lower processing cost than principle a in the two reflexive forms studied here. at first glance, this seems to go in the opposite direction to what would be predicted by principle b delay effect. however, it is necessary to keep in mind that this effect is related to the identification of the correct antecedent of a pronoun, more than an investigation about its processing, which implies the reactivation of an antecedent in the working memory and its subsequent binding with the retrieval. analyzed from this perspective, it is possible to say that pronouns, at least in bp, activate an antecedent stored in working memory more easily than a reflexive anaphor, despite being able to establish relations that are not always local. a possible explanation for this effect may be the fact that the pronouns refer back to the name located in the subject position of the main clause, a more prominent topic position. in addition, the fact that it was mentioned first may contribute to make the antecedent of the pronoun more active in working memory, within what is known as the primacy effect (baddeley, 1986). these two factors act to facilitate the action of principle b in the search and recovery of its possible antecedents at the time the pronoun is processed. principle a, even establishing more local relations (which is to say that the retrieval is closer to its antecedent), causes greater difficulty in reactivating its antecedent when compared with the antecedents licensed by principle b, which delays its processing in the sentences used in this experiment, probably due to the fact of the antecedent of the anaphor is placed in a less prominent topical position. to summarize, the action of the binding principles seems to be affected not only by factors of syntactic configuration, but also by effects related to the working memory, especially with regard to the way the stored antecedents are activated and retrieved when pronouns and anaphors are processed. the differences observed with regard to the analyzed ages are consistent with the natural course of linguistic development and maturation of working memory. adults have shorter processing times due to their full acquisition process as well as the maturation of their working memory. the same can be said of children in the intermediate age group, who are faster in response times than younger children. the age effect observed here, therefore, goes against what is proposed by the hypothesis assumed here, that there is a progressive maturation of the grammar being acquired, in addition to the working memory5 that serves as a basis. the lack of a significant matching effect could cause some confusion, at first, that it could denote a precarious acquisition of the binding principles, or even that adults are not able to perceive violations of these principles. however, the observation of the interaction effects resulting from anova 5 to provide more evidence on this hypothesis, the use of some working memory test should be applied. initially, we thought about applying the standard memory span tests (digit span, word span). however, we realized that such tests focus on working memory only in terms of its capacity, which could not prove to be predictive of a more complete development of working memory. a more appropriate test would be the reading span test, like the one being developed by vasconcelos, almeida, estivalet and ferrari-neto (2019). journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 71-85, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 83 may provide a possible explanation. longer reaction times were recorded in condition a1, regardless of matching, possibly due to the fact that anaphors, as already seen, hinder the activation and retrieval of their antecedents in working memory, also causing greater difficulty in the perception of violations of principle a. in turn, shorter reaction times recorded in condition b seem to indicate a more accurate perception of the violations of principle b, since their activation and recovery in working memory are easier. then, the perception of violations when the antecedents are not so activated is more unlikely. with pronouns, since they activate their antecedents more strongly, the perception of violations is easier, which explains the shorter reaction times of condition b in the interaction with the matching condition. to sum up, the results of this study showed that, as expected, both children, as well as adults, know the binding principles, however, processing them effectively increases with age. the binding principles also pose different processing demands, as reflected in the reaction times shown in our results, and seems to be affected by factors related to working memory operation. 4. conclusions and discussion the study of the acquisition of anaphoric coreference, together with the acquisition of the binding principles, suggested by the generative linguistic theory, focuses on determining the correct antecedent of reflexive anaphors, as expected in a theory whose main goal is to model the grammatical knowledge possessed human speakers. however, more than that, it is also necessary to include in this modeling the use of that knowledge in the processing of language, as proposed by psycholinguistics theories. under this view, the study of processing and acquisition of binding principles must determine how the antecedents are kept in the working memory and retrieved from it, at the moment when a proform is recognized in the input, as well as it is necessary to verify how children during the acquisition process perceive linguistic elements which will enable them establishing coreferential relationships. according to ferrari-neto and marinho (2015), this type of information is undoubtedly very relevant to the knowledge of the acquisition process of this module of grammar, but there is also a need to verify the influence of other factors. thus, in this paper, we aimed to explore, through online methodology, the cost of processing of binding principles, providing some insights about how these principles are acquired and used in sentence processing. in addition, the working memory maturation factor was also investigated, by comparing different age groups. in general, the results obtained here allow us to claim that the linking principles are available early in children's grammar, in the direction of what grodzinsky and reinhart (1993) sustain. the differences observed in the processing times of principles a and b, here studied, suggest that they impose specific demands, at least with regard to the ages analyzed, which can be understood as evidence of the way they are perceived and processed by the child from the input to which they are submitted. binding principles development in brazilian portuguese ferrari-neto, vasconcellos lopes 84 references araújo, a. & ferrari-neto, j. 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(1985). the development of lexical anaphors and pronouns. papers and reports on child language development 24, 138149. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 3 306-320 issn: 2148-1997 306 pragmatic language difficulties in children with specific language impairment – a systematic review swapna narayanan1 all india institute of speech and hearing kavya vijayan2 all india institute of speech and hearing prashanth prabhu p.3 all india institute of speech and hearing mekhala v. g.4 all india institute of speech and hearing animesh barman5 all india institute of speech and hearing abstract specific language impairment (sli) is a developmental disorder wherein a child fails to acquire age-appropriate linguistic skills. the study attempted a systematic review of articles pertaining to pragmatics in children with sli in the last decade. a thorough search of the electronic databases yielded 666 articles, out of which 136 articles were shortlisted. among these, 14 articles were selected for full length screening based on predetermined criteria. the use of picos design for filtering the articles led to the selection of 2 articles. the results of the review revealed a dearth of studies in this area. the two selected articles explored the pragmatic components in the sli group in depth as against the typically developing peers. the studies highlighted the way in which children with sli react to pragmatically demanding situations by demonstrating deficits with turn taking, maintaining a topic, unusual content and use of language and difficulties with comprehending context. also attempts have been made to illustrate the pragmatic patterns within the sli group to identify children who exhibited disproportionate deficits in pragmatic language versus those who had no pragmatic difficulties. the comprehensive review draws attention to the need for speech-language pathologists to distinguish pragmatic deficits from generalized linguistic deficits in children with sli. the study also underlines the importance of identifying subgroups of children with sli. keywords specific language impairment, pragmatics, linguistic deficits, systematic review, communication disorder, pragmatic deficits 1 associate professor in speech pathology, all india institute of speech and hearing (aiish), mysore 570006, karnataka, india. email: nsn112002@yahoo.com. research interests – in the area of motor speech disorders, swallowing and dysphagia. 2,4 research associate, aiish, mysore. 3 assistant professor in audiology, aiish, mysore. 5 professor in audiology, aiish, mysore. corresponding author: kavya vijayan, research associate, department of audiology, aiish, mysore. email: kavya.vijayan@gmail.com received : 06.09.2021 accepted : 23.10.2021 published : 11.11.2021 systematic review of pragmatic deficits in sli narayanan et al. 307 1. introduction communication is one of the functions of language wherein the speaker attempts to convey the meaning behind his/her communicative intent. spoken language is one of the widest means of communication adapted by humans and innumerable linguistic variations have been made across centuries. pragmatics in the area of linguistic and communication sciences refers to the usage of contextual meaning in various conversational circumstances. it focuses on areas such as the use of language in social interaction, aspects of meaning not recoverable from linguistic expressions and connected discourse (leinonen, letts & smith, 2000). pragmatics deals with the process used by the speaker to cognize the intentions while dealing with various situations before expressing the thoughts. the listener then analyzes the intended meaning, investigates their purposes and explores the assumptions of actions with respect to the performance in front of the audience (siddiqui, 2018). a recent study by cordier, munro, wilkes-gillan et al. (2014) has described several observable communication behaviors associated with pragmatic language and these behaviors have been classified under five sections including introduction and responsiveness, non-verbal communication, socio-emotional attunement, executive function and negotiation. language disorders in children are one of the most frequent causes of difficulties in communication, social interaction, learning and academic achievement. one of the prominent language disorders seen in the pediatric population is specific language impairment (sli). sli is understood to be a disruption in language acquisition wherein a child does not acquire ageappropriate linguistic skills in spite of having normal hearing abilities and non-verbal intelligence and no associated sensory or neurological impairment (leonard, 2014; joanisse & seidenberg, 1998). the primary sign of sli is a delay in the acquisition of words or expressive language followed by a subsequent delay in the acquirement of syntax (rescorla & lee, 2000). a more recent term proposed is the ‘developmental language disorder’ (dld), which will be used by the upcoming international classification of diseases-11 (icd-11) classification in 2022 (bishop, 2017). the enforcement of this term dld is the result of years of international work led by bishop and her colleagues who have championed the development and use of this term (bishop, 2014; bishop, snowling, thompson & greenhalgh, 2017). this term includes all the diagnostic criteria of sli, but excludes using non-verbal ability as a diagnostic criterion, thereby allowing reflection of clinical realities. across the last few decades, various studies have focused on investigating the linguistic deficits and patterns in children with sli. earlier studies conducted on native speakers of english highlighted that grammatical morphology was the primary deficit for children with sli, but gradually over the years, light has been thrown on semantic, pragmatic and cognitivelinguistic discrepancies (bishop & donlan, 2010; osman, shohdi & aziz, 2011; tsimpli, peristeri & andreou, 2016). with advancement in research, it was noticed that children with sli had issues with pragmatic development which could be exhibited as problems with interactive communication. some of the initial attempts at investigating journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 3 306-320 issn: 2148-1997 308 the problems with respect to social interaction in this population were begun in the 1980s, wherein pragmatic features such as turn exchange behaviors and conversational management were compared with typically developing (td) children (fey & leonard, 1983; craig & evans, 1989). the studies revealed that most children with sli exhibited discourse regulation deficits with respect to interactive attention, degree and latency of responsiveness and length of turn-taking. in the following decade, detailed analyses were carried out examining the intricate relationship between semantic and pragmatic development in sli, which led to the conception of the term ‘semantic-pragmatic disorder’ (adams & bishop, 1989). theoretical linguistic models were applied to categorize the semantic and pragmatic behaviors, which led to highlighting deficits such as failure to understand literal meanings, volunteering too little information, usage of avoidance strategies and lexical simplification (mills, pulles & witten, 1992). craig and evans (1993) further explored the pragmatic abilities by subdividing the sli groups based on their language as expressive sli (e-sli) and combined expressive-receptive sli (e-r-sli) and revealed that the two groups differed on pragmatic skills such as turn-taking and cohesion. during this decade i.e., 1990’s, there was an attempt to delineate the various terminologies such as ‘pragmatic disability’ (mctear & conti-ramsden, 1992), ‘semantic-pragmatic difficulties’ (vance & wells, 1994), and the more widely investigated term, viz. ‘pragmatic language impairment’ (pli) (bishop, 1998). there has been a great deal of controversy regarding pli and the debate has centered over the question of whether it is a subtype of sli or a part of the autistic spectrum, or a separate condition. various authors have tried to differentiate between sli and pli (botting & conti-ramsden, 1999; bishop, 2000). the clinical criteria for pli enumerates that although the child speaks in fluent utterances with adequate articulation, he/she may be poor at turn-taking in conversation and have difficulties following rules for conversation. at the turn of the 21st century, there was a noteworthy escalation in studies investigating the pragmatic component of language in sli. researchers drew the focus to various interrelated aspects of language and behaviors such as social cognition, social self-esteem, behavioral discrepancies among others (conti-ramsden & botting, 2004; marton, abramoff & rosenzweig, 2005). the pragmatic difficulties observed in children with developmental language disorders such as sli was profiled and the role of pli was also compared with disorders which occur as part of the behavioral phenotype of organic syndromes such as autism spectrum disorders (asd) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd) (bishop, chan, adams, hartley & weir, 2000; reisinger, cornish & fombonne, 2011). it was concluded that a sub-group of children with sli could exist, who demonstrate primary pragmatic deficits and it is therefore essential to identify children with pli from the heterogeneous sli group. many of the studies relied on the children’s communication checklist (ccc) developed by bishop (1998) as there were no pre-defined standards or protocols to identify pli or to differentiate it from sli (botting & contiramsden, 2003; reisinger, cornish & fombonne, 2011). a more recent systematic review of pragmatic deficits in sli narayanan et al. 309 version of the same (ccc-2, bishop, 2003b) has been reported to identify children whose pragmatic abilities are not proportionate to their language abilities. the checklist consists of 9 subscales and derives a ‘pragmatic impairment score’. another noteworthy research trend during this period was the interest in a component of social-cognitive development i.e., theory of mind (tom), and the contribution of grammar and vocabulary measures to tom (miller, 2001; farrant, fletcher & mayberry, 2006). in the last decade various aspects such as behavioral, emotional and social aspects have been linked to pragmatics and expressive language (st.clair, pickles, durkin & conti-ramsden, 2011; helland & helland, 2017). in dsmv (american psychiatric association, 2013), the term social (pragmatic) communication disorder (spcd) was introduced, which is equivalent to pli. the diagnostic criteria for spcd are persistent difficulties in the social use of verbal and nonverbal communication, which include deficits in using communication for social purposes, impairment in the ability to change communication to match context, difficulties following rules for conversation and difficulties understanding non-literal meaning of language. preschoolers with language impairment are less likely than their peers to initiate topics and their conversational skills are restricted to acknowledgement of the communication partner’s utterance (kaderavak, 2015). as children with sli reach school-age, pragmatic difficulties could result in social communication problems (rice, 2016). older children with sli exhibit difficulties in entering into conversations and struggle to make conversational repairs. furthermore, children with sli demonstrate poor theory of mind which could affect social communication and social cognition (shyamala, tiwari, & krishnan, 2011). these linguistic problems in their preschool years signal the occurrence of failures later in academic, vocational and social areas and thereby make sli an insidious and lifelong disability. from the review it can be noted that a relatively limited body of research has been dedicated to describing and systematically documenting the pragmatic deficits and identifying clinical markers in children with sli as opposed to the other linguistic domains. the studies in the last few decades have mainly investigated the language patterns with emphasis on grammatical morphology and syntax, as it was considered to be the primary deficit. very few studies have attempted the comparison of verbal and non-verbal pragmatic aspects of young children with sli relative to the typically developing peers. therefore, there is a lacuna with respect to research in this particular domain of language in the sli group. studies also attempted to delineate the diagnostic features by comparing various neurodevelopmental disorders such as asd, adhd, sli and pli or spcd. there have been very few studies in the past dedicated specifically to investigating, identifying and profiling the pragmatic features in children with sli across age groups. detailed investigations in this area are crucial for effective, evidence-based interventions and will minimize the long-term effects of pragmatic language deficits. keeping the above mentioned aspects in view, it was planned to conduct a systematic review to highlight how pragmatics is often an overlooked component of language in this heterogeneous population. the review also hopes to encourage investigators to carry out research in this journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 3 306-320 issn: 2148-1997 310 domain in future by tapping the various components of pragmatics in the language impaired population. the aim of the study was to determine the extent to which the various components of pragmatics of language have been accurately studied, illustrated and profiled in children with sli in the recent times. the components of pragmatics such as communicative intentions and engagement, verbal and nonverbal rules of conversation were specifically looked into. 2. methodology 2.1. database searches and article selection to identify the articles relevant to the topic, electronic databases were searched and studies involving the investigation of pragmatics in children with sli were downloaded. the databases included pubmed which provides access to the medline database and google scholar which is a part of the google search engine and provides free access to a wide array of research material. various keywords and their combinations such as language impairment, pragmatics, pragmatic language impairment, social communication deficits, social interaction and specific language impairment were entered in the databases to obtain relevant articles. also pertinent back references from various articles were referred to for this purpose. in the google scholar database, search limit was provided for the publication date and the time frame of the research period was set to ‘custom range’ from 2010 to 2019, in order to obtain the latest trend in investigations related to pragmatics in sli. also, the sorting search limits were set to ‘sort by relevance’ to include full-length articles, patents and citations. in the preliminary database, a total of 666 articles pertaining to the topic were screened. among these articles the duplicates were excluded after which 517 articles remained. out of these articles, after title screening, 136 articles which were relevant to the topic were selected for abstract screening. all the abstracts were screened, keeping in mind various factors such as the timeline of research, nature of access and downloadability. an exhaustive and intensive review led to the selection of 14 studies for full length screening. these studies were submitted to further scrutiny keeping in mind the inclusion criteria mentioned below. the picos (participant, intervention, control, outcome and study) design proposed by moher, liberati, tetzlaff and altman (2009) was used in order to systematically filter the articles. a thorough review of the 14 articles led to the selection of 2 articles. the other 12 articles were rejected as they did not meet one or more of the inclusion criteria. the process followed has been presented in the form of a flow chart in figure 1. the two selected articles have been discussed at length in the paper. the summary of the two articles have been outlined in table 1 below. systematic review of pragmatic deficits in sli narayanan et al. 311 figure 1. flow chart depicting the procedure followed for selection of articles for review the following criteria were used to select relevant articles: (a) participants who were children (≤12 years) diagnosed as sli with no associated conditions. (b) studies investigating one or more of the three components of pragmatics. (c) studies investigating comparison of performance on the three components in groups of individuals with sli and td. (d) articles pertaining specifically to the detailed assessment of pragmatics as opposed to other components of language. (e) studies that utilized standardized pragmatic language assessment tools. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 3 306-320 issn: 2148-1997 312 table 1 descriptive summary of the shortlisted articles based on the picos design reference design testing protocol outcomes results comments osman, shohdi & aziz (2011) standard group comparison [sli group (n=30); td group(n= 30)] age range– 4-6 years. pragmatic screening tool paralinguistic parameters, describing object functions, conversational skills, intentionality, narration skills. independent sample test and mannwhitney test used for analysis. no significant differences in nonverbal paralinguistic skills between groups on most tasks. sli group was significantly poorer w.r.t pragmatic use of language for conversational skills, intentionality, and narrative abilities. the pragmatic aspects in young children with sli (4-6 years) often get overlooked and thus the study is commendable for its detailed pragmatic profiling. ryder & leinonen (2014) standard group comparison [sli group (n=30); td group(n= 67)] age range711 years. trog, rapt, towk, itpa,childr en’s communic ative checklist. story/scena rio context, world knowledge, irrelevant answers. mann-whitney test used for analysis. between group comparisons made using kruskal wallis test. children with sli produced more world knowledge and irrelevant answers on verbal task than the story task. subgrouping of sli into children with and without pli, which leads us to identify the key areas of deficits and its effect on expressive language. *note: trogtest for reception of grammar (bishop, 2003a), rapt renfrew action picture test (renfrew, 1988), towk test of word knowledge (wiig & secord, 1992), itpa illinois test of psycholinguistic ability (kirk, mccarthy & kirk, 1968) 3. findings the study by osman, shohdi and aziz (2011) attempted to identify and illustrate the pragmatic difficulties in preschool children with sli by comparing them with td children in the age range of 4 to 6 years. the participants belonged to cairo-egyptian ethnicity and the arabic pragmatic systematic review of pragmatic deficits in sli narayanan et al. 313 screening tool (anter, hoshy, khaled, shohdi & osman, 2008) was used for assessment purpose. non-verbal paralinguistic abilities including eye contact, body posture, suprasegmentals of speech such as intonation and volume, facial expressions, responding to greetings and maintenance of attention to tasks were assessed. in addition, verbal pragmatic abilities to understand and describe object functions, conversation skills including initiation, turntaking, making conversational repairs and request for clarification, intentionality and narrative skills were evaluated by the ability to express greetings, make requests, responding to questions, picture and event description. the results of the study revealed that with respect to the non-verbal paralinguistic abilities, there was no significant difference between the groups except on two items such as ‘responding to greetings’ and ‘sustaining attention to a task’. however, the verbal tasks revealed a highly significant difference on all items which were attributed to both deficits in expressive language as well as to pragmatics. the children with sli especially had deficits in conversation skills such as initiating topics, intentionality skills such as describing emotions and narrative abilities. in addition, they preferred the usage of short phrases, relative and referential pronouns, cohesive markers and conjunctions. therefore, the authors recommended further categorization of pragmatic assessment tools in order to differentiate between the social and linguistic deficits. unlike the control group which rephrased sentences in order to convey meanings, the sli group resorted to using pantomimes or refused to elaborate on their responses. the authors also hypothesized that these pragmatic difficulties may vary or worsen depending on the conversational situations and the speaker’s intentions. they concluded that these difficulties could arise from an inherent deficit in processing linguistic information and thereby advocate a thorough screening of the various linguistic domains. the second and the more recent article by ryder and leinonen (2014) focused on the ability of children with sli to react to pragmatically demanding situations based on the context. the study used implicatures which are meanings derived by integrating conceptual information based on previous inferences. the study consisted of a short verbal task and a storytelling task. the verbal task consisted of two sentences which were read aloud. the sentences were followed by a question and no contextual cues were provided. in the storybook task, a short story which consisted of central characters and a theme was read aloud to the children. the storybook contained pictures and subsequently the children were required to answer simple questions related to the story. in both tasks, the attempt made by the children to verbally answer pragmatically loaded questions by integrating contextual information was analyzed. the heterogeneous group of children with sli was compared to age-matched td children. the sli group was further sub-divided to include children who exhibited predominantly pragmatic language difficulties or the pli group and those who had no pragmatic difficulties. children who spoke in well-formed, fluent and well-articulated utterances, but had pragmatic language difficulties were included in the pli group. the children in this group journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 3 306-320 issn: 2148-1997 314 demonstrated deficits with turn taking, maintaining a topic, unusual content and use of language and difficulties with comprehending meaning with respect to context. standardized language tests such as trog (test for reception of grammar), rapt (renfrew action picture test), itpa (illinois test of psycholinguistic abilities) and towk (test of word knowledge) were used to assess measures such as receptive grammar, expressive grammar, auditory association and auditory memory in addition to receptive and expressive vocabulary respectively. the children’s communication checklist (bishop, 2003b) was used to evaluate the communicative skills and social behavior. the results of this study suggested that the pli group produced more number of irrelevant answers on the verbal task than the sli group, which was comparable to the td group. this was attributed to the lack of contextual information in the purely verbal tasks. in adition, the pli group produced greater number of incorrect answers than the sli group on story task and they showed a tendency to depend on world knowledge or past experiences of situations whereas the sli and td groups relied on usage of story context in addition to world knowledge. these findings highlight that in response to pragmatically loaded questions, children with sli and the td children trusted their world knowledge by recalling something that they had previous knowledge of, based on their semantic meanings. the study thereby indicated that the td children and the sli group were able to perform in a given context even though they had not fully interpreted the focal point of the question. the greater number of irrelevant answers by children with pli on purely verbal tasks denoted a struggle to perform on pragmatically loaded questions, in the absence of contextual cues such as pictures. they also showed a tendency to succeed when the verbal scenarios were compounded by indexical or symbolic referents. in summary, the study concluded that children with sli were slower than their peers in developing the ability to integrate available information and utilize the pertinent context in the absence of supporting referents. 4. conclusions in essence, the comprehensive review reveals the research trend with respect to recent investigation of the relatively neglected topic of pragmatics in sli. it serves to highlight the dearth of studies pertaining to a systematic and detailed assessment of the pragmatic component of language in children with sli. however, some studies illustrate the awareness regarding the lack of a ‘gold standard’ or a standardized assessment protocol to identify and diagnose the so called sub-group of children with sli who present with a disproportionate deficit in their pragmatic language as opposed to the overall linguistic abilities. in the current study two databases were searched and the freely downloadable articles were included for the systematic review. the inclusion of a few more databases would probably have given a comprehensive idea regarding similar studies carried out in this area. the inclusion criteria also could have been relaxed, which might have yielded better outcomes. however, keeping the criteria stringent results in a more organized and structured review process. in addition, behavioral issues and other social systematic review of pragmatic deficits in sli narayanan et al. 315 and psychological adjustment issues have been avoided in the study and strict adherence to the linguistic aspect of pragmatics has been preserved. including these features would yield a wider understanding regarding the non-linguistic pragmatic difficulties faced by this population in day-to-day life. 5. discussion the present study aimed to shed light on the research carried out in the last decade in the area of pragmatics of language in children with sli. the study also intended to outline the trend in the development of terminologies, diagnostic criteria and assessment tools with respect to pragmatics in language impaired children and to highlight the limited studies pertaining to it in children with sli. it is interesting to note that very few studies made an effort at a detailed evaluation of pragmatics relative to syntactic and semantic aspects. a systematic review of various databases revealed numerous studies which had explored one or more of the different components related to the pragmatics of language. however, very few studies attempted to systematically profile the pragmatic deficits in detail. this could be attributed to the lack of specific test materials probing the various pragmatic components in depth or due to the lack of clarity regarding the diagnostic indicators which could lead to an overlap between children with pragmatic language deficits (pld) and children with pure sli. also, since deficits in morphosyntax and semantics are more evident in this population, researchers tend to focus on these aspects. the studies also tended to compare pragmatic deficits in various neurodevelopmental disorders wherein the focus on sli was lost. the widespread review of literature led to narrowing down and selection of 14 articles which elucidated the pragmatic deficits in sli. it is startling that the outcome of filtering was such a small number of articles (two) which again highlights the limited research carried out in this area. therefore, the present study highlights the fragmentation of components and lack of uniformity in illustrating the pragmatic deficits in children with sli. as it has been documented across the years that deficits in social interaction also form a cluster of deficits in this group, more efforts need to be made in order to develop a detailed testing protocol. uniformity in assessment of pragmatic components to an extent has to be attempted as this is a heterogeneous group and there is a lack of consensus regarding the diagnostic features due to overlapping conditions. of the two selected articles, the study by osman, shohdi and aziz (2011) made an endeavor to investigate and profile purely the verbal and non-verbal pragmatic deficits in children with sli using a standardized pragmatic screening tool. the study also highlights the importance of early identification of pragmatic deficits which could affect the social communication, peer interaction and literacy acquisition at later stages. it also specifies the importance of looking into the differences between actual expressive deficits versus pragmatic difficulties during evaluation. this study also underlines the need for speech-language pathologists (slps) to evaluate journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 3 306-320 issn: 2148-1997 316 the communicative deficits, specifically the pragmatic performance under generalized situations in children with sli. certain tasks in the study such as conversational skills, description of events, pictures and narrations maybe unable to tap purely the pragmatic aspects and could be influenced by the underlying expressive linguistic deficits. this has been corroborated by previous authors who have outlined the difficulties in differentiating pragmatic impairments from receptiveexpressive language deficits using descriptive tasks (botting & contiramsden, 1999; reisinger, cornish & fombonne, 2011). the language ages of the participants have not been mentioned in the study and even though the children with sli had an mlu which was around 5, it can be assumed that they demonstrated notable deficits in their expressive language. therefore, there is a need to use stringent pragmatic assessment tools which attempt to distinguish between the structural language and pragmatic deficits. the subgrouping of the sli group could have thrown some light on the effect of poor receptive or expressive language age on the pragmatic output. further, the experimental and control groups were matched with respect to chronological age. it would be interesting to study the correlation of these trends, if a language-matched group had been included in this study. the study highlights the necessity for a thorough and detailed evaluation of pragmatic skills while assessing the communication deficits of children with sli. however, the study fails to explore the diverse nature of the population by sub-grouping them based on pragmatic deficits. this was carried out by ryder and leinonen (2014) who divided the sli group to include children with purely pragmatic language deficits. although no standardized test materials specific to pragmatic abilities were used, the findings revealed interesting pragmatic strategies used by children with sli and pld as opposed to the td group. the study by ryder and leinonen (2014) was an endeavor to analyze and interpret the strategies used by children with sli during pragmatic language comprehension and expression. it makes use of the relevance theory and the emergentist view in order to explain these strategies. using these theories, it has been suggested that pragmatic language development predominantly involved the ability to interpret relevant context and utilized the capability to integrate various sources of information to process and extrapolate language respectively. the study also explored the relation between receptive and expressive grammar and pld. it is one of the few studies which provided important strategies for pragmatic language therapy in clinical settings with respect to providing additional context in this population. subgrouping of the sli group to include pld was a good attempt to highlight the deficit trends in the pragmatic output. the study illustrates only a section of pragmatic comprehension and no attempt was made to profile and investigate the pragmatic components of language in detail in children with sli by making use of standardized testing protocols. other than the ccc which was used to evaluate the communicative skills and social behavior, no tests were specifically used to diagnose children as pli. the slps were instructed to identify children with pld in their routine evaluation. detailed procedure regarding how this systematic review of pragmatic deficits in sli narayanan et al. 317 diagnosis was made has not been provided. it would also be interesting to note the correlation of these trends, if a language-matched control group had been included in the study. the study highlighted the necessity for a detailed evaluation of pragmatic skills for subgrouping children with predominantly pragmatic language deficits in the sli group. this would have far reaching effects in language intervention wherein contextual cues could be supplemented for the integration of information in pragmatically loaded situations. since sli is a heterogeneous group, such differentiation or subgrouping will help in providing additional support. similar to the first article, this study also draws attention to the urgent need to differentiate between pragmatic and structural language deficits and the necessity to develop stringent assessment protocols for the same. thus, the present study endeavors to point out to the lacunae in pragmatic language assessment in children with sli and the need for developing standardized and uniform testing protocols for pragmatics in this population. the present review will aid future researchers to fill in the lacunae in terms of structured assessment with respect to pragmatics in sli. the various components and strategies reviewed in this article would also help clinicians to plan appropriate techniques during intervention. it would aid in investigating whether the child has an underlying pragmatic language deficit, which could be affecting the expressive language. future evidencebased research in this direction would help in identifying and reducing the social interactive deficits faced life-long by children with sli. acknowledgements the present study is part of an ongoing research project on “neuroaudiological profiling of children with specific language impairment”, funded by the department of science and technology [no. dst/csri/2017/24(g)], government of india. the authors would like to thank dst for funding the project. the authors also thank the director, all india institute of 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(1992). test of word knowledge. london: the psychological corporation. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 3 288-305, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 288 language experience and phonological development: a case study of a bicultural/monolingual family in korea jihye seong1 the state university of new york at buffalo abstract this case study investigates the influence of maternal speech on a child’s phonological acquisition of korean consonants examining conversational speech data collected from a dyad of a korean-speaking child (aged 3;8 – 4;1) and his vietnamese mother a late korean learner for a six-month period. correlation of the mother’s speech accuracy and her child’s consonant production were examined. the results showed the child exhibited a delay in phonemic acquisition while his error patterns were not congruent with those of his mother. the mother’s korean phonemic awareness was more accurate than her child’s one, and her errors in production was induced by her native language. the findings suggest that the maternal influence is not correlated with the child’s phonemic acquisition while it is still probable that his mother’s non-salient production may have led difficulties for the child to build phonological contrasts. keywords korean, early language experience, maternal influence, phonological development, language delay 1. introduction a large body of studies stated that children’s phonological development is guided by their early experience with sets of sounds (or features) (maye et al. 2002; yoshida et al. 2010). the children increase their sensitivities to distinguish certain pairs of sounds based upon input of acoustic implementations of sounds (aslin and pisoni 1980). cristià (2011) demonstrated that the more salient the caregivers’ acoustic cue was, the better children exhibited in sound discriminations. hunter and pisoni (2017) suggested that the quality of phonological representations was affected by both the quantity and the quality of early language input – delayed exposure to language, impoverished language input, and enriched language input – by investigating phonological awareness among different groups of children. van heugten and johnson (2017) suggested that speech variants in a single language may lead to a different developmental trajectory among children when compared to monolingual children. they found the variability in children’s language input affected children’ word recognition. this inconsistent and/or insufficient input of sound variants may adversely affect the child’s phonemic awareness, which is known to be a significant predictor of latent language development. the language development of children from immigrant families in south korea become a huge issue since marriage-based immigrant has been growing for the past two decades (ministry of gender equality and family 2016; korean 1 jihye seong is a ph.d. candidate in linguistics at the state university of new york at buffalo. her areas of interest and research are in phonological developments by first and second language learners. her recent published work was on english-loanwords production by korean speakers. corresponding email: jihyeseo@buffalo.edu received : 17.10.2018 accepted : 12.08.2021 published : 30.09.2021 mailto:jihyeseo@buffalo.edu language experience and phonological development seong 289 national statistical office 2017; ministry of justice 2017; lee, 2008). in this family, immigrant parents’ native language is not supported (kim et al., 2010; park et al. 2012), and korean is set as the primary home language (seol, 2009). the children rarely learn their non-korean parent’s native language (jeong et al., 2013). in the family, which is a multicultural but monolingual, the linguistic input that the child receives is different from non-immigrant families. since immigration is led by immigrant women and they become a main care giver to children. their korean language proficiency doesn’t reach a sufficient level at the time when a child requires linguistic input from his/her mother. most of the women start learning korean upon arrival in korea (national korean language institute 2007) and lee et al. (2006) reported that 54.2% of the mothers had difficulties when communicating with their children in korean. a large body of literatures reported a child’s delayed language development was linked with their mother’s korean language proficiency (choi 2012; oh et al. 2009; woo et al. 2008; chae 2008; oh 2005; jeong 2004). those children showed a delayed development in korean language. the children’s expressive and receptive vocabulary sizes were relatively smaller and morphosyntactic competence was lower than their non-immigrant children counterparts. kwon et al. (2010) examined thirty-two published papers on children’s language development in multicultural families. their findings demonstrated that children in the multicultural setting showed a delay in phonemic awareness, phonological development, semantic knowledge, and morphological understanding. they pointed out that the mothers’ proficiency in korean and the length of their residence in korea were the two most dominant factors associated with the child’s language development. when demonstrating the influence of maternal speech on children’s language development, most of the studies compared mothers’ and children’s test performance scores obtained from a standardized assessment tool such as the urimal test of articulation and phonology (kim & shin 2002), preschool receptive-expressive language scale (kim 2000), and korean oral syntax expression comprehension test (bae et al. 2004). since the assessment instruments provide age-adjusted criteria based on a large population of normally developing children, it is easy to gauge at which developmental stage a test taker is situated and in what area the participant showed the most difficulty. however, there have been concerns regarding the exploitation of the assessment tool with multicultural families. first, the assessment tools have limitations in their ability to explain nondevelopmental errors, such as native language influence on a target language production. second, merely showing test scores of mothers and children does not elucidate the relation between maternal speech and children’s speech. the results simply show in what areas the test taker has the most difficulty. lastly, the test examines children’s language abilities at a specific point of time, but does not provide information on how their linguistic understanding improves over time. shin and ahn’s study (2008) on sixty-nine children from ages five to ten in multicultural families showed that the older the child was, the better their phonological awareness was. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 3 288-305, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 290 consequently, in order to have a comprehensive understanding of children’s phonological development in relation to the mother’s productions, a different methodological approach is needed. more longitudinal data are needed to determine the linguistic relationship between children and their korean l2 mothers. this approach also can also provide information as to detailed phonetic variants in mother’s speech. assuming the course of a child’s language development will be (at least in part) the result of their interactions with his/her mother, a detailed analysis of the distinctive features of maternal speech should provide a clear picture why the children experienced the language delay under the assumption that the child’s language delay is associated with the influence of the mothers’ speech. extending selinker’s notion of interlanguage (1972) to mother’s target language production, mothers may exhibit traits of their native language when producing korean sounds, or experience difficulties of producing specific sounds or applying certain phonological rules, which may not exist in their native languages. the interlanguage is formed by learners’ experiences with another language, and the variabilities in utterance are caused by the differences between learners’ l1 and the target language. following this perspective, the mothers’ phonetic variance in her utterance may have caused by the linguistic differences between vietnamese and korean: phonemic inventories and phonological constraints. examining the ‘accentedness’ in the mothers’ speech is important since the resent study by considering the mother’s speech variation and the recent findings on the role of input variation, it is probable that a child in a multicultural family may demonstrate a different developmental trajectory when compared with children from non-immigrant families. to determine whether a child in a multicultural family is on a typical developmental trajectory, it is crucial to know how normally developing children adopt korean phonemes and obtain phonological awareness. the current study unfolds two parts: mother’s phonemic awareness, especially consonantal acquisition of korean and the child’s developmental stage of the korean consonantal awareness compared to children from non-immigrant family. of two main approaches to studying early child language one is to examine a large sample of children collected at periodic intervals and the other is to concentrate on a smaller sample collecting dense amount of data the current study used the latter method to guarantee sufficiently detailed data so as to investigate the complex relationship between language interactions and acquisition to gauge the effect of maternal speech on her child’s speech, distinctive characteristics in the mother's speech were examined to determine whether they were reflected in the child’s speech. 2. methodology 2.1 participants and data collection. one mother from vietnam and her son (3;8) participated in the study for six months. the mother is from ho chi mihn city in vietnam and learned the korean language upon her arrival to korea. she is the main care giver to the child and the child spent time with his father at night or on weekends. the language experience and phonological development seong 291 participants do not have any medical disorders related to articulation or hearing (such as cleft-palate, dyslexia, or aphasia). speech samples were collected by recording verbal interactions between the mother and her child without interference of the researcher for a six-month period. during this period, the participants were asked to record their free conversations bi-weekly with a hand-held zoom h1 handy recorder and lapel microphone. as a supplementary measure, a picture-based word elicitation task called the korean standard picture articulation test was employed (seok et al. 2002; ks-part hereafter). 2.2 data analysis speech samples were segmented into word tokens. when deconstructing a speech into tokens, a morphological formation and prosodic boundaries were considered. a bound morpheme was not counted as a single token but included as a part of the content word to which it was affixed. for instance, a content word with a nominative marker, -i/ka was counted as one token instead of two. this inclusion was needed since phonological procedures accompany with morphological formations (sohn 1999). in the case of a predicate, no matter how many morphemes were inflected, it was counted as one token for the same reason. prosodic boundaries based upon accented phrases were considered when decomposing a running speech into tokens. for instance, the word speak in korean can be said either [mal#he] with two accented phrases (one for an object — mal— meaning speech and the other for a predicate —he — meaning do) or [ma.le] with one accented phrase where the weakest sound, [h], is dropped and resyllabified in a formation of cv.cv. the former was counted as two word tokens; the latter was counted as one word token. after parsing, each token was marked either "correct" or "incorrect" by comparing its actual production with the target sound production. correctly pronounced words were decomposed into syllable-sized units and then further into a set of phones. each of the phones was examined for accuracy. as for the mispronounced word tokens, errors were classified into phonemic or phonological errors. a phonemic error occurs when a word token contains only a single mispronounced phoneme. a phonological error occurs when a word token includes one or more mispronounced phones due to the misapplication of a phonological rule, i.e. linking, nasalization, tensing, or aspiration. of the two error types, word tokens, classified as a phonemic error, were further analyzed since they still included correctly pronounced phonemes in addition to incorrect one. of all the phonemes in korean (nineteen consonants and seven cardinal vowels), the scope of the study lied on understanding of obstruent and phonological processes. to measure the phonemic acquisition, the accuracy rates were calculated as follows: inaccuracy rates of each phoneme = the number of incorrect occurrences / the total number of incorrect and correct occurrences (%). the accuracy of phonemes was determined based on three factors: place of articulation, manner of articulation, and three-way distinctions in obstruents (lenis, fortis, and aspirated). there were five subgroups in manner: plosives [p, t, k, p*, t*, k*, ph, th, kh], fricatives [s, s*, h], affricates [tʃ, tʃ*, tʃh], nasals [m, n, ŋ], and a lateral liquid [l]. there were five journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 3 288-305, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 292 subgroups in place: labial [p, p*, ph, m], alveolar [t, t*, th, s, s*, n, l], alveopalatal [tʃ, tʃ*, tʃh], velar [k, k*, kh], and glottal [h]. the obstruents were divided into three subgroups: lenis [p, t, k, s, h, tʃ], fortis [p*, t*, k*, s*, tʃ*], and aspirated [ph, th, kh, tʃh] articulatory and phonological errors were divided into the following types: deletion, insertion, place or manner alternation, tensing or aspiration of obstruents, linking, nasalization, assimilation, and syllabic changes, such as blending multiple syllables or a complete change of syllables. in deletion, the location where the phoneme disappeared was examined along with its manner of articulation. place alternations were classified into two types: fronting and backing. contexts where phonological alternations did not apply, i.e. nasalization, consonantal linking, or [h] deletion, were examined as well. the child’s speech was examined in two-time frames from ages three to four during the given six-moth period. the first period was the first four months (3;8 – 3;11) and the other was last two months (4;0 – 4;1). the prior studies traced children’s phonological development based upon their age by year. in order to compare the findings of the current study with the previous findings, the break was made by age rather than 2-3-month periods. the supplementary phonological assessment test was conducted at 4;2. performance of each month was included in appendix. 3. findings the literature examining children’s production of consonantal phonemes delineates an order of sound acquisition in terms of manner and place (lee & kwon 1979; kwon et al. 1979; eom 1986 as cited in kim 1996). in consistent with the previous literature, the phonemic accuracy of the child and mother was examined by place of articulation, manner of articulation, and the threeway distinctions in obstruents. the correctly pronounced phonemes were categorized by the three factors (place of articulation, manner of articulation, and three-way distinctions in obstruents) and the results are demonstrated in figure 1-3. figure 1 demonstrated the percentage of correctly pronounced phonemes in place of articulation. the bar graphs represented the child’s data (the first bar is the results when he was 3; the second bar is when he was 4). the line drawn above the bars were the results of mother’s. the mother’s performance was better than the child’s except velar. the child’s production was improved as he got older. in the production of bilabial sounds, he outperformed his mother as he turned to four. language experience and phonological development seong 293 figure 1. correctly pronounced phonemes in place of articulation (%) the results of production in manner of articulation is illustrated in figure 2. similarly, the child showed improvements in production as getting older except fricatives. across all the manners, the mother showed fairly high accuracy rates (over 90%) except liquid (below 70%). under the low production of the liquid, the child’s production of the liquid improved and outperformed his mother’s. figure 2. correctly pronounced phonemes in manner of articulation (%) the results of the three-way distinction in obstruents were illustrated in figure 3. the mother exhibited better production then the child did. she showed more difficulties producing fortis sounds, which lacks in her native language (hwa-froelich & edwards 2002). the child increased his production as he got older. like his mother exhibited, he struggled more with the fortis sounds than the other features. bilabial alveolar alveopalatal velar glottal child (3;8-3;11) 97,4 65,8 50,7 96 93,1 child (4;0-4;1) 100 68,7 53,6 99,2 90,9 mother 98,7 90,9 91,7 94,3 99 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 a c c u r a c y (% ) phomeme accuracy (place) plosives affricates fricatives nasals liquid child (3;8 3;11) 93,4 50,7 48,5 97,2 57,1 child (4;0 -4;1) 96,7 53,6 41 99,3 77,7 mother 94,9 91,7 96,3 98,6 69,4 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 a c c u r a c y ( % ) phoneme accrucy (manner) journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 3 288-305, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 294 figure 3. correctly pronounced obstruents in the three-way distinction (%) overall, the results demonstrated that mother’s performance was better than that of the child across all three categories (place of articulation, manner of articulation, and a three-way distinction in obstruents). the mother exhibited unbalanced performance; especially showed a lower production of liquid. to examine how the discrepancy between the vietnamese and korean sound inventory affected the mother’s phonemic production, the korean consonantal phonemes were divided into two groups: phonemes shared with vietnamese and ones only in korean, as seen in table 1. the numbers after the phoneme represented the percentage of inaccuracy rates. table 1 error rates of phonemes produced by mother (%) phonemes shared with vietnamese inaccuracy phonemes only in korean inaccuracy p 0.5 p* 0.5 t 3.2 t* 3.7 k 2.3 k* 8.3 th 1.4 ph 0 s 0.7 kh 0.7 h 0.5 s* 5.1 m 2.1 tʃ 1.6 n 2.3 tʃ* 2.8 ŋ 1.2 tʃh 1.2 l 62.2 when comparing the inaccuracy rates of the sounds, the difference in the two groups was not great. all of the sounds recorded lower than 10% of inaccuracy rates except the /l/ (over 60%) even though the lateral liquid is shared both vietnamese and korean. the results suggested her native language’s phonological constraints affected the results not the phonemic discrepancy. lenis fortis aspirated child (3;8 3;11) 77,6 63,3 85,3 child (4;0 4;1) 77,7 65,8 89,6 mother 98,8 87,3 97,2 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 a c c u r a c y ( % ) obstruents distinction language experience and phonological development seong 295 in vietnamese, only six consonants are allowed in a coda position: /p/, /t/, /k/, /m/, /n/, and /ŋ/ (cheng, 1991). the syllabic constraints on the /l/ led the errors in /l/. in the data, she showed the highest errors of /l/ especially when it was on the coda position. the accuracy of each phonemic production was examined in relation to the acquisitional stages (kim 1996), illustrated in tables 2 and 3. his developmental stage of each phoneme was compared with the findings in kim (1996) and seok et al. (2002). table 2 exhibited the child’s data when he was three. when comparing the child’s results with other children of his age, he showed lower accuracy rates on affricates and alveolar fricatives. he had the most difficulties producing a fortis alveolar fricative. when turning four, he improved the production of the aspirated affricate and a lateral liquid as demonstrated in table 3. however, he still experienced the difficulties in the fortis alveolar fricative and other affricates. table 2 acquisition stage of the child participant (age 3) age acquisition (100 – 95%) master (94 – 75%) customary (74 – 50%) emerging (49-25%) below 24% 3;0 – 3;11 (kim 1996; seok et al. 2002) p, ph, p* t, th, t* k, kh, k* n, m, ŋ h tʃ, tʃ*, tʃh, s* l s 3;8 — 3;11 ph, p* t k m, n, ŋ p t*, k* th, kh h tʃh l tʃ, tʃ* s s* table 3 acquisition stage of child participant (age 4) age acquisition (100 – 95%) master (94 – 75%) customary (74 – 50%) emerging (49-25%) below 24% 4;0 – 4;11 (kim 1996; p, ph, p* t, th, t* k, kh, k* s journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 3 288-305, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 296 seok et al. 2002) tʃ, tʃ*, tʃh, n, m, ŋ s*, h l 4;0 — 4;1 p, ph, p* t k, kh, k* m, n, ŋ th tʃh h l tʃ, tʃ* s s* as a supplementary measurement, ks-part (seok et al. 2002) was employed. the test was taken when the child turned to 4;2. as seen in the naturalistic data, mother’s performance was better than the child’s except bilabial and plosive sounds. the child showed the lowest accuracy on affricates sounds. the child’s results were 87.7% of the accuracy while his mother’s was 93.7%. according to the age-adjusted norms of ks-part, the child was one standard deviation below the norm of age four while the mother was at the four-yearold norm. figure 4. results of ks-part by the child and the mother the types of phonological errors produced by the mother and her child was examined as listed in table 4. of all the errors committed in the given period, how much each phonological error type contributed was calculated. the lowest low showed the total number of phonological errors. the raw counted number was in the parenthesis. the number provided in each table showed the percentage of each phonological error. bilabia l alveol ar alveopalatal velar glottal plosvi es affricat es fricati ves nasals liquid child (4;2) 100 87,8 61,5 96 80 98,3 61,5 74 92 88,9 mother (31;3) 90 98 92,3 100 100 90 92,3 100 100 88,9 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 a c c u r a c y ( % ) ks-part results language experience and phonological development seong 297 table 4 articulatory error types (%, raw counts in parenthesis) types child mother 30; 9 – 31;2 3;8 — 3;11 4;0 – 4;11 insertion 1.5 (7) 0 (0) 2.2 (13) deletion: onset 5.7 (27) 4.0 (5) 0.9 (5) deletion: coda 7.5 (36) 5.6 (7) 2.6 (15) place: fronting 18.7 (89) 23.2 (29) 2.4 (14) place: backing 6.1 (29) 5.6 (7) 24.4 (142) manner: altered to plosives 41.1 (196) 51.2 (64) 1.4 (8) manner: altered to affricates 1.3 (6) 2.4 (3) 0 (0) manner: altered to fricatives 0.8 (4) 0.8 (1) 0 (0) manner: altered to nasals 4.4 (21) 0.8 (1) 44.2 (257) manner: altered to liquids 0.2 (1) 0 (0) 0.5 (3) plain/aspirated to fortis 6.3 (30) 4.0 (5) 2.9 (17) fortis to plain/aspirated 0.6 (3) 0 (0) 15.3 (89) plain/fortis to aspirated 2.9 (14) 2.4 (3) 0.9 (5) aspirated to plain/fortis 2.9 (14) 0 (0) 2.2 (13) total 477 125 581 both mother and the child showed similar patterns in deletion. both showed that deletion was more common than insertion. of the two places (onset or coda), phonemes appearing in the coda position were more prone to be deleted. for the rest of types, their patterns were unrelated. in place alternation, the child showed more errors in fronting while the mother showed more backing. in manner change, the child altered sounds to plosives while his mother was prone to change sounds to nasals. in distinction of obstruents, both the child and mother showed more errors on fortition (either fortifying non fortis plosives or non-fortifying non-fortis obstruents) than aspiration fortition (either aspirating non-aspirated plosives or non-aspirating non-aspirated plosives). however, the directionality of the fortition and aspiration errors differed. the child tended to produce non-fortis obstruents as fortis obstruents while his mother produced fortis obstruents as lenis obstruents. likewise, the journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 3 288-305, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 298 child aspirated sounds more often while his mother did not aspirate sounds that needed to be aspirated. other types of errors related to the phonological processes were examined, including syllabification (a morphophonological process when a bound morpheme is attached), nasalization, and aspiration (alternation of plain plosives to aspirated due to preceding [h] sound) and so on. table 5 other articulatory error types (%, raw counts in parenthesis) types child mother 30; 9 – 31;2 3;8 — 3;11 4;0 – 4;11 no application of syllabification 12.5 (2) 25 (1) 45.2 (19) alternation of a syllable (c(v)) 75 (12) 25 (1) 14.3 (6) deletion of a syllable (c(v)) 12.5 (2) 50 (2) no application of nasal assimilation 21.4 (9) voiced 19 (8) total 16 4 42 of the phonological errors, the child exhibited the highest errors in a syllable alternation (75%). not a phonemic segment but a set of phonemes consisting of a syllable was. other errors that he showed were a deletion of a syllable and no application of syllabification, 13.5% respectively. unlike the child, the mother exhibited the greatest error in syllabification. the syllabification accompanies with a morphological formation. for instance, when a nominative case marker, -i, is attached to a closed syllable (cvc), syllables are rearranged as cv.ci. similarly, the nasal assimilation occurred through a morphological formation: a preceding consonant is nasalized when followed by a nasal sound through conjugation. when a morpheme whose initial sound is a nasal like, -nɨn.de meaning but, is attached to an independent morpheme, ep, it is realized as /em.nɨn.de/. the results were attributed to mother’s lack of understanding in a morphophonological process in korean. another type of error showed that mother over-employed her vietnamese sound contrasts. normally, word-initial obstruents are voiceless in korean while they are voiced in an intervocalic condition. however, she often altered the voiceless feature of word-initial obstruents into voiced. her language experience in two languages was represented in these errors. 4. discussion and conclusions this study is to demonstrate how the maternal speech influences the child phonological influences. the accented variants of the immigrant mother may have affected on the child phonological acquisition. in order to attest the hypothesis, speech data obtained from both the child and his mother were examined in the following aspects: phonemic accuracy in production, patterns associated with production errors, and phonological errors related to influence of native language. overall, the results showed that the child showed an language experience and phonological development seong 299 increased accuracy in phonemic production over time, and the improvement is unrelated to the types of errors that his mother made. first, the child in this study demonstrated the similar developmental trajectory of acquiring phonemes as attested in the previous literature. the child showed acquisition of anterior sounds (bilabials) before post-arterial sounds (velars and glottals) and higher accuracy in nasals and plosives than affricates and fricatives. however, the child showed a delay in acquiring the affricates [tʃ] and [tʃ*], and fricatives [s] and [s*] (below 50% of the accuracy) in free speech. the accuracy of [s*] was surprisingly lower than 24%. according to seok et al. (2008), three-year olds exhibited over 80% accuracy in production of affricates and showed over 50% accuracy in [s] and [s*]. the child’s performance of those sounds was significantly low. when examining the mother’s performance of those sounds, she showed over 90% accuracy in production [tʃ] and [s] and over 75% accuracy in [s*] and [tʃ*]. the late acquisition of those sounds, which are [tʃ], [tʃ*] and [s*] could be explained by the child’s individual variation. it is probable that difficulties of forming articulatory gestures when producing those sounds may have caused the delay. across the data, the child altered [s*] to [t*], [tʃ] to [t], and [tʃ*] to [t*] quite consistently. that is, he maintained a three-way distinction among obstruents while altering manner to plosives. his perceptual awareness of those sounds would be better than his production as evidenced by maintaining the fortis feature. the alternation was motivated by difficulties of employing tongue laminar and body when articulating fricatives and affricates. fronting his articulators and simplifying the manners — from keeping a narrow gap to make a blockage and from a sequence of movements to one blocking movement — would be his strategy for those sounds. the mother exhibited the lowest accuracy of the lateral sound across all phonemes. her errors occurred when the liquid appeared at coda positions. she altered the coda [l] in three different ways: deletion, alternation to [n], or alternation to [ŋ]. when examining the coda [l], 49% changed to [ŋ]; 45% altered to [n]; and 15% were deleted. there were two cases when coda position [l] altered to either [m] or [t]. however, the coda [l] predominantly altered to either [ŋ] or [n]. when speculating the sonority of the liquid and nasals, the direction of manner alternation can be expected. however, in case of [ŋ], the place change from alveolar to velar was odd compared to the alternation to [n], which shares the same place feature of [l]. thus, it was decided to examine neighboring contexts where [ŋ] and [n] appeared. in the context where the coda [1] was altered to [ŋ], the neighboring environment 53% of the time. nonetheless, in 10.7% of the cases, the sound following the liquid was an alveolar. the coda [l] was altered to [n] when followed by an alveolar sound 21.5% of the time. there were still 14.9% of the cases when it was followed by a velar sound. it is hard to state that place feature of the following consonants has led to the choice of [n] and [ŋ]. however, over half of the cases when [l] altered to [ŋ] were followed by a following velar sound. thus, what has made the speaker alter the coda [l]? the reflection of constraints imposed by vietnamese phonology has affected the mother’s speech. there are only six consonants that can appear on a coda, which are [p], [t], [k], [m], [n], and [ŋ] (cheng 1991). the lateral approximant exists in the vietnamese phonemic inventory; however, it does not appear in journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 3 288-305, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 300 syllabic final position. due to the influence of her native language (l1 hereafter), the coda [l] altered to other nasal sounds. in case of korean, of the 19 consonantal phonemes, seven of them can appear on the coda: [p], [t], [k], [m], [n], [ŋ] and [l] (sohn, 1999). the syllabic constraint affected the low accuracy in the coda /l/ production. then, would the mother’s low accuracy in the /l/ production affect child’s acquisition of the /l/ sound? the child also exhibited a high error in the liquid. over time, however, his accuracy of [l] was improved from a customary level (50.3%) to a mastery level (78.2%), while the mother’s accuracy of [l] production remained at a mastery level of 68.6%. the child increased his production of [l] with prevailing errors of [l] in the mother’s speech. the results demonstrate that the child developed his phonemic awareness even though he was exposed to erroneous sounds. similar findings were obtained in other sounds involving bilabial and velar, and plosives and nasals. when examining errors other than errors related to phonemic articulation, the child exhibited more errors of alternation or deletion of syllables, which corresponded to 85% of the phonological errors. the child showed the errors when he did not know a word correctly. he corrected his errors with the aid of his mother. whenever the child misproduced a word, his mother corrected it and helped him recall the word with detailed descriptions of the word or anecdotes associated with the word. it is probable that such syllabic alternation and deletion were caused by his lexicon. when he could not correctly recall the words, he produced them in ill forms with the errors. the mother’s phonological errors were involved with a resyllabification, which corresponded to 44.2%. most of the consonantal linking accompanied morphological formations with an attachment of grammatical morphemes. when the morpheme is attached to a closed syllable, a coda of the closed syllable moved to an onset in the following syllable, which ultimately rearranges the syllables in a formation of cv.cv. the mother failed at making the consonantal movement. another type of errors was nasalization. a consonant at a coda position altered to nasal sounds when followed by nasal sounds. she failed at applying the nasal assimilation, which accounted for 20% of errors. 13% of the errors were involved with syllabic alternation. this alternation was different from the child’s one. her errors were more related to selecting an incorrect grammatical morpheme, which is an error of morphology rather than in phonology. under the influence of her l1, she was prone to alter word-initial voiceless plosives into voiced ones. while vietnamese has a voicing distinction, korean does not distinguish plosives in voicing while lenis plosives become voiced intervocalic conditions. overall, the features of this maternal speech were not reflected in the child’s speech. the child has been exposed to varying sounds, which came from his mother and other korean monolingual speakers. his delay in phoneme acquisition was affected by a low production of a few specific sounds: affricates and fricatives. his strategy of altering the manner seemed to keep the production rates of those sounds lower than the other sounds. his mother altered the coda [l] and demonstrated a low accuracy rate of the sound. however, the child improved his production of [l]. the influence of the maternal speech was not a significant factor influencing the child’s language experience and phonological development seong 301 phonological development. the impact of the maternal speech may be mitigated since the child must have received linguistic input not only from his mother but also from other language models such as his other family members or peers. it is probable that a child constantly reshapes linguistic notions in his mind with his own processing abilities. the assessment tool, ks-part, represented a similar pattern of phonemic or articulatory errors though there were a few inconsistent cases. the tool can provide a brief glimpse of phonemic awareness of participants. in addition, it allows for us to examine each phoneme at different positions of a syllable within a word. it is useful when investigating the contextual influence on a phoneme. however, it does not reflect a deeper analysis of the morphophonological process since the assessment only uses a selected number of words where morphological formation is not applied. the current case study focused on only one mother and child dyad and the results may not extend to a larger population. however, it presents empirical evidence suggesting that the influence of maternal l2 speech may not negatively impact the child’s phonological development. this contradicts what previous studies had argued. park and kim (2014) provided similar findings when investigating the phonological awareness of twenty-one children aged from three to seven in multicultural families and another twenty-one nonimmigrant children using assessment of phonology and articulation for children (kim et al. 2007). the results showed that both groups displayed no differences. there could be other factors associated with the child’s language delay, which are frequently observed in multicultural families. choi and hwang (2009) suggested the child’s language development was influenced not only by their mother’s proficiency in korean but also by aspects such as the parents’ educational levels and income levels. ahn and shin (2008) suggested similar results by pointing out the influence of socio-cultural backgrounds on children’s phonological development. it has been well known that children’s language abilities are affected by the income-level of families, which was also closely linked with home literacy environment (payne et al. 1994). children from low socio-economic status (ses) backgrounds were more likely to experience language delay than those from high-ses backgrounds (ginsborg 2006). in sum, the current study examined an influence of maternal speech on a child’s phonological by examining one vietnamese mother and child from a multicultural family. the results demonstrated that there existed no correlation between the maternal speech and the child’s speech when examining phonemic awareness, articulatory error types, and phonological error patterns. it is suggested that the mother’s influence on the child’s phonological development might not be a significant factor. however, this finding cannot exclude the possibility that mother’s phonological realizations caused the language delay. also, it is probable that the prevalent language delay observed in multicultural families may be associated with other factors, which are related with socio-economic backgrounds. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 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(2008). mothers' korean language ability and preschoolers' language development in multicultural families. korean journal of child studies, 30(3), 114. language experience and phonological development seong 305 appendix the child’s development of phonemic accuracy (3;8 – 4;1) age acquisition (100 – 95%) master (94 – 75%) customary (74 – 50%) emerging (49-25%) (24-0%) 3;8 k, p k*, p* kh, ph h m, n t ŋ l t* th tʃh s tʃ, tʃ* s* 3;9 t k*, p*, t* ph h m, n, ŋ k, p kh, th s* tʃ, tʃh, tʃ* l s 3;10 k, t kh, ph n, ŋ tʃh p k* th h m tʃ* s tʃ l s* 3;11 k, t k*, p* kh, ph m, n, ŋ p t* th h tʃh s tʃ tʃ* l s* 4;0 k, p, t k*, p*, t* kh, th h m, n, ŋ tʃh t’ l s tʃ, tʃ* s* 4;1 k, p, t kh, th, ph m, n, ŋ h l tʃ, tʃh s tʃ* s* journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 662-679, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 662 acquisition of argument structures and ditransitive verbs: evidence from an elliptical language burcu turhan1 hatay mustafa kemal university abstract in first language acquisition, verbs can be regarded as the word types which are more challenging to comprehend and interpret due to their cognitive and linguistic constraints (sofu & ertekin sucak, 2018). in essence, children can make inferences about the types of verb meanings from the possible number of arguments that the verbs can take (becker, 2005). for this reason, it is crucial to know how children acquire argument structures of the verbs, especially the arguments of ditransitive verbs which include two internal arguments in its phrase. to this end, this cross-sectional study scrutinizes how turkish children acquire argument structures of ditransitive verbs in their mother tongue. 10 children were presented a task including nine sentences built with ditransitive verbs. words in those nine sentences were intentionally ordered differently; and each sentence was formed with different subjects and objects. specifically, sentences which could be frequently used in the kindergarten context were included in the task. moreover, a particular focus was on circumstances when turkish children omit argument structures in their spontaneous speech. both comprehension and production data which were analyzed descriptively indicate that children are successful at interpreting and producing argument structures and they are aware of argument omission. in addition, they do not rely on word order in order to correctly interpret and make use of arguments in their speech. keywords: verbs, ditransitive verbs, argument structures, argument omission, turkish, acquisition 1. introduction many studies on language acquisition indicate that adults use verbs as frequently as nouns although nouns are used more commonly in child’s speech, and in fact, nouns are the first lexical items produced by children (ekmekçi, 1979; gentner, 1978; sofu, 1995, türkay, 2005). the importance of knowledge of nouns in verb acquisition is explained by waxman et al. (2013) who believe that the meaning of a verb is directly related to the nouns (arguments) that it takes; thereof, children’s acquisition of verbs need to be preceded by the development of a repertoire of nouns. as such, the study of verbs and their argument structures has become crucial in terms of understanding how they are acquired. this is because the varieties of lexical categories influence the acquisition of arguments (conwell et al., 2011; yang, 1 burcu turhan is an assistant professor doctor at english language teaching department of hatay mustafa kemal university. she completed her master and ph.d. at çukurova university, turkey. her ma thesis is a study on english-medium instruction (emi) at tertiary level, revealing motivational tendencies of engineering students and lecturers toward emi. besides, her phd study focuses on fostering english language teacher candidates’ immediacy behaviours via a specific training programme. her general research interests include foreign language teacher education, pragmatics, english as medium of instruction (emi), metacognition, problem-based learning, critical discourse analysis and reflective practice. contact information: burcuturhan@mku.edu.tr received : 05.11.2022 accepted : 26.02.2023 published : 08.03.2023 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7738367 mailto:burcuturhan@mku.edu.tr https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7738367 acquisition of argument structures in turkish turhan 663 2016). in this regard, the first step should be to be familiar with what an argument is. generally, an argument is defined as a noun phrase having a semantic and grammatical relation to a verb (allen, 2015). because of this relation, the presence of an argument is necessary for the well-formedness of sentences; and the presence of arguments may be either overt or implied depending on the context of the utterances. in turkish, a sentence with a transitive verb can preferably include either overt or covert arguments as well as pronouns; namely, it is possible to use covert, omitted or elided subjects and objects. to exemplify, you can say “kesinlikle beğendiremedim (i never made her like it.)” instead of “ben bu oyuncağı kızıma kesinlikle beğendiremedim (i never made my daughter like this toy).” that is, it is possible to omit the subject (ben/i-first person singular), direct (bu oyuncağı/this toy) and indirect (kızıma/my daughter) objects. in the related literature, this issue on how children acquire verbs and argument structures have been argued with four main hypotheses which are semantic bootstrapping, syntactic bootstrapping, verb island hypothesis and weak or graded abstract representations. firstly, as a way to understand how verbs and argument structures are acquired, semantic bootstrapping hypothesis asserts that children pay attention to the events which verbs refer to, which means semantic cues are fundamental grammatical evidences for children to learn meanings of verbs (pinker, 1984; 1989). in relation to this, allen (2015) exemplifies the semantic bootstrapping as noticing that some events (e.g. running) require an agent; however, some events (e.g. pushing) require both an agent and a patient in it. for instance, through observation, children notice that a running event requires an agent who is running, but a pushing event requires an agent who is pushing and a patient who is pushed at the same time. allen also posits that children map this knowledge of verbs having a subject or an object as they are exposed to the input. this shows that repeated experiences can be important in order for children to figure out argument structures of verbs that they hear. in this process, children have the innate ability to be able to make connections between the semantic knowledge and syntactic knowledge (pinker, 1989). pinker (1989) reveals that children do not make dative overgeneralizations to verbs that do not allow for this in his study including spontaneous speech and production activities. such a finding can be an indicative of the sensitivity of children to semantic relations between verbs and argument structures. the main challenge to semantic bootstrapping comes from the accounts of syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis argued by gleitman, (1990), göksun et al. (2008), landau and gleitman (1985), matsuo et al. (2012). these accounts point to the fact that syntactic cues surrounding a verb help children learn the meaning of that verb (gleitman, 1990; landau & gleitman, 1985; matsuo et al., 2012). to clarify, gleitmen (1990) presents evidence from the verb acquisition process of a blind child even though they could not see the context where the specific action takes place. that is, both blind and sighted children who are under different exposure conditions to language input acquire more or less the same representations for the verbs. starting from this point of view, what provides children to learn verb meanings is the number of noun phrases and other elements occurring with journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 662-679, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 664 the verbs (gleitmen, 1990). identically, göksun et al. (2008) propose that children analyze the different verbs depending on their differing syntactic features while learning argument structures. another rationale behind gleitmen’s (1990) syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis is that some verbs are very similar; therefore, it may be impossible to differentiate them just by observing (eg. flee, chase). moreover, some verbs have meanings which we cannot understand by observing (eg. think, know). this is related to the displacement feature of language faculty which means the ability to understand the spatially and temporally remote things (tamura & hashimoto, 2012). naigles et al. (1992) have shown that children (2-4 ages) try to adjust a known verb into a new syntactic frame contrary to older children who (5-12 ages) may not be interested in the syntactic frame when it does not fit the established verb meaning like adults. in addition, lee and naigles (2008) conclude that children extend the verb meanings by analyzing the number of noun phrases in an utterance. in other words, they extend certain meanings to other familiar verbs encountered in different transitivity frames. this finding is an evidence for the presence of an abstract grammatical knowledge in acquisition of verbs, namely the syntactic bootstrapping. similarly, göksun et al. (2008) have found out that turkishspeaking children are better at syntactic bootstrapping tasks. this is most probably because of the fact that case marking is essential in turkish and case information gives cues on the argument roles. özge et al. (2019) presents evidence for this by stating that four-year-old turkish children have abstract knowledge of case markers that is independent of the verbs. later on, a supportive view toward syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis belongs to yuan et al. (2012) who point out that the toddlers generally benefit from the pronominal arguments in order to correctly identify and comprehend a novel verb. in fact, it would be wrong to evaluate the impacts of semantic and syntactic bootstrapping hypotheses as totally separate issues since the only distinction between them is the direction of the mapping process. in the former one, the acquisition is from the semantic cues to syntactic knowledge whereas in the latter one, the acquisition is from syntactic cues to semantic knowledge. both of these hypotheses claim that children have adult-like grammar and the effect of an innate ability to acquire adult-like grammar cannot be ignored. as a matter of fact, pinker (1984) mentions that both semantic and syntactic knowledge are influential in the acquisition process; yet, we need to know which one matters more at the very beginning of the acquisition process. pinker (1989) argues that children make use of innate semantic knowledge to bootstrap into syntax; however, gleitman (1990) states that children focus upon innate syntactic knowledge to bootstrap into semantics. apart from the semantic and syntactic bootstrapping hypotheses accounting for an innate linguistic knowledge, the verb-island hypothesis, also known as usage-based theory, suggests that children benefit from only general cognitive mechanisms to acquire language (tomasello, 2000). in this theory, the aid in the acquisition process is the generalizations which children make from the input. it should be noted that such aid is a commonly agreed notion indicating that language acquisition requires acquisition of argument structures in turkish turhan 665 exposure (gates, 2002; wang et al., 2022). the foundations for this approach are based upon the findings of tomasello’s (1992) study which includes the spontaneous speech of a child before age 2. the data illustrate that each verb is an “island” with its own distinctive argument structures. this view asserts that children produce their multi-word utterances without being aware of syntactic structures such as noun and verb. children’s early utterances are formularized according to a functionally-oriented distributional analysis (tomasello, 1992) of the language they are exposed to. for instance, in the sentence "mary throws the pencil", the roles of mary and the pencil are assigned to "throws". that is, mary is the one who can throw things, and the pencil is something that can be threw. tomasello also proposes that verb-specific argument structures are later generalized by children to more abstract categories such as agent, subject, and intransitive verbs and so on. in this process, the primary determinants are the cognitive development and social interaction (tomasello & brooks, 1999). this indicates that children make an organization of verbs in their mental schema with the information that they gain through experience. further, 3-4 years olds could integrate the novel items to the utterances that they did not encounter in adult speech; however, 2-3 years olds could not do the same thing (tomasello & brooks, 1998). the implication is that children gradually construct an abstract linguistic knowledge as understood from the case of older children. in the same line with this notion, theakston et al. (2001) emphasize that the most important factor influencing children’s acquisition of verbs and argument structures is the experience with the input, rather than abstract grammatical representations. another support for this hypothesis comes from a case study of a turkish child which was conducted by i̇nci-kavak and kavak (2021). they conclude that young children’s awareness of how to use linguistic structures increases thanks to the availability of those structures in the contextual communication with their caregivers. allen (2015) suggests some contradictory opinions toward the proposition that experience and exposure are the keys for acquiring verbs. to exemplify, the usage-based theory behind the verbisland hypothesis does not account for abstractness for the reason that it solely provides evidence for syntactic priming. she supports her idea by asserting that the child continues to use the learned syntactic frames just because they are primed to use the frames to which they are exposed in the environment. therefore, the focus should be geared toward the hypothesis of “weak or graded abstract representations”. from a critical perspective, the usagebased approach primarily relies on production studies in which children have to be active decision-makers; and this process is really bound to syntactic representations. in spite of this, comprehension studies can be less demanding on children and thus, children could be involved in abstract representations of argument structures. what is implied here is that more comprehension studies are required to be conducted so as to compensate for the lack of abstractness because usage-based theorists make interpretations depending on what is available in the input. however, abstract words (words referring to intangible qualities, ideas and concepts such as truth, kindness or honor) should be scrutinized because, for children, they are relatively journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 662-679, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 666 more difficult to comprehend than concrete words (words referring to tangible qualities, ideas and concepts such as green, square or wood) (bellagamma et al., 2022). conducting one of the related comprehension studies, conwell and auen (2021) claim that the acquisition of argument structures by english-speaking pre-school children may be easier with the help of the accompanying pronouns which give important hints about the thematic roles. in addition to these four hypotheses, much of the related literature is concerned with the presence or absence of arguments in caregiver speech which is in a constant relationship with the child speech (i̇nci-kavak & kavak, 2021) because omission of arguments is possible in turkish which permits the uses of null arguments (gürcanlı et al., 2007). the crucial point is that we need to know how children process the input to learn arguments or how they produce argument structures in languages (e.g. turkish) where arguments are often omitted. in other words, in such languages, children are not able to use semantic cues to bootstrap themselves into verb meaning. instead, especially in morphologically rich languages, they need to activate their syntactic bootstrapping mechanisms which can provide them with some morphological cues to verb learning (ural et al., 2009). in a recent study from turkish context, i̇nci-kavak and kavak (2021) investigate the caregiver speech in terms of variation sets and reveal that variation sets have a big role in providing children with rich and varied contexts where they can analyze and interpret the boundaries of words in their mother tongue. in a similar vein, che et al. (2018) assert that there are strong ties between the “here and now” content which is full of repetitions and the child language development. in relation to argument ellipsis, sugisaki (2009) conducted a study with 24 japanese-speaking children aged between 4;11 and 6;07. the experimenter used a truth-value judgement task in which children were supposed to say whether the puppet truly described the story or not. the results showed that japanese-speaking children have knowledge of argument ellipsis. argument ellipsis is said to be connected to scrambling (takahashi, 2008) or the lack of overt agreement (saito, 2007). moreover, argument ellipsis is found to be acquired early by sugisaki (2009). this may be because of the fact that argument ellipsis and some specific properties of the japanese language such as agreement and scrambling are interrelated (saito, 2007; takahashi, 2008). from a different perspective, in their study focusing on parental input, kayama and oshima-takane (2022) propose that the existence of variation sets, which provides morphosyntactic clues, in the input help children reconstruct verb argument structures in japanese. as for turkish which is a head-final, svo language like japanese, there is a correlation between argument ellipsis and scrambling (oku, 1998). also, turkish allows for object ellipsis, but it does not allow for subject ellipsis. the reason for that is argument ellipsis is not permitted when there is agreement (saito, 2007); however, the presence of scrambling is a determinant for argument ellipsis (oku, 1998). in turkish, gürcanlı et al. (2007) observes that, in their experimental study in which adults’ and children’s rates of argument omission were focused, pragmatic information available in the environment may be a determinant for the saliency of the acquisition of argument structures in turkish turhan 667 arguments. further, sofu and ertekin sucak (2018) claimed that argument ellipsis may not only derive from the frequency of ellipsis in adult speech but also from the joint attention of the adult and child on the same objects and actions while interacting. in turkish, göksun et al. (2008) assert that both the number of noun phrases and the influence of an accusative case marker and the causative morpheme can be the determinant of the verb meaning process. in this study, causative enactments are found to increase when there is accusative case markers or two-argument frames. that is, göksun et al.’s (2008) study emphasize the place of syntactic and morphological cues in verb learning. hence, language-general properties lead to a supporting view for the syntactic bootstrapping in the acquisition process of verbs. ketrez (1999) explored that verbs in turkish are either used in frozen forms or in base forms by children. in a sense, this shows the absence of an adult-like verb category for children. furthermore, ketrez (1999) discusses the semantic bootstrapping hypothesis in the context of errors she observed on the production of utterances with inanimate subjects and action verbs. according to the findings discussed by ketrez (1999), children may not successfully relate verbs to noun phrases in the specific semantic context. besides, it is the pragmatic conditions which explain the rationale behind the overt uses of arguments by children; for example, children use arguments explicitly when they want to draw attention to them (ketrez, 1999). from another perspective, yapıcı (2008) accounts for verb and argument structure acquisition of turkish children with the verb-island hypothesis based on her naturalistic longitudinal data. she is of the opinion that turkish children cannot use overt arguments at the outset, but they become able to use multiple arguments later in the acquisition process. this means that children’s acquisition of arguments is cumulative, which is in the same line with the proposition of verb-island hypothesis demonstrating that children succeed to acquire argument structures as they get older and as they gain experience with the language. the rationale is that the acquisition of arguments necessitates time and experience because, as judy and recio (2022) express, less structurally complicated arguments are figured out earlier than their comparatively more structurally complicated counterparts. it should be noted that the languages are grouped under the categories of the ones with free/flexible word orders and the ones with strict/fixed word orders. for instance, certain european languages such as english and french have strict/fixed word orders. this means that english and french do not let sequencing words in interchangeable positions since such an attempt will lead us to change the overall meaning or to make the sentence ungrammatical. however, as an elliptical language, turkish permits free word orders; that is, verbs are generally at the final position whereas subjects and objects are possible to be placed in interchangeable positions. although the canonical word order was sov in turkish, not only the omission of subject pronoun is frequent but also the argument ellipsis is very common in use. another issue is transitivity/intransitivity which determines the number of arguments each verb requires (göksel & kerslake, 2005). if a verb is transitive, it exerts its action on an object. yet, if a verb is journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 662-679, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 668 intransitive, it can make sense without an object. besides, there exists another category which is ditransitive verbs surrounded by both direct and indirect objects. to exemplify the canonical uses of ditransitive verbs in turkish, we can present the sentence below: selin soruyu öğretmenine sordu. selin question-acc teacher-poss-2sg-dat ask-past-3sg ‘selin asked her teacher the question.’ in the light of all these views and considering the difficulty in the acquisition of verbs compared to nouns (hirsh-pasek & golinkoff, 2006), the present study aims to expand knowledge on how sensitive turkish children are in identifying argument structures of ditransitive verbs in sentences whose word orders are different. another aim is to reveal to what extent children tend to omit arguments in their utterances. the reason why ditransitive verbs are under scrutiny is that direct and indirect objects are possible to co-occur with ditransitive verbs. besides, it may be essential to study ditransitive verbs in turkish which permits scrambling which can make things more complicated to understand the preferences and order of argument structures. therefore, this study aims to answer the following research questions: 1. at what degree are turkish children sensitive to argument structures of ditransitive verbs? 2. at what degree are turkish children sensitive to sentences in which argument structures of ditransitive verbs are ordered differently? 3. at what degree do turkish children omit argument structures of ditransitive verbs? 2. methodology 2.1. research design the present study was designed as a cross-sectional study which is descriptive in nature. trochim (2006) defines the cross-sectional studies as the investigation of characteristics in a community without manipulating the variables at a single point in time. the data were collected from different participants only once. the factors such as age, gender, socioeconomic level, language proficiency, educational background were not included as variables in the study. the focused variables are children’s ages and their language background and linguistic environment. 2.2. participants ten turkish monolingual children who lived in a monolingual environment from birth to their current age were involved in the study. their ages ranged between 3;4 and 5;9. four of them were females and six of them were males. all of them attended a daily kindergarten located in the southern part of turkey. their mean length of utterance (mlu) and the level of exposure to the first language were not checked because these are not the variables for the present study; the ultimate aim is to purely describe the realizations of argument structures by turkish children at specific ages. acquisition of argument structures in turkish turhan 669 2.3. data collection task the data collection task involved nine sentences built with ditransitive verbs which were selected with the intuitive native judgments of the researcher and the kindergarten teacher considering the common semantic schema of the children. in each sentence, “subject” was the initial word and the orders of “verb, direct object and indirect object” differed. each sentence was not presented in all possible word orders; instead, each ditransitive sentence was presented once and in different word orders. the choice for the word orders was random. in the construction of the sentences, all items had 3rd person singular subjects and were formed in the past tense. detailed information about the task is illustrated in table 1: table 1 sentences in the data collection task ditransitive verbs sentences (turkish version) word order sentences (english version) sormak (to ask) öğretmenim soru bana sordu. (s-do-io-v) my teacher question me asked. gizlemek (to hide) babam makası dolaba gizledi. (s-do-io-v) my father the scissors in the cupboard hid. vermek (to give) arkadaşım kitabını bana verdi. (s-do-io-v) my friend me his/her book gave. getirmek (to bring) babam okula beni getirdi. (s-io-do-v) my father to school me took. yazmak (to write) öğretmenim kağıda ismimi yazdı. (s-io-do-v) my teacher my name on the paper wrote. anlatmak (to tell) öğretmenim bize masal anlattı. (s-io-do-v) my teacher us tale told. göstermek (to show) ablam gösterdi bize resimler. (s-v-io-do) my elder-sister showed us pictures. ödünç vermek (to lend) arkadaşım ödünç verdi bana boyayı. (s-v-io-do) my friend lent me the crayon. göndermek (to send) annem gönderdi bana yemeği. (s-v-io-do) my mom sent me the food. note: s: subject, do: direct object, io: indirect object, v: verb 2.4. data collection procedure at the very beginning of the data collection procedure, the researcher introduced herself to the children, created rapport and became acquainted with them so that the children could feel relaxed and produce natural speech without hesitation. following this, because the children were not literate at the time of the study, each of them listened to each sentence in the task from the recorder. afterwards, in order to check the comprehension, the researcher uttered the sentence one more time and the child were encouraged to repeat the same sentence. after the child’s comprehension was ensured, the researcher asked questions such as “who did this?, what was done? to whom/to where was the action done?” these questions were asked in the same order to each child after each sentence in the task. the journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 662-679, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 670 responses to these questions were important in terms of understanding the children’s sensitivity to the subjects, direct and indirect objects of particular verbs. the researcher went through the same procedure separately with each child. when the task was over, the researcher was involved in a free conversation with each child during almost 10 minutes. in the course of these dual conversation, the researcher asked questions involving ditransitive verbs so that she could obtain data in relation to argument omission when a ditransitive verb was uttered. all the dialogues established for collecting both comprehension and production data were audio-recorded by the researcher who is a native speaker of turkish via the mobile phone. 2.5. data analysis for the analysis of argument structures of ditransitive verbs utilized by children, the first step was to prepare the transcriptions for the descriptive analysis. the correct and wrong responses of children to the questions “who did this?, what was done? to whom was the action done?” were manually counted so that frequencies and percentages could be calculated as a result of the overall number of productions of all the children. moreover, the use of argument structures for different word orders was categorized, and omitted argument structures in children’s spontaneous speech were explored. the verbatim transcriptions of the whole spontaneous speech were analyzed with the intent of discovering the uses of utterances including ditransitive verbs as a way to understand the rate of the children’s omission of argument structures of ditransitive verbs. for the sake of reliability, the whole data were analyzed twice at different times; and thus, an acceptable intra-rater reliability score was ensured. 3. findings 3.1. at what degree are turkish children sensitive to argument structures of ditransitive verbs? to examine the sensitivity to argument structures co-occurring with ditransitive verbs, the correct responses for each argument structure were defined and counted as illustrated in table 2: table 2 argument structures identified correctly by the children arguments f % s 89 (out of 90) 99 do 80 (out of 90) 89 io 83 (out of 90) 92 total 252 (out of 270) 93 note: s: subject, do: direct object, io: indirect object. as understood from the total results in table 2, children seem to be able to identify the majority (93%) of argument structures of ditransitive verbs correctly. in terms of s, do and io; children were found to be sensitive to the subject to a great extent (99%). following this, they were quite good at determining the direct (89%) and indirect objects (92%). when the results acquisition of argument structures in turkish turhan 671 are compared, it can be argued that there is just a slight difference between the true responses for direct and indirect objects even though indirect objects are identified more appropriately. overall, children aged between 3;4 and 5;9 are successful at their interpretations of argument structures of ditransitive verbs. the fact that all age groups were successful at interpreting argument correctly indicates that the acquisition of arguments is almost fully completed as early as age 3. 3.2. at what degree are turkish children sensitive to sentences in which argument structures of ditransitive verbs are ordered differently? to investigate whether different word orders are influential in the sensitivity of children to argument structures co-occurring with ditransitive verbs, sentences in the data collection task were grouped under three categories which were s+do+io+v, s+io+do+v and s+v+io+do. as seen, the subject was always in the initial position; however, the other argument structures and the verb were positioned differently. correspondingly, table 3 shows how sensitive children were in identifying argument structures of ditransitive verbs positioned in different orders: table 3 argument structures identified correctly by the children in sentences in which words are sequenced differently arguments word orders s+do+io+v s+io+do+v s+v+io+do f % f % f % s 30 100 30 100 29 97 do 23 77 29 97 28 93 io 29 97 25 83 29 97 note: s: subject, do: direct object, io: indirect object. table 3 sheds light into the relation between different word orders and sensitivity of turkish children to argument structures of ditransitive verbs. it is highly possible to say that there are not huge differences in the correct interpretations of argument structures by children. for each different word order, the subjects were almost always interpreted correctly. most probably this is because the subjects were not scrambled at all. only for s+v+io+do order, the subject was not identified correctly once. when the results regarding direct and indirect objects were scrutinized, some slight differences were encountered. to exemplify, for the s+do+io+v order, indirect objects (97%) were more correctly interpreted than direct objects (77%). the situation for s+io+do+v order is vice versa because children appear to be more skilful at identifying direct objects (97%) than indirect objects (83%). concerning s+v+io+do order, the results show that children are considerably capable of interpreting each argument structure. based on all these, it is logical to express that various word orders might not create a difference or challenge for children’s identification of argument structures of ditransitive verbs. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 662-679, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 672 3.3. at what degree do turkish children omit arguments structures of ditransitive verbs? in total, 80 utterances (see samples in appendix) including ditransitive verbs were identified from children’s spontaneous speech. among 80 utterances, omitted argument structures were defined and calculated; and the results are presented in table 4: table 4 omission of argument structures of ditransitive verbs in children’s spontaneous speech f % omission of s (null subject) 57 48 omission of do 21 18 omission of io 40 34 omission in total 118 100 note: s: subject, do: direct object, io: indirect object. table 4 demonstrates that children omitted 118 out of 179 arguments in their utterances. out of these 118 omissions, the most frequent omission (48%) is related to the subject, which means children tend to prefer null subject very commonly. one example for the use of null subject is “masal anlatmış çocuklara (tale told children)”. as is clear in this utterance, the child did not refer to the subject who was a third person singular, but the subject was in fact “the teacher” depending on the contextual information. this can be explained with the pro-drop feature of turkish; namely, the empty part is the subject which remains unexpressed in specific circumstances (öztürk, 2002). the other frequently omitted argument is indirect objects (34%) and following this, direct objects were also omitted in the ratio of 18%. if we compare the omissions of direct and indirect objects, we can assert that indirect objects were nearly omitted two times more than direct objects. this can be an indicative of a tendency among turkish children to tell more about indirect objects which represent the recipient or beneficiary of the action of the verb. to exemplify omission of direct objects, “babam okula getirmiş (my dad to school took)” can be an illustrative example. here, what was taken to school was not mentioned whereas the contextual cues pointed to the “schoolbag”. in terms of indirect object omissions, one child uttered this sentence: “arkadaşım kitabı vermiş (my friend the book gave).” that is, we could not know to whom/to where the book was given in the absence of discourse cues. apart from these, it was also found out that children did not omit any arguments in four sentences listed in the following part. each dialogue belongs to a different child. researcher: sonra ne oldu? öğretmenin ne yaptı peki? child: öğretmenim arkadaşımın ismini tahtaya yazmıştı. (s+do+io+v) (3;9) ‘my teacher my friend’s name wrote on the board.’ researcher: herkes görsün diye galiba değil mi? acquisition of argument structures in turkish turhan 673 researcher: diğer gün hangi aktiviteyi yapmıştınız? child: öğretmenimiz masal anlatmıştı bize. (s+do+v+io) (4;1) ‘our teacher tale told to us.’ researcher: ya, güzel bir masal mıydı? researcher: yani evde telefonla oyun oynamıyor musun? child: babam telefonu dolaba saklıyor. (s+do+io+v) (3;4) ‘my dad phone cupboard hiding.’ researcher: hmm, istemiyor telefonla uğraşmanı demek ki. researcher: senin annen peki? öğlen ne yapıyor? child: annem yemek gönderir babama. (s+do+v+io) (4;6) ‘my mom meal sends to my dad.’ researcher: o zaman sabah yemek pişirmekle meşgul annen. as is evident in the above examples, children were not inclined to omit any argument in four different sentences. when these sentences are examined, it is revealed that children made use of different word orders although the initial word was always the subject. in the above sentences, another common point is that the direct object was always used as the second word. most probably, the differences in the word orders of those sentences resulted from the fact that children has tendency to put emphasis on different words by using arguments in interchangeable positions. that is, children’s tendency to these sorts of scrambling is not without cause in turkish (özkan grigoras, 2020). overall, according to result of argument omission, the most-eyecatching point might be that direct objects existed more frequently in children’s utterances when compared to other argument structures cooccurring with ditransitive verbs. this shows that children preferred to give information about the direct object; and this maybe because direct objects are directly affected by the action of the verbs, namely they are the things acted upon. 4. discussion and conclusions as an elliptical language, turkish permits scrambling; that is, verbs are generally at the final position whilst subjects and objects are possible to be used in interchangeable positions. in the related literature, the studies (göksun et al., 2008; lee & naigles, 2008; lidz et al., 2003) generally cover the number of noun phrases to have an idea about the verb acquisition of children. for this reason, the present study aimed at revealing how turkish children comprehend and produce argument structures with certain ditransitive verbs. to achieve the former aim (comprehension), a task including sentences in which words were ordered differently was conducted with children. to achieve the latter (production), children were encouraged to speak spontaneously with the researcher by focusing some certain actions of pre-selected verbs. the primary results show that children displayed sensitivity toward argument structures of ditransitive verbs and there were only slight differences between the correct interpretations of the subject, direct and journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 662-679, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 674 indirect object. among those, it was the subject which was correctly interpreted more frequently. regarding other arguments, indirect objects were correctly identified more often when compared to the correct identification of direct objects. the reason behind the correct interpretation of the subject might be related to the affixes attached to the verb since those affixes give information about the subject. this may be also associated with the finding that turkish children are better at syntactic bootstrapping thanks to the case marking system in turkish linguistic structure (göksun et al., 2008). that is, such syntactic cues as affixes or case markings help children correctly interpret the linguistic input they encounter. as for direct and indirect objects’ correct identifications, children may use both syntactic and semantic mechanisms together. the former one refers to syntactic cues surrounding a verb (landau & gleitman, 1985; gleitman, 1990; matsuo et al., 2012; yuan et al., 2012) and the latter one refers to the use of innate semantic knowledge (pinker, 1989). with regard to sensitivity to varying word orders, children did not seem to be influenced by the interchangeable positions of arguments while identifying argument structures of ditransitive verbs. the reason why they did not rely on word order so as to interpret arguments correctly was most probably because they focus on their semantic mechanisms instead of benefitting from syntactic bootstrapping strategies as proposed by gleitman (1990). another explanation for this might be associated with the notion that discourse related cues can be helpful to learn verb meanings and argument structures (ketrez, 1999). an additional justification may be that languagespecific properties in verb learning, such as free order property which makes turkish different from other languages having strict word order rules (e.g. english and french), might be influential in the interpretation of arguments. this contradicts with the proposition that general cognitive mechanisms play a role in the acquisition of verb meanings and argument structures (lidz et al., 2003). however, similar to the effects of general cognitive mechanisms in language acquisition, some characteristics of the input can foster the acquisition process positively. for instance, being involved in rich and varied contextual communication (i̇nci-kavak & kavak, 2021) and repetitions in the input (che et al., 2018) might ease the cognitive and emotional difficulties in the language acquisition. concerning argument omission, both direct and indirect objects were omitted to a great extent, but children tended to mention direct objects more frequently in their utterances. this shows that turkish children aged between 3;4 and 5;9 are aware of argument omission. this finding is in consistency with the findings of sugisaki (2009) indicating that japanese speaking children have knowledge of argument ellipsis. in addition, argument ellipsis is found to be acquired early by sugisaki (2009). the findings of this study are also in line with the findings of sugisaki (2009). as to the reasons behind the existence of argument ellipsis, takahashi (2008) relates it to scrambling or the lack of overt agreement (saito, 2007). similarly, oku (1998) points out that the presence of scrambling is a determinant for argument ellipsis. within the present study, argument omisson is prevalent among turkish children and this may be because of the fact that the joint attention paid by the adult and the child on the same acquisition of argument structures in turkish turhan 675 objects and actions in communication (sofu & ertekin sucak, 2018). joint attention can solve the challenges created by the elliptic nature of turkish. taking the limitations of the study into account, it is an urgent need to carry out a further study investigating the similarities and differences between argument comprehension and production of children at different ages. alternatively, a longitudinal study could be conducted to examine the process of how arguments are acquired through time. if these are ensured, more reliable and valid data could be gathered; and we can have a broader idea about the acquisition of argument structures. in terms of contexts where the data are collected, argument structures uttered in different settings can be explored. in this way, the variables resulting from contextbound differences could be eliminated. last but not least, arguments produced by adults or caregivers should also be in the scope of an upcoming study in which argument structures of children and adults are compared in a way that the researchers can use adults’ argument structures as a reference to better understand the employment of arguments by children. note: this study is a modified version of the author’s proceeding presented at the fifth international mediterranean social sciences congress (mecas v) which was held in podgorica, montenegro on june 18-20, 2019. references allen, e. m. shanley. 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(2016). the price of productivity: how children break the rules of language. cambridge, ma: mit press. yuan, s., fisher, c., & snedeker, j. (2012). counting the nouns: simple structural cues to verb meaning. child development, 83, 1382–1399. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01783. wang, x., wang, b., & bi, y. (2022). early-life language deprivation affects specific neural mechanisms of semantic representations. biorxiv, 202211. waxman, s., fu, x., arunachalam, s., leddon, e., geraghty, k., & song, h.j. (2013). are nouns learned before verbs? infants provide insight into a long-standing debate. child development perspective, 7(3), 155–159. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01783 acquisition of argument structures in turkish turhan 679 appendix samples from the children utterances for each ditransitive verb sample 1: researcher: peki sen? sen cevap verebildin mi? child: yok, hayır bana sormadı ki. (5;9) ‘nope, he did not ask it to me.’ researcher: keşke sorsaydı değil mi? cevabı biliyordun çünkü. sample 2: researcher: nasıl buldu öğretmen peki? child: boyaları masanın altına gizlemek istedim ama … (5;5) ‘i wanted to hide the crayons under the table but …’ researcher: böylece paylaşmış oldun ama. sample 3: researcher: buraya da not kağıtlamızı ve kalemleri koyalım. child: bana vermeyecek misin? (3;7) ‘won’t you give it to me?’ researcher: neyi, kalemleri mi? sample 4: researcher: duvardaki posterler ne kadar güzel. i̇nceleyebiliriz birlikte, ne dersin? child: getirmemi ister misin? (4;3) ‘do you want me to take it?’ researcher: olur ama birazdan tamam mı? sample 5: researcher: hadi yazalım o zaman duygularımızı seninle. child: tamam, yazalım benim defterime. (5;0) ‘okay, let’s write on my notebook.’ researcher: anlaştık. sample 6: researcher: çok mu seviyorsun masalları? anlatıyor musun masal acaba? child: kardeşime anlatıyorum ben masallar … (4;8) ‘i tell my sister tales …’ researcher: hmm, harikasın. sample 7: researcher: çizdiklerini gösterir misin bana şimdi? child: olur ama, öğretmenim izin verirse gösteririm. (3;9) ‘okay, but i show them to you if my teacher let me.’ researcher: peki izin al, bakalım sonra. sample 8: researcher: bir günlüğüne bile mi? child: hayır, bir günlüğüne bile ödünç veremem bunları ben. (4;1) ‘no, i can’t lend them to you even for one day.’ researcher: gerçekten mi? neden ama? sample 9: researcher: kuzenin için olsa göndermek ister misin? child: evet, hediyeyi kuzenime göndereceğim. (3;4) ‘yes, i will send the gift to my cousin.’ researcher: çok sevinir gönderirsen değil mi? journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 728-746, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 728 effectiveness of class-wide peer tutoring on idiom comprehension in middle school students with specific learning disability gowri arakere1 loma linda university karen mainess2 loma linda university abstract idioms are frequently used in classrooms. students with learning disabilities have challenges in comprehending them. providing idiom instruction in the student’s least restrictive environment (i.e., the classroom) is effective and time efficient. the present study examined the efficacy of class wide peer tutoring (cwpt) in twenty-one middle school students (6th and 8th grade) who had an educational diagnosis of specific learning disability, an active individual education plan (iep) and attended a special day classroom for their english language arts instruction. students were trained in cwpt procedures in the special day classroom 4 days a week for 4 weeks. they were assigned to dyads and learned six idioms each week for 4 weeks. each idiom was presented in different contexts over the course of 4 days. pre and posttest were given for thirty idioms including six idioms that were not trained via cwpt. testing of the six idioms determined if the students could generalize the learned skill. pre, post, and generalization data were analyzed using repeated measures anova. results revealed that students made significant progress in idiom comprehension in both grades. there was also statistical significance in the generalization of the six idioms. however, clinical significance for generalization was not consistent with statistical findings. discussion specifically addressed clinical implications for use of the process both in the classroom and by speech language pathologists (slps). keywords: figurative language, idioms, class wide peer tutoring, specific learning disability, speech therapy 1. introduction figurative or nonliteral language is used extensively in many cultures in both formal and informal situations. for example: in hindi, “every sixth six months” means every once in a long time. in spanish, “to take a french leave” means to leave without saying goodbye. in italian, “to sweat seven shirts” means to work hard (bhalla, 2009). idioms are the most frequently used figurative language in classrooms (kerbel & grunwell, 1997). the significant role of idiom use in everyday language suggests that idiom comprehension should be included in academic curriculum. in the united 1 dr. gowri arakere is a speech language pathologist practicing in fontana, ca. dr. arakere specializes in speech, language and swallowing disorders in patients. corresponding author: gowri.arakere@alvordschools.org 2 dr. karen mainess is a full-time assistant professor in the department of communication sciences and disorders at loma linda university. her clinical background includes early childhood and school-based practice with specialization in developmental disorders and autism. received : 10.11.2021 accepted : 06.02.2023 published : 30.03.2023 doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7799680 mailto:gowri.arakere@alvordschools.org https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7799680 peer tutoring on idiom comprehension arakere, and mainess 729 states, figurative language has become a part of the common core educational curriculum (national governors association center for best practices, council of chief state school officers, 2010). learning a language not only involves learning vocabulary and the syntactical structure but also learning the idioms and other figurative language to understand the language and the culture. figurative language enriches meaning and is used to convey thoughts, feelings, and ideas in a more effective, persuasive, and impactful ways than literal language (bischofshausen, makoid, & cole, 1989). it often compares two concepts or ideas that at first don’t seem to relate to each other. for example: ‘she runs like lightning’ compares the speed of movement to the speed of lightning, indicating that she runs really fast. a simile uses the words “like” or “as” to compare one object or idea to another, indicating they are alike in some way (e.g., busy as a bee). a metaphor states a fact by using an analogy, for example, ‘that was a real train wreck’. idioms are phrases that have both literal and nonliteral interpretations, e.g., “it’s raining cats and dogs”, and “two peas in a pod”. idioms are widely used by people who share a common language and culture. a speaker’s metalinguistic competence, cultural background, and knowledge of the world constantly serve as a framework to a speaker’s understanding of a language (nippold, 2006). literal language states the facts and there is transparency of what is said. however figurative language is used to make exaggerations or alterations of literal words fora particular linguistic point. of all the various kinds of figurative language, idioms are the most frequently occurring in classrooms (kerbel & grunwell, 1997). syntactically, idioms can range from single words (e.g., nosey) to phrases (e.g., hit the nail on its head). simpson and mendis (2003) have defined idioms as “a group of words that occur in a more or less fixed phrase and whose overall meaning cannot be predicted by analyzing the meanings of its constituent parts”. without the understanding of these complex phrases, an individual reading a newspaper article, attending a classroom, or socializing with peers would be unable to grasp the intricate meanings conveyed (hung & nippold, 2013). due to the pervasiveness of idiom use in classrooms, literature, and everyday language use, it is important that children and adolescents understand their meanings (kerbel & grunwell, 1997). idioms are unique to every language and culture, and it is difficult for a new speaker of a given language to understand them without prior knowledge of their meanings (in that culture). idioms and figurative language comprehension are challenging for individuals with learning disabilities and for individuals whose first language is not english (blue 1981; irujo, 1986; seidenberg & bernstein, 1986). children who struggle to comprehend idioms are at a disadvantage for understanding critical messages presented in the classroom and social situations. it is therefore important to examine how to best teach nonliteral language in the most relevant setting: the classroom. to address figurative language in a systematic way, it is essential to learn about the development of figurative language. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 728-746, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 730 1.1. development of figurative language language development is a dynamic process and is not complete even by late childhood. it continues through adolescence and into adult years (nippold, 2000; nippold & taylor, 1995). abkarian et al. (1992) studied preschoolers and found that by age 6, children were able to provide some sort of rationale for the idioms they used accurately 70% of the time. over the ages tested (3.5–6.5 years), this study demonstrated that with increasing age, children tend to interpret idioms less literally. qualitative changes in understanding idioms change as a function of age. typically developing children comprehend some idioms by age 5, and by age 11 their comprehension of idioms is essentially complete. in contrast, children with language learning disabilities were delayed in their comprehension of idioms and correlates with their severity of language delays (johnson, 1985). levorato and cacciari (1995) also noted that children are literally oriented when younger and become more idiomatically oriented as they grow older. nippold and rudzinski (1993) and nippold and taylor (1995) have found that idiom understanding in children and adolescents were significantly correlated with the familiarity and transparency ratings of the expressions. transparency refers to when literal and nonliteral meaning of an idiom are very close, whereas frequency is how often an idiom is used. familiar idioms were easier to understand and were frequently used and understood by young people as compared to unfamiliar idioms (nippold & taylor, 2002). opaque and infrequently used idioms, for example: “giving someone a cold shoulder”, “bag of bones” etc., on the other hand, were more difficult and are learned later in development for individuals (nippold & taylor, 2002). teaching idioms in context results in more effective learning when compared to teaching them in isolation (nippold & martin 1989). when idioms were presented in two-sentence story contexts, adolescents aged 14-17 found it slightly easier than when idioms were presented without any story contexts. hence, in schools it is prudent to teach students transparent and frequently used idioms-in-context before addressing opaque and unfamiliar idioms. 1.2. figurative language in schools figurative language is an essential part of academia. not only do we find teachers using nonliteral language during lectures and conversation, but it is prevalent in textbooks, reading materials and social situations. although specific idioms vary in frequency of use, the general use of idioms is frequent in both formal and informal speech and texts. fifty-four hundred classroom teachers participated in a study by lazar et al. (1989) who evaluated the utterances used by teachers and found at least one idiom in 11% of all utterances and contained at least one multiple meaning expression 36% of the time. they also found that the usage of idioms increases in higher grades. although teachers use multiple meaning words and nonliteral language extensively with their students, reed and spicer (2003) found that the high school teachers ranked two communication skills associated with figurative language as the least important skill for student’s communication with them. it is important to make the teachers aware of this discrepancy as it affects the student’s comprehension of lectures and peer tutoring on idiom comprehension arakere, and mainess 731 curriculum, especially students who are second language learners or with learning difficulties. 1.3. idiom comprehension idioms can be confusing to students who have language disabilities as well as students who have learned english as a second language. often, idioms are one of the last features of a new language that an english language learner acquires. students with language difficulties tend to be literal in language use and find it challenging to keep up with their typical peers in a classroom which is rich with idioms. the frequency of idiom usage could potentially pose a problem for students with language or learning disability who fail to understand non-literal language. rapin (1996) found that students with semantic-pragmatic language deficits are literal in their understanding of language and have challenges comprehending non-literal or figurative language. similar findings have been reported by seidenberg and bernstein (1986) who studied simile and metaphor comprehension of third through sixth grade students. they found that the older learning-disabled students had difficulty with nonliteral language and performed on par with younger non-disabled students. research has found a significant relationship between reading comprehension and the comprehension of figurative language (wiejak, 2014). children who had received 2-4 years of reading instruction were given both reading and metaphor activities. children with poor reading comprehension displayed poor metaphor identification whereas children with medium and good reading comprehension abilities fared well. nippold (1998) indicated that the comprehension of figurative language is important to cultural literacy and linguistic competence. in adolescent years, the comprehension of figurative language becomes increasingly essential for peer interactions and may affect social relationship skills (im-bolter, cohen & farnia, 2013). one hundred and thirty-eight adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17 with mental health referrals were compared to age-matched adolescents with no mental health problems. adolescents with mental health referrals had significantly lower social cognition and figurative language skills. they showed less mature social relationships as well as problem solving abilities. rinaldi (2000) reported impaired understanding of ambiguous language (including idioms) in older pupils with language impairment, age 11–14 years, who attended special classroom settings for adolescents with communicative disorders. similar results have been reported by lee and kamhi (1990) and nippold and fey (1983) who found non-literal language comprehension deficits in children with learning disabilities. there are only a few studies that compare non-literal language comprehension in children with autism spectrum disorders and learning disabilities. one such study is by mashal and kasirer (2012) who studied the non-literal language comprehension in adolescents with language disabilities and autism. they found that both groups had difficulty comprehending the non-literal meaning of the figurative language when compared to typically developing adolescents. chahboun et al. (2016) matched children with high functioning autism (hfa) and typically developing children on their intelligence and language level. even though the structural language of both groups were journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 728-746, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 732 matched, children with hfa had difficulty with nonliteral language. furthermore, norbury (2004) studied children with communication disorders between 8 and 15 years old and found that providing an idiom in context offered an advantage in comprehension of unfamiliar idioms in children with language and communication impairments. however, context did not provide much advantage to children with deficits in structural language i.e., impairments in semantics and syntax. qualls et al. (2004) studied adolescents with language-based learning disabilities and found that they often interpret idioms literally. idioms with context do not provide a lot of support for students with language-based learning disabilities to comprehend idioms, as they have trouble comprehending the context itself. these children will have trouble learning the meanings of idioms incidentally and will need to be taught explicitly via repeated exposure and assistance in processing the meaning of nonliteral language in order for generalization to occur. 1.4. idiom interventions idiom comprehension is important for academic and social success. trup (2009) examined teaching idioms to children with autism and found that explicit instruction in idioms helps in idiom comprehension. whyte, nelson & khan, (2013) found similar results when they introduced idioms in a community social skills program designed for children with autism. they studied the effectiveness of group idiom intervention for 2 weeks in 7–12year-old children with autism spectrum disorders (asd). they found that children with asd showed enormous gains not only during the intervention but also during the delayed posttests. children with asd showed improvements even on idioms that were not taught to them during the intervention. idiom intervention within the classroom has shown favorable results. abrahamsen and smith (2000) compared two different modalities of idiom instruction in children with communication disorders. computer teaching and classroom intervention were studied and both methods proved effective in teaching idioms; however, the classroom method was significantly more effective than the computer method (abrahmsen & smith, 2000). additionally, teaching idioms using computers took two hours each week while classroom instruction for the entire class took only 20-30 min each week. similar results were found by lundblom and woods (2012) when they used class wide peer tutoring (cwpt) in middle school students with low reading and achievement scores. four students made considerable gains on idiom comprehension when they took the role of a tutor and tutee using cwpt, while the teacher supervised the class. it is the professional responsibility of a speech-language pathologist (slp) to provide culturally competent services to a diverse population of students. common core curriculum is implemented in many u.s. states and requires implementation in the least restrictive environment. there are many ways for an slp to work with language disordered or delayed students within the classroom. slps are also greatly involved in response to intervention (rti) and the individualized education plan (iep) processes. peer tutoring on idiom comprehension arakere, and mainess 733 class wide peer tutoring (cwpt) is an instructional strategy which can be used by slps to implement strategies in the least restrictive environment for students who have language or learning disabilities (maheady & gard, 2010). the diversity of backgrounds and various capabilities of the students in different classrooms can make it difficult to tailor the classroom instruction. cwpt has been proven to be a helpful method for providing intervention to students using peers as tutors. this technique uses reciprocal peer tutoring and group reinforcement. the whole classroom of students are actively involved and engaged in learning and practicing various academic and social skills simultaneously, in a systematic fashion. an slp may choose to utilize cwpt to provide structured language enrichment. this structured language enrichment might include instruction of figurative language, using skills such as asking relevant questions or staying on topic, particularly for students identified as having language learning difficulties (nippold, 2000). cwpt can provide numerous practice opportunities for students in the basic subject areas (i.e., reading, vocabulary, spelling, math facts) as they are engaged in learning tasks with a peer tutor. the cwpt program has been researched and used since 1980 and has repeatedly demonstrated that the tutoring process increases students' time on tasks and improves overall academic performance (delquadri, greenwood, stretton, & hall 1983; greenwood, 1991). cwpt can be a valuable resource for students of all age levels and has been effectively implemented within general and special education populations and limited english proficient students. with increasing numbers of students in secondary schools requiring language intervention, slps can use this technique effectively either as a classroom consultant or a service provider (nippold, 2000). the goal of cwpt is to enable student success and to assist in achieving knowledge in the academic areas. it includes a game-format tutoring technique that reinforces error correction and benefits both tutor and tutee (greenwood, delquadri, & carta, 1997). in cwpt, student dyads work together as tutor and tutee and cooperatively learn the academic task. the tutee responds to the tutor either orally and/or in writing. the tutor has the responsibility to monitor and assess the accuracy of the responses provided by the tutee. when explicit teaching is used, not only do typical students’ progress in the areas that are used with cwpt, but students with learning disability, and intellectual disability have shown growth in academic and social areas areas (lundblom & woods, 2012; whyte, nelson & khan, 2013; qualls et al, 2004; ezell & goldstein, 1992). with the introduction of the common core curriculum as well as the paradigmatic shift of speech/language service delivery from ‘pull-out’ to more inclusive services, cwpt has proven to be beneficial (klecan-aker, 1985). idioms are the most frequently occurring figurative language in our classrooms as well as in social situations. it is crucial that our students, especially with language learning difficulties comprehend them to fully participate in both academics and in social relationships. with the introduction of rti and common core, collaboration of the classroom teacher and the slp in terms of intervention and monitoring of development of language skills is increasingly taking a center stage. cwpt provides journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 728-746, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 734 intervention in the student’s least restrictive setting, collaboration among educators, and more involvement of the students in the process. this research explored the efficacy of cwpt in training middle school students identified with specific learning disability (sld) in the comprehension of idioms. research questions were as follows: 1. is there a significant difference in idiom comprehension when cwpt is used over time for middle school students identified as having specific learning difficulties? 2. do formally taught idiom comprehension skills generalize to comprehension of novel idioms? 2. methodology 2.1. participants twenty-one middle school students between the ages of 11 and 14 were recruited to participate in this study. all students had received an educational diagnosis of specific learning disability (sld) and had an individualized education plan (iep). according to california code of regulations (ccr), sld is defined as a “disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken, or written, that may have manifested itself in the imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell, or do mathematical calculations, including conditions such as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia. the basic psychological processes include attention, visual processing, auditory processing, sensory-motor skills, cognitive abilities including association, conceptualization and expression”. all participants in this study attended a special education classroom for english language arts (ela) instruction each day. written consent was obtained from the student’s parents, and student assent was obtained in accordance with the loma linda university institutional review board (irb) requirements for ethical treatment of study participants. the selected and consented students were administered the ‘idiomatic language’ subtest of comprehensive assessment of spoken language (casl) (carrow-woolfolk, 2016). to meet inclusionary criteria, the students scored at or below the 16th percentile on the subtest. any student with a record of chronic absenteeism was excluded from the study. 2.2. material forty-eight idioms were selected for this study from previous research and the scholastic dictionary of idioms (terban, 1998). the middle school teachers provided input regarding the familiarity of the idioms by classifying 48 idioms into high, medium, and low familiarity. out of 48, 30 idioms which had a mix of high, moderate, and low familiarity were chosen for this current study. appendix a shows the rating scale given to the teachers. out of the 48 idioms, 24 idioms that are a mix of high, moderate, and low familiarity were selected to be used for this study. another six idioms were peer tutoring on idiom comprehension arakere, and mainess 735 selected for preand posttesting. these six idioms were not used during the cwpt sessions. the 24 idiomatic phrases used for the idiom training were randomly assigned to one of four sets. during the cwpt sessions, each idiom was presented in the context of short stories consisting of 1-3 sentences. four choices were provided to the student to identify the correct figurative meaning of the idiom presented. students were provided a choice of four possible answer choices including a figurative interpretation, a literal interpretation, and two unrelated answer choices. the students were expected to provide a verbal response to each item. if the answer was correct, the student received two points. if not, the tutor read a scripted message for error correction; “not quite. let’s read the story again to look for clue words and think about what is happening in the story”. the tutor then asked the tutee to try again. if the student’s second response was correct, they received one point. after two tries, if the student continued to give erroneous responses, the tutor provided the correct answer. in this condition, the tutee did not receive any points. 2.3. training the slp facilitated and provided reinforcement to the cwpt dyads. the teachers were provided a copy of the manual regarding cwpt: together we can! classwide peer tutoring to improve basic academic skills (greenwood, delquadri, & carta,1997). the slp reviewed the cwpt procedures with the teacher by role playing activities with the stimulus items. the teachers demonstrated comprehension of the procedures by return demonstration of the cwpt process and explanation of the entire procedure. the students were trained on cwpt procedures before beginning the study. the slp and the special education teachers (educators) conducted the training by explanation, modeling, and practice. the educators demonstrated the tutoring procedures, rules, and methods to correct errors and earn points. to demonstrate, two students, guided by the educators, practiced the cwpt process in front of the class. the educators provided feedback highlighting the appropriate error correction procedure, tutoring, and scoring procedure. students were well trained to perform tutoring at the end of the training session. the cwpt sessions began once the training sessions were completed? 2.4. instrumentation each student was given a pretest and posttest of 30 idioms before the beginning of the cwpt sessions and at the end of four weeks. the students received a 1 or a 0 for correct and incorrect responses, respectively. each student could score from 0-30 points. appendix b shows the training set that was used in preand post-test conditions. the figurative meaning of each idiom was presented, and the participant selected the corresponding idioms from four choices including the correct idiom and three randomly chosen idioms. the randomly selected idiom choices were from the aforementioned 30 idioms selected for this study. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 728-746, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 736 2.5. procedures classroom students selected and consented as participants were paired as tutor-tutee for the duration of the study. each pairing was randomly assigned. cwpt pairs typically change each week. however, the pairs remained constant in the present study to control for variability. cwpt sessions were conducted in the student’s special education classroom. the slp initiated the sessions during the class period in which language arts was taught. the length of the cwpt sessions did not exceed 20 minutes. the sessions were implemented 4 days a week for 4 weeks. the slp and classroom teacher moved around the classroom to ensure appropriate implementation (including reading the stimulus cards, providing correction prompts, and scoring of the answers) of the procedures. at the start of each session, the subject partner dyads sat together. a set of six flashcards with the week’s idioms was handed to the individual dyad groups. a timer was set for 10 minutes. the tutor read the idiom in its context as well as the answer choices. the tutee reviewed the answers and verbally responded by choosing an answer. the tutor provided a score of 2, 1 or 0 depending on the tutee’s responses. two points were earned if the answer was correct. if the tutee chose the wrong answer, the tutor read from the stimulus item prompt “not quite. let’s read the story again to look for clue words and think about what is happening in the story”. if the tutee got the right answer after this prompt, then he/she earned one point. if not, the tutor gave the correct answer, but no points were earned. two separate sets of stimulus material cards were utilized for the tutor and tutee roles. appendix c provides an example of an idiom card used by the tutor/tutee dyads. after the first 10 minutes, the roles of tutor and tutee reversed, and the same procedure followed. at the end of the 20 minutes, the educators went around the room and collected the number of points earned by each student in the pairs. these numbers were documented at the end of each cwpt session. 2.6. data collection and analyses the students totaled the number of points earned during each session. the slp collected and documented all points earned by each student across four weeks. additionally, the students were administered a pre and posttest of the 30 aforementioned idioms (at the beginning and end of the four-week period). a repeated measures anova was used to analyze the data from both preand post-test for idiom comprehension and generalization of the six idioms. students obtained a score between 0 and 30 for preand posttests and a score between 0 and 6 for preand posttest generalizations. 3. findings ibm spss statistics version 25.0 was used to perform data analysis. there were 12 participants from the sixth grade (6 girls, 6 boys) and 9 participants from the ninth grade (1 girl and 8 boys). all the students had individualized education programs (ieps) and were enrolled in special education programs. the students attended a special day class for their english language arts instruction taught by a special education teacher. peer tutoring on idiom comprehension arakere, and mainess 737 idiom comprehension: mean preand post-test scores were compared across 6th and 8th grade students to determine the efficacy of cwpt training. there was a significant difference in performance on preand the post-test scores [f (1, 19) = 11.5, p = .003] with increases indicated on post scores (table 1). table 1 a comparison of pre and posttest mean idiom comprehension scores within and across grades 6th grade n=12 mean (sd) 8th grade n= 9 mean (sd) p value pretest 9.8 (3.6) 13.9(3.9) 0.33 post test 13.4(6.1) 19.6(2.6) 0.33 p value 0.001 0.001 although there were significant differences in preand posttest scores for both grades, there were no observed differences between groups [f (1, 19) = 1.0, p = .33]. figure 1 illustrates pre-test and post-test data points for the 24 idioms that were used to train the students during cwpt. fıgure 1. the effect of cwpt training on pre and post-test scores of 6th and 8th graders generalization: six idioms, which were not used in training, were presented to the students during pre and post cwpt training to observe their ability to generalize comprehension of novel idioms. there was a significant difference in performance in preand post-test scores [f (1, 19) = 7.93, p = .01) (table 2). there were no observed differences between groups [f 91, 19) = 0.00, p = 1.0]. although we found statistical significance on the generalized idioms, 0 5 10 15 20 25 pre post m e a n i d io m r a w s co re s 6th graders 8th graders journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 728-746, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 738 it cannot be determined if there was clinical significance as the group scores varied by only one raw score point. table 2 a comparison of pre and post mean generalization scores within and across grades 6th grade n=12 mean (sd) 8th grade n= 9 mean (sd) p value pretest 2.0 (0.95) 3.0 (1.5) 1.0 post test 3.4 (1.26) 4.4 (1.5) 1.0 p value 0.003 0.003 figure 2, below, illustrates pre-test and post-test data points for the 6 idioms that were novel to the students and used to determine the ability to generalize idiom knowledge. figure 2. pre and post mean generalization scores across grades 4. discussion the results of this study are consistent with the findings of former research (lundblom & woods, 2012; nippold & martin, 1989). ezell and goldstein (1992) demonstrated that students with mild mental retardation were able to generalize comprehension of idioms to novel contexts. our study involved a different population and comparable results were observed. students in both grades showed improvement in comprehension of six idioms that were not used in the cwpt sessions. however, although the difference was statistically significant, they were not clinically significant as there was a difference of only one raw score point. 0,0 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 3,0 3,5 4,0 4,5 5,0 pre post m e a n n u m b e r it e m s c o rr e ct 6th graders 8th graders peer tutoring on idiom comprehension arakere, and mainess 739 we considered the number of study participants a strength, as the numbers were solid enough for drawing fair and objective conclusions from the data. the study included the involvement of classroom teachers in rating the selected idioms from previous research and the scholastic book of idioms based on the familiarity of idioms. according to lazar et al. (1989) 11% of the teacher’s utterances contain some form of figurative language. hence, the involvement of teachers assured the most familiar idioms were included in the study along with an equal number of medium and low familiarity idioms. the idioms used were presented to the students in different contexts each day, which contributed to improved comprehension of the idioms (norbury, 2004). less than 20 minutes of daily class time was spent teaching the students 24 new idioms over a period of four weeks. some limitations of the study included that students with primary diagnoses other than sld could not participate as specified by the inclusionary criteria. they were therefore present in the classroom and participated in the cwpt process; however, their data was not collected or used. the students attending special day classes tend to represent a diversity of disorders, so including the other students in the study would have given us a more realistic view of our outcomes. there was also a gap in the grade levels that were included in the study. that is, seventh grade students were obviously absent from this research. there were several reasons for this but the strongest were that the classroom teachers felt that the idiom training process would monopolize instruction time. the teachers also did not feel that they had adequate spare time for learning these training concepts. although not the focus of the present study, we observed that the participants who were second language learners had more difficulty than the other students regarding comprehension of idioms (blue, 1981; irujo, 1986; seidenberg & bernstein, 1986). the students were not classified by language (monolingual english, dual language learners), but if they had been, this would have provided information regarding how second language learners perform while participating in cwpt. in retrospect, we also realized that the groups were not balanced for gender and number. despite findings of statistical significance, we wonder how balancing these two variables might have influenced the results. we learned a few things from this study. first, it seems that context is a critical component of learning idioms. as reported by previous research, the chances of learning idioms improve when the idioms are presented in a context (norbury, 2004). in our study, we observed that the students found identifying the meanings of the idioms in isolation a challenging task. however, when the idioms were presented in context, their accuracy improved. maintaining fidelity of training and implementation when using cwpt was also determined to be a crucial factor to success. the students and the teachers participated in extensive training and role-playing before the study. the students required several role-playing sessions to master the cwpt format. in one instance, after a few days of training, the students were observed deviating from the prescribed format by not reading the “error correction” message following a tutee error. the teacher and researcher reminded the students of the importance of following all the cwpt rules to journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 728-746, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 740 maintain study reliability. the students participated and worked during their classroom time, so teacher cooperation and commitment were important for effective application. this study supports that with effective implementation of the process, not only can cwpt be used as rti (response to intervention) (lundblom & woods, 2012), but also as a classroom language therapy strategy. future research should address several issues related to this study. inclusion of a diverse population of students including those with various disorders and language status (monolingual or bilingual) may prove to be significant, given the differences in learning idioms as a native speaker or an english language learner. the results of the present study should also be extended to explore teaching other skills such as vocabulary, sentence structure, or other types of figurative language. our study included only six idioms to test for generalization; however, testing more idioms for generalization would have added value to the results. therefore, utilizing more idioms might provide useful information in determining the generalization of learned skill to novel idioms. future research could also determine the effect of length of time of cwpt implementation on the comprehension skills. 5. conclusion the purpose of the current study was to determine the effect of class wide peer tutoring (cwpt) on the comprehension of novel idioms for middle school students in special day classes. positive changes in idiom comprehension were demonstrated in students in both 6th and 8th grades. following implementation of cwpt there was a significant increase in the students’ comprehension of idiomatic phrases. training students on idiom familiarity and contextual comprehension resulted in more effective learning as evidenced by the increase in the post-test scores in both grades. students in both grades showed improvement in comprehension of six idioms that were not used in the cwpt sessions. however, although the difference was statistically significant, they were not clinically significant as there was a difference of only one raw score point. references abkarian, g. g., jones, a., & west, g. (1992). young children's idiom comprehension trying to get the picture. journal of speech, language, and hearing research, 35(3), 580-587 abrahamsen, e. p., & smith, r. (2000). facilitating idiom acquisition in children with communication disorders: computer vs classroom. child language teaching and therapy, 16(3), 227-239. bhalla, j. (2009). i am not hanging noodles on your ears: and other intriguing idioms from around the world. sydney, n.s.w bischoffshausen, s., makoid, l., & cole, j. (1989). effects of inference requirements on comprehension and recognition of metaphors. metaphor and symbolic activity, 4(4), 227-246. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327868ms0404_2 blue, c. m. (1981). types of utterances to avoid when speaking to language-delayed children. language, speech, and hearing services in schools, 12, 120–124. peer tutoring on idiom comprehension arakere, and mainess 741 carrow-woolfolk, e. 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(2002). judgments of idiom familiarity and transparency. journal of speech language and hearing research, 45(2), 384. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2002/030) qualls, c., lantz, j., pietrzyk, r., blood, g., & hammer, c. (2004). comprehension of idioms in adolescents with language-based learning disabilities compared to their typically developing peers. journal of communication disorders, 37(4), 295-311. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcomdis.2003.12.001 rapin, i. (1996). practitioner review: developmental language disorders: a clinical update. journal of child psychology and psychiatry, 37(6), 643-655. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.1996.tb01456.x reed, v. a., & spicer, l. (2003). the relative importance of selected communication skills for adolescents' interactions with their teachers: high school teachers' opinions. language, speech & hearing services in schools, 34(4), 343-357. rinaldi, w. (2000). pragmatic comprehension in secondary school-aged students with specific developmental language disorder. international journal of language and communication disorders, 35, 1–29 seidenberg, p. l., & bernstein, d. k. (1986). the comprehension of similes and metaphors by learning-disabled and non-learning-disabled children. language, speech, and hearing services in schools, 17, 219–229 simpson, r., & mendis, d. (2003). a corpus-based study of idioms in academic speech. tesol quarterly, 419-441. terban, m. (1998). scholastic dictionary of idioms. new york: scholastic reference. peer tutoring on idiom comprehension arakere, and mainess 743 trup, e. m. v. (2009). idiom intervention for children with autism (doctoral dissertation, pennsylvania state university). whyte, e. m., nelson, k. e., & khan, k. s. (2013). learning of idiomatic language expressions in a group intervention for children with autism. autism, 17(4), 449-464. wiejak, k. (2014). recognition of figurative language and reading ability in polish school children. l1 educational studies in language and literature, 13-14, si elit espol (early lit. research in poland), 1-18. http://dx.doi.org/10.17239/l1esll-2014.01.12 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 728-746, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 744 appendices appendix a please rate the following idioms based on your familiarity. idioms low familiarity moderate familiarity high familiarity monkey business miss the boat all ears at the drop of a hat back to square one beat around the bush break a leg bug someone zip your lips catch you later chill out cold feet dime a dozen to get away with murder face the music fat cat fish out of water get out of my face get real go fly a kite go to the dogs hang in there head in the clouds hit the books in a nutshell in the same boat let the cat out of the bag mess with someone on cloud nine kick the bucket sleep on it play with fire rain or shine rock the boat see eye to eye shake a leg sky’s the limit take the cake throw in the towel under the weather hit the sack peer tutoring on idiom comprehension arakere, and mainess 745 bury the hatchet break the ice jump the gun pull your leg drive someone crazy piece of cake appendix b example of preand posttest check the idiom that means: to stop talking 1. face the music 2. get away with murder 3. zip your lips 4. go fly a kite appendix c example of cwpt week 1 post-test check the idiom that means: to stop talking a. face the music b. catch you later c. zip your lips d. sky’s the limit journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 728-746, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 746 appendix d tutor and tutee cards for cwpt sessions front of tutor and tutee card idiom: zip your lips mary was tired of her friend constantly talking to her in the class. she asked her friend if she could zip her lips during the important math lesson. what is the meaning of “zip your lips?” a. mary’s friend should stop talking. b. mary’s friend should sew a zip on her lips c. mary’s friend likes math d. mary’s friend likes to talk to mary back of the tutor card what is the meaning of” zip your lips”? a. mary’s friend should sew a zip on her lips. not quite, let’s read the story again to look for clue words and think about what is happening in the story. b. mary’s friend should stop talking. first answer: that’s correct, you get 2 points c. mary’s friend likes math. not quite, let’s read the story again to look for clue words and think about what is happening in the story. d mary’s friend likes to talk to mary. not quite, let’s read the story again to look for clue words and think about what is happening in the story. if the second attempt is correct, award 1 point. if the second answer is incorrect. read the correct answer. 0 points journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 429-450, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 429 acquisition of infinitival complements: the case for semantic or syntactic development, or both john m. ryan1 university of northern colorado abstract this article revisits the topic of the acquisition of infinitival complements in children, considering the extent to which longitudinal data for one child in the childes corpus supports one, the other or both of the following two frameworks, namely: 1) the lexical/semantic approach which suggests among other things that verbs taking infinitival complements are acquired in a semantically meaningful order, that is: a) modality, b) manipulative, and c) cognition utterance verbs; and/or 2) the maturational syntactic interpretation which suggests that children at first have no functional syntactic levels such as either a tense phrase (tp) or complementizer phrase (cp) in their language. the data show support for the first framework in the sense that verbs taking infinitival complements appear to enter the informant’s productive speech in a predictable semantic order, and that there was also a certain order to the appearance of infinitive types as related to verb type. it also appears that structure expands to accommodate separate subjects for the complement taking verb and the complement infinitive. in terms of the second framework, syntax appears to trail behind semantics with the idea that the tp is not initially present but begins to emerge while the child amasses verbs and forms. this seems reasonable in that at this stage the child would be sorting out the very nature of the tp level, processing simultaneously the different possible items such as tense, infinitival to, auxiliaries, modals such as can, could and will, and the progressive copula be, all of which have been shown to occupy the head of the tp. the paper shows that analysis of the early behavior of these other elements must be taken into account in addition to that of infinitival ‘to’ in order to provide a more complete picture of the development of the tp in the broader sense, and that a focus solely on the nature or behavior of infinitival ‘to’ without looking at these other forms would fall short in capturing what may be truly happening at the level of the tp. as has also been demonstrated in this paper, knowing that there are other forms that “compete” with the space typically occupied by infinitival to, it would make sense that initially, sarah would alternate between correct production of infinitival to and omitting it, while she is trying to figure out the many purposes of the head of the tp. keywords infinitival complements, english, incipient clause structure, semantics, syntax 1. introduction 1 bio: john m. ryan is professor of spanish and linguistics at the university of northern colorado. his work on first and second language acquisition includes articles published in jclad, hispania, the journal of language teaching and research and theory and practice in language studies. also, recent work in historical linguistics and discourse analysis has appeared in several edited volumes and the athens journal of philology. contact: john.ryan@unco.edu received : 17.01.2022 accepted : 26.03.2022 published : 30.03.2022 mailto:john.ryan@unco.edu acquisition of infinitival complements ryan 430 one of the most prominent polemics in language acquisition research has been the divide between 1) proponents of universal grammar, or ug, namely, chomsky (1995; 2007) and others, and 2) semanticists such as schlessinger (1988). those from the ug camp argue that despite the varying language of input, language structures emerge in children according to universal principles innate to the child. by contrast, those in support of the semantic approach to language acquisition assert that a child learns structure, not with a universal roadmap, but rather on semantically based notions. in other words, syntactic notions come about from semantic assimilation by distributional facts about categories. despite the fact that chomsky’s work was already making a buzz on the linguistics scene in the 1960s and 70s, and this having no small implication on the field of language acquisition, any real data-driven generative studies on the acquisition of syntax in children did not start to play catch-up until the midto late-80s. pre-ug studies that were based on longitudinal child data included such pioneering work as limber (1973), brown (1973), and brown & hanlon (1970). the focus of these early studies was incrementalist in nature and concerned themselves with finding a “natural” order in the acquisition of structure. accordingly, it was observed cross-linguistically that language acquisition takes place in somewhat predictable increments, hence each advance adding some element that didn’t exist before. in contrast to ug, the incrementalist theory minimized the importance of innateness in acquisition, but on the other hand, presupposed the notion of cumulative complexity. it was limber (1973) who suggested the following order for acquisition of complex sentences in children as illustrated in table 1: table 1 stages in acquisition of complex sentences during the third year according to limber (1973) when pioneering work by chomsky and others did finally take hold, studies of child data took a greater interest in the extent to which the child’s innate ability might have an impact on how s/he learns language structures. studies by radford (1990) took the maturational approach, suggesting that journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 429-450, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 431 language structure could be predicted by the maturational level of the child. in contrast, researchers of the usage based/constructivist position, including diessel (2004), suggest that children do not have an innate syntactic knowledge, but rather more advanced structures are built up from existing structure through exposure to the language and which cooccur with lexical items they appear with frequently in the input. 1.1. purpose this paper has a dual purpose. the first is to explore the nature of the acquisition of infinitival complements in children, with a special focus on prior work conducted by two differing frameworks, the first of which is diessel (2004) on behalf of the usage-based/constructivist position, who observes the acquisition of infinitival complements in part as a gradual evolutionary process beginning with a semantically compact relationship between matrix verb and its compliment in cases of modal-type verbs like wanna and gonna, to a more independent relationship in manipulative type verbs like want and make, and completing the process with cognition-utterance verb types such as know and learn. the second framework to be evaluated here is the nativist/ maturational position, with radford (1990) who claims that early omission of infinitival to has more to do with the absence of the functional tense phrase (tp) projection in children. as such, this paper aims to test: 1) the extent to which longitudinal data for one child in the childes2 corpus (macwhinney, 2000) supports radford’s maturational assertion of a missing tp (or tense phrase) projection early on; 2) what correlations might obtain among the different syntactic items that typically occupy the head of the tense phrase in addition to infinitival to and 3) whether any of these possible elements predominantly precedes the others, perhaps even facilitating the acquisition of the tp. results will be compared to findings by diessel (2004). 2. methodology the methodology employed for this study is a longitudinal analysis of the transcripts of a healthy child in the childes database to determine whether the progress the child makes with regard to the acquisition of infinitival complements and other items that typically fill the position occupied by infinitival ‘to’ in the tp can help explain the initial absence of infinitival ‘to’ in early child utterances. the child chosen for this study was sarah, one of the three well-known subjects of roger brown (1973) and one of five subjects 2 the child language data exchange system (childes) is a web-driven, state-of-the-art, first language data resource that is accepted and utilized by acquisitionists worldwide. a very powerful, multi-tiered system, childes has evolved and been in use since the early 1980s, including corpora from renowned first language studies in english such as brown (1973) as is utilized for this analysis, and also a growing variety of international language data as well. most importantly, childes includes a powerful search engine/analytical software called clan (computerized language analysis) that may be utilized to sort through data to determine the presence and emergence of certain syntactic/morphological structures. acquisition of infinitival complements ryan 432 analyzed in diessel’s (2004) study. sarah’s database, as described on childes, suggests that among the children included in diessel’s analysis, hers would be the most adequate for a longitudinal study on the acquisition of progressively more complex structures, being that of all three of brown’s subjects included in diessel’s study, sarah had the greatest number of sessions (139) spread out over the longest period of time (from the age of 2;3 through 5;1). two-word production is usually attributed to the age of two years and beyond and sarah’s first infinitival complement-taking verb want was observed among the very first transcripts. on analysis, out of a total of 38,255 utterances, 1,176 tokens were identified as being targets for infinitival complements in sarah’s speech, as well as for purposes of comparison, an additional 1,659 as targets for other elements that typically occupy the same head position within the tp. these elements include the modals can, could and will, the contraction don’t in do-support constructions, and the copula be used as an auxiliary in progressive constructions. in other words, unlike diessel’s study that relied on the complement-taking verb and its semantic type as its starting place, this study took a more syntactic approach and considered as tokens not only sarah’s production of infinitival complements, but these other occupiers of the tp head as well throughout her sessions. 2.1. previous work on infinitival complements 2.1.1. infinitival complements in adults before delving into the special problems that infinitival complements present to children acquiring english, it would first be wise to understand how these have been alleged to work in adult language. according to diessel (2004), in the language of healthy adults, infinitival complements are non-tensed, noun-like versions of sentences that function as nominals in an outer sentence (e.g., i want [you to go] where [you to go] is an object complement of the verb want.). infinitival complements are just one of two varieties of nonfinite complements--where the verb of the nonfinite clause is not tensed-manifesting itself as either: 1) an infinitive (in the case of infinitival complements, hence, the topic of this paper); or 2) a participle. according to diessel, infinitival complements may appear in the following three forms: 1) to-infinitives (e.g., i want to run); 2) bare infinitives (e.g., i can hear him breath); and 3) wh-infinitives (e.g., i know what to do). diessel (and to some extent limber (1973) and bloom et al. (1984)) also point out that infinitival complements are both preceded and governed by certain complement-taking verbs (table 2) that can be divided into semantic classes: journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 429-450, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 433 table 2 semantic classes of english verbs governing infinitival complements as suggested by bloom and tackeff (1984) further consideration by givón (1980, 1984, and 1990) suggests that bloom’s five semantic classes might instead be collapsed into three categories that are employed by adults for complement-taking verbs: 1) modality verbs that elaborate the semantic structure of the activity denoted by the nonfinite verb (e.g., want, try, begin); 2) manipulative verbs that describe activities that bring about the activity denoted by the embedded verb (e.g., make, force, cause); and 3) cognition-utterance verbs that provide a viewing frame for the situation in the complement clause (e.g., know, see, say). givón further argues that the closer the semantic relationship is between the nonfinite complement and its governing verb, there will be a greater degree of syntactic integration of the complement within the matrix clause. he points out that first two types of governing verbs, modality and manipulative, are more closely related semantically with the activity denoted in the complement clause and that this greater closeness predicts a greater degree of syntactic integration within the outer clause. this, as we shall see, will be important to diessel’s hypothesis (below). 2.1.2. infinitival complements in children complements are the first overall complex constructions to ever appear in child language, the first ones being object nominals (want cup) (lees, 1960), shortly followed by subjectless infinitival phrases (want [. do it]) (limber, 1973). shortly thereafter, infinitival complements with overt subjects (want [lady open it]) appear. another important consideration when discussing infinitival complements, is the development of the infinitival morpheme to. radford (1990), as we shall see, points out that in early cases the infinitival word to is absent. according to aldridge (1989) and others, the morpheme to begins to occur with infinitives at about the same time as modal auxiliaries appear (around age 2;0), also another important observation as we shall also see in radford. bloom et al. (1989) suggests that children’s early use of infinitival to first happens with verbs expressing a wish or intention toward an action (e.g., examples i. volitional want, like, etc. ii. aspectual start, stop, etc. iii. perception see, hear, etc. iv. causative make, have, etc. v. communication tell, ask, etc. verb type acquisition of infinitival complements ryan 434 want or go) implying that learners may perceive a semantic similarity between prepositional and infinitival uses of to. other work on infinitival complements includes studies that have focused on the omission of to in child language (bloom 1973, diessel 2004, and limber 1973), while others have focused on the relationship between infinitival to and prepositional to (bloom, 1984, rice (1999, 2003), pinker (1984) and tomasello (1987). another line of research (kirjavainen et al., 2009) supporting the usage-based/constructivist account of language acquisition looked at a combination of these issues and found that omission errors correlated with certain verb sequences and the frequency of these in the input. more recent work by kirjavainen et al. (2017) looks more closely at the role of priming in either inhibiting or facilitating the production of infinitival to. 2.1.2.1. diessel’s semantic explanation for the acquisition of infinitival complements in his analysis of the data of five children from different longitudinal studies, diessel (2004), proposes that the acquisition of infinitival complements in children might be explained as the development from: 1) a more semantically compact relationship between matrix verb and infinitival complement (i.e., a single proposition and a single state of affairs as in almost modal like verbs such as wanna and hafta) to 2) a more independent relationship between matrix verb and infinitival complement (i.e., two separate propositions and separate state of affairs as in verbs such as know). accordingly, diessel suggests the following separate yet interrelated sequences that he has observed children to undergo when they acquire infinitival complements: 1) modality > manipulative > cognition utterance verbs: diessel finds that children initially use exclusively what givón terms modality verbs such as wanna and hafta, explaining that these are very much like modals in that they elaborate the semantic structure of the nonfinite verb that follows. they do not constitute a separate action and they never have different subjects. these verbs tend to take bare infinitives. children then begin to use manipulative verbs such as make or want where the complement taking verb no longer just elaborates the action of the complement verb but rather semantically exercises some force or influence over it. these may either take bare or to infinitives and may also have different subjects 2) np-v-vp > np-v-np-vp: a) using the verb want as an example, diessel suggests that children start out with the simple i want n (nominal complement structure) and this quite early on b) forks into both i want n (for objects) and i want bare inf (for actions). diessel sees this extension a logical step because of the semantic similarity between both structures, one being used for objects and the other for actions. c) the next structure to arise (as a result of i want n and i want bare inf) is i want np xp (a nominal complement with a location expression such as ‘i want baby in house’ or ‘i journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 429-450, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 435 want ice cream in the refrigerator’). here, the child begins to elaborate with one clause and there is still one verb but, as diessel suggests, the child can manipulate more information semantically. having now mastered the internal goings-on of one clause, diessel explains that this paves the way for the next step where the child can manipulate two separate propositions. d) finally, the syntactically independent i want np vp arises where two semantically distinct verbs, the matrix verb and the infinitival complement, coexist in the sentence (‘i want baby cry). figure 1 visually represents this process. figure 1. expansion of complement structure (based on diessel (2004)) 3) bare infinitives > to infinitives > whinfinitives. with this proposed order of acquisition of infinitive forms, without ever saying it, or perhaps even realizing it, diessel is confirming radford’s hypothesis as we shall see below, that a child starts out with no tp or cp, then develops a tp, and then a cp. the difference in the two orientations is primarily that, instead of giving a syntactic explanation, diessel interprets this sequence in semantic terms, suggesting that: 1) bare infinitives most likely pair with modality verbs which like auxiliaries have meanings that are so semantically tied to their complements that bare infinitives suffice; 2) to infinitives most likely pair with manipulative verbs (although bare infinitives are also possible) because of the greater distance between the more separable meanings of the matrix and complement verbs; and 3) whinfinitives most likely pair with cognitive verbs because they tend to introduce information. stage i: stage ii: stage iii: stage iv: i want + np + vp i want baby cry i want + bare inf i want sing i want + np + xp i want baby in the house i want + n i want baby i want + n i want baby acquisition of infinitival complements ryan 436 2.1.2.2. radford’s syntactic explanation for the acquisition of infinitival complements in contrast with diessel, radford (1990) suggests that the process of acquisition that a child goes through in acquiring infinitival complements can be explained at first by the lack of the tp syntactic layer, followed by its subsequent acquisition. radford proceeds to cite much evidence in the early speech of children learning english where they might first lack a tp, potentially functioning solely with the vp layer. he goes on to say that children at this first stage typically have highly reduced clauses that are similar to what is known in adult grammar as small clauses or scs. as compared to adult ordinary clauses (as radford terms them), adult small clauses simply consist of a determiner phrase and a predicate phrase. examples of adult ordinary and small clauses: (1) i consider [that this candidate would be unsuitable for the post]. ordinary (2) i consider [this candidate unsuitable for the post.] small children first produce clauses very much like (2) in adults, only usually (but not always) without determiners. examples from real children are: (3) wayne in bedroom. (4) teddy want bed. (5) daddy go? radford explains that this reduced version of a clause does not reach the level of tp or cp in either adult or child language. first of all, the verb is usually uninflected, and secondly, as in (5) there appears to be no movement in the case of questions. some of the indicators that radford cites for the lack of a tp in early child language are the following absent items that typically appear in the head (t) of the tp, namely: 1) infinitival to; 2) modals; 3) finite verb inflections; 4) dosupport; 5) copula be; 6) progressive be; and 7) perfective have. it is the lack of infinitival to that concerns us primarily here since this is the indicator that the level of tp has developed to support infinitival complements. figure 2 illustrates what radford would propose as the difference between the adult structure (with a full tp), namely want to help you and that of the child (without the tp), namely want help you: journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 429-450, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 437 figure 2. adult versus early child structure (based on radford (1990)) figure 2 shows the proposal that in the adult structure (on the left-hand side of the figure), there lies a functional layer between both verb phrases (vps) in the form of a tense phrase (tp) which, according to generative theory, serves several purposes, one of which is a placeholder for infinitival to. by contrast, the child’s tree, as proposed by radford and illustrated to the right of the figure, has not yet developed this tp layer, and therefore, it has no placeholder for infinitival to. consider also how figure 3 illustrates how the head of the tp layer, or t, serves as a locus for not only infinitival to, but other important functional structures in adult english, such as, 1) do in do-support structures, important for both negation and questions; 2) modals such as can, could and will; and 3) the copula be, used as an auxiliary verb with the progressive tenses. acquisition of infinitival complements ryan 438 figure 3. adult tp structure accommodating do-support, modals and progressive copula be (based on radford (1990)) although this paper focuses on the emergence of the tp, it is worth mentioning that, in addition to the lack of a tp layer in children’s speech, radford suggests that there is also evidence for the lack of the complementizer phrase (cp) layer of syntax which, according to generative theory, is the functional projection that provides the ability to form questions and subordinate clauses. radford argues: 1) that children are observed to first lack any complementizers whatsoever in their speech; 2) auxiliaries are usually never preposed in early children’s speech, suggesting that without the head of a complementizer phrase, there is no landing site for a moving auxiliary; 3) children normally do not productively move wh-constituents from their place of origin to the specifier position of c, suggesting that without a complementizer phrase, there is no landing site in the form of the spec of the cp for a moving wh-constituent; and 4) when children are presented with input containing preposed wh-constituents, they rarely parse them correctly. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 429-450, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 439 studies by other researchers such as phinney (1981) show that use of complementizers doesn’t happen with children until 5 years of age. 3. findings this section of the paper evaluates the subject’s use of infinitival complements throughout her sessions. i first draw on diessel’s (2004) perspective as it relates only to sarah, the subject of the study. i then present the results of my syntactic analysis of sarah’s data, which tests radford’s assertions about the early absence of the tp. diessel’s and radford’s (1990) differing perspectives are summarized below. diessel 1) sequence of acquisition by verb type: modality > manipulative > cognition 2) expansion of complement structure: np-v-vp > np-v-np-vp: 3) expansion of infinitive type: bare infinitives > ‘to’ infinitives > whinfinitives radford 1) at an early stage, children produce small clauses (sc). 2) at an early stage, children seem to lack the tp level of syntactic structure. 3) at a later early stage, children seem to lack the cp level of syntactic structure. 3.1. analysis of sarah’s data from the perspective of diessel (2004) 3.1.1. verb type as in diessel’s study (2004), we would predict that in sarah’s data alone the evolution in the appearance of verb types that take infinitival complements would proceed in a similar order to the progression suggested by diessel for all five subjects overall, namely: 1) modality, 2) manipulative, and 3) cognitive. table 3 shows the sequence of appearance of complement taking verbs. for sarah alone. acquisition of infinitival complements ryan 440 table 3 order of appearance of verbs that take infinitival complements according to semantic verb type in sarah’s speech alone (diessel, 2004) table 3 data for sarah alone corroborate diessel’s hypothesis that complement taking verbs tend to appear in the following order: modality, manipulative, and cognitive, although as might be expected, there are traces of overlap. 3.1.2. complement structure expansion table 4 shows sarah’s structural use of particular complement taking verbs, whether n-v-vp or n-v-np-vp. the second column of the graph indicate nv-vp structure for the corresponding verb while the third column indicate nv-np-vp structure verb age verb type verb age verb type (cont.) wanna 2;3 modality love 3;8 cognitive gotta 2;7 modality start 3;8 modality hafta 2;9 modality wonder 3;8 cognitive got 2;10 modality tell 3;10 manipulative want 2;10 manipulative hard 4;0 manipulative make 2;10 manipulative need 4;0 modality watch 2;11 cognitive have 4;1 modality help 2;11 manipulative know 4;1 cognitive try 3;2 modality learn 4;3 cognitive see 3;3 cognitive hear 3;6 cognitive teach 3;4 manipulative mean 4;7 cognitive like 3;5 cognitive show 4;9 cognitive begin 3;8 modality forget 5;0 cognitive journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 429-450, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 441 table 4 complement structure in sarah’s speech: n-v-vp versus n-v-np-vp as table 4 illustrates, sarah does indeed start out with a cluster of n-v-vp structure and this continues until the age of 2;9, but this is subsequently followed by a second cluster of n-v-np-vp structure toward the end of her third year, namely at 2;10 and 2;11. after reaching the milestone of three years of age, sarah’s structure starts to alternate, not favoring one or the other structure. this makes sense both semantically and syntactically in that structures are becoming more complex not only in meaning (as seen in table 3), but in structure as well, as illustrated in table 4. 3.1.3. infinitive type sarah appears to have acquired infinitive types more or less according to the following order, as predicted by diessel, and illustrated in table 5: bare infinitives > to infinitives > wh-infinitives age n-v-vp n-v-np-vp 2;3 wanna 2;7 gotta initial cluster 2;9 hafta of n-v-vp 2;10 got 2;10 want subsequent cluster 2;10 make of n-v-np-vp 2;11 watch 2;11 help 3;2 try 3;3 see 3;4 teach 3;5 like 3;8 begin 3;8 love 3;8 start 3;8 wonder 3;10 tell allternating 4;0 hard structure 4;0 need 4;1 have 4;1 know 4;3 learn 4;6 hear 4;7 mean 4;9 show 5;0 forget acquisition of infinitival complements ryan 442 table 5 order of appearance of infinitive types in sarah’s speech table 5 shows that sarah begins to use bare infinitives and continues to do so until the age of 2;9. at 2;10, she starts to use to-infinitives, but continues to use bare infinitives at the same time for certain verbs. this alternation continues until 4;1 when she appears to use her first wh-infinitive this also correlates both semantically and syntactically in that structures are becoming more complex not only in meaning (as seen in table 3), but in structure as well, as illustrated in table 4. 3.2. analysis of sarah’s data from the perspective of radford (1990) 3.2.1. small clauses (sc): sarah’s earliest production of multiword utterances can all be classified as small clauses as radford refers to them. (6) i wan a bottle. 2;3 (7) i wan milk. 2;4 (8) marie go. 2;3 (9) i pull dat? 2;5 (10) i have some? 2;6 3.2.2. lack or presence of infinitival to among the things radford recommends to look for in early children’s speech to determine the lack of a tp level is the lack of infinitival to. diessel says at first children overextend the bare infinitive phase. rather than seeing this as an extension of a bare infinitive phase, radford would instead classify this as a phase in which the tp is absent in the child’s language. sentences 11 through 37 have been carefully chosen from sarah’s data to illustrate and comment upon the child’s development of infinitival complements between the age of 2;9 and 5;0. (11) i wan(t) play record [?]. 2;9 verb age infinitive type verb age infinitive type (cont.) wanna 2;3 bare inf love 3;8 to inf gotta 2;7 bare inf start 3;8 to inf hafta 2;9 bare inf wonder 3;8 bare inf got 2;10 to inf tell 3;10 to inf want 2;10 to inf hard 4;0 to inf make 2;10 bare inf need 4;0 to inf watch 2;11 bare inf have 4;1 to inf help 2;11 to inf know 4;1 wh inf try 3;2 to inf learn 4;3 wh inf see 3;3 bare inf hear 3;6 bare inf teach 3;4 to inf mean 4;7 to inf like 3;5 to inf show 4;9 wh inf begin 3;8 to inf forget 5;0 wh inf journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 429-450, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 443 (12) i wan(t) go swimming now . 2;10 (13) he want get a blanket. 3;1 (14) 3i want a go to sleep. 3;1 (15) i want get in. 3;1 (16) mommy # <i wan(t) go get> [/] # i wan(t) go get xxx . 3;5 (17) i don('t) wan(t) do my home+work on it . 3;6 (18) i goin(g) do my dance . 3;6. (19) i have to wear these penguins . 3;7 (20) you want to go out ? 3;8 (21) then he taught [/] # taught me how to swim ! 3;9 (22) i just goin(g) make a bubble 3;9 (23) huh # who's goin(g) to put me up there ? 3;10 (24) you want i do a cartwheel? 3;11 (25) i'm tryin(g) to hol(d) my bunny this week . 4;0 (26) want to go under the bed . 4;1 (27) i know how to write my name now # huh ? 4;2 (28) know how to fix it all up ? 4;3 (29) you want me keep it ? 4;4 (30) this [//] the puzzle's hard to do # huh ? 4;4 (31) i know how to write donna . 4;5 (32) and # y(ou) want me to make my daddy ? 4;6 (33) i meant to tell you this . 4;7 (34) it's hard to cut the snowman out . 4;8 (35) i only want to stay over one # time . 4;9 (36) you try to get em on slowly. 5;0 (37) i'm goin(g) put eight on . 5;0 sarah’s use of infinitival ‘to,’ as radford would predict, would start slow. at first it is nonexistent and then by about 3;7 it becomes much more productive with some exceptions after certain verbs. for example, at both 3;9 and 5;0 years of age, sarah tends to leave out infinitival to after ‘going’ in expressions such as ‘i’m going put eight on.’ also, even with verbs where sarah has already begun to use infinitival to when the subject of the infinitival complement is the same (e.g., sentence 20) you want to go out? 3;8), she later does not supply infinitival to for the exact same verb when the infinitival complement has a different subject (e.g., sentence 29) you want me keep it? 4;4). from the maturational syntactic perspective, the fact that sarah is observed to start out with complement-taking verbs that require infinitival to but at first delays in using them would be strong evidence for the initial non-existence of the tp in early children’s speech. also important in terms of development is the inconsistency that develops once sarah starts to produce infinitival to in which she appears to alternate at random between correctly producing the form and omitting it. this would suggest that the child has developed the tp, but may still be working out the details of how it works. this is especially important as we consider the following section of the paper which reports the findings for sarah’s early production of other elements that, like infinitival to 3 this sentence was taken directly as already transcribed in the childes chat file. no effort was made to determine whether “want a” here should be interpreted as “wanna.” acquisition of infinitival complements ryan 444 also occupy the head of the tp, and may cause early delays while she is trying to sort out different purposes that the tp serves. 3.2.3. emergence of other elements in sarah’s early speech as further evidence for the tp as explained previously, my analysis of sarah’s speech to determine the presence of a tp did not end with an analysis of the presence or absence of infinitival to alone. as radford (1990) suggests, other elements that occupy the same slot of the head in the tense phrase should also present evidence as to whether the tp exists or not. with this in mind, i conducted an additional analysis of sarah’s data to evaluate her use of three elements that, like infinitival to, also occupy the head of the tp. these were her production of dosupport, the modals can, could and will, and the copula be for the present progressive. consider table 6 which illustrates the first three appearances of both dosupport and three modals found in sarah’s early speech, both structures as shown in figure 3 of this paper occupying the same location (the head of the tp) as does to in infinitival complements. table 6 early emergence (first three appearances) of do-support and modals in sarah’s speech according to table 6, both do-support (in the form of don’t) and the modal can were the first of these elements to appear in sarah’s speech during the first half of her third year of age. as the table shows, sarah first produced “i don’t know” at 2;3.5 and then “i can ride horsie” at 2;4.12. she then repeated “i don’t know” at 2;5.7 and soon after, at 2;6.13, her third occurrence of dojournal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 429-450, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 445 support occurred with “don’t touch that.” sarah would not produce the modal can for the second time until 2;8.25 with “i can come get you” and for the third time at 3;1.10. after can, the second modal sarah would produce was could for the very first time at 3;0.27, with the utterance, “you could find them too,” after which she would not produce it again until five months later (at 3;5.1) with “we could put it right on.” shortly thereafter, she would produce it again at 3;6.30 with “i could stand xxx than one”. the third modal sarah produced was will at the age of 3;2.10 with “you will shake it,” and only ten days later (at 3;2.20) she correctly formed the question “will i break it?” and then again (at 3;4.9) she correctly forms another question, “will you make dog?,” both structures suggesting that not only has she mastered the structure of the tp, but also movement of will from the head of the tp to that of the cp, as required for questions in adult speech.4 the preceding account of sarah’s production of do-support and modals suggests that although she was at first slow in producing these items in the first half of her third year, shortly after the age of 3, she begins to produce these structures more regularly. this lends further support to the notion that the tp may be formed, but competition between the different forms that can occupy the head of tp may contribute to a delay in its regular production. this leaves us with another form that is also an occupier of the head of tp, namely, progressive be. unlike the data presented for both do-support and modals, for which it was more difficult to determine with any degree of certainty those cases in which these structures might have been omitted by sarah in her speech, omissions (in addition to occurrences) were indeed possible to track for sarah’s targeting of progressive be, since this item is always accompanied by the verb in the form of the present participle, which sarah frequently produced early on without the auxiliary, hence, table 7. 4 according to generative theory, do-suport, modals and auxiliaries all move from the head of the tp to the head of the cp to form questions. although acquisition of the cp level is less important for purposes of this study, it is still worth mentioning briefly here to help complete the picture of a syntactic analysis according to radford (1990). here we have evidence that cp structure indeed becomes significantly relevant as it relates to the expansion of sarah’s sentence complexity, namely, the evolution from structures consisting of verb-plus-infinitivalcomplement to sentences with two tensed clauses. in other words, early evidence in sarah’s data which suggest the early absence of a cp level in her syntax would be the lack of the following items: 1) complementizers; 2) do-support, modals and auxiliaries that have moved from the t to c position; and 3) wh-constituents that have moved to the specifier position of c. the earliest appearance of these according to table 6 are with will in the early part of the fourth year, confirming radford’s hypothesis that these items would be absent from sarah’s speech at first and then gradually appears after the presence of tp components. acquisition of infinitival complements ryan 446 table 7 early emergence of progressive auxiliary be in sarah’s speech table 7 shows how the progressive auxiliary be, like do-support and the modal can, was also an early item to emerge in sarah’s speech, at 2;3.7 with the utterance “i’m going.” also, according to the table, all of the first auxiliaries correctly produced were in fact contractions of the auxiliary with the subject pronoun, as in the previous example and “he’s playing peekaboo” at 2;5.25 and “he’s eating” at 2;8.25; however, sarah doesn’t always produce the auxiliary during this early period. in fact, as the table also shows, she frequently omits the auxiliary, as in “raining out here” at 2;3.19, “poor donna crying” at 2;4.10, and, as the table also shows, this would continue into the second half of the third year with “he painting” at 2;6.13 and “he swimming” at 2;8.25. comparing the two tables, one quickly notices that of all the different elements that could appear as the head of the tp, auxiliary be not only appears early on in sarah’s data, but, unlike the data presented previously for both dosupport and modals, the occasion for its use happens more frequently in the data than it does for these other structures, whether the form is correctly produced or omitted.5 4. conclusions the purpose of this paper was to conduct a syntactic analysis on the speech of one child from the childes database, with a particular focus on the production of those elements that typically occupy the slot reserved in the structure of infinitival to in adult speech, namely the head of the tp or tense phrase. two differing frameworks were presented to evaluate the data, namely: 1) the lexical/semantic approach of diessel (2004); and 2) the generative 5 this would support brown’s (1973) observation that the first grammatical morpheme produced is the present progressive form of the verb in –ing without an auxiliary verb. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 429-450, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 447 syntactic maturational approach of radford (1990). the child chosen for analysis was sarah from the studies of roger brown (1973) using the childes database. diessel (2004) focused on the acquisition of infinitival complements as a lexical/semantic phenomenon and, based on work by givón and others, suggested that verbs that take infinitival complements tend to be acquired in a certain semantically meaningful order: 1) modality, 2) manipulative, and 3) cognitive. diessel suggests that this order corresponds to a progressively more independent semantic relationship between the complement taking verb and its nonfinite complement, starting with modality verbs that have the same subject and tend to take bare infinitives, moving to manipulative verbs that may have two separate subjects and may take ‘to’-infinitives, and finally, cognitive verbs that can take what diessel refers to as wh-infinitives. radford (1990), on the other hand, focused on children’s language acquisition through the lens of generative syntax and suggested that children at first have no functional tp or cp levels in their language. in fact, radford suggests that children’s sentences at first will look for an extended period of time very much like adult simple clauses. radford claimed that proof of no tp in early child language would be things like no infinitival ‘to,’ no modals, no finite verb inflections, no do-support; no copula be, no progressive be; and no perfective have, all being items that have been proposed to occupy the head of the tp. the data in sarah’s transcripts overwhelmingly support both diessel’s and radford’s hypotheses. in the case of diessel, sarah was indeed found to acquire complement-taking verbs in the order of modality, manipulative, and cognitive. according to this data, sarah also acquired infinitives in the following order: 1) bare infinitives, 2) to-infinitives, and 3) wh-infinitives. finally, as predicted, sarah also progressed from simple n-v-vp structure to the more complicated n-v-np-vp. when it came to radford’s predictions, sarah was observed at first to lack any of the elements that are typically found in the head of a tp, including infinitival ‘to.’ but what can this seemingly odd combination of semantic and syntactic evidence tell us about sarah’s acquisition of infinitival complements? i would argue that the interaction between meaning and structure in the case of the acquisition of these structures is not only in fact not odd, but rather crucial. in the first place we have seen that verbs that take infinitival complements enter a child’s productive speech in a predictable semantic order, and that there was also a certain order to the appearance of infinitive types as related to the type of verb. we then saw how structure expanded to accommodate separate subjects for the complement taking verb and the complement infinitive. syntax appears to be a little behind semantics where the tp level is not fully acquired while the child is amassing the verbs and forms. this seems to be reasonable in that at this stage the child would be sorting out the very nature of the tp level, observing the different possible items such as tense, ‘to,’ auxiliaries, and modals that can occupy the t slot. if to were the only item to occupy the t position, perhaps it would be acquired and used much earlier and in a more consistent fashion than it does. however, the fact that there is a large variety of forms with different grammatical purposes that find their acquisition of infinitival complements ryan 448 way into the same place in the structure of the tp may in fact delay early acquisition and facilitate what seems to be the early alternation between production and omission of the targeted forms, as we saw in the case of both infinitival to and progressive be in sarah’s early data. in conclusion, i would propose that both semantic and syntactic forces propel the acquisition of infinitival complement structures and work together to make it happen in the little time that it does. figure 4 summarizes the steps and suggests how this might happen. figure 4. combined syntactic and semantic forces at play in the development of infinitival complements in children this paper was a preliminary effort to evaluate the syntactic implications of not only the early production of infinitival to, but several other elements that also represent the head of the functional tp structure. the paper shows that analysis of the early behavior of such elements as progressive be, modals, and do support must also be taken into account in order to provide a more complete picture of the development of the tp in the broader sense, and that to focus solely on the nature or behavior of infinitival to without looking at these other forms would fall short in capturing what may be truly happening at the level of the tp. as has also been demonstrated in this paper, knowing that there are other forms that “compete” with the space typically occupied by infinitival to, it would make sense that initially, sarah would alternate between clause structure stage i: n + v + n stage ii: n + v + n stage iii: n-v-np-xp stage iv: n-v-np-vp expanded clause structure allows n-v-np-vp with manipulative and cognitive verbs. infinitival 'to', progressive be , do support, and the modal can all begin to show as evidence for a tp level in addition to the structures above, other modals, like could and will also begin to be used with evidence for the cp level syntactic (radford) no tp semantic (diessel) no tp strict use of nominal complements 1) continued use of nominal complements. 2) first time exclusive use of bare infinitives as complements of modality verbs like 'wanna' and 'gotta' expanded clause structure appears with locative expressions 1) n + v + n 2) n + v + vp journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 429-450, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 449 correct production of infinitival to and omitting it, while she is trying to figure out the many purposes of the head of the tp. an expansion of this study might look at elements, other than those that have been analyzed here, that have also been shown to occupy the head of the tp. these would include tense markers (although this would be more challenging for languages like english due to its impoverished morphology), perfective have, and other modals, such as would, might, etc., in order to explore any differences that obtain with respect to the acquisition of tp, or perhaps even dialectal differences in the emergence of elements that as shown here typically occupy the head of the tp. references aldridge, m. (1989). the acquisition of infl. bloomington: indiana university linguistic club. bloom, l. (1973). one word at a time. janua linguarum, series minor 154. the hague: mouton. bloom, l., rispoli, m., gartner, b., & hafitz, j. (1989). acquisition of complementation. journal of child language 16, 101-120. bloom, l., & tackeff, j. (1984). learning ‘to’ in complement constructions. journal of child language 11, 391-406. brown, r., & hanlon, c. (1970). derivational complexity and order of acquisition in child speech. in j. r. hayes (ed.), cognition and the development of language (pp. 11-53). new york: wiley. brown, r. (1973). a first language: the early stages. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. chomsky, n. (1995). the minimalist program. cambridge: mit press. chomsky, n. (2007). approaching ug from below. interfaces+recursion = language? in sauerland, u. and gärtner, h.-m., eds., chomsky’s minimalism and the view from syntax-semantics, mouton de gruyter, berlin, 1-29. diessel, h. (2004). the acquisition of complex sentences. cambridge university press. givón, t. (1980). the binding hierarchy and the typology of complements. studies in language 4, 333-377. givón, t. (1984). syntax: a functional-typological introduction, vol. i amsterdam: john benjamins. givón, t. (1990). syntax: a functional-typological introduction, vol. ii amsterdam: john benjamins. kirjavainen, m., theakston, a., lieven, e., & tomasello, m. (2009). ‘i want hold postman pat’: an investigation into the acquisition of infinitival marker ‘to,’ first language, 29(3), 313-39. kirjavainen, m., lieven, e., & theakston, a. (2017). can infinitival to omissions and provisions be primed? an experimental investigation into the role of constructional competition in infinitival to omission errors. cognitive science, 41,1242–1273 lees, r. b. (1960). grammar of english nominalizations. bloomington, indiana: university of indiana press. acquisition of infinitival complements ryan 450 limber, j. (1973). the genesis of complex sentences. in moore, t. cognitive development and the acquisition of language. academic press: new york. macwhinney, b. (2000). the childes project: tools for analyzing talk. 3rd edition. vol. 2: the database. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. phinney, m. (1981). syntactic constraints and the acquisition of embedded sentential complements. ph.d. diss., university of massachusetts at amherst, department of linguistics. pinker (1984). language learnability and language development. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. radford, a. (1990). syntactic theory and the acquisition of english syntax. oxford: blackwell. rice, s. (1999). patterns of acquisition in the emerging mental lexicon: the case of to and for in english. brain and language, 68, 268-276. rice, s. (2003). growth of a lexical network: nine english prepositions in acquisition. in h. cuyckens, r. dirven, & j.r. taylor (eds.),cognitive approaches to lexical semantics (pp. 243-280). berlin & new york: mouton de gruyter. schlessinger, i. m. (1988). the origin of relational categories. in levy, y (ed.). categories and processes in language acquisition. nj: erlbaum. tomasello, m. (1987). learning to use prepositions: a case study, journal of child language, 14, 79-98. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 116-135, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 116 bangla tense inflections productivity among pre-school children1 s. m. sanzana rahman2 southeast university lubaba sanjana3 brac university abstract although there have been different types of studies regarding bangla verbs, acquisition of bangla verbs and different types of bangla tenses; there is a lack of research on the relationship between age and productive tense inflections and development of these inflections for bangla speaking children. this paper studies the relation between age and productivity of tense inflections of typically developing bangla speaking pre-school children. the data have been collected from speech samples of 30 children aged 24 months to 48 months through elicited production method. the study finds out the different age range when different tense inflections become productive. it proposes an order of use of the morphological verb inflections of tense and tense inflections for the 30 children in this study. in addition, it explores the probability of a developmental sequence in these inflections in relation to tomasello’s (2008) usage-based approach for typically developing bangla speaking pre-school children. the findings of this research can be used to help future studies in the field of bangla tense acquisition as well as to create a profile for typically developing children. moreover, studies dealing with children with language impairments may benefit from the findings. keywords tense inflections; bangla tense; productivity; bangla verbal morphology; first language acquisition 1. introduction in bangla language, different morphological inflections are used with bare verb stems to denote different types of tenses. as a result, bangla tense system is extraordinarily complex including different range of morphological verb inflections. sultana (2016) asserted that in bangla language, an indepth scenario of typical growth in language has not been established by analysing child language data. this research will measure typical bangla speaking children’s productive use of tense inflections in relation to age. it will conduct a comparative analysis of the usage of the productive morphological verb inflections of bangla tense to propose a developmental 1 the authors have made equal contributions to the paper 2 s. m. sanzana rahman is a lecturer currently working in the department of english, southeast university, dhaka, bangladesh. her areas of research interest include child language development, sla, language and identity and call. she teaches eap courses. 3 lubaba sanjana is a lecturer in the department of english & humanities, brac university, dhaka, bangladesh. her areas of research interest include child language development, reading development and sla. currently, she is pursuing her phd in the faculty of education at mount saint vincent university, nova scotia, canada. corresponding author: lubaba.sanjana273@gmail.com received :15.10.2020 accepted : 13.12.2020 published : 30.12.2020 development of productive tense inflection rahman, sanjana 117 trend in these inflections which can be later used to create assessments and interventions for children with language impairment. the researchers have tried to figure out the answers to these questions: a. when do children start to use different tense inflections productively? b. what is the comparative range of usage of the productive morphological verb inflections of bangla tense among the children? c. is there any developmental trend in the productive verb inflections of tenses in relation to tomasello’s (2008) usage-based approach; for typically developing bangla speaking pre-school children? 1.1. bangla tense rácová (2009) mentioned that there are eight tenses in bangla language; simple present, present imperfect or present continuous or present progressive, present perfect, preterite or simple past, past imperfect or past continuous or past progressive, pluperfect or past perfect, past habitual, and future. in bangla language, finite verb forms are marked for person, tense, aspect, and honour features, each attaching itself to the verb stem in a fixed order (kar, 2009; thompson, 2012). unlike english, they are unmarked for plurality or gender. the markers attach to the verb in an incremental or agglutinative fashion (kar, 2009). in bangla language, the finite verb form not only includes the root morpheme which has the lexical meaning of the verb but also, tense marking grammatical morpheme + aspect marking grammatical morpheme + personal endings (rácová, 2009; sultana et al., 2016). therefore, the designations of finite verbal forms include information about the aspect as well as the tense (e.g., present perfect, past imperfect or past continuous etc.) (rácová, 2009). in case of present tense, verbs do not have overt tense markers. also, aspect markers are seen in case of only two contexts; progressive and perfective. there are distinct person markers to indicate first, second, and third person agents (sultana et al., 2016), and young children tend to acquire third person marker comparatively easily (sanjana, 2018). also, paramita (2006) explained that in bangla, each tense is incorporated with a set of five term person morphemes which include the honour features. they are, person 1 (p1), person 2. status 1 (p2sl), person 2 status 2 (p2s2), person 2 status 3 (p2s3) and person 3 (p3). it is possible for these tense-person morphemes to have some allomorphs that might be suffixed to the verb root. bangla tense-aspect paradigm in all the three persons is included in appendix a. chakraborty and leonard’s study (2012) found present progressive and past progressive forms to gain high accuracy. in her study, sultana (2016) found that present perfect form is produced in the highest number (over 92%) by the children. present progressive verb forms in bangla obtains a moderate production score. performance of the children has suggested that they frequently substitute past simple verb forms by the present perfect forms. the overall production of past progressive and past perfect verb forms is incredibly low due to their structural and cognitive demands. another study by sultana et al. (2016) stated that the highest accuracy of acquisition is in present simple forms (88%), then in present progressive forms (67%), and the lowest in past progressive forms (44%). journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 116-135, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 118 1.2. bangla verbal system there are two types of verbs in bangla verbal system; simple verbs and complex verbs which refer to both conjunct and compound verbs (chatterjee, 2014). complex verbs can be of several constrictions as well. for example; noun/adjective + do type, noun/adjective + do + verb type and verb + verb type. n/a + do and n/a + do + v constructions are called conjunct verbs whereas, v+v constructions are called compound verbs (thompson 2012). bangla language has a limited use of simple verbs and abundant usage of conjunct verbs. in two-part conjunct verbs, noun or adjectives appear with a helping verb such as, kora (do). for example, bhul kora (to mistake). here, the helping verb bears tense, person and aspect inflection. in three-part conjunct verbs, noun or adjectives appear with two verbs; a helping verb such as, kora (do) and a vector verb such, neya (to take). for example, bhul kore niyechi (to take mistakenly). here, the helping verb is in the perfective participle form, whereas the vector verb bears tense, person and aspect inflection (chatterjee, 2014). ramchand (1990) viewed that the vector verb also affects the aktionsart or the lexical aspect, and provides semantic meaning (as cited in chatterjee, 2014). compound verbs contain two verbs to express a single action. the first or the main verb is in nonfinite perfective participle form which is known as the pole. the second verb is a light verb which bears tense, aspect and person inflection is known as the vector verb (butt, 2010). in these types of verbs, the pole always bears conjunctive participial form “-e” or infinitive form “-te” (paul, 2003) despite the kind of aspect the vector has. for example, pore giyeche (have fallen). the vector verbs in compound verbs carry inflections and affects the aktionsart of the verbal construction (chatterjee, 2014; paul, 2003). (1) por-chi-l-am (bangla) /por-/ is the verb stem ‘to read’; /-chi/ denotes the progressive aspect marker; /-l-/ is the past tense marker; and /-am/ is the first-person marker. i was reading. hopper and traugott (1993) explained that verbs which occur as a pole or simple verb contains its full meaning (as cited in chatterjee, 2014). however, as vectors, these verbs tend to lose their inherent meanings and create slight difference in meaning (chatterjee, 2014; paul 2003). bangla language has 16 vector verbs in total (paul, 2003). 1.3. usage-based approach according to tomasello (2008), usage-based approach to language acquisition views that children acquire language structure from language use and frame language based on their general cognitive skills. tomasello (2000a; 2008) viewed that instead of learning words directly, children try to understand adult utterances which results into comprehension of a word by deciding its functional role in the utterance and commonalities of this functional role across utterances (2008). tomasello (2000a) further explained that when children want to communicate, they use these set expressions development of productive tense inflection rahman, sanjana 119 which they have already mastered from their “stored linguistic experience” (p. 76). however, when there is no ready set expression, they modify their already mastered previous utterances or stored linguistic experiences to produce new utterances. this is known as “usage based syntactic operations” (tomasello, 2000a, p.76); which explains that children create their new utterances by assorting or “cutting and pasting” their “pre-existing psycholinguistic units” according to the communicative situation; instead of building their utterances from scratch, morpheme by morpheme. according to usage-based model, children's early linguistic knowledge involves an “inventory of item-based constructions” which includes “utterance schemas” to structure new whole utterances (tomasello, 2000a, p.77). these processes of continuous learning, chunking, making categories, and inferencing, in addition to fragmental or complete repetition later result into establishment of the language categories and structures (bybee & beckner, 2009). 1.4. item based approach according to tomasello (2000b), in early language acquisition period children follow an item-based approach. their early utterance includes particular words and phrases which lacks “system-wide syntactic categories or schemas” (p.156). owens jr. (2014) also mentioned that children observe the patterns of language in use in the environment around them and form a “hypothesis” about the rules of the patterns and test them in their own speech. as the child reaches cognitive and social maturity, he/she learns to use the “linguistic codes” with sophistication in his/her speech (p.294). macwhinney (2005) went on stating that in each item-based construction there is a set of specific slots. in the initial phase, children’s comprehension of the first words encountered in these slots assign the features of these slots. thus, item-based learning is an ongoing process of generalisation of the semantic features of the arguments, where each item-based construction is related to a particular lexical item. this approach towards language acquisition inspired tomasello (2000b) to propose a “usage based model” which argued that children learn new linguistic expressions naturally by imitating language around them and using cognitive and social-cognitive skills to “categorise, schematise and creatively combine” these new expressions in order to reach adult like competence (p.156). 1.5. productivity yang (2005) explained that a structure or rule is productive when it can be automatically used with a set of lexical items having properties and can be used with novel items having similar properties. brandt et al. (2011) explained that language acquisition, comprehension and production include three main processes which are segmentation, categorisation, and recombination. children’s productive acquisition takes place in rapid rate in a morphologically rich language (xanthos et al., 2011). hohenstein & akhtar (2007) mentioned that children’s vocabulary includes verbs only in the ways they have experienced them to be used around them as long as they do not experience other verbs. here, sultana (2016) mentioned that the children’s early morphological production is strongly determined by the structural and the cognitive complexities of the target forms, where usually the structure of journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 116-135, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 120 substitute verb forms are simpler than the target forms. in case of bangla, study shows that the productivity in early verb paradigm significantly increases with increasing age (sanjana & sultana, 2019). it is to be mentioned that simply adding inflections to verb stems does not mean that the child can use verbal inflections productively, since using appropriate inflection in the relevant syntactic context is important (hohenstein & akhter, 2007). 2. methodology burns, grove & gray (2015) interpreted research design as, “a blueprint for conducting a study with maximum control over factors that may interfere with the validity of the findings” (p. 195). this research has been designed to understand the productive nature of tense inflections in relation to age, and to find a developmental pattern in these inflections. to investigate these issues, the researchers have collected language data from 30 typically developing bangla speaking pre-school children aged 24 months to 48 months (age 2 to 4) from 3-day care centers in dhaka. the language data is collected through elicited production. elicited production or narrative is a data collection measure used for various numbers of purposes which includes eliciting particular structure or narrative from the participants by placing them in a discourse scenario where the target response is particularly appropriate (ambridge, 2012; mackey & gass, 2005). elicited production methods can lie along with a continuum from least to most structured. moreover, sentence or stem completion technique can allow the researcher to exert more control (ambridge & rowland, 2013). ambridge (2012) viewed that this paradigm is useful when the researcher wants to investigate children’s acquisition of rarely used structures. furthermore, the researchers have done a complete morphological transcription of the language data in order to analyse them to answer the research questions stated for this study. the data collected from the sample has been analysed following the usage-based approach proposed by tomasello (2008). frequency is one of the main factors in a usage based model to explain the productivity of language schemas, and structures as well as the abstractness of these language structures (brandt et al., 2011; bybee 2008). frequency can be further divided into token and type frequency (brandt et al., 2011; bybee 2008). yang (2005) mentioned that constitution of early vocabulary is directly related to token frequency, whereas productivity is depended on the type frequency of words in the early child vocabulary. here, token frequency includes how many times a specific item is used in a specific pattern (brandt et al., 2011; ellis & collins, 2009). it can refer to the number of times a lexical item occurs in child language data, i.e., a specific verb. compared to low token frequency words, high token frequency items are strongly represented in memory, and are easily accessible (rispens & de bree, 2014). on the other hand, type frequency is a characteristic of patterns or constructions. it deals with a number of distinct items which either occur in the open slot of a construction or occur to create a pattern (bybee & beckner, 2009; ellis & collins, 2009). in general sense, type frequency includes the number of different lexical items which are used in a specific pattern, i.e., a suffix. (brandt et al., 2011; bybee, 2007). rispens & de bree development of productive tense inflection rahman, sanjana 121 (2014) further mentioned that morphological productivity is highly influenced by type frequency. in this study, an inflection that has been used with even one verb stem is considered as productive use of that inflection. moreover, the researchers have tried to connect the findings of this research with the existing literature in the same field. 2.1. participants the participants of this research are 30 children from 3 government operated day care centres in dhaka city who are aged from 24 months to 48 months (age 2 to 4). with the permission from the authority, this study has been conducted. table 1 gives information about the participants. table 1 age profile of children children age (months) mean (n= 30) standard deviation age range (maximum age minimum age) 36.33 7.82 48-24= 24 a 20-minute language sample is collected through elicited production method from each of the 30 children (mean= 36.33, standard deviation= 7.82). the three-day care centres are identified as: x, y, and z. the ratio of number of participants from each day care, x: y: z = 10: 11: 9. all the participants are identified as typically developing children by the caregivers in the day care centres. the authority of the day care centres has confirmed that the participants included in this study have no reported speech and/or language delay. 2.2. data collection and processing to elicit children responses for this research, the researchers have created a set of questions (see appendix b). sultana (2016) in her study with bangla speaking children found only administering structured probes is fruitless to elicit the target verb forms. she recommended a spontaneous conversation framework using structured probes with very young children. the questions thus have been designed to elicit responses from the children which contain the verb forms in the target 8 tenses. similar to sultana’s (2016) study the questions included target morphological forms used with non-target finite verbs. the researchers are native bangla-speakers themselves. therefore, they have used their intuition and have chosen those verbs with which young children are familiar; such as, kanna kora (to cry), boka deowa (to scold), katukutu deowa (to tickle). however, during data collection children are also given scope for natural language production. at one end, the children are given the scope for natural production; on the other end, the researchers exert control by constraining questions. during elicited production procedure, to engage the children in conversation, the researcher has used a set of toys including a car, a stuffed elephant and a teddy bear. the researcher has given the toys gradually to the children to engage them in a play session. the pre-planned question included questions related with journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 116-135, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 122 the toys to capture the interest of the children. the conversations have been video recorded with a digital camera and a mobile phone. the setting of this study is the three-day care centres. while conducting the study it is necessary that the recording of child language data takes place in a place which is familiar to the participants (eisenbeiss, 2010). as the children stay in the day cares for a significant amount of time, it can be assumed that the place will be familiar to and comfortable for them. in a familiar surrounding the children will not be intimidated and will willingly take part in the study. eisenbeiss (2010) also mentioned that observer effect will be stronger if the researcher remains a stranger to the participants of the research before the actual recording takes place. therefore, the researcher who has collected the data has made herself familiar with the children in the place where the study has taken place. otherwise, the language sample will be unreliable containing insignificant data as the children will be frightened to take part in the elicitation process. eisenbeiss (2010) explained that researchers can use orthographic transcriptions combined with additional conventions for capturing deviations from the target forms by also incorporating target like forms and the properties of the children’s spoken speech sample, e.g., pauses, hesitations, gestures, etc. which can be sometimes relevant for its interpretation. for this study, a complete morphological transcription of the language data has been done. 2.3. data analysis the transcribed language data have been analysed following several steps. first of all, only simple verbs and conjunct verbs with noun/adjective+ do type (verb) have been included in the analysis. then, to analyse the data the researchers have calculated frequencies. eisenbeiss (2010) explained that type frequency includes the calculation of frequency of morphological verb inflections and token frequency includes the calculation of frequency of individual tense inflected verb forms which the children will produce. for this study, an inflection that has been used with even one verb stem is considered productive use of that inflection. while calculating frequency of productive inflections, same inflection produced with the same verb stem as well as different verb stems has been considered a different item in every single use. to measure the use of verb inflections, inflections are written in standard bangla to keep the tense markers consistent throughout the paper. all the varieties (standard and colloquial) produced by the children are included in appendix a. production score of tense inflections has been generated by calculating mean score and standard deviation. mackey & gass (2005) mentioned that mean or arithmetic average is a commonly used measure of central tendency. mean or arithmetic average despite being commonly used, is sensitive to extreme scores when the number of participants is small. measure of central tendency can be useful to show the typical behaviour of a group, but it tends to ignore some vital information. mean score does not show how the scores are dispersed around the mean. in order to measure variability or dispersion it is necessary to measure standard deviation. a smaller standard deviation means that in terms of a particular behaviour the groups is more homogenous, and vice versa. the development of productive tense inflection rahman, sanjana 123 smaller the standard deviation, the better the mean indicates the behaviour of group. thus, measures of dispersion serve as a quality control for measures of central tendency. besides, comparison has been made between 4 age groups. these 30 children have been divided into 4 age groups (see table 2). from group a to group d, the age of the children increases. table 2 age groups group number of children (n= 30) age range (months) a 8 24 <30 b 6 30 <36 c 6 36 <42 d 10 42 < 48 graphical representation of the data collected from the sample has been done using microsoft excel. 3. findings in total, 29 different morphological verb inflections for 8 tenses are found to be productive in this study. for a better representation, they have been shown under their particular tense inflection (see table 3). for example, four morphological verb inflections (-i, -o, -e, -en) represent simple present tense; and they are shown under that particular tense inflection. table 3 productivity of tense inflections and their frequency of use for each child n o . c h il d r e n 's a g e i n m o n th s tense inflections s im p le p r e s e n t p r e s e n t p r o g r e s s iv e p r e s e n t p e r fe c t s im p le p a s t p a s t p r o g r e s s iv e p a s t p e r fe c t p a s t h a b it u a l f u tu r e 1 24 5 0 2 0 0 0 0 1 2 24 10 0 1 0 0 0 0 2 3 26 16 1 2 0 0 0 0 1 4 26 15 4 1 1 0 0 0 4 5 27 13 0 3 0 0 0 1 1 6 28 12 0 1 0 0 0 0 2 7 28 9 2 8 3 0 1 0 5 8 29 14 3 5 0 0 3 1 4 9 30 12 5 3 0 2 6 2 3 10 31 12 0 11 1 1 1 1 3 11 32 16 1 6 0 1 1 1 4 12 33 15 4 8 2 0 3 1 5 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 116-135, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 124 13 34 23 2 9 2 2 5 0 1 14 35 27 2 14 0 1 3 3 3 15 36 28 5 12 3 2 6 2 6 16 37 25 7 15 0 1 0 3 5 17 38 37 6 12 2 0 8 1 5 18 39 36 6 11 2 1 7 1 2 19 40 39 6 20 1 2 0 0 5 20 41 59 4 14 1 1 7 3 6 21 42 32 7 11 3 0 0 3 5 22 43 31 8 11 2 1 6 2 12 23 44 32 9 22 1 0 7 5 11 24 44 25 8 18 2 0 5 4 8 25 45 32 9 27 2 1 6 4 7 26 45 50 11 19 6 0 3 5 16 27 46 49 11 21 3 10 29 5 14 28 47 80 12 27 5 6 16 21 13 29 48 82 13 19 15 15 5 9 14 30 48 79 17 42 9 4 12 5 12 apart from that, table 4 represents the production scores of tense inflections across age groups. here, mean score and standard deviation of productive tense inflections have been measured for each group. table 4 mean score and standard deviation of tense inflections across age group age groups a b c d inflections of simple present tense mean score 11.75 17.50 37.33 49.20 standard deviation 3.62 6.16 11.94 22.89 inflections of present progressive tense mean score 1.25 2.33 5.67 10.50 standard deviation 1.58 1.86 1.03 2.99 inflections of present perfect tense mean score 2.88 8.50 14 21.70 standard deviation 2.47 3.83 3.29 8.98 inflections of simple past tense mean score 0.5 0.83 1.50 4.80 standard deviation 1.07 0.98 1.05 4.32 inflections of past progressive tense mean score 0 1.17 1.17 3.70 standard deviation 0 0.75 0.75 5.19 inflections of past perfect tense mean score 0.5 3.17 4.67 8.90 standard deviation 1.07 2.04 3.67 8.36 development of productive tense inflection rahman, sanjana 125 inflections of past habitual tense mean score 0.25 1.33 1.67 6.30 standard deviation 0.46 1.03 1.21 5.48 inflections of future tense mean score 2.50 3.17 4.83 11.20 standard deviation 1.60 1.33 1.47 3.49 from the group data (see table 4), it is also shown that productivity increases as the age of the children increases. some of these productive morphological verb inflections of tenses have been more frequent and some of them have been less frequent. below, the total number of productive morphological inflections of verb for tenses and the number of productive tenses for each child is shown (see table 5). table 5 productive tenses and productive morphological inflections of verb for bangla tenses children n o . o f p r o d u c ti v e t e n s e s n o . o f p r o d u c ti v e in fl e c ti o n s o f v e r b children n o . o f p r o d u c ti v e t e n s e s n o . o f p r o d u c ti v e in fl e c ti o n s o f v e r b 1 (24 months) 3 3 16 (37 months) 6 11 2 (24 months) 3 5 17 (38 months) 7 14 3 (26 months) 4 5 18 (39 months) 8 13 4 (26 months) 5 7 19 (40 months) 6 15 5 (27 months) 4 7 20 (41 months) 8 18 6 (28 months) 3 4 21 (42 months) 6 14 7 (28 months) 6 10 22 (43 months) 8 20 8 (29 months) 6 11 23 (44 months) 7 18 9 (30 months) 7 12 24 (44 months) 7 16 10 (31 months) 7 10 25 (45 months) 8 19 11 (32 months) 7 11 26 (45 months) 7 18 12 (33 months) 7 13 27 (46 months) 8 23 13 (34 months) 7 13 28 (47 months) 8 22 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 116-135, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 126 14 (35 months) 7 13 29 (48 months) 8 20 15 (36 months) 8 18 30 (48 months) 8 26 table 6 represents total number of produced productive inflections of verb for tense and productive tenses across age groups. here, mean score and standard deviation of the produced inflections and tenses have been measured for each age group. table 6 mean score and standard deviation of the total number of productive tenses and productive morphological inflections of verb for tense across age groups g r o u p n u m b e r o f c h il d r e n age range (months) no. of tenses no. of productive inflections of verb m e a n s c o r e s ta n d a r d d e v ia ti o n m e a n s c o r e s ta n d a r d d e v ia ti o n a 8 24 <30 4.25 1.82 6.5 2.83 b 6 30 <36 7 0 12 1.26 c 6 36 <42 7. 17 0.98 14.83 2.79 d 10 42 < 48 7.5 0.71 19.6 3.47 table 7 provides information about frequency of total number of use of productive morphological verb inflections of bangla tenses. for one verb inflection of tense, the number of children who have used that inflection productively during the elicitation task has been taken as frequency of total number of child use for that particular inflection. table 7 usage of verb inflections among children verb inflection of tense total number of child use percentage (%) verb inflection of tense total number of child use percentage (%) -i 29 96.67 -o 16 53.33 -len 3 10.00 -e 29 96.67 -chilam 11 36.67 -en 2 6.67 -chilo 7 23.33 -chi 19 63.33 -chile 2 6.67 -cho 1 3.33 -echilam 19 63.33 -che 23 76.67 -echile 4 13.33 -chen 1 3.33 -echilo 12 40.00 -echi 28 93.33 -tam 15 50.00 development of productive tense inflection rahman, sanjana 127 -echo 11 36.67 -te 4 13.33 -eche 24 80.00 -to 15 50.00 -echen 3 10.00 -bo 28 93.33 -lam 11 36.67 -ba 9 30.00 -le 10 33.33 -be 16 53.33 -lo 12 40.00 -ben 1 3.33 4. analysis 4.1. productivity of tense inflections 4.1.1. present and future tense from the study, it is found that inflections of present simple tense, present perfect tense and future tense start to be used productively from the earliest period (24 months) by the children (see table 3). looking at the group data from table 4, there is a gradual increase of mean score in the age groups. in case of age group d which includes the highest number of children, a significantly high standard deviation is observed for all the tenses. it suggests that the productive tense inflection scores fluctuated among the children. for example, in table 3, in case of simple present, child 24 scores 25, whereas, the highest score in this age group is 82 (from table 1). it can be due to individual personality trait (such as, shyness) or their preference to not engage during the data collection procedure. some children have talked more whereas some have been reluctant to respond. therefore, they may have not productively used some morphological forms which are present to them. four verb inflections (-i, -o, -e, en) of simple present tense, four verb inflections (-echi, -echo, -eche, -echen) of present perfect tense, and four verb inflections (-bo, -ba, -be, -ben) of future tense have been productive among the children in this study. however, inflections of present simple tense are found to be most productive in this study. two of the simple present tense inflection (-i and -e) are used by 96.67% of the total sample in this study (see table 7). on the contrary, -cho, -chen, -ben verb inflections have been used by only one child (3.33%). this is different than english language where children’s early utterances include present progressive tense the most (brown, 1973). the reason which makes it the “earliest developing form” is that the structure of this form is the simplest and requires the least complex tense and aspect markers (sultana et al., 2016, p.14). the researchers also feel that cultural learning plays an important role in acquisition of productive tense inflections (ghalebi & sadighi, 2015). in the early years, children are exposed to these tense inflections more than other tense inflections in their social and linguistic environment. inflections of present progressive tense become productive later than these 3 tenses; from around the age of 26 months with some exceptions (see table 3). there is a gradual increase of mean score in the age groups as well (see table 4). four verb inflections (-chi, -cho, -che, -chen) of present progressive tense have been productive among the children in this study. it has been observed by the researchers that children have tended to use present perfect tense in the context of present progressive tense. again, this may be due to the relative complexity of the present progressive tense inflections than the journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 116-135, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 128 perfect ones (-echi, -echo, -eche, -echen > -chi, -cho, -che, -chen). although children start to use future tense inflections before tense inflections of present progressive tense (see table 3), there production scores are quite similar. again, this can be due to the children’s avoidance of talking about incidents in the future in the study. moreover, in the context of future tense children have tended to use present tenses. 4.1.2. past tenses for elicited production, questions have been included to elicit inflections of simple past tense before the questions to elicit other past tenses as inflections of simple past tense have been expected to be productive before those inflections (see appendix b; question f). however, it is seen that inflections of past perfect tense and past habitual (from the age of 28 months and 29 months respectively) are productive earlier than simple past tense inflection (see table 3). there is a gradual increase of mean score in the age groups (see table 4). three verb inflections (-echilam, -echile, -echilo) of past perfect tense, and three verb inflections (-tam, -te, -to) of past habitual tense have been productive among the children in this study. in most cases, children start to use inflections of simple past tense productively from around 33 months (see table 3). there is a gradual increase of mean score in the age groups for these tenses as well (see table 4). four verb inflections (-lam, -le, -lo, -len) of simple past tense have been productive among the children in this study. as anticipated, inflections of past progressive tense become productive later than all the other tense inflectionsfrom around 46 months (see table 3). before that age, there have been some limited productive use of the inflections of this tense. there is no reported use of this tense for age group a, and productivity increases for age group d, before being somewhat limited in both age group b and c (see table 4). three verb inflections (-chilam, -chilo, -chile) of past progressive tense have been productive. sultana et al. (2016) explains that these forms can be cognitively challenging for the children and they often can be replaced by non-target forms. in sultana’s (2016) study, past progressive and past perfect verb forms were very low due to their structural and cognitive demands. in chakraborty and leonard’s (2012) study past progressive forms were highly accurate. the researchers in this study have also found the accurate but very limited use of past progressive tense inflections by the children. 4.2. comparative usage among children from table 5, it is found that there is an increase in the number of productive verb inflections for tense and productive tenses along with the increase of age in the children. there has been a strong positive correlation between children’s age and their productive tenses, r = .78, p < 0.000005. a one-way anova run with age groups as independent, and number of productive tense inflections as dependent variables further shows that the age groups have a significant effect on productivity of tense inflections (f3,26 = 32.32, p < 0.00000005). children create categories and slots as they learn new inflections, and later test them in conversational context; finally form a generalisation about the semantic features. while doing so, they are bound development of productive tense inflection rahman, sanjana 129 to make mistakes, which is why production of tense has gone through fluctuation from 37 months to 45 months. thus, the findings in this research implies that linguistic acquisition and production of children involves consciously learning linguistic terms and their constructions in order to gradually reconstruct them to form more “abstract and word general” linguistic items. (wittek & tomasello, 2002, p.586). it is to be noted that the researchers have not explored other situational, cognitive and individual aspects which can affect the production of target tense forms. therefore, from the current study it was not possible to propose an exact developmental trend in productive tense inflections. however, there is a certain pattern in the productive use of the tense inflections which is observed during this study. first of all, from table 5 it can be seen that the number of productive verb inflections of tenses starts to increase as the age of the children increase. however, this increase in productive tense inflections does not necessarily mean that productive tense increases along with age. as seen from table 5, there is a fluctuation of number of tenses produced by the children. from 37 months to 45 months, the number of tenses produced varied from 6 to 8. in group data (see table 6), we can see these trends very clearly. the mean score of number of tenses and inflections produced increases along with age. 4.3. order of use for productive tense inflections and tenses based on the number of child use from table 7, the researchers can propose the following order of use for all the morphological verb inflections of different bangla tenses: -i, -e> -echi, -bo> -eche> -che> -chi, -echilam> -o, be> -tam, -to> -lo, -echilo> -echo, -lam, -chilam> -le> -ba> -chilo> -echile, te> -echen, -len> -en, -chile> -cho, chen, ben from the data of table 3, the production scores (mean score and standard deviation) for the tense inflections have been graphically presented in figure 1. figure 1 production scores of tense inflections. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 116-135, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 130 from the comparative analysis amongst the tense inflections it is found that present simple tense gets the highest production score (mean score= 30.50, standard deviation= 21.43). past progressive tense gets the least production score in the study (mean score= 1.70, standard deviation= 3.29). based on the production scores of the tense inflections, the following order of use of tense inflections can be proposed: simple present tense> present perfect tense> future tense> present progressive tense> past perfect tense> past habitual tense> simple past tense> past progressive tense the researchers believe that younger children lack the cognitive skills and produce less productive verb inflections and tenses. also, there is a chance that the children they may have not productively used some morphological form. in children’s early years, their “stored linguistic experience” (tomasello, 2000a, p.76) includes only those inflections and tenses which do not require complex linguistic understanding. however, as they age, and their cognitive skill starts to mature, they learn to create “utterance schemas” (tomasello, 2000a, p.66). they create slots for the inflections they have learned from their linguistic experience to use with variety of range of verb stems. at first these use of new inflections are not appropriate as they seem cognitively challenging and difficult to produce for the children. however, as they gain experience, they begin to get more proficient in using the verb inflections and tenses more productively. 5. conclusion to conclude, the researchers employ the data collection methodselicited production; to investigate the productive tense inflections in bangla speaking pre-school children from 3-day care centres. in this study, the researchers have found that age of the children plays role in acquisition of tense inflections. although, other variables, such as exposure to forms in environment, or processing capacity of children etc. have not been studied in this research, the finding of this study is helpful to create a developmental profile for typically developing children. this study can be used as an inventory by researcher as it includes real-life data from 30 typically developing bangla speaking pre-school children. moreover, this research will help other researchers who are interested to work on bangla tense and inflection development in children. therefore, conclusions derived from this study is noteworthy in the area of bangla tense inflection acquisition, productivity and development. recommendations for future studies are given below: a. future studies can explore the other factors except age for tense inflection production b. they can include complex and conjunct verb forms. c. they can include aspectual and personal markers as well. d. they can include larger sample to draw more generalisations. e. they can use other data collection methods. development of productive tense inflection rahman, sanjana 131 references ali, m. n. y., sarker, m. z. h., ahmed, g. f., & das, j. k. 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(2016). morphosyntactic development of bangla-speaking preschool children. first language, 36(6), 637-657. thompson, h.-r. (2012). bengali. john benjamins publishing. tomasello, m. (2000a). first steps towards a usage-based theory of language acquisition. cognitive linguistics, 11(1/2), 61-82. https://sah.ulab.edu.bd/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2018/09/crossings_vol-9_2018_published.pdf https://sah.ulab.edu.bd/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2018/09/crossings_vol-9_2018_published.pdf http://jclad.science-res.com/archives_full_issu/vol_7_issue_3/204_jclad_lubaba_sultana.pdf http://jclad.science-res.com/archives_full_issu/vol_7_issue_3/204_jclad_lubaba_sultana.pdf http://jclad.science-res.com/archives_full_issu/vol_7_issue_3/204_jclad_lubaba_sultana.pdf development of productive tense inflection rahman, sanjana 133 tomasello, m. (2000b). the item-based nature of children’s early syntactic development. trends in cognitive sciences, 4(4), 156-163. tomasello, m. (2008). the usage-based theory of language acquisition. the cambridge handbook of child language (pp. 69-88). cambridge: cambridge university press. wittek, a. & tomasello, m. (2002). german children's productivity with tense morphology: the perfekt (present perfect). journal of child language, 29. 567-589. yang, c. (2005). on productivity. linguistic variation yearbook, 5(1), 265-302. xanthos, a., laaha, s., gillis, s., stephany, u., aksu-koç, a., christofidou, a., … & dressler, w. u. (2011). on the role of morphological richness in the early development of noun and verb inflection. first language, 31(4), 461479. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 116-135, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 134 appendices appendix a: bangla tense-aspect paradigm tense 1st person 2nd person 3rd person neg gen res gen res simple present -i pori -ish porish -o poro -en poren -e pore -en poren present progressive -chi/-tesi porchi/ portesi -chis/tesis porchish/ portesis -cho/teso porcho/ porteso -chen/tesen porchen/ portesen -che/-tese porche/ portese -chen/tesen porchen/ portesen present perfect -echi/-si porechi/ porsi -echis/ sis porechis/ porsis -echo/-so porecho/ porso -echen/sen porechen/ porsen -eche/-se poreche/ porse -echen/sen porechen/ porsen simple past -lam porlam -li porli -le porle -len porlen -lo porlo -len porlen past progressive -chilam/tesilam porchilam/ portesilam -chilish/tesilish porchilish/ portesilish -chile/tesila porchile/ portesila -chilen/tesilen porchilen/ portesilen -chilo/tesilo porchilo/ portesilo -chilen/tesilen porchilen/ portesilen past perfect -echilam/silam porechilam/ porsilam -echili/ sili porechili/ poresli -echile/sila porechile/ porsila -echilen/silen porechilen/ porsilen -echilo/silo porechilo/ porsilo -echilen/silen porechilen/ porsilen past habitual -tam portam -ti porti -te porte -ten porten -to porto -ten porten future -bo/-mu porbo/ pormu -bi porbi -ba porba -ben porben -be porbe -ben porben here, gen=general, neg=negligible and res= respect note: adapted from ali, sarker, ahmed & das, 2010; bhattacharya, choudhury, sarkar & basu, 2005; paramita, 2006; sultana 2016. appendix b: elicited production questionnaire 1. basic introductory questions: a. tomar nam ki? b. kemon acho? 2. questions focusing on tense: a. ki korcho? b. sokale ki korecho? c. dekho to eta ki? (showing the child a toy car). d. garita die ki koro? e. gari ta die ki ki kora jay amake ektu bolo toh? f. accha, tumi ei putul take bolo toh tumi kal ke ki ki korechile? (showing the child a doll) g. acting as if the doll is speaking: hi amar nam bulu, amar kono bondhu nei. ami ki korle tumi amar bondhu hoba? development of productive tense inflection rahman, sanjana 135 h. acting as if the doll is speaking: ami jodi kanna kortam tahole tumi ki korta? i. acting as if the doll is speaking: tumi jokhon basay kanna koro tokhon tomar ammu ki korto? j. acting as if the doll is speaking: ami jodi tomake boka dei tahole ki korba tumi? k. acting as if the doll is speaking: tomake abbu/ ammu boka dile ki koro? l. tickling the doll: dekho putul tar onek katukutu ache. tomake keu katukutu dite chaile ki korta? m. (giving the child the doll) ektu age putuler sathe ki korla bolo toh amake? n. putula ta die ki koro? o. (dancing a teddy in front of the child) bolo teddy ta ki korche? p. teddy ta jante chasse ajk basay jeye ki ki korba? q. (pinching the teddy) teddyta ke etokkhon ki kortechilam? r. (giving the child the teddy) teddyta r na onek mon kharap oke ektu bolo toh valo teddy hote hole ki ki korte hobe? s. tumi boro hoe ki ki korba? journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 476-498, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 476 expressive linguistic development of bangla-speaking children with severe congenital hearing impairment mobasshera islam1 dhaka university abstract to acquire speech and language using a hearing aid along with speech and language therapy plays a vital role for children with hearing impairment. the present study tries to determine the importance of speech therapy in developing expressive language of bangla-speaking children with hearing impairment. in addition, this study shows their development of pragmatic capacity. a qualitative method is used in this research and the data are collected using a semistructured questionnaire. all 14 participants of the research are divided into two groups: each consists of 7 children having the same level of hearing impairment at the same age but one of them is facilitated with slt (speech and language therapy). the result reveals that the phonological performance of banglaspeaking children who receive speech and language therapy regularly and use hearing aids is better than that of bangla-speaking children who use only hearing aids. the result of this study indicates a positive impact of providing speech and language therapy regularly for bangla-speaking children with severe congenital hearing impairment. keywords: bengali hearing-impaired children, intervention of severe hearing loss, slt, hearing aid, severe congenital hearing-impaired children 1. introduction this research investigates the outcomes of using a hearing aid as well as receiving regular speech and language therapy (slt) for a group of children with severe congenital hearing loss. for people who have difficulties with speech and language, eating, and swallowing problems, slt is a proven treatment. slt focuses on developing listening and speaking skills for children with hearing impairment. speech is a powerful way of communication and hearing impairment hinders the development of proper communication. 1.1. expressive linguistic features expressive linguistic features represent the neutrality of a language; it is a form of language performance ranging from linguistic to paralinguistic and extra-linguistic features (tynbayeva & yakhina, n.d.). to suit the use of a persons’ communicative functions, the systematic variation in all levels of its 1 bio: mobasshera islam is a senior associate linguist at reve system. she is an m.phil. second part student of the communication disorders department, university of dhaka (du). she graduated from du with a bachelor's and master's degree in linguistics. from the same university, she has completed her professional master's in speech and language pathology. her interest is in special needs children's language acquisition and speech development. contact: mobasshera.naser@gmail.com received : 13.11.2021 accepted : 23.03.2022 published : 28.04.2022 mailto:mobasshera.naser@gmail.com bangla-speaking hearing impaired children islam 477 structure likephonology, morphology, lexicology, and syntax, varies in various contexts. acquired or developmental hearing impairment impacts the expressive linguistic features of a child. when impairment occurs after a period of normal development, it is acquired, but when impairment occurs before the birth or just after the birth, it refers to a developmental hearing impairment (bressert, n.d.). this study has been designed to collect data from only severe hearingimpaired children. ‘who grades for hearing impairment’ chart indicates that if the hearing limit is between 61-80 db, it is severe hearing impairment (mathers et al., 2003). from the diagnostic report of my participants, i identified the children with severe hearing impairment. in addition, this study has been designed to find out desired outcomes based on data collected from only congenital hearing-impaired children. 1.2. intervention the capacity of hearing plays a vital role in the acquisition and development of spoken language. that is why hearing-impaired people need intervention to learn spoken language. early diagnosis is important for children because the first few years are crucial to learning a language. according to the theory of cph (critical period hypothesis, there is an ideal age to acquire a language. lenneberg (1967) argued that only within the critical period extending from early infancy to puberty, a child could acquire language; after puberty, it cannot be learned in a normal, functional sense. this theory provides direct evidence for the language learning of hearingimpaired children. so hearing-impaired children need early diagnosis and intervention to learn a language (françois et al., 2015). intervention includes proper diagnosis, providing necessary aids, proper use of a device, maintenance, therapy, appropriate language learning environment, and other necessary supports. necessity and procedure of intervention depend on the criteria of hearing impairment. there is a universal agreement that all children with hearing impairment should develop their language early in life as an effective means of communication (gravel & o’gara, 2003). 1.3. purpose of the study this purpose of the study is to help determine the importance of proper intervention in developing expressive linguistic elements for bangla-speaking children with severe congenital hearing impairment. in this study, only the phonological expertise has been considered among all expressive linguistic elements. this research tries to find out the importance of speech and language therapy to develop the expressive linguistic features of bangla-speaking children with severe congenital hearing loss. in addition, it tries to discover whether only the use of a hearing aid is enough or the use of a hearing aid along with slt is much effective to develop their expressive linguistic features. so, the objectives of this research are 1) to identify the importance of intervention. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 476-498, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 478 2) to explain whether only using a hearing aid is enough for expressive linguistic development or besides a hearing aid, slt is also necessary to get a better outcome. 1.4. literature review several pieces of research have been conducted on the effectiveness of the hearing aid for children with hearing loss, even in the case of those who have a severe or profound hearing impairment. using a hearing aid is the most common way to compensate for hearing impairment. the primary goal of using a hearing aid is to restore audibility. rather in a noisy environment, using a hearing aid has shown satisfactory results in a quiet environment (kochkin, 2009). early intervention is also important for the acquisition of language. so, diagnosis, use of hearing aid, and proper intervention also play a vital role to acquire speech and language (bloomfild,1935). children who have a hearing impairment or are hard of hearing can get the maximum acoustic neurological benefit by using such modern hearing technology as digital hearing aids. children with severe hearing impairment can develop language and listen using digital hearing aids (durieux-smith et al., 2008). in several studies, it is found that those hearing-impaired children who started using appropriate hearing aid from an early age with proper intervention can enter mainstream society and enter a normal school. the research paper “outcomes for young children with hearing loss in an auditory-verbal therapy program” compared two groups; one group consisted of hearing-impaired children who were facilitated with avt therapy for their intervention, and another group consisted of typical hearing children. they studied over 50 months and found that developmental progress for language skills was at the same rate as the typical hearing group (dornan, 2010). however, some research has proved that moderate to severe congenital bilateral hearing loss has a slight impact on a child’s schooling, but that depends on the retention grade. those children who have a moderate bilateral hearing impairment, fitted with a hearing aid, can now attend a regular school (françois et al., 2015). 2. methodology the qualitative research method has been used for data collection. the researcher has conducted interviews with the participants. a semistructured questionnaire was used for the interview. the qualitative research methodology was effective to understand the status of expressive linguistic features of severe congenital hearing-impaired bangla-speaking children. 2.1. participants the data for this study were collected mainly from severe congenital hearingimpaired bangla-speaking children. the number of total participants was 14. they were divided into two groups: one consisted of 7 children with severe congenital hearing impairment, regularly wearing hearing aids, facilitated with slt for last three years, and another consisted of the rest of the 7 children of the control group having the same facility except slt. bangla-speaking hearing impaired children islam 479 the mean age of the participants was 7.34 years. all the children’s mother tongue was bangla. the researcher tried to ensure that all the children’s parents were using the standard form of bangla at home so that collected data may get rid of the influence of the dialects of the bangla language. 2.2. data collection and processing for data collection, two schools were chosen: both were renowned schools of bangladesh. both of them had a separate section for hearing impaired children. they had specialized teachers and other facilities. but of the two schools, one had no speech and language therapy section. so, only the students of other schools were facilitated with speech and language therapy, but students of earlier one did not get any speech and language therapy facility. data for the language assessments of severe congenital hearing-impaired bangla-speaking children were collected from participants directly. data collection was carried out by one session; each session lasted for approximately 40 to 50 minutes. in a quiet room, each child was tested individually. in addition, teachers provided the information of four specific questions about the participants, added in the appendix (0.2 other information). at first, with the help of a specialized school teacher, i selected those hearing-impaired children who were severe congenital hearing impaired and attended school for at least three years. participants were identified as severe congenital hearing impaired on the basis of their medical assessment report. moreover, those students were chosen whose family members were using the standard form of bangla at home. after choosing, the students, each of them was taken into an isolated room along with their teacher. i tried to make a good relationship with them by giving them some chocolates and warm behavior. they were asked to repeat each word by following my voice. three words for each phoneme were chosen in three different positions (initial, middle & final); the chart can be found in the appendix. each of their utterances was written down on a sheet of paper and recorded as well. after collecting data, i praised them for their cooperation. when i took data from each child, i gave them a short break every 9-10 minutes so that they did not lose their attention. 2.3. stimuli to collect data, vocal prompts were used to assess the participants’ expressive linguistic features, for example, to examine their performance in producing bilabial sound /p/, i sat just beside them and uttered [pat̪a], and then they tried to utter the same word. 2.4. data analysis the method used in this research for analyzing the data is comparative analysis. the percentage of performance on each phoneme in three positionsinitial, middle, and final has been presented comparatively. obtained results have been discussed on the basis of linguistic theory and aspects of slt. to represent the expressive linguistic ability to use each journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 476-498, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 480 phoneme of bangla language, the place of articulation of bangla consonants was considered. 3. findings two groups of children were selected to obtain the objectives of this research. the ability to use speech efficiently and accurately to decode and comprehend other people, speech clarity is very important. perfect use of ‘place of articulation’ helps to make speech intelligible. the place of articulation of each phoneme is an important element of expressive linguistic features. that is why of all the features of expressive language, only the place of articulation was focused in this research. all consonantal phonemes of the bangla language elicited from bangla-speaking children with severe congenital hearing impairment were considered. for each phoneme, different words were picked so that the utterance of each phoneme in different positions can be considered. here, by using the word “different position”, i meaninitial, middle, and final position of each phoneme. 3.1. data presentation here, to represent the expressive ability of using each phoneme of banglaspeaking children with severe congenital hearing impairment, only the place of articulation has been discussed. 3.1.1. place of articulation place of articulation is one of the prior concerns to depict the nature of expressive features of the bangla language. as expression encompasses the accuracy of the production of the phoneme, this research has focused on the phonetic representation of each phoneme of the bangla language. the elementary construction of a phonetic representation of each phoneme has been shown with binary opposition in appendix. this binary opposition has revealed both the experimental and control groups' performance. in the case of the bangla language, place of articulation covers the following characteristics • bilabial • dental • palato-dental • alveolar • palatal • velar • glottal in this research, the two groups comprised of seven participants. all characteristics of the place of articulation have been examined upon all the participants of each group. all the words used as the element of examination have been taken for each phoneme with the position of initial, middle, and final; the table can be found in the appendix (01. each phoneme in three different positions). the binary opposition has been depicted by (+) and (-). bangla-speaking hearing impaired children islam 481 3.1.1.1. bilabial sounds bilabial sounds are those which are produced with the association between two lips. in bangla language, bilabial phonemes are /p/, /pʰ/, /b/, /bʰ/, and /m/ (ali, 2012). as regards /p/, six children of each group have been able to produce /p/ accurately in the initial position. in the middle position, six children of the experimental group and seven children of the control group have produced the phoneme /p/ properly. in the final position /p/ phoneme has been articulated accurately by six children of the experimental group and three children of the control group. it has been found that mostly /p/ bilabial sound was produced accurately in the middle position by each group. in the case of /pʰ/ six children of the experimental group and five children of the control group have articulated properly. but in the middle position, four children of the experimental group and one of the control groups have been able to articulate /pʰ/ phoneme. in the final position, six children of the experimental group and two children of the control group have properly uttered /pʰ/ phoneme. as regards /pʰ/, the children of both the groups have pronounced quite accurately at the initial position. in pronouncing /b/, it has been seen those seven children in the experimental group and six children in the control group could articulate properly in the initial position. in the middle position, four children of the experimental group and one of the control group have correctly pronounced /b/ phoneme. as regards the final position, five children of the experimental group and one of the control group have articulated the phoneme /b/ appropriately. in contrast to other positions, in the initial position /b/ sound has been uttered accurately by most of the children of the experimental group and the control group. afterwards, /bʰ/ phoneme has been pronounced properly by three children of the experimental group and six children of the control group in the initial position. in the middle position, two children of the experimental group and four children of the control group have been able to produce /bʰ/ sound. in this regard, in the final position, one child of each of the groups has produced /bʰ/ phoneme properly. the surprising issue is that /bʰ/ has been produced more properly by the control group’s participants than the experimental group’s in both the initial and middle positions, but equal performance can be seen in the final position. finally, the last phoneme /m/ in terms of initial position has been produced by all the participants of the experimental and control groups. in the case of the middle position, seven children of the experimental group and six children of the control group have pronounced /m/phoneme properly. in terms of final position, /m/ phoneme has been articulated properly by seven children of the experimental group and six children of the control group. in this regard, it has been shown that /m/ has been pronounced accurately by most of the children of the experimental group and control group. from the perspective of bilabial sounds, the experimental group has done well in comparison to the control group. the performance of two groups of journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 476-498, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 482 children has been shown in the appendix (03. place of articulation: bilabial sounds). 3.1.1.2. dental sounds dental sounds are those which are produced with the association between the tip of the tongue and the ridge of the teeth. in bangla language, dental sounds are /t ̪/, /t ̪ʰ/, /d̪/, / d̪ʰ/, and/n/ (ali, 2012). as regards /t̪/, all the children of both the groups have produced properly. in the middle position, seven children of the experimental group and four children of the control group have produced /t̪/ appropriately. in the final position, seven children of the experimental group, and four children of the control group were able to produce /t̪/ properly. the in case of /t ̪ʰ/ phoneme, six children of the experimental group and three children of the control group have produced /t̪ʰ/ properly in the initial position. in the middle position, five children of the experimental group and one child of the control group have produced /t̪ʰ/ phoneme properly. similarly, in the final position, five children of the experimental group and one child of the control group have produced /t̪ʰ/ phoneme perfectly. in pronouncing /d ̪/, it has been seen that six children of the experimental group and seven children of the control group could articulate the phoneme properly in the initial position. in the middle position, five children of the experimental group and four children of the control group have pronounced /d̪/ properly. in this regard, in the final position, five children of both groups have articulated the sound /d̪/ appropriately. in contrast to other positions, in the initial position, /d̪/ sound has been uttered by most of the children of the experimental group and the control group accurately. afterwards, /d̪ʰ/ sound was enunciated in the initial position by seven children of the experimental group and three children of the control group. in the middle position, four children of the experimental group and one child of the control group have been able to produce /d̪ʰ/. as regards the final position, one child of the experimental group produced /d̪ʰ/ phoneme appropriately, but none of the children of the experimental group was able to produce this phoneme. the surprising issue is that a greater number of children of the control group have produced /d̪ʰ/ perfectly than that of experimental group in the initial position. from the perspective of the dental phoneme, most of the children of the experimental group have done well in comparison to the children of the control group. the performance of the two groups of children has been shown in the appendix (04. place of articulation: dental sounds). 3.1.1.3. palato-alveolar sounds palato-alveolar sounds are those which are produced with the association between the tip of the tongue and the alveolar ridge. in bangla language, palato-alveolar sounds are /t/, /tʰ/, /d/ and /dʰ/ (ali, 2012). as regards /t/, six children of the experimental group and two children of the control group have been able to pronounce it perfectly. in the middle position, five children of the experimental group and two children of the control group have produced /t̪/ properly. the last, in the final position, /t̪/ bangla-speaking hearing impaired children islam 483 has been articulated accurately by four children of the experimental group, but none of the control group participants was able to produce it properly. in the case of /tʰ/ phoneme, three children of the experimental group in the initial position and two children in the middle position have produced properly, but in the final position, none of the participants of both groups was able to produce /tʰ/ phoneme properly. in addition, participants of the control group at the initial and middle position were not able to produce /tʰ/ phoneme appropriately. as regards /d/, it has been seen that, seven children of both groups could articulate the phoneme properly in the initial position. similarly, in the middle position six children and in the final position one child of both groups could have articulated the phoneme /d/ properly. in contrast to other phonemes, in pronouncing /d/ phoneme, both groups performed equally. afterwards, /dʰ/ sound was enunciated by six children of the experimental group and three children of the control group. in the middle position, three children of the experimental group have been able to produce /dʰ/ phoneme, but none of the control group participants has been able to produce /dʰ/. as regards the final position, six children from the experimental group and three children from the control group have produced /dʰ/ phoneme appropriately. the performance of two groups of children has been shown in the appendix (05. place of articulation: palato-alveolar). 3.1.1.4. alveolar sounds alveolar sounds are those which are produced with the flow of air that is stopped by creating a block between the tongue and the alveolar ridge. in bangla language, alveolar sounds are /n/, /r/, /l/ and /ʃ/ (ali, 2012). as regards /n/, seven children of the experimental group have been able to produce /n/ phoneme accurately in the initial position and so have the six children of the control group. in the middle position, four children of both groups have produced /n/ properly. the last, in the final position, /n/ has been articulated accurately by four children of the experimental group and five children of the control group. in the case of /r/ phoneme, five children of the experimental group and two children of the control group have produced /r/ phoneme properly in the initial position. as regards the middle position, five children of the experimental group and two children of the control group have produced /r/ phoneme correctly. in the final position, one child of the experimental group and two children of the control group have produced /r/ phoneme properly. in the final position, participants of the control group performed better than that of the experimental group. in pronouncing /l/, it has been seen that in the initial position, seven children of the experimental group and six children of the control group could articulate the phoneme properly. in the middle position, five children of the experimental group have been able to produce /l/ phoneme, but only one participant of the control group has been able to produce /l/ phoneme correctly. in this regard, in the final position, six children of the experimental group and four children of the control group have produced /l/ phoneme journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 476-498, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 484 appropriately. in contrast to other positions, in pronouncing /l/ phoneme, both groups performed well in the initial position. afterwards, /ʃ/ phoneme was enunciated by six children of the experimental group and four children of the control group. but in the middle position, although one child of the experimental group has been able to produce /ʃ/ phoneme, none of the control group participants have been able to produce /ʃ/. as regards the final position, three children of each group have produced /ʃ/ phoneme appropriately. the performance of two groups of children has been shown in the appendix. (06. place of articulation: alveolar). 3.1.1.5. palatal sounds palatal sounds are produced with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate. in bangla language, palatal phonemes are /c/, /cʰ/, /ɟ/ and /ɟʰ/ (ali, 2012). as regards /c/, six children of the experimental group have been able to produce /c/ phoneme accurately at the initial position and the same level of performance is shown by four children in the control group. in the middle position, five children of the experimental group and six children of the control group have produced /c/ phoneme correctly. last but not the least, in the final position, /c/ phoneme has been articulated accurately by three children of each group. in the case of /cʰ/ phoneme, six experimental group children and one child of the control group have produced /cʰ/ phoneme properly in the initial position. in the middle position, although three children of the experimental group have produced /cʰ/ phoneme correctly, none of the control group participants has produced /cʰ/ phoneme correctly. in the final position, three children of the experimental group and two of the control group have produced /cʰ/ phoneme properly. in pronouncing /ɟ/, it has been seen those five children of the experimental group and two children of the control group could articulate the phoneme properly in the initial position. in the middle position, six children of the experimental group have been able to produce /ɟ/ phoneme, but none of the participants of the control group has been able to produce /ɟ/ phoneme correctly in this position. similarly, in the final position, although four children of the experimental group have produced /ɟ/ phoneme appropriately, none of the control group participants has articulated /ɟ/ phoneme correctly. afterwards, /ɟʰ/ phoneme was enunciated by five children of the experimental group and two children of the control group in the initial position. in the middle position, six children of the experimental group have been able to produce /ɟʰ/ phoneme, but none of the participants of the control group has been able to produce /ɟʰ/ phoneme correctly. similarly, in the final position, although four children from the experimental group have produced /ɟʰ/ phoneme appropriately, none of the control group participants has produced /ɟ/ phoneme correctly. the performance of two groups of children has been shown in the appendix (07. place of articulation: palatal). bangla-speaking hearing impaired children islam 485 3.1.1.6. velar sounds velar sounds are produced with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate. in bangla language, palatal phonemes are /k/, /kʰ/, /g/, /gʰ / and /ŋ/ (ali, 2012). as regards /k/, six children of the experimental group have been able to produce /k/ phoneme accurately in the initial position and so have two children of the control group. in the middle position, four children of the experimental group and one of the control group have produced /k/ phoneme correctly. the last, in the final position, /k/ phoneme, has been articulated accurately by six children of the experimental group and two children of the control group. in the case of /kʰ/ phoneme, of the experimental group, three children in the initial position and one child in the final position have produced /kʰ/ phoneme properly. but in the middle position, all the children of the experimental group and in all positions (initial, middle, and final), all the children of the control group failed to produce /kʰ/ phoneme correctly. similarly, as regards /g/, it has been seen that, five children of each of the both groups could articulate the phoneme properly in the initial position. in the middle position, five children of the experimental group have been able to produce /g/ phoneme, but none of the participants of the control group has been able to produce /g/ phoneme correctly. similarly, in the final position, although six children of the experimental group have produced /g/ phoneme appropriately, none of the control group participants has articulated /g/ phoneme correctly. but, the /gʰ/ phoneme has been enunciated by five children of the experimental group and two children of the control group in the initial position perfectly. in the middle position, six children of the experimental group have been able to produce /gʰ/ phoneme, but none of the participants of the control group has been able to produce /gʰ/ phoneme correctly. similarly, in the final position, although four children of the experimental group have produced /gʰ/ phoneme appropriately, none of the control group participants has produced /gʰ/ phoneme correctly. afterwards, /ŋ/ phoneme was enunciated by five children of the experimental group in the middle position but none of the control group participants. in the final position, four children of the experimental group h and two of the control group have produced/ŋ/ phoneme correctly. the performance of two groups of children has been shown in the appendix (08. place of articulation: velar). 3.1.1.7. glottal sounds palatal sounds are those which are produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract. in the bangla language, the palatal phoneme is /h/ (ali, 2012). concerning /h/, six children of the experimental group and two of the control group have been able to produce /h/ phoneme accurately in the initial position. in the middle position, three children of the experimental group have produced /h/ phoneme correctly, but none of the control group participants has produced it properly. the last, in the final position, /h/ phoneme has been articulated accurately by one child in the control group, but none of the participants of the experimental group has produced this journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 476-498, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 486 phoneme appropriately. the performance of two groups of children has been shown in the appendix (09. place of articulation: glottal). 3.2. preliminary conclusions of data analysis with a critical viewpoint of the place of articulation, it can be said that the experimental group has performed far better than the control group in producing phonemes. but in case of a few phonemes, the control group performed better at some positions than the experimental group, and sometimes performed equally. although differences in scores are not so notable for most of the phoneme, we should illuminate on them/p/, /d/, /t̪/, /d̪/, /c/, /r/, /h/, /ʃ/ and /bʰ/. in pronouncing /p/ phoneme, the control group (middle-7) has done better than the experimental group (middle-6) in the middle position. in the case of /r/ phoneme, the control group (final-2) has performed better than the experimental group (final-1) in the final position. both groups have performed equally in the final position (final-3) of articulating /ʃ/ phoneme. in case of /h/ phoneme, the control group (final-1) has done better than the experimental group in the final position (final-0). on the other hand, it is prosaic that the experimental group has performed better. as regards /d/, both the groups (initial7, middle-6, final-1) have performed at the same level. concerning the pronunciation of the phoneme, /t̪/ (initial-7), it has been articulated perfectly by all in each group in the initial position. in the case of /d̪/, the control group (initial-7) has performed better than the experimental group in the initial position, and both groups have performed equally in the final position (final-5). in the case of /c/, the control group (middle-6) has done better than the experimental group in the middle position (middle-5). but for /bʰ/ phoneme, the control group (initial position6, middle position-4) has had pointedly better performance than the experimental group (initial position-3, middle position-2,) and at the final position, both groups performed equally (final-1). it cannot be stated that the control group has articulated more accurately than the experimental group. rather for these sounds, the control group has been nearer to the experimental group. 4. discussion the expressive language shows the way of perceiving the ability of a phoneme as well as morpheme and syntactic forms based on articulation. the process of uttering a phoneme follows different phonological structures of a language. with the phonetic representation, a phoneme can be determined whether the sound has been perceived as it is or not. if there is some deviation in producing some words or phonemes, the underlying cause must be identified in terms of their prosodic features. but in this study, the focal point is grounded on the severe congenital hearing-impaired children who have been using a hearing aid and taking slt. the theoretical aspect focuses on the deviation from the natural sound to the perceived sound considering phonological rules of the bangla language. mostly, for these severe congenital hearing-impaired children, phonemic awareness has been considered based on the performance of responses. bangla-speaking hearing impaired children islam 487 mavilya (1972) shows that differences are more prominent in the phonemic aspect of vocalization of normally hearing infants than that of hearingimpaired infants. according to her, a severe delay of developing consonant sounds in the vocalization of hearing-impaired infants with vowels produced more than consonants (mary and nancy, 1982). this study uses words as stimuli that have been taken for each phoneme with the position of initial, middle, and final. participants of both groups have performed well in the initial position compared to the middle and final position. i think it is easy to identify the place of articulation initially compared to other phonemic positions. that is why most of the children of both groups performed better in the initial position than in other positions. in this research, by doing a cross-section of obtaining data, mostly two types of error have been found • omission • substitution the tendency of ‘omission’ and ‘substitution’ is visible between the two groups. it has been found that both groups have performed better in terms of the ‘first’ position rather than the ‘middle’ and ‘final’ position. 4.1. omission omitting a sound in a word is called omission (daymut, 2009). by far, the single most frequently reported error in the speech production of severely and profoundly hearing-impaired children is the omission of a phoneme (hudgins & numbers, 1942). omission of consonants may occur in the initial, middle and final position of words. from the data, it is found that all the participants tend to omit phonemes whether it is in the initial, middle, or final position. data retrieved from this research participants refer that omission mostly happened at the middle position. as regards the phonemic assessment in the ‘middle’ position, most of the words of the questionnaire are constituted with two or three syllables which is the reason why the tendency to omit phonemes more frequently happens in the middle position. the tendency to omit the 2nd syllable or a part of the 2nd syllable has occurred frequently. for instance /bɔcʰor//bɔ..o/ /bacal/-/ba..ai/ 4.2. substitution substitution is replacing one sound with another (daymut, 2009). hearingimpaired speakers tend to position their articulators fairly accurately, especially for those places of articulation that are highly visible but fail to coordinate properly the movement of the articulators (huntington et a1., 1968). obtaining data refer to substituting the phoneme happened more frequently than omission by the participants of this research. substitution happened at all positions of the phoneme, which means it happened at the initial, middle, and final positions. for instance, in the ‘final’ position as regards /p/, four journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 476-498, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 488 control group participants and one experimental group participant have substituted it for other phonemes. of them, three participants replaced /pʰ/ instead of /p/, and another two participants have pronounced /m/ replacing /p/. mostly, one phoneme has been substituted for the same category of phoneme (place of articulation), which means all of the bilabials are substituted with the other bilabial phonemes. substitution patterns mostly follow grimm’s law, but exceptions also happened, such as three of the participants of two groups have pronounced /pʰ/ substituting /p/ phoneme, but two participants have pronounced /m/ instead of /p/ phoneme. according to the grimm’s law (huq, 2003), the substitution of /pʰ/ instead of /p/ follows the first rule: the voiceless stop follows the voiceless fricative. /p//pʰ/ as stark (2004) reported, hearing-impaired children are different from typically developed children due to phonemic production rather than the quantity of vocal output, which means they face problems in articulation. data of the present research refer that participants of this research frequently omitted and substituted phonemes. it happened due to poor knowledge of the place of articulation. as the place of articulation plays a vital role in speech and language therapy for hearing impaired children, it helps to develop phonemic production. moreover, from data collected from severe congenital hearing-impaired bengali children, some unique point has been noticed. for instance, the control group has not been able to produce /tʰ/, and /kʰ/ at all. the characteristics of these phonemes are ‘plosive’ and ‘aspirated’. on the other hand, the control group has performed comparatively well in pronouncing /ɟʰ/, /bʰ/, /gʰ/, and /dʰ/: these phonemes contain three features together; ‘voiced’, ‘plosive’ and ‘aspirated’. they performed better than the experimental group in the case of /bʰ/ phoneme and in producing /ɟʰ/, /gʰ/, and /dʰ/, the performance of both groups is nearer. from this viewpoint, it is a matter of question why the participants of the control group performed poorly for the phoneme /tʰ/, and /kʰ/ though these phonemes comprise only two features‘plosive’ and ‘aspirated’. but at the same time, they performed well in the case of /ɟʰ/, /bʰ/, /gʰ/ and /dʰ/ though these phonemes comprise three features together: ‘voiced’, ‘plosive’ and ‘aspirated’. the noted point is that of all these phonemes mentioned here, two common features are ‘plosive’ and ‘aspirated’. there is very limited research on bengali hearingimpaired children’s expressive linguistic features. and features of the bangla language and other languages like english differ a lot. that is why no supporting research has been found to explain why this type of result came out. so, this point may require further research. but from the viewpoint of this research objective, we can observe that the experimental group performed better than that of the control group in the case of each phoneme, which refers to the positive impact of slt on the expressive fractures of bengali children with severe congenital hearing impairment. 5. general conclusions based on obtained data, the result refers that the experimental group's performance in each section is better than that of the control group. as the bangla-speaking hearing impaired children islam 489 experimental group went throw regular speech and language therapy along with hearing aid, that is why their performance could be better than the control group in each section and most of the subsections as well. so, the importance of slt is evident for bangla-speaking children with severe congenital hearing impairment. moreover, it is easy to understand that to develop a good level of expressive linguistic features of severe congenital hearing-impaired bangla-speaking children, only the use of a hearing aid is insufficient. along with hearing aid, slt plays an important role to develop expressive linguistic features of bengali children with severe congenital hearing impairment. 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(2009). marketrak viii: 25-year trends in the hearing health market. hearing review, 16(11), 12-31. lenneberg, e. h. 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(1972). spontaneous vocalization and babbling in hearing impaired infants. in g. fant (ed.), international symposium on speech communication abilities and profound deafness, (pp.163-171). washington, dc: alexander graham bell association for the deaf. mathers, c., smith, a., & concha, m. (2000). global burden of hearing loss in the year 2000. global burden of disease, 18(4), 1-30. osberger, m. j., & mcgarr, n. s. (1982). speech production characteristics of the hearing impaired. speech and language, 8, 221-283). elsevier. stark, p., & hickson, l. (2004). outcomes of hearing aid fitting for older people with hearing impairment and their significant others. international journal of audiology, 43(7), 390-398. tynbayeva g.s, yakhina s.b., (n.d.). stylistic features of language. retrieved from http://www.rusnauka.com/40_oinbg_2014/philologia/2_182618.doc.htm http://www.rusnauka.com/40_oinbg_2014/philologia/2_182618.doc.htm%2015/01/2022 bangla-speaking hearing impaired children islam 491 appendices 01. each phoneme in three different positions phoneme initial ipa middle ipa final ipa comment /p/ পাতা pa.t̪a আপপল a.pel কাপ kap /pʰ/ ফুল pʰul ফরফর pʰɔr.pʰɔr হাফ hapʰ /b/ বাম bam অবাক ɔ.bak ডাব dab /bʰ/ ভুল bʰul অভাব ɔ.bʰab আভা a.bʰa /t/ তাল t ̪al মাতাল ma.t̪al আতা a.t̪a /tʰ/ থালা t ̪ʰa.la মাথাল ma.t̪ʰal বযাথা bæ.t̪ʰa /d/ দাদা d ̪a.d̪a আদল a.d̪ol আদা a.da /dʰ/ ধান d ̪ʰan বাাঁধন bã.d̪ʰon কাাঁধ kãdʰ /c/ চুল cul বাচাল ba.cal আাঁচ ãc /cʰ/ ছাল cʰal বছর bɔ.cʰor বাছা ba.cʰa /ɟʰ/ জল jɔl আাঁজল ã.jol আজ aj /ɟʰ/ ঝাল jʰal ঝরঝপর ɟʰɔr.ɟʰɔre ঝাাঁঝ ɟʰãɟʰ /t/ টাকা ta.ka হাটুপর ha.tu.re হাটা ha.ta /tʰ/ ঠক tʰɔk হঠাত hɔ.tʰat̪ কাঠ katʰ /d/ ডাব dab ডামাপডাল da.ma.dol ললাড lod /dʰ/ ঢাকা dʰa.ka ঢুলুঢুলু dʰu.lu.dʰu.lu /k/ কাপ kap সকাল sɔ.kal নাক nak /kʰ/ খাম kʰam মুখর mu.kʰɔr সুখ sukʰ /g/ গাছ gacʰ ছাগল cʰa.gol দাগ d ̪ag /gʰ/ ঘাস gʰas রাঘব ra.gʰob বাঘ bagʰ /ŋ/ বযাঙ্গাচচ bæŋ.a.ci বযাঙ bæŋ /m/ মাথা ma.tʰa আমার a.mar বাম bam /n/ নাক nak কনক kɔ.nok কান kan /r/ রাত rat ̪ বরাত bɔ.rat̪ ডর dɔr /ɽ/ তচিৎ t ̪o.ɽit̪ তাচি ta.ɽi journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 476-498, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 492 /ʃ/ সুখ sukʰ অসুখ ɔ.sʰuk হাাঁস hãs /h/ হাত hat̪ বাাঁহাত bã.hat̪ বাহ bah /ɭ/ লাল lal বালক ba.lok ডাল dal 0.2 other information 1. duration of using hearing aid: 2. year of school admission: 3. facilitated by sltyes/ no 4. from when started to take slt 03. place of articulation: bilabial sounds the experimental group the control group p la c e o f a rt ic u la ti o n p h o n e m e p1 p 2 p 3 p4 p5 p 6 p7 p1 p2 p3 p4 p5 p6 p 7 bilabial /p/ i + + + + + + + + + + + + m + + + + + + + + + + + + + f + + + + + + + + + /pʰ/ i + + + + + + + + + + + m + + + + + f + + + + /b/ i + + + + + + + + + + + + + m + + + + + f + + + + + + + /bʰ/ i + + + + + + + + + m + + + + + + f + + bangla-speaking hearing impaired children islam 493 /m/ i + + + + + + + + + + + + + m + + + + + + + + + + + + + f + + + + + + + + + + 04. place of articulation: dental sounds the experimental group the control group p la c e o f a rt ic u la ti o n p h o n e m e p1 p 2 p3 p4 p5 p6 p7 p1 p2 p3 p4 p5 p6 p7 dental / t̪/ i + + + + + + + + + + + + + + m + + + + + + + + + + + f + + + + + + + + + + + /t̪ʰ/ i + + + + + + + + + m + + + + + + f + + + + + + /d̪/ i + + + + + + + + + + + + + m + + + + + + + + + f + + + + + + + + + + / d̪ʰ/ i + + + + + + + + + + + + + + m + + + + + + + + + + f + + /n/ i + + + + + + + + + m + + + f + + + + + + + + + journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 476-498, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 494 05. place of articulation: palato-alveolar the experimental group the control group p la c e o f a rt ic u la ti o n p h o n e m e p1 p 2 p3 p4 p5 p6 p7 p1 p2 p3 p4 p 5 p6 p7 palatoalveolar / t/ i + + + + + + + + m + + + + + + + f + + + + /tʰ/ i + + + m + + f /d/ i + + + + + + + + + + + + + + m + + + + + + + + + + + + f + + / dʰ/ i + + + + + + + + + m + + + f + + + + + + + + + bangla-speaking hearing impaired children islam 495 06. place of articulation: alveolar sounds the experimental group the control group p la c e o f a rt ic u la ti o n p h o n e m e p1 p 2 p3 p4 p5 p6 p7 p1 p2 p3 p4 p5 p6 p7 alveolar / n/ i + + + + + + + + + + + + + m + + + + + + + + f + + + + + + + + + /r/ i + + + + + + + m + + + + + + + f + + + /l/ i + + + + + + + + + + + + + m + + + + + + f + + + + + + + + + + / ʃ/ i + + + + + + + + + + + m + f + + + + + + journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 476-498, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 496 07. place of articulation: palatal sounds the experimental group the control group p la c e o f a rt ic u la ti o n p h o n e m e p1 p 2 p3 p4 p5 p 6 p 7 p1 p2 p3 p4 p5 p6 p7 palatal / c/ i + + + + + + + + + + + m + + + + + + + + + + + f + + + + + + /cʰ/ i + + + + + + + m + + + + + f + + + + + /ɟ/ i + + + + + + + m + + + + + + + + f + + + + + + + /ɟʰ/ i + + + + + + + m + + + + + + f + + + + bangla-speaking hearing impaired children islam 497 08. place of articulation: velar sounds the experimental group the control group p la c e o f a rt ic u la ti o n p h o n e m e p1 p 2 p3 p4 p5 p6 p7 p1 p2 p3 p4 p5 p6 p7 palatal /k/ i + + + + + + + + m + + + + + f + + + -+ + + + + + /kʰ/ i + + + + + + m + f + /g/ i + + + + + + + + + + + + m + + + + + + + f + + + + + + + /gʰ/ i + + + + + + + m + + + + + + f + + + + /ŋ/ m + + + + + f + + + + + + journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 476-498, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 498 09. place of articulation: glottal sounds the experimental group the control group p la c e o f a rt ic u la ti o n p h o n e m e p1 p 2 p3 p4 p5 p6 p7 p1 p2 p3 p4 p5 p6 p7 glottal / h/ i + + + + + + + m + + + f + + + + + journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 209-222, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 209 multilingualism as an advantage or an obstacle to the early acquisition of croatian katarina aladrović slovaček1 university of zagreb (croatia) maša rimac jurinović2 university of zagreb (croatia) abstract one of the goals of the european union's language policy is multilingualism and multiculturality which contribute to creating a multilingual community. research that was conducted in croatian primary schools indicates that learning a foreign language positively affects the mother tongue acquisition, i.e. that parallel language codes are not an obstacle but rather an advantage in the process of acquiring standard croatian language. various factors influence children's early stages of language acquisition, like e.g. media a child is exposed to (cartoons in different languages, language of advertisements and of computer games), the environment in which a child is raised and most of all, speech models in the family (parents) and kindergarten (kindergarten teachers), the acquisition of, i.e. learning a second language to which a child is exposed being an additional factor of influence. it is, therefore, the aim of this paper, to examine the interference of parallel language codes of both related languages and those that are not related, but are dominant in a child's environment, with the process of croatian language acquisition at the kindergarten and preschool age. 15 kindergarten and preschool children (aged 5 and 6) participated in the research and were examined by longitudinal process of monitoring and by short linguistic questionnaire designed for the purpose of the research with the topics of everyday life, colours and animals and a number of pictures were used to prompt children to tell a story orally. it was expected that there would be interference between foreign languages and the process of croatian language early acquisition and a more significant influence of related slavic languages and english as a linguae francae. moreover, it was expected that the interference would not be a difficulty but rather an advantage for acquiring the mother tongue (croatian). keywords acquisition of language, media, language in contact, croatian language, multilingualism. 1 katarina aladrović slovaček is an assistant professor in the department of croatian language in the faculty of teacher education at university of zagreb. in her scientific work she is concerned with applied linguistics: communicative competence development, language games and the process of acquiring and learning croatian language. she is the author of two books, about 60 scientific papers and four textbooks for primary school. contact: kaladrovic@gmail.com 2 maša rimac jurinović is a postdoctoral researcher and the author of a textbook for croatian language (higher grades of primary school) and is, in her scientific work, concerned with research into language acquisition and teaching. moreover, she has particular expertise in the subject of drama techniques in education, especially in croatian language teaching and for the purpose of acquiring linguistic educational content and fostering reading. received : 13.03.2021 accepted : 25.03.2021 published : 30.03.2021 mailto:kaladrovic@gmail.com multilingualism, advantage or obstacle aladrović slovaček, rimac jurinović 210 1. introduction one of the goals of the european union's language policy is developing multilingualism and multiculturalism that together lead to creating a multilingual community. in this context, it is expected from european speakers to use at least two languages: their mother tongue and one foreign language. data collected by eurobarometer statistics show that the most common language in the european union is german (16%), then english (13%), french (12%), spanish (8%), i.e. (eacea/eurydice, 2017). polish. interestingly one should point out, 54% of the citizens of the european union can conduct a conversation in one foreign language, and 10% are able to do it even in three languages. most often used second language is english (38%), followed by french (12%), german (11%), spanish (7%) and russian (5%). acquiring at least two foreign languages besides your mother tongue is recommended in the zajednic ̌ki europski referentni okvir za jezike: učenje, poučavanje, vrednovanje3 (2005). in most european countries acquiring foreign languages starts between the ages of six and eight, and in 2014 about 84% of european students learned at least one foreign language, which is a considerable difference in comparison with 2005 when 67% students were doing that. at the same time about 60% of european students in primary schools learned two foreign languages, whereby it was in most countries their choice to learn a second foreign language and not their obligation. knowing the (multi) linguistic trends and tendencies in europe, it is important to understand how these efforts towards multilingualism are reflected in the language policy of the republic of croatia. however, before offering an insight into that question, it is essential to understand the context. croatian language is, namely, the 24th official language of the european union, and since it is a small language with a relatively small number of active speakers (about seven million), learning other languages is an important educational component of the curriculum. moreover, through history and today still, the influence of other, in different periods differently dominant languages (turkish, italian, german and hungarian) is inevitable, and today the predominant influence is that of the english language and the rest the anglicisms and globalism accompanying it and with it industry supporting it, that is evident throughout the world. 1.1. acquiring the mother tongue (croatian) the process of language acquisition starts as early as in the prenatal period when a child listening to the language in his/her environment starts acquiring it. there are recognisable milestones and developmental patterns present (or absent) in the process at expected developmental stages (kuvač kraljević and kologranić belić, 2015). the prelinguistic stage lasts to the end of the first year, i.e. until a child speaks its first meaningful word and it represents the hive of developmental activities (kuvač kraljević and kologranić belić, 2015: 27). during that period a child communicates with his/her environment crying, laughing and by other nonverbal signs understanding more than producing language. typical of the 3 common european framework of reference for languages journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 209-222, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 211 prelinguistic stage are rhythmic logatomes that occur in pronunciation of a combination of simple consonants and vowels: pa-pa, ba-ba, ma-ma, ta-ta. around the first year of age rhythmic logatomes acquire their first meaning. in the next linguistic stage, a child continues to develop his/her lexical system, at the same time making mistakes on phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic levels. a child switches certain sounds, skips those that are difficult to pronounce or pronounces them incorrectly. he or she gradually acquires grammatical rules, generalising them and making mistakes on a morphological level, staying constantly within the system of the croatian language. around the age of two a child pronounces first sentences that often resemble so called telegraphic speech, i.e. they lack uninflectable words, auxiliary verbs and emphatic pronouns. the first sentence most often consists of one or two words. moreover, a child enriches his/her vocabulary using words in only one of their meanings or creates neologisms in order to fill his/her lexical gaps. one could say that around the age of three a child commands the base of the mother tongue and, according to estimates, has in his/her mental lexicon about 1 000 words. this number grows progressively with age and around the age of six, a child's vocabulary consists of about 10,000 words. language acquisition is a spontaneous process and its success depends on a number of factors, for example the number of children in the family, the structure of the family, sex, environment and education of the parents, the amount of time that parents and relatives spend interacting with the child, social conditions in which the child is growing up and other factors. there are numerous theories about early acquisition of language trying to answer the question of how a child acquires a language. since it is a very complex process, theories addressing this question vary to a considerable degree. each offers a part of the answer to this complex question and the rest of them are universal and apply to all the languages in the world. however, one should bear in mind that the language acquisition process is specific and depends on the features of a particular mother tongue. we could agree with generativists (chomsky, 1967, acc. to jelaska, 2005) that all children are born with the same mind grammars but completing the mind map will depend on the exposure to and specifics of a particular mother tongue. we could, also, agree with the statements of behaviourists (acc. to aladrović slovaček, 2019) who claim that a child acquires language through imitation, but then one should consider the total language production of a child that could not have been heard in such a form ever before. what equally affects language acquisition is a child's environment as well as his/her cognitive abilities, i.e. thinking capacity. description of croatian language acquisition is based on the parents' records of three monolingual children and it is in the world base of children's language – childes. with regard to the fact that learning a foreign language starts in school, a question arises as to what happens in the early kindergarten and preschool period, i.e. what role do languages that children are exposed to have in their acquisition of their mother tongue, which continues, for croatian, up to the seventh year of age. nacionalni okvirni kurikulum za predškolski odgoj i multilingualism, advantage or obstacle aladrović slovaček, rimac jurinović 212 obrazovanje te opće obavezno i srednjoškolsko obrazovanje4 (2015) in the republic of croatia encourages and supports the development of eight key competences for lifelong learning among which communication in the mother tongue is the most important one, followed by communication in a foreign language (preporuke o ključnim kompetencijama za cjeloživotno učenje5 (2006)). communication in a mother tongue is strengthened by instructing children how to correctly express themselves orally and in writing: their thoughts, feelings, experiences in different activities that are purposeful and meaningful to them. communication in a mother tongue includes developing a child's consciousness about the influence of language on others and the need to use language in a positive and socially responsible way. this competence is developed in such organisation of the educational process in kindergartens that is based on creating an encouraging language environment and encouraging children to socially interact with other children and adults in various ways. on the other hand, a child in the early childhood and pre-school education learns a foreign language in groups that are formed especially for that purpose (most often english, german, french, italian) or in kindergartens that specialise in teaching children a foreign language (french, german, italian or a minority language). a foreign or a minority language is acquired in an encouraging linguistic context, through play or other activities with the same purpose of learning the language. teaching a foreign language is woven into everyday educational activities of the kindergarten and does not take place through separately defined methodical procedures. encouraging crosscultural understanding and communication between children and other subjects in and outside of the educational facility contributes to the development of this competence. research (pavličević franić, 2005 and 2011) shows that both horizontal and vertical multilingualism occur already in the early language acquisition, i.e. children that enter the kindergarten with their own idiom, get to know other children's idioms and in this way become vertically mulitlingual, i.e. they are acquainted not only with different forms of their mother tongue (dialects), but also with a foreign language through media and various programmes taking place in and outside of the kindergarten. all of that, naturally, has a powerful impact on the process of a mother tongue acquisition. 1. 2. influence of the media on language acquisition nowadays we cannot speak of language acquisition without connecting it to numerous other processes and situations that today's children are exposed to. even though language acquisition process in the prelinguistic stage has the same phases in all the languages of the world, it will still be influenced not only by the structure of the language, especially its grammar, but also by numerous extralinguistic reasons. in conclusion, the influence of the media on children's language acquisition process is inevitable. research (jelaska, 2007) has shown that children of educated parents have somewhat better linguistic competences, children that attended kindergarten programmes for 4 the national curriculum framework for pre-school education and general compulsory and secondary education 5 recommendations on key competences for lifelong learning journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 209-222, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 213 at least three years later have better reading competences (pirls, 2011), children who can use computers also have significantly better competences as well as children who have more varied and richer language input. however, even though most children do not learn a foreign language in early childhood and at the preschool age, they are still exposed to it through media, watching cartoons, following youtubers and playing various computer games, so, in order to comprehend this problem, one should definitely consider the influence of the media that children are more or less exposed to every day. to what extent they are exposed to the media depends mostly on their parents' attitudes towards media and on how busy or able they are to spend quality time with their children. author vandewater and the rest (2007) conducted a comprehensive research in america which included more than 1 000 parents who confirmed that their children who are not even two years old, spend a little more than two hours in front of the screen every day. also, author de decker et all. (2012) conducted a research about the amount of time preschool children spend in front of the tv. six european countries were included in the research and the results differed to a great extent – from 20 minutes to 4 hours a day. german and spanish children spend the least amount of time in front of the screen (20 – 30 minutes), in greece it is half an hour to an hour and a half a day, whereas parents from belgium, poland and bulgaria state that their preschool children spend from one to four hours a day in front of the screen. research that was conducted in 2017 in the republic of croatia included 653 preschool children whose parents completed a questionnaire on the influence of the screen on the life of their preschool child and on the children's and parents' habits during a week and on weekdays. the results showed that all preschool children use tv screens and that it begins before the age of two with children doing it more than two hours every day (roje đapić, flander buljan and selak bagarić, 2020). the authors emphasise that about 43% of preschoolers in the republic of croatia can use the internet, 97% watch tv v every day, 68% follow media content via their smart phones and the rest in some other way, all of which is a clear indication that the influence of media on language development is inevitable. children choose media content mostly on their own although the american pediatric society recommends that they do it with the help and support of their parents. since they choose the content themselves, they at the same time choose the language in which the content will be consumed and so they encounter new speech forms, idioms and different languages. to investigate to what extent this is the case and which languages they are exposed to is the crucial question of this research. research shows (acc. to aladrović slovaček, 2019) that too much time spent in front of the tv has as a consequence less interaction between the child and parents and other children. on the other hand, quality tv programmes can offer good speech models to children. moreover, quality content on tv can provide models for new games with friends and children who watch multicultural programmes are more likely to play with children from other cultures, which enhances understanding and acceptance and increases tolerance. multilingualism, advantage or obstacle aladrović slovaček, rimac jurinović 214 author jasna šego (2009) believes that programmes in dialectal speech and foreign languages enrich children's language and speech development, e. g. when children hear different words or different pronunciation of a word for an object, activity or occurrence that they know, it makes them more aware of the communicative function of the language. unfortunately, television can also have a negative impact on children's language and speech development. if children watch it for too long, their linguistic abilities will become insufficient (prereading skills will be weaker, sentences too simple, and their interactions with peers and parents will be reduced). most programmes intended for children up to the first year of age in english are completely appropriate if we consider their colours, movement and language simplicity, but psychologists emphasize that the presence of so many colours and movement will influence early emotional and social development in a negative way because they surround children with an unnatural situation to which they will get accustomed and later expect the same to happen in the world that surrounds them. still, most research on the influence of the media on language acquisition and development was conducted among school children. one such empirical study was conducted in the netherlands where the dutch is the official language and it was the aim of the researchers to compare the influence of three different media in english on the language of primary school children. the research showed that the students who watch tv programmes and films with subtitles show considerably better results in the tests of oral skills in english. similarly, students who play computer games more often, as well as girls had better results in the knowledge of the english language (kuppens, 2010). a croatian the research shows (pavličević-franić and aladrović slovaček, 2017) that learning a foreign language positively affects the mother tongue acquisition, i.e. that parallel linguistic codes are not an obstacle in learning but an advantage in acquiring standard croatian. it means that children that learn english or some other language as a second language think more about rules and communication in their mother tongue. so, that has positive effect on the process of learning croatian language. all of that contributes to the basic educational goal of the european union – nurturing multilingualism and multiculturalism as the fundamental values on which this community is founded. 1.3. bilingualism, multilingualism, plurilingualism as already stated in the introduction, nurturing multilingualism is one of the educational and cultural goals of the european union and it is therefore important to encourage learning at least one or possibly two foreign languages besides a mother tongue. the importance of acquiring a mother tongue is hereby not to be neglected since it is a precondition for learning other languages which is confirmed in the document preporuke o ključnim kompetencijama za cjeloživotno učenje (2006). when we talk of multilingualism, in theory we encounter several different concepts. most often the terms that are used are speaking two languages or bilingualism, which means knowing two languages in the identical way even though one language is the dominant one. it is most often the one used in the community in which journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 209-222, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 215 a child or a person lives. in short simple terms, bilingualism is the ability of speaking two languages (trask, 2005). bilingualism can be individual but also a characteristic of the whole community in which two or more languages are regularly spoken. author trask (2005) states that more than 70% of the world population is bilingual or multilingual. the term multilingual or multilingualism implies the possibility to learn different languages in any educational institution or in various multicultural environments which need not interfere with each other (pavličević-franić, 2006), and plurilingualism implies interlinguistic connectedness, intertwining and interference of various linguistic codes in the same speaker who uses his existent language knowledge to acquire a new language (pavličević-franić, 2006; zajednički europski referentni okvir za jezike: učenje, poučavanje, vrednovanje6, 2005). author königs (2000, acc. to jaić-novogradec, 2017) differentiates between three kinds of individual plurilingualism: retrospective plurilingualism, which describes bilingual speakers who coming to class already have a considerable knowledge of the second language (l2 knowledge), retrospective and prospective plurilingualism, which describes speakers who are plurilingual and have advantage over other learners whereby neither of their languages is the language being taught. through learning the third language those learners further develop their plurilingualism and prospective plurilingualism, which is characteristic for students who are monolingual coming to classes and who develop their plurilingualism by learning a foreign language at school. prospective plurilingualism is the kind of plurilingualism typically present in most european schools, including those in the republic of croatia where, students starting school start learning one or more foreign languages and develop their plurilingualism mostly learning their first foreign language at school. in conclusion, it is the main idea and goal of this research to examine to what extent exposure to other languages influences the process of croatian language acquisition, be it in kindergartens, preschools or language schools which children at this young age attend, or through the exposure to media content that is most often in the form of cartoons, following youtubers and playing computer games. 2. methodology 2.1. description of research samples, instruments and methodology 15 children, seven boys and eight girls, from the ages of 4 to 7 participated in this research. all of them are monolingual and the rest of them learn english as a second language once or twice in a week. children were selected purposefully (we know their parents and we have confidence that they will do it how we explain) in order to systematically record their speech in the course of three months, from september to december 2019. their speech was recorded by their parents who followed a short instruction provided by the researcher. parents were supposed to record all the words or utterances that a child produces in free speech and that do not belong to the system of 6 common european framework of reference for languages multilingualism, advantage or obstacle aladrović slovaček, rimac jurinović 216 croatian language. apart from this longitudinal research during three months, each child was examined using storytelling cards. they were each offered six cards in different colours and they were asked to choose three cards from the six that they were offered. the children were then supposed to tell a story using these three cards. researchers were prompting them and if they had difficulties telling a story or did not include pictures on their cards in their story, the researchers would ask them questions about the cards. each card colour represented a category: place of action, a role, feelings, things, time and people. each examinee was recorded and then his/her speech was transcribed and entered into nooj – a linguistic computer program for text analysis. the corpus was date of first type of researching – transcripts of parent’s recordings and second was data of recordings of stories of children that they talked by storytelling cards). we annotated words that we thought are important for our research. the data were processed using both the qualitative method of content analysis and the quantitative method using spss tests of parametric statistics: t-test, variance analysis, chi-squared test and the descriptive markers for every stated variable (age, sex) were defined. moreover, children were in the research divided into two groups; kindergarten group (4 and 5 years of age) and preschoolers (6 and 7 years of age). 2.2. research goals and hypotheses the main research goal was to establish the influence of other languages that children are exposed to in the process of croatian language acquisition. in accordance with this goal, the present study was designed to examine 1. the interference of parallel language codes of both related languages and those that are not related, but are dominant in a child's environment, with the process of croatian language acquisition at the kindergarten and preschool age. 2. the characteristics of children speaking in early age phase (sentences, most frequent words, lexical diversity and lexical density). in accordance with the goal mentioned above, the following research hypotheses were identified: h1 – it is expected that parallel linguistic codes will appear, i.e. separate lexemes and phrases from languages that children are exposed to. the most powerful influence is expected to be that of the english language, especially on the lexical level, but also of the serbian language on both lexical and grammatical level since numerous cartoons are synchronized in the serbian language and of other slavic languages. it does not mean that children are bilingual or multilingual, it just confirms the influence of other dominant languages in medium or in context of living. h2 – it is expected, with regard to the purposefully chosen sample, that the children will exhibit a high level of linguistic competence, i.e. linguistic knowledge and confidence. therefore, a high level of lexical diversity (the ratio of variants and occurrences in the text) and density (the ratio of full words and journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 209-222, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 217 occurrences) is expected which means that the examinees have a broad vocabulary completely in accordance with their cognitive age. their sentences are expected to be built respecting the syntactic rules of croatian language and consisting of a number of words characteristic of their cognitive age and also that there will be some deviations on the stylistic level in speech and recorded utterances. 3. findings and discussion examinees were, with regard to their answers, divided into two groups: kindergarteners – children aged 4 and 5 and preschoolers – children who are almost 6 or 6 years old. in spontaneous parents' notes there were mostly separate words that children used in free speech exchanging thereby the croatian word, in naming colours in particular: bijela (white), crna (black), smeđa (brown), narančasta (orange), crvena (red), plava (blue) and siva (gray). children would sometimes, talking about a picture or drawing or explaining what a toy or a person looks like, use the english word for a colour instead of the croatian one. doing that they would not apply the rules of croatian grammar for the used word. they would not inflect it for instance, which can later be observed among primary school students. here are some examples: imam brown (smeđeg) medu (i have a brown teddy bear.). neću obući tu majicu black (crne) boje (i’m not wearing that black t-shirt.). mama, to je white (mom, it’s white.). sunce je yellow (the sun is yellow.). apart from colours, children would also use english words to name animals (bear, polar bear, snake) but in naming animals one could observe some words that belong to serbian: lenjivac (ljenivac – sloth ), lagano (ljenivac), sisar (sisavac – mammal ). considering the fact that the serbian language is also a south slavic language and similar to croatian with regard to its lexical structure, children sometimes choose cartoons in serbian or bosnian, not knowing that these are different language codes. watching cartoons about animals (wild kratts in particular), a child adopts some lexical terms that he/she does not have filled in croatian language. for example the word sisavac (mammal in english) and sisar have, actually, the same root, but different suffixes, so that the child retained the serbian word because he/she possibly had never heard the croatian word. the child probably does not know the complete meaning of the word but knows what kind of animals it refers to in relation to the cartoon that he/she watches. apart from the mentioned words, some others were recorded that children used because they had heard them in a cartoon: nouns: makaze (škare – scissors), e. g. daj mi te makaze! (give me those scissors!); wc šolja (wc školjka-toilet), e. g. idem na wc šolju. (i’m going to the toilet.). examples of recorded verbs are: posmatrati (promatrati – watch) – e. g. mama, vidi kako me pas posmatra! (mom, look at the dog watching me!). children also use some words that exist in croatian too, but are pronounced with different accent, e. g. zubići, čudovište in which instead of the short rising accent on the first syllable they use long rising accent on the second syllable in the word zubići, whereas in the word čudovište they use short rising accent on the second syllable instead of the short rising accent on the first syllable. it is interesting that the interference of the english language is observed in counting as well since a lot of children start counting in english (mostly to multilingualism, advantage or obstacle aladrović slovaček, rimac jurinović 218 ten) instead of croatian. this is especially appealing for young children who have only just started learning english. this interference of english is particularly evident in naming colours, counting and in using some other nouns that have entered croatian as globalisms and have not been replaced in active speech, like for example the word shopping that is rarely used in the croatian version kupovanje or kupovina. consequently, we can sometimes hear interferences of the whole simple english sentences: mummy, let's go shopping, let's start! dance!, clean up!, be quiet! and fly. apart from the mentioned phrases, the interference of english is evident in spontaneous speech as well where words like snowman instead of snjegović, laptop instead of računalo, book instead of knjiga, candy instead of slatkiš sometimes appear. all of the above examples demonstrate that children interfere that which they learn and they most often first learn numbers, colours, typical and frequent phrases like be quiet! or clean up! and some words that are connected to certain occasions or seasons like, e. g. snowman or christmas, for instance in a sentence: mama, sada je christmas (mom, today is christmas.). another example is the word birthday, e. g. in the sentence: danas je karlin birthday (today is karla’s birthday). the whole language acquisition process is characterized by filling the lexical gaps that a child has with new words. sometimes they are words that a child uses in only one meaning that needs to correspond with the meaning that adults assign this particular word (for instance, a child may use for all fourlegged animals the word dog – for a wolf and a fox as well…). however, a lot of children use so-called neologisms, i.e. new words. some of them were recorded in this research: putovnici (putnici travellers), stojiti (stajati stand), otopiti (utopiti drown), otklopac (poklopac lid), okopako (naopako – upside down), galub (golub pigeon) and pozviniti (pozvoniti ring the bell). moreover, they also use english words with croatian endings, for instance: prenkujem te (šalim se s tobom, zezam te i am just joking with you.) in which the english noun prank was given a croatian verb form ending for the first person singular in the present tense -jem. it was observed that some children, who watch cartoons about little battle tanks sometimes use two russian words: babuška and deduška in the meaning grandma and grandpa because they spend part of their time being exposed to russian tv. it could be said that, as a result of spontaneous observation, a significantly bigger number of words was recorded that do not belong to the corpus of croatian due to the fact that children speaking spontaneously do not think about what and how they are going to say something and choose their words depending on the situation. however, if they are telling a story and are aware of the fact that their speech is being recorded, they very rarely use the croatian word for a colour instead of the english word but they use neologisms when they lack words for naming a concept or a thing. all of that supports accepting the first hypothesis, i.e. the idea that the interference of other linguistic codes children are exposed to is evident, and significantly more so in spontaneous speech. the second goal of the research was to examine lexical density and diversity of children's speech when telling stories, i.e. to establish some characteristics of their lexical development. with regard to the fact that children were divided in two groups: kindergarteners and preschoolers, it was observed that there journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 209-222, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 219 is not a statistically relevant difference in lexical diversity when telling stories with the help of storytelling cards. namely, the results of the ratio between the total number of types and tokens show a very similar number: kindergarteners (0.63), preschoolers (0.65). kindergarteners have in their sentences 6 words on average, which is in accordance with their age, whereas preschoolers have seven words in a sentence, quite consistent with their age. interestingly, in texts they most often use coordinating conjunctions (i), contrasting ones (a), time conjunctions (kad or onda), and relative pronouns to connect sentences (koji). their texts have 3-4 sentences on average, which is in accordance with their developmental age. here are some examples: the child's name, age, number of sentences in the text, average number of words in a sentence and most often used connectors (in brackets): • marta, 6 years – 3-4 sentences • diego emanuel, 4 years – 3 sentences • antea, 4 years – 3 sentences • lana, 7 years – 4 sentences, 7 words in a sentence (using i, a, koji) • jan, 6 years – 3 sentences, 7 words in a sentence (using connectors i, a, koji) • eva, 5 years – 3 sentences, 6 words in a sentence • andrija, 5 years – 5 sentences, 6 words in a sentence (using connector kad and onda) • grgo, 7 years – 4 sentences, 7 words in a sentence (using koji, i, kad). described, collected, and analysed data indicate that the second hypothesis which presupposes a high level of linguistic knowledge and confidence since the sample was purposefully chosen, can be accepted. consistent with the expectations, the examinees demonstrated excellent lexical diversity in their speech, significant number of words in their texts and sentences and superb use of connectors. comparing results that were collected for first-graders (aladrović slovaček 2019), these results show that the children's oral linguistic competence is on a high level. the obtained results were similar to the results of a research in which kindergarteners' and preschoolers' basic emotion expression was examined (aladrović slovaček, čosić and magašić, 2020). in these studies we show that children speak the most when they describe sadness, they have about six words in sentences and they use simple phrases and words when they started describe their feelings. 4. conclusions multilingualism as the main idea of the european union's language policy manifests itself in various ways, from inclusion in educational curricula and other documents to fostering this idea in different informal ways. the process of croatian language acquisition as well as other languages is under a strong influence of english as the global language, but also of other languages surrounding croatian, i.e. slavic languages among which the mentioned research confirms the presence of bosnian and serbian. the situation in which there is lack of cartoons for kindergarten and preschool children multilingualism, advantage or obstacle aladrović slovaček, rimac jurinović 220 synchronized in croatian is the reason why children watch cartoons in other languages and thus acquire some language forms or lexemes that they incorporate in their speech. they do that sometimes not even knowing the exact meaning of these words. apart from the language of cartoons, another powerful influence are youtubers who children follow (e.g. filip and zaga – bosnian youtubers) and computer games that they play, as well as films about playing computer games which are often in bosnian or serbian. the influence of the russian language which also 'came' the same way, i.e. through cartoons is particularly interesting. children discovered it searching on youtube with parents being present but not controlling their activities. since the sample is relatively small and purposefully selected, the results should be taken with some reservation, i.e. they can not be generalized. the influence is definitely present, and a more comprehensive examination would answer the question how significant it really is. it should be pointed out that two methods of examination were used, which led, as it was explained, to different results, i.e. to using lexemes differently depending on the occasion, situation and goal. other extralinguistic factors, naturally, played a part in this research but they were not measured, e.g. if a child has a brother or a sister, parents' social status, sex, parents' reading habits, etc. since the sample was purposefully chosen, the social situations of the families that participated in the research were similar and it can therefore be inferred that differences would not be of significance after comparing data. however, such analysis was not conducted because the sample was also very small. one should definitely consider conducting it in the future. in conclusion, we can say that parallel language codes developing in the process of early language acquisition is something not typical only of families and countries where bilingualism is natural but also that it happens spontaneously and does not influence acquisition of croatian in a negative way. on the contrary it is beneficial for it and it directs the child from the early childhood in the direction of multilingualism and multiculturalism. one more observation is that this process will depend on the amount of time spent in front of a screen. parents' control over their child's media consumption and on a child's interests and age. so, boys will watch war cartoons with battle tanks (in russian), cartoons about animals and follow youtubers talking about computer games and girls will choose female youtubers talking about making yourself look beautiful and cartoons with less aggression and more colours. also, in our research we did not find any differences according to gender. all of that will more or less affect the language in which these contents are presented and consequently this language will influence the process of the mother tongue (croatian) acquisition. references aladrović slovaček, k. čosić, g. i magašić, a. 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(2005). vijeće europe. odjel za suvremene jezike strasbourg. zagreb: školska knjiga. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 189-208, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 189 a comparative analysis of the production of aspect markers by mandarin-speaking children with developmental language disorders and by their typically developing peers lijun chen 1 guangdong university of foreign studies shasha an2 guangdong university of foreign studies xiaowei he3 guangdong university of foreign studies abstract previous studies found that mandarin-speaking children with developmental language disorder (children with dld) have difficulty in producing aspect markers and their production of aspect markers was influenced by verbs’ situation types. however, these studies did not include in their experimental paradigms all the four typical mandarin aspect markers. moreover, there have been controversies concerning the findings of these studies. using a priming picture-description task, the present study investigated the performance of mandarin-speaking preschool children with dld in producing the four typical mandarin aspect markers zai-, le, -zhe, and -guo, as compared with typically developing age-matched children (tda children). seventeen 4 to 6-year-old children with dld (mean age was 61.38 months old) and 17 tda children (mean age was 62.31 months old) participated in the experimental task. the results demonstrate that children with dld produced significantly fewer sentences with the three postverbal aspect markers le, -zhe, and -guo, and produced significantly more sentences with bare verb forms and other types of responses (such as producing a single word or irrelevant sentences, saying ‘i don’t know’, or giving no response, etc.) than the tda children did; however, they performed similarly to their tda peers in producing sentences with the preverbal aspect marker zai-. furthermore, children with dld were more likely to be affected by verbs’ situation types than the tda children were in producing mandarin aspect markers. the difficulty of children with dld in producing the postverbal aspect markers did not correlate with their general language abilities and intelligence, nor with their delay in aspectual development. keywords children with dld, mandarin aspect markers, postverbal aspect markers, neutral tone, bare verb forms 1. introduction 1 bio: ph.d. student at the center of linguistics and applied linguistics, guangdong university of foreign studies. his main areas of interest are children’s language acquisition and language impairment. 2 bio: post-doctoral researcher at the faculty of english language and culture, guangdong university of foreign studies. her main areas of interest are children’s language acquisition and language impairment. 3 bio: professor of the faculty of english language and culture, guangdong university of foreign studies. his main areas of interest are formal linguistics and language impairment. corresponding author: xwhe@gdufs.edu.cn received : 08.11.2020 accepted : 10.02.2021 published : 30.03.2021 mailto:xwhe@gdufs.edu.cn production of mandarin aspect markers by children with dld, and td children chen, an, he 190 developmental language disorder (also known as specific language impairment; hereafter, dld) does not have a clear biomedical etiology (bishop, snowling, thompson, greenhalgh, & catalise-2 consortium, 2017). children with dld have impaired language abilities, yet they are normal in hearing and nonverbal intelligence (leonard, 2014a). the literature demonstrates that children with dld are weak in grammatical abilities (e.g., wexler, schaeffer, & bol, 2004; bishop, adams, & norbury, 2006; lukács, leonard, kas, & pléh, 2009; leonard, 2014b; auza, harmon, & murata, 2018; moscati, rizzi, vottari, chilosi, & guasti, 2020), they tend to omit grammatical inflections which express number, tense and subject-verb agreement (leonard, deevy, miller, rauf, charest, & robert, 2003; bishop, 2013; chondrogianni & john, 2018; deevy & leonard, 2018), and use nonfinite forms of lexical verbs (i.e., bare verb forms) more frequently than typically developing (hereafter, td) children (for a review, see krok & leonard, 2015). the production of verbs’ bare forms rather than verbs with grammatical inflections by children with dld is highly related to their limited phonological short-term memory (conti-ramsden, botting, & faragher, 2001; norbury, bishop, & briscoe, 2001; bishop, adams, & norbury, 2006). children with dld are impaired in phonological short-term memory (taylor, lean, & schwartz, 1989; gathercole & baddeley, 1990; van der lely & howard, 1993; baddeley, gathercole, & papagno, 1998; torrens & yagüe, 2018). it is evidenced by the fact that children with dld perform significantly worse than td children in non-word repetition task, the most popular task used to measure the phonological short-term memory (bishop, north & donlan, 1996; conti-ramsden, 2003; gray, 2003; leonard, 2014a). aspect markers are the main mean to express aspectual notions in chinese languages. there are four typical aspect markers in mandarin (li & thompson, 1981; smith, 1994, 1997). the progressive marker zaiis pronounced with a falling tone and precedes the predicate verb in a sentence. it indicates that an action/event is progressive/ongoing, as shown in sentence (1) below. (1) john zai qi yi-liang zixingche. john zai ride a-cl bike ‘john is riding a bike.’ the perfective marker -le is pronounced with a neutral tone and without stress in a sentence. it follows the predicate verb and indicates the completion of an action, as shown in sentence (2) below. (2) xiao nvhai hua-le yi-duo hua. little girl draw-le a-cl flower ‘the little girl has drawn a flower.’ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10489223.2016.1187617 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10489223.2016.1187617 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10489223.2016.1187617 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 189-208, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 191 the postverbal durative marker -zhe is pronounced with a neutral tone and is stressless in a sentence. it expresses the enduring state of a situation, as shown in sentence (3) below. (3) xiao nanhai dai-zhe yi-ding maozi. little boy wear-zhe a-cl hat ‘the little boy wears a hat.’ the postverbal experiential marker -guo is pronounced with a netural tone and without stress in a sentence. it is used to express that someone has the experience of doing something in the past, as shown in sentence (4) below. (4) mary qu-guo tuerqi. mary go-guo turkey ‘mary has been to turkey.’ previous studies that investigate the acquisition of the mandarin aspect markers by td children demonstrate that mandarin-speaking td children are sensitive to the aspectual contrast between the perfective marker -le and the imperfective marker -zhe when they are about 30 months old (yang, shi, & xu, 2018), and they are able to facilitate event recognition as well as adults with the cues of the temporal information encoded in aspect markers when they are three years old (zhou, crain, & zhan, 2014). td children acquire the aspect markers in the following order: the perfective marker -le> the progressive marker zaiand the durative marker -zhe> the experiential marker -guo (the aspect marker at the left side of the symbol ‘>’ appears earlier than the aspect marker at its right side in td children’s production) (erbaugh, 1992). the acquisition of aspect markers by td children is consistent with the aspect hypothesis (li & bowerman, 1998; jin & hendriks, 2005). based on the classifications of vendler (1957) that verbs include activity verbs, accomplishment verbs, achievement verbs and state verbs, the aspect hypothesis predicates that td children use the past or perfective markers with achievement verbs and accomplishment verbs at the earliest stage of the aspectual development, and eventually extend their use to activity verbs and state verbs; in languages that have the progressive aspect, td children use the progressive aspect markers mostly with the activity verbs at the earliest stage, and then extend them to the accomplishment verbs and achievement verbs (shirai & andersen, 1995; andersen & shirai, 1996). chen and shirai (2010) found that mandarin-speaking td children tend to combine the perfective marker -le with achievement verbs, the progressive marker zaiwith activity verbs, the durative marker -zhe with activity verbs, and the production of mandarin aspect markers by children with dld, and td children chen, an, he 192 experiential marker -guo with accomplishment verbs at the earliest stage of their aspectual development; the strong tendency weakens with the aspectual development. children with dld who speak chinese languages perform poorly in producing aspect markers (stokes & fletcher, 2003; cheung, 2005; fletcher, leonard, stokes, & wong, 2005; he, sun, & tian, 2013; yu, wang, & liang, 2019). two studies that investigate the performance of cantonese-speaking children with dld in producing aspect markers reveal that cantonese-speaking children with dld are less likely than td children to produce aspect markers, and they are more likely to restrict aspect markers to verbs that present a maximal semantic match, such as achievement verbs with the perfective marker, and activity verbs with the progressive marker (stokes & fletcher, 2003; fletcher, leonard, stokes, & wong, 2005). consistent with the findings of the studies on cantonese-speaking children with dld, the studies that examine the production of aspect markers by mandarin-speaking children with dld demonstrate that mandarin-speaking children with dld also have difficulty in producing mandarin aspect markers (cheung, 2005; he, sun, & tian, 2013), and their production of aspect markers (i.e., grammatical aspect) is influenced by verbs’ situation types (i.e., lexical aspect) (yu, wang, & liang, 2019). cheung (2005) examined the production of aspect markers zai-, -le, and -zhe by 6-7 years old children with dld with a picture-story narrative elicitation task. he found that children with dld improved in their production of these aspect markers within a one-year span and their performance was similar to that of the four-year-old td controls. he, sun, and tian (2013) investigated the production of the aspect markers zaiand -le by 4 to 6-year-old children with dld with an elicitation task. their results showed that children with dld had difficulty in producing the perfective marker -le evidenced by the fact that they were less likely to produce the perfective marker -le; however, no significant difference was observed between dld and td groups in the production of the progressive marker zai-. two outstanding questions exist in the studies of cheung (2005) and he, sun, and tian (2013). first, the two studies did not cover all the four typical mandarin aspect markers in their experimental paradigms. as a result, the whole picture of the ability of children with dld in producing the mandarin aspect markers was not examined. second, the two studies did not examine the correlation of the difficulty of children with dld in producing aspect markers with their general language abilities and intelligence. besides the two studies, yu, wang, and liang (2019) investigated the performance of 7-10 years old children with dld in processing the semantic consistent and inconsistent combination of lexical and grammatical aspects as compared with td age-matched (hereafter, tda) children and td younger (hereafter, tdy) children through a self-paced reading task. by measuring the reaction time of the aspect markers -le and -zhe that followed different types of verbs, journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 189-208, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 193 they found that children with dld, like tdy children, processed faster when verbs’ situation types were consistent with aspect markers than inconsistent situations, as predicted by the aspect hypothesis. the authors concluded that the lexical aspects still affected the grammatical aspect processing in children with dld and tdy children, and children with dld were in their early stage of development of grammatical aspect processing. why do children with dld who speak chinese languages have difficulty in producing aspect markers? stokes and fletcher (2003) interpreted the difficulty of cantonese-speaking children with dld in producing cantonese aspect markers within a limited processing-capacity account. however, they did not interpret the influence of the limited-processing capacity on children with dld’s poor performance of producing contanese aspect markers in depth. fletcher, leonard, stokes, and wong (2005) and he, sun, and tian (2013) attributed the difficulty of children with dld in producing aspect markers to the features of aspect markers in chinese languages. fletcher, leonard, stokes, and wong (2005) proposed that the sparse morphology of cantonese aspect markers and the nonobligatory nature of these forms were the causes of the difficulty of cantonese-speaking children with dld in producing cantonese aspect markers. the sparse morphology of cantonese aspect markers refers to the fact that each aspect marker is represented by a phonologically unvarying form. the nonobligatory nature of cantonese aspect markers means that sentences with bare verb forms (i.e., without aspect markers) are still grammatical and acceptable in cantonese although a different meaning is conveyed. under the view of formal linguistics, he, sun, and tian (2013) interpreted the difficulty of children with dld in producing the postverbal perfective marker -le with the proposition of li and xu (2010) that the aspect marker -le is a bound morpheme which attracts the movement of predicate verb in forming a sentence, and the movement might increase the burden of producing the aspect marker -le. the propositions of fletcher, leonard, stokes, and wong (2005) and he, sun, and tian (2013) that the difficulty of children with dld in producing aspect markers is caused by the features of aspect markers in chinese languages could explain the poor performance of children with dld in producing aspect makers. however, it could not interpret well why children with dld perform significantly worse than td children in producing aspect markers when both groups are treated with the same experimental conditions. in consideration of the outstanding issues in the previous studies, the present study aims to investigate the performance of mandarin-speaking children with dld in producing the four typical mandarin aspect markers as compared with tda children with a priming picture-description task. the research questions of the present study are: production of mandarin aspect markers by children with dld, and td children chen, an, he 194 (i) how do children with dld perform in producing the four mandarin aspect markers as compared with tda children? (ii) does the ability of children with dld in producing aspect markers correlate with their general language abilities and intelligence? 2. methodology previous studies that elicited the production of aspect markers by children with dld used video/picture story narration tasks (e.g., stokes & fletcher, 2003; cheung, 2005), picture-description elicitation tasks (e.g., fletcher, leonard, stokes, & wong, 2005; he, sun, & tian, 2013), or conversational tasks (e.g., stokes & fletcher, 2003). the disadvantage of these experimental paradigms is that they could not provide participants with appropriate conditions to produce the experiential marker -guo since it is used to express someone’s experience in the past, which is difficult to be displayed by the tasks mentioned above. therefore, a priming picture-description task that takes the advantage of the structural priming effect was conducted in the present study to elicit the four typical mandarin aspect markers. children with dld show similar structural priming effect to td children, and priming is promising as a method for investigating production factors in language development (miller & deevy, 2006). in a priming picture-description task, the experimenter describes a picture with a sentence that contains a grammar point first, then the participant is encouraged to describe a similar picture. the participant could be primed to produce another sentence with the grammar point by the experimenter’s sentence if he/she has mastered it. in the present study, the experimenter and the participant described pictures in turn. the experimenter described the priming picture with a sentence that contained an aspect marker first, and then a similar picture (the target picture) was displayed to the participant. the participant was expected to describe the picture with a sentence that contained the same aspect marker. 2.1 participants thirty-four 4 to 6-year-old children participated in the present study. seventeen children with dld were recruited from special education schools, kindergartens, and hospitals, and 17 tda controls were recruited from kindergartens. the criteria to recruit the participants were listed below. first, the intelligence of the participants was measured with the fourth edition of wechsler preschool and primary scale of intelligence (wppsi-iv; wechsler, 2012). the scores of the full-scale index in the wppsi-iv test (i.e., iq scores) for all the participants were higher than 75. second, the general language abilities of the participants were tested with the peabody picture vocabulary test-revised chinese version (ppvt-r; dunn & dunn, 1981) and rating scale for pre-school children with language disorder-revised chinese version (rspcld-r; lin, 2008). three scores were journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 189-208, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 195 obtained from the two language tests, including the score of ppvt-r, and the scores of language comprehension and language production in the rspcldr. at least two out of the three scores of children with dld were 1.25 sd below the norms of their age (tomblin, records, buckwalter, zhang, smith, & o’brien, 1997); while the scores of all the tda children were within the norms of their age. then, the teachers or therapists of all the participants were interviewed to exclude those who had hearing loss, neurological or psychiatric disorders, behavioral disorders, emotional abnormality, etc. finally, the parents of the participants signed the consent form. the descriptive information of the participants is shown in table 1. table 1 the participants’ basic information group n moa (sd) ppvt(sd) lc(sd) lp(sd) iq(sd) dld 17 61.38 (9.56) 48.24 (11.39) 21.76 (3.98) 26.29 (5.53) 96.18 (10.38) tda 17 62.31 (6.54) 70.59 (20.52) 31.76 (2.73) 39.59 (1.77) 111.06 (9.16) notes: n = number of participants, moa =months of age, lc = language comprehension, lp = language production, iq=the score of the full-scale index in wppsi-iv. the dld group and the tda group were group-matched in age, t(32)=0.332, p=.742. the tda children, however, got significantly higher scores on the general language abilities tests and iq test than children with dld, tppvt(32)=3.93, p=.000; tlc(32)=8.56, p=.000; tlp=9.44, p=.000; tiq(32)=4.43, p=.000. 2.2 stimuli there were two practice items and 20 test items (five for each aspect marker) in the task. each test item included the priming part and the target part. the verbs used in the priming part of this task were all activity verbs. for the aspect markers zai-, -le, and -zhe, the priming picture and the target picture demonstrated the same stage of different actions/events (the priming picture was above the target on a page). following li and bowerman (1998) and he, sun, and tian (2013), each picture contained two small pictures that depicted the process (both small pictures displayed the ongoing stage of an action/event) or the completed state (one small picture displayed the ongoing stage and the other displayed the completed stage of an action/event) for the aspect markers zai-, -le, and -zhe. since the experiential marker -guo is used to indicate that someone has experienced something at least once in the past, there were photos behind the figures in both the priming and the target production of mandarin aspect markers by children with dld, and td children chen, an, he 196 pictures to represent the experience of the figures in these pictures. table 2 demonstrates the examples of the priming and target pictures for the four aspect markers. table 2 examples of the pictures for the four aspect markers aspect markers priming picture target picture zai -le -zhe -guo the pictures in the task were displayed with the powerpoint on a laptop or a pad with the pictures of each test item on a page. 2.3 procedure participants were tested individually in a quiet room. at the beginning of the task, an experimenter instructed each participant with the rules of the task. for each test item, the experimenter described the priming picture with a sentence that contained an aspect marker firstly, and the participant was asked to describe the target picture. for instance (taking the progressive marker zaias the example), the experimenter gives the following instruction first, “‘the man is building a house’ in this picture.’ (point to the priming picture). how about this picture? (point to the target picture)”. the instructions were given in mandarin. the participant was expected to describe the target picture (which displayed the ongoing stage of a different action/event) and he/she was expected to describe the target picture with the progressive marker zai-. the test process was audio recorded by an assistant, who also kept a written record of the responses of participants. the task lasts for fifteen minutes. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 189-208, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 197 2.4 data treatment the production written down by the assistant was checked and confirmed by the experimenter after the experiment. the production was analyzed from four aspects. from the first aspect, participant’s production for each aspect marker was classified into four types: 1) the sentences with the target aspect marker; 2) the sentences with bare verbs; 3) sentences with other aspect markers; 4) the other types of responses, which includes producing sentences irrelevant to the task or a single word, saying “i don’t know”, and giving no response, etc. then, the proportion of each type in the production of the participant was calculated separately and presented in percentage form. it was hard to say that one participant was wrong if he/she viewed a picture presented to him/her differently from other participants and described the picture with one aspect marker that was not our expectation. therefore, each participant’s total production was classified into six types: 1) the sentences with the progressive marker zai-; 2) the sentences with the perfective marker -le; 3) the sentences with the durative marker -zhe; 4) the sentences with the experiential marker -guo; 5) the sentences with bare verbs; 6) other types of responses, which includes producing the sentences irrelevant to the task, producing a single word, saying “i don’t know”, or giving no response, etc. then the proportion of each type of production among the total production was calculated and presented in percentage form. thirdly, the verbs combined with the aspect markers in the production of the participants were classified according to the classifications of vender (1957) and analyzed to examine whether children with dld follow the aspect hypothesis. finally, the correlations between the performance of children with dld in producing aspect markers and their general language abilities as well as their intelligence were analyzed. 3. findings no participant was excluded from the data analysis in this section. in section 3.1, the proportion of each type of production for every aspect marker was compared between the dld group and the tda group. then, the proportions of the six types for the total production were compared between the two groups in section 3.2. in section 3.3, the verb’s situation types combined with the perfective marker -le were classified and analyzed. finally, the correlation analyses were conducted in section 3.4. 3.1 comparison of the production for each aspect marker the mean proportion and sd of each type of production of the four aspect markers are presented in table 3 below. production of mandarin aspect markers by children with dld, and td children chen, an, he 198 table 3 mean proportion (%) of each type of production for each aspect marker types of production zai(sd) -le (sd) -zhe (sd) -guo (sd) dld tda dld tda dld tda dld tda target aspect markers 85.88 (24.25) 98.82 (4.85) 23.53 (26.68) 87.06 (15.72) 71.76 (33.96) 97.64 (6.64) 42.35 (38) 95.3 (8.75) bare verbs 12.94 (23.39) 1.18 (4.85) 10.59 (12.49) 1.18 (4.85) 12.94 (23.39) 1.18 (4.85) 23.53 (28.49) 0 (--) other aspect markers 1.18 (4.85) 0 (--) 4.71 (11.25) 0 (--) 14.12 (25.26) 0 (--) 7.06 (12.13) 2.35 (6.64) other types of responses 0 (--) 0 (--) 61.17 (30.39) 11.76 (14.25) 1.18 (4.85) 1.18 (4.85) 27.06 (30.77) 2.35 (6.64) because the data of this task were non-normally distributed (confirmed with the kolmogorov-smirnov test), mann-whitney u tests were conducted to compare each type of production between the dld group and the tda group for the four aspect markers. the results are as follows: 1) for the progressive marker zai-, there were no significant differences between the dld group and the tda group in the four types of production, the sentences with the target aspect marker zai-: u=100.5, z=2.148, p=.131; the sentences with bare verbs: u=101, z=2.127, p=.14; the sentences with other aspect markers: u=136, z=1, p=.786; other types of responses: u=144.5, z=.00, p=1.0. 2) for the perfective marker -le, the dld group produced significantly fewer sentences with the target aspect marker -le than the tda group did, u=10, z=4.73, p=.000; on the contrary, the dld group produced significantly more sentences with bare verbs (u=84.5, z=2.691, p=.038) and other types of responses (u=28.5, z=4.107, p=.000) than the tda group did. no significant difference was observed between the two groups in producing the sentences with other aspect markers, u=119, z=1.785, p=.394. 3) for the durative marker -zhe, the dld group produced significantly fewer sentences with the target aspect marker -zhe (u=63, z=3.238, p=.004) and significantly more sentences with other aspect markers (u=85, z=2.909, p=.041) than the tda group did. meanwhile, there was no significant difference between the two groups in producing the sentences with bare verbs (u=101, z=2.127, p=.14) and other types of responses (u=144.5, z=.00, p=1.0). 4) for the experiential marker -guo, the dld group produced significantly fewer sentences with the target aspect marker -guo than the tda group did, u=27, z=4.267, p=.000; on the contrary, the dld group produced significantly more sentences with bare verbs (u=59.5, z=3.645, p=.003) and other types of responses (u=69.5, z=3.034, p=.009) than the tda group did. in producing the sentences with other aspect markers, no significant difference was observed between the two groups, u=118, z=1.298, p=.375. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 189-208, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 199 the comparisons above indicate that the dld group produced significantly fewer sentences with the target aspect marker than the tda group did for the three postverbal aspect markers -le, -zhe, and -guo on the one hand; and on the other hand, the dld group produced significantly more sentences with bare verbs than tda group did for the postverbal aspect markers -le and -guo, more sentences with other aspect markers for the durative marker -zhe, and more other types of responses than tda group did for the experiential markers -guo. 3.2 comparison of each type of production for the total production since children in both groups described pictures with other aspect markers rather than the aspect marker expected for the four aspect markers, and it could not recognize that one participant was wrong if he/she viewed a picture presented to him/her differently from other participants, the total production of each participant was classified into six types and compared between the dld group and the tda group in this section. the mean proportion and sd of each type for the total production is displayed in table 4. table 4 mean proportion (%) of each type of production for the total production because the data were non-normally distributed (confirmed with the kolmogorov-smirnov test), mann-whitney u tests were conducted to compare the dld group with the tda group in the six types of production. the results show that there was no significant difference between the two groups in producing the sentences with the preverbal aspect marker zai-, u=112, z=1.257, p=.274. however, the dld group produced significantly fewer sentences with the postverbal aspect markers -le (u=20.5, z=4.359, p=.000), zhe (u=79, z=2.595, p=.024), and -guo (u=27, z=4.262, p=.000), and significantly more sentences with bare verbs (u=7, z=4.798 p=.000) and other types of responses (u=73.5, z=2.9, p=.013) than tda group did. the analysis in this section and section 3.1.1 demonstrates that children in the dld group had difficulty in producing the postverbal aspect markers. groups zai (sd) -le (sd) -zhe (sd) -guo (sd) bare verbs (sd) other types of responses (sd) dld 27.35 (11.61) 8.24 (7.89) 18.53 (8.97) 10.88 (9.23) 29.71 (15.66) 5.29 (7.6) tda 25 (1.77) 22.35 (5.04) 24.41 (1.66) 23.82 (2.19) 3.82 (4.85) 0.6 (1.66) production of mandarin aspect markers by children with dld, and td children chen, an, he 200 3.3 the verbs combined with the perfective marker -le as revealed by erbaugh (1992), td children acquire the perfective marker -le firstly, and then the progressive marker zaiand the durative marker -zhe; the experiential marker -guo is the last aspect marker acquired by td children. to testify whether the children with dld in the present study followed the aspect hypothesis, the perfective marker -le that acquired firstly was concerned with and the verbs combined with it in the participants’ production were classified according to the verbs’ situation types of vender (1957) in this section. figure 1 displays the mean proportion of each combination of verbs’ situation type with the perfective marker -le. as shown in figure 1, children in both the dld group and the tda group combined the perfective marker -le with achievement verbs, activity verbs, and accomplishment verbs although they were primed by the activity verbs. because the data were non-normally distributed (confirmed with the kolmogorov-smirnov test), friedman tests were conducted to examine whether there were significant differences in the proportions of activity verbs, achievement verbs, and accomplishment verbs within each group of children. figure 1. mean proportion (%) of each type of verbs combined with the perfective marker -le the results show that there was no significant difference between the three types of verbs for the dld group, chi2=4.667, p=.097. however, a significant difference was observed for the tda group, chi2=10.133, p=.006. the post hoc friedman’s test shows that the tda group combined significantly fewer accomplishment verbs than activity verbs (p=.049) and achievement verbs (p=.018) with the perfective marker -le, while no significant difference was observed between activity and achievement verbs. it can be speculated from the combination of verbs’ situation types with the perfective marker -le in the present study that the production of children with dld was consistent with the aspect hypothesis, but they were in the early journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 189-208, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 201 stage of aspectual development because they combined the perfective marker -le with achievement verbs and accomplishment verbs as many as activity verbs although they were primed with activity verbs. 3.4 correlational analyses in section 2.1, it can be seen that children with dld got significantly lower scores on the language tests and the intelligence test than tda children did. as a result, it could be supposed that the difficulty of children with dld in producing the postverbal aspect markers might be related to their poor language abilities or intelligence. to test whether there were correlations between the language abilities and intelligence of children with dld with their performance in producing postverbal aspect markers, the pearson correlation tests were conducted in this section. the language abilities were represented with the three language scores and the intelligence was represented with the score of the full-scale index in the wppsi-iv test. the proportions of the postverbal aspect markers -le, -zhe, and -guo in the total production were applied in the correlation analysis. the arcsine transformations were applied to the percentage data for the postverbal aspect markers. the correlations between pairs of variables are reported in table 5. table 5 results of correlation analysis (r) -le (p) -zhe (p) -guo (p) ppvt -.003 (.99) .058 (.824) .146 (.577) lc -.274 (.288) -.072 (.784) -.026 (.921) lp .004 (.989) -.212 (.413) -.1113 (.665) iq -.005 (.986) -.063 (.811) -.158 (.544) notes: lc = language comprehension, lp = language production, iq=the score of the full-scale index in wppsi-iv. the table above shows that the performance of children with dld in producing the three postverbal aspect markers did not have significant correlations with their language abilities and intelligence. 4. discussion the analyses above showed that mandarin-speaking children with dld have difficulty in producing the three postverbal aspect markers -le, -zhe and -guo. specifically, children with dld were less likely to produce sentences with the postverbal aspect markers, and were more likely to produce sentences with bare verb forms or other types of responses than tda children did; for the preverbal progressive marker zai-, however, they performed as well as tda children did. production of mandarin aspect markers by children with dld, and td children chen, an, he 202 the results of the present study were consistent with stokes and fletcher (2003) and fletcher, leonard, stokes, and wong (2005). the two studies examined the performance of producing cantonese aspect markers by cantonese-speaking children with dld as compared with td children and found that children with dld were less likely to produce aspect markers and more likely to produce sentences with bare verbs than their td peers did. since the aspect markers in cantonese are postverbal, it could be deduced from the two studies that cantonese-speaking children with dld have difficulty in producing postverbal aspect markers. the results of this study were also compatible with he, sun, and tian (2013). with an elicited production task, they found that mandarin-speaking children with dld were less likely to produce the postverbal perfective marker -le and were more likely to used bare verb forms than tda children, but no significant difference was observed in producing the preverbal progressive marker zaibetween children with dld and td children. the results of the present study, however, were inconsistent with the findings of cheung (2005). with a picture-story narrative elicitation task, cheung found that mandarin-speaking children with dld produced the aspect marker -le most (account for 89.09% in six years old, and 82.3% in seven years old children with dld), and the aspect markers zaiand -zhe ranked second and third in the production of children with dld. he, sun, and tian pointed out that, “cheung (2005) counted the sentence-final le as the perfective marker -le” (he, sun, & tian, 2013, track 30). the production of -le mostly in cheung (2005) might be attributable to his counting of sentencefinal le as the post-verbal perfective marker -le. why do mandarin-speaking children with dld are less likely to produce sentences with the postverbal aspect markers than tda children do? since children with dld got significantly lower scores than tda children in the tests of language abilities and the intelligence test, one might propose that the poor performance of children with dld in producing the three postverbal aspect markers might be correlated to their language abilities and intelligence. however, as shown in section 3.4, there were no significant correlations between the language abilities and intelligence of children with dld with their performance in producing the three postverbal aspect markers in the present study. therefore, the poor performance of mandarin-speaking children with dld in producing the three postverbal aspect markers might be related to other factors. through analyzing the combination of verbs’ situation types with the perfective marker -le, the present study showed that mandarin-speaking children with dld followed the aspect hypothesis, but they might be in their early stage of aspectual development because they combined the perfective marker -le with achievement verbs and accomplishment verbs as many as activity verbs although they were primed with activity verbs. this finding is consistent with other studies (e.g., stokes & fletcher 2003; cheung, 2005; journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 189-208, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 203 fletcher, leonard, stokes, & wong, 2005; he, sun, & tian, 2013; yu, wang, & liang, 2019) which found that children with dld are inclined to combine the aspect markers with maximal semantic matched types of verbs. therefore, it can be proposed that the reason for the difficulty of mandarin-speaking children with dld in producing the three postverbal aspect markers in the present study was that they were in the early stage of aspectual development. however, erbaugh (1992) found that td children acquire the perfective marker -le earlier than the progressive marker markers zai-. if children with dld of the present study were in the early stage of aspectual development, they would also have difficulty in producing the preverbal progressive marker zai-. the results of the present study showed that children with dld performed as well as tda children in producing the preverbal progressive marker zai-. hence, the difficulty of mandarin-speaking children with dld in producing the postverbal aspect markers might not attribute to the fact that they were in the early stage of aspectual development. fletcher, leonard, stokes, and wong (2005) attribute the difficulty of cantonese-speaking children with dld in producing the contanese aspect markers to their sparse morphology and the nonobligatory nature of these aspect markers. and he, sun, and tian (2013) explain the difficulty of mandarin-speaking children with dld in producing the perfective marker -le from the view of formal linguistics that the movement of predicate verbs in forming sentences with the postverbal aspect markers may increase the cognitive burden of producing sentences. however, the interpretations of fletcher, leonard, stokes, and wong (2005) and he, sun, and tian (2013) from the features of aspect markers in chinese languages could not explain why children with dld performed significantly worse than td children did when the two groups were treated with the same experimental conditions. stokes and & fletcher (2003) interpret the difficulty of cantonese-speaking children with dld in producing cantonese aspect markers with a limited processing-capacity account. however, cheung (2005) commented that “the limited processing-capacity account is not elaborated” (cheung, 2005, track 11). to make the limited processing-capacity account more specific, it is proposed in the present study that the difficulty of children with dld in producing the three post-verbal aspect markers was related to their impaired phonological short-term memory. although the phonological short-term memory of children with dld was not measured in the present study, numerous previous studies have found that children with dld performed significantly worse than td children in the non-word repetition task, the best way to measure the phonological short-term memory (bishop, north & donlan, 1996; conti-ramsden, 2003; gray, 2003; leonard, 2014a; torrens & yagüe, 2018). https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10489223.2016.1187617 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10489223.2016.1187617 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10489223.2016.1187617 production of mandarin aspect markers by children with dld, and td children chen, an, he 204 the performance of english-speaking children with dld in producing inflectional morphemes that relate to tense and agreement is highly related to their impaired phonological short-term memory (gathercole & baddeley, 1990; bishop, adams, & norbury, 2006). specifically, english-speaking children with dld are more frequently than their td peers form sentences that may be optionally finite (with tense markers) or nonfinite (with the bare verb form) (rice, wexler, & cleave, 1995; rice & wexler, 1996). mandarinspeaking children with dld perform similarly to english-speaking children with dld because they produce the postverbal aspect makers that are bounded to the predicate verbs less frequently and the bare verb form more frequently than td children do. therefore, it could be proposed that the poor performance of mandarin-speaking children with dld in producing the three postverbal aspect markers might be related to their impaired phonological short-term memory. furthermore, the pronunciation features of the three postverbal aspect markers might also lead to the difficulty of children with dld in producing them. unlike the preverbal progressive marker zaiwhich has a falling tone and is salient in front of the predicate verbs, the three postverbal mandarin aspect markers are pronounced with the neutral tone, and they are stressless in sentences. the pronunciation features of the postverbal aspect markers make them less prominent than the preverbal progressive marker zaiin sentence production. as a result, children with dld who are impaired of phonological short-term memory might ignore the three postverbal aspect markers and produce more sentences with bare verb forms than their tda peers because they are unable to store the inconspicuous postverbal aspect markers efficiently in the process of sentence formation. therefore, it can be speculated from the discussion above that the difficulty of mandarin-speaking children with dld in producing the three postverbal aspect markers might be related to their impaired phonological short-term memory and the pronunciation features of the postverbal aspect markers. 5. conclusions with a priming picture-description task, the present study investigated the performance of mandarin-speaking children with dld in producing the four typical mandarin aspect markers as compared with tda children. the findings of the present study are the following. first, children with dld produced significantly fewer sentences with the three postverbal aspect marker -le, -zhe, and -guo than their tda peers. second, children with dld produced significantly more sentences with bare verbs and other types of responses than tda children did. third, children with dld were more likely to combine the perfective marker -le with its cognate inherent verbs’ situation type achievement verbs than their tda peers did. the poor performance of children with dld in producing the postverbal markers might be related to their journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 1 189-208, 2021, march issn: 2148-1997 205 impaired phonological short-term memory and the pronunciation features of the postverbal aspect markers. the present study has its limitations. first, the phonological short-term memory of children with dld was not measured in the present study, and the conclusion about the correlation between phonological short-term memory and performance in producing the postverbal aspect markers was speculative. second, the gender difference was not taken into account in the present study because the majority of children with dld were boys, which makes it difficult to match the participants in gender. acknowledgments the study is supported by grants from the chinese national social science foundation (project no. 17ayy08), guangdong planning office of philosophy and social science (project no. gd19yyy05), guangzhou planning office of philosophy and social science (project no. 2020gzyb49, and the postgraduates' research and innovation project of guangdong university of foreign studies (project no. 20gwcxxm-01). references andersen, r. w., & shirai, y. 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(2014). grammatical aspect and event recognition in children’s online sentence comprehension. cognition, 133(1), 262-276. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 394-412, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 394 lexical and sub-lexical auditory phonological priming effects on word reading in grades 4 and 5 varun a. g. uthappa1 pristine rehab care, llc. keith s. h. wolgemuth2 loma linda university benjamin j. becerra3 california state university abstract there is emerging evidence that phonology contributes to visual word recognition independent of orthography in the upper elementary grades, more so when reading less frequent words. it is unclear how lexical and different sublexical phonological units influence familiar word reading; therefore, we investigated the priming effects of the phonological word (repetition), syllable, rime, and phoneme units on word reading in fourth and fifth grades. we used an auditory primed and timed word reading task to determine whether different phonological units influenced the speed of reading familiar words. to examine their relationship with reading ability, we compared primed reading speeds with word and pseudo-word reading measures. the results revealed a significant lexical phonological priming effect of facilitation by repetition primes, and a difference between the direction of phoneme and rime priming. lexical phonological priming did not relate with word or pseudo-word reading. sublexical syllable priming, on the other hand, had a significant relationship with word reading. these findings show the influence of primed auditory phonological units during word reading without any overlapping orthographic prime in fourthand fifth-grade children. overall, lexical phonology has a definitive role of facilitation regardless of word reading ability whereas the sub-lexical phonological units appear to have a variable impact. syllable influenced reading speed has a direct relationship with word reading. keywords: auditory phonological priming, phoneme, syllable, rime, word reading 1. introduction phonological processing is an integral part of reading (ashby, 2010; cataldo & ellis, 1988; mattingly, 1972; wagner & torgesen, 1987). in learning to read, the ability to convert letters into their corresponding sounds, blend and later access the phonological lexicon is crucial. there is consensus that direct orthographic access to the lexicon gradually replaces the reliance on 1 bio: dr. varun uthappa a. g. is a practicing speech-language pathologist at pristine rehab care, llc., california. his research interests are in the areas of speech and language processing in typical and atypical populations. e-mail: vallarandaganapathy@llu.edu 2 bio: dr. keith s. h. wolgemuth is a pediatric and rehabilitative audiologist who is a professor, researcher, clinical supervisor, and speech-language pathology doctoral program director at loma linda university in southern california. e-mail: kwolgemuth@llu.edu 3 bio: dr. benjamin j. becerra is an assistant professor in the department of information & decision sciences at california state university, san bernardino. he is also the co-director for the center for health equity on campus and uses data analytics, research methods, and statistics to perform research in health-related areas. e-mail: benjamin.becerra@csusb.edu received : 04.09.2021 accepted : 18.10.2021 published : 05.12.2021 mailto:vallarandaganapathy@llu.edu mailto:kwolgemuth@llu.edu mailto:benjamin.becerra@csusb.edu phonological units in children’s word reading uthappa, wolgemuth & becerra 395 phonological coding as reading proficiency increases (e.g., acha & perea, 2008; ehri, 2005; castles et al., 2007). studies have shown that this shift does not exclude phonology as a factor that continues to exert an influence on reading (leinenger, 2014; milledge & blythe, 2019; sauval et al., 2017). while a serial conversion of graphemes to phonemes prior to lexical selection may be unnecessary with increasing reading experience, phonological patterns extracted from written units do impact visual word recognition in younger, developing readers (e.g., kyte & johnson, 2006; jared et al., 2016). however, the specific role of different auditory phonological units not extracted from written units on word reading in developing readers remains unclear. psycholinguistic research regarding phonological grain size in reading also provide an inclusive account of phonology and orthography (see ziegler & goswami, 2005). although phonological processing in reading is not devoid of orthographic processing, studies comparing the performance of children on the former with actual reading ability typically use phonological awareness tasks that require manipulations of auditory phonological input (see melby-lervåg et al., 2012). it is not known whether auditory phonological units are relevant for reading beyond correlations with explicit phonological processing tasks. therefore, we investigated the impact of lexical and sub-lexical auditory phonological units as primes on measured word reading speed or latency and examined their relationship with word reading ability in this study. the role of phonology in learning to read transitions from an implicit awareness of larger units such as rhyming words to an explicit metaphonological knowledge of smaller units such as the phoneme or rime. preschool children auditorily categorize rhyming words or identify a nonrhyming word without declarative knowledge of the rime causing a rhyming effect (see seymour & duncan, 1997). as children continue to receive instruction, they recognize the components within words, identify the smallest units, and manipulate speech sounds that comprise words (e.g., frost, 1998; stahl & murray, 1994; ziegler & goswami, 2005). in the early stages of learning to read, children rely on the auditory phonological processing system and as children enter the early elementary grades, a sequence of letters is treated as representing corresponding sounds that blend together to form the phonological lexicon associated with the written word. this process becomes relatively automatic and explicit phonological coding is then not always required as a direct channel accessing the phonological lexicon for written words strengthens (e.g., acha & perea, 2008; castles et al., 2007). thus, the role of orthography in identifying words increases and one relies on phonology when reading less-familiar words (e.g., eddy et al., 2016; schmalz et al., 2013; ziegler et al., 2014). the self-teaching theory of reading development acknowledges this shift in reading style where a developing reader plays an active role to make sense of the phonological patterns encountered in a given orthographic structure (share, 1995). the dual route model explains this difference in the pattern of reading through two separate routes accessing the input lexicon. the nonlexical route accesses the phonological lexicon by linking each grapheme with its corresponding phoneme. it is suitable for reading regular words that follow the phoneme-grapheme correspondence rules in an alphabetic script. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 394-412, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 396 the direct route relies on the orthographic connection with the phonological lexical unit for reading familiar and irregular words (coltheart et al., 1993; coltheart et al., 2001; schmalz et al., 2013). however, these routes are not mutually exclusive. reaction time studies on the impact of orthographic primes which convey phonologically related information, e.g., pseudo homophones and words with phoneme and feature overlap, on lexical decision making and naming in children have primarily shown that phonological information redundant in the words do influence reading (e.g., brooks & macwhinney, 2000; eddy et al., 2016; sauval et al., 2018). zeguers et al. (2018) found contrary evidence where children across grades 2, 4 and 6 did not exhibit reliable phonological priming effects despite large phonological differences between the target and control primes. visual tracking during silent reading also provides preliminary evidence for the role phonology serves in reading (blythe et al., 2015; jared et al., 2016). children may not always require explicit phonological recoding in the later stages of reading (e.g., /b/+/ɪ/+/t/ = /bɪt/), but phonological pattern analysis recognize printing deviations that do not fit the expected phonological patterns in a script (e.g., bit versus bti). research recognizes that the nature of phonological impact varies but does not cease (see milledge & blythe, 2019). models such as the multiple-route model and the cdp+ model acknowledge the self-teaching aspect of phonological coding in children and provide the option to include a dynamic system of learning to read with phases between the indirect phonology-based and direct lexical routes (grainger et al., 2012; perry et al., 2007). orthography, however, mediates this role of phonology. interestingly, fewer studies have approached this area of investigation from the perspective of spoken phonology influencing reading rather than orthography-mediated phonological effects. it is unclear whether the presentation of an auditory stimulus encompassing phonological elements would influence word reading responses, particularly in developing readers. intermodal priming studies in adults have shown that auditory spoken words with overlapping onsets and nuclei, particularly in the initial position for monoand disyllabic words, and rime segments are facilitatory to picture naming when compared with phonologically unrelated spoken words (meyer & schriefers, 1991; schriefers et al., 1990). adults have shown similar facilitatory effects on repetition or identity primes with lexical decision and spoken word repetition tasks (dumay & radeau, 1997; holcomb et al., 2005). we found two studies in children that examined the effects of auditory primes on semantic interpretation of printed words and lexical decision making, respectively. reitsma (1984) found that initial spoken cv syllables were facilitatory for children in grade 1, but the effects waned for children in grade 6. a recent study in thirdand sixth-grade children also found auditory identity prime facilitation compared with unrelated conditions on both frequent and less frequent words. they also reported that this facilitatory effect was larger for less frequent words as compared to frequent words (sauval et al., 2017). therefore, preliminary evidence indicates that speech-based phonological input modulates visual word recognition in children. it is unclear how these effects change with the use of different spoken phonological units and on a read aloud task. phonological units in children’s word reading uthappa, wolgemuth & becerra 397 the models of reading discussed above also limit their exploration to the utility of the phonological route in the context of deciphering orthographic units. the bimodal interactive activation model (biam), based on the work of mcclelland and rumelhart (1981), considers the role of non-orthographic phonological input. it supports the connectedness between spoken and written language processing. both auditory and visual (script) input may activate phonological codes at the lexical and sub-lexical levels (e.g., grainger et al., 2003; diependaele et al., 2010). studies by sauval et al. (2017) and reitsma (1984) suggest the presence of activation at both lexical (identity priming) and sub-lexical (syllable) levels on tasks that involve decision making but no requirement for a word to be read aloud. although spoken phonology influences lexical decision making, it is uncertain whether the same holds good in the process of reading aloud. in this study, we investigated whether spoken repetition of the entire target word, syllable, phoneme, and rime prime stimuli would have an effect on a timed read aloud task. the choice of the three sub-lexical units used in this study was based on psycholinguistic research in adults and children pertaining to phonological grain size in orthographic processing. the results of unimodal (visual-visual) and intermodal (auditory-visual) priming studies reveal that onset-phoneme, rime, and syllable grain sizes alter the reaction time of visual word recognition (campos et al., 2018; brooks & macwhinney, 2000; grainger & ferrand, 1996; ferrand et al., 1997; schiller, 2004; sauval et al., 2017). additionally, correlational studies between phonological awareness and reading achievement rely on meta-phonological tasks using these different phonological units to compare with reading ability (e.g., anthony & francis, 2005; anthony & lonigan, 2004; deacon, 2011; del campo et al., 2015; hogan et al., 2005; hulme et al., 2012; melby-lervåg et al., 2012; plaza, 2001; plaza & cohen, 2003). phonological awareness tasks involve an analysis of spoken phonology (e.g., phoneme elision, syllable blending, rime awareness) which suggest that reading differences can be influenced by factors such as bilingualism, the language under consideration, lack of reading experience (non-readers) and duration of reading exposure (e.g., denton et al., 2000; haigh et al., 2011; li et al., 2017; plaza, 2001; sauval et al., 2017). the participants in our study were spanish-english bilinguals as this group represented the majority population of the school district where the study was conducted. therefore, we note that the syllable is a key unit in spanish phonological awareness (denton et al. 2000). in a review of cross-linguistic transfer effects in reading, lallier and carreiras (2018) noted that crosslinguistic effects depend on orthographic depth and factors such as reading level and language proficiency between the two languages children learn to read. since the participants in our study only had exposure to written language in english, we did not anticipate cross-linguistic transfer occurring as a result of learning to read two different languages. if anything, there may be direct phonological transfer effects based on spoken exposure to the two languages. overall, research has shown that phoneme, rime, and syllable awareness tasks either correlate with or predict word reading performance from about four years of age till grade 6 to varying degrees, and that the strength of this relationship reduces with increase in grade level (e.g., anthony & francis, journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 394-412, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 398 2005; anthony & lonigan, 2004; deacon, 2011; del campo et al., 2015; hogan et al., 2005; hulme et al., 2012; melby-lervåg et al., 2012; plaza, 2001; plaza & cohen, 2003). taken together, experimental priming studies and correlational analyses have shown the importance of sub-lexical units in developing reading skills. it is not known whether there is a pattern in which phonological units in a spoken form impact the process of reading words when the orthographic cues are absent, particularly in the upper elementary grades. if there is an impact of spoken phonological units on reading, it is unclear at this time as to how it relates with word reading ability per se. therefore, this study aimed to: (1) determine whether different types of spoken phonological units exert an influence on word reading speed and (2) examine the relationship between the effects of these phonological units on word reading latency and reading ability. we investigated the first question through an auditory priming experiment where we presented lexical (repetition) and sub-lexical (phoneme, rime, syllable) primes prior to familiar words read aloud as fast as possible. we predicted that if the auditory phonological units at both lexical (repetition) and sub-lexical levels (phoneme, rime, syllable) impact word reading speed, reaction times across experimental conditions would be significantly different than that of the no prime control condition. if they do not impact word reading uniformly, a pattern would emerge indicating specific units which yield differences compared with the control condition. we anticipated that reading trisyllables would take longer than reading monosyllables in the control condition due to the orthographic length effect (spieler & balota, 2000). we used familiar words instead of less frequent and unfamiliar words for three reasons. familiar words were preferred over unfamiliar and less frequent words to control the confounding variable of word recognition ability in a primed and timed read aloud task. the impact of auditory phonological units on reading speed of less frequent and unfamiliar words may be expected considering reduced lexical knowledge, but the concern of this study was to find the role of spoken phonological units in conditions where phonological recoding is not typically essential. the results based on words subjected to a familiarity rating by third-grade teachers from the same school district as the participants were expected to be of greater relevance. we addressed the second question by comparing the reaction time values of the different experimental conditions with measures of real word and pseudo-word reading ability. floyd et al. (2007) found that word decoding ability is unrelated to the speed of processing as measured by visual matching, decision speed and cross out tasks beyond eight years of age. if this effect persists with the speed of word reading, the reaction time of the two control conditions would be unrelated to reading ability in our study. we assumed that if the role of phonology is dependent on reading level, there would be a relationship between the experimental primed reaction time values and scores on the word and/or pseudo-word reading tasks and expected that the nature and strength of these relationships may vary based on the lexical and sub-lexical level of phonological unit used as well as the type of reading task. phonological units in children’s word reading uthappa, wolgemuth & becerra 399 methodology 2.1 participants thirty children from fourth (five males, eight females) and fifth grades (10 males, seven females), with a mean age of 10.2 years (range: 9.2 years to 11.0 years), from a public elementary school in southern california participated in the study. we chose them consecutively per the return of letters of interest attached to advertisement flyers, by interested parents. we obtained a written informed consent from the parents in the language of their choice (spanish or english) and a written assent from each participant. the participants were spanish-english bilinguals receiving academic instruction in english, the majority population of the school district. the nature of spanish exposure at home (e.g., spanish vs. spanish-english speaking parents or grandparents at home, dialect and proficiency differences across families and individuals) was variable. we excluded children with known diagnoses of sensory, speech, language, socialemotional, cognitive, and reading impairments, and those receiving special education services or on a 504 plan. all participants passed hearing and vision screenings at school. participation was voluntary and each participant received a gift worth $10. 2.2. instrumentation we administered the primed word naming experiments using a dell inspiron 13 7373 laptop running windows 10 operating system. a compatible noisecancelling headset microphone (logitech-h390) delivered the auditory primes and recorded word naming responses. the dmdx software (forster & forster, 2003) presented the stimuli and recorded the experimental data. we used the dmdx compatible checkvocal software (protopapas, 2007) to view audio-visual output (audio playback, waveform, and spectrogram) for reaction time (latency) analysis of word naming responses. we chose the letter-word identification (wi) and word attack (wa) subtests of the woodcock-johnson iv tests of achievement (schrank et al., 2014) to include real word and pseudo-word reading tasks. in the former, children may read the words using a combination of direct and indirect routes of reading. the latter requires the application of phoneme-grapheme correspondence rules by blending sub-lexical phonological units extracted from the script. 2.3 materials first, we made lists of 120 monosyllabic (consonant-vowel-consonant) and 60 trisyllabic words with consonant onsets familiar to third graders from grade level books. three third-grade teachers rated the words for their familiarity to third-grade students on a 3-point rating scale: very familiar, familiar, unfamiliar. we discarded words rated as unfamiliar by any rater and retained words rated as very familiar and familiar (92 monosyllabic and 48 trisyllabic words). using systematic random sampling (every second item from randomized lists), we arrived at 60 and 30 monosyllabic and trisyllabic words, respectively. very familiar and familiar words were chosen for two reasons: (1) they are not expected to interfere with read aloud responses for children and (2) the effect of the spoken primes, if any, would not be journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 394-412, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 400 conflicted by a need to access the phoneme grapheme correspondence route for reading less-familiar words. the 60 monosyllabic words were targets for the phoneme, rime, repetition and corresponding no prime conditions. we divided them into two sets of 30 each for phoneme and rime priming conditions, using the odd-even method. the 30 trisyllabic words were targets for syllable, repetition and corresponding no prime conditions. for monosyllabic repetition and no prime targets, we chose 30 words from the 60 monosyllabic words using systematic random sampling. we divided them into two sets of 15 words for no prime and repetition prime conditions using the odd-even method. for trisyllabic repetition and no prime targets, we divided the 30 trisyllabic words into two sets of 15 words for no prime and repetition prime conditions using the odd-even method. thus, the primed word naming experiments included 150 words serving as targets for the phoneme, rime, syllable, repetition (monosyllabic: m-r and trisyllabic: t-r) and no prime (monosyllabic: m-np and trisyllabic: t-np) conditions (appendix). we used the no prime condition as a control instead of an unrelated condition to ensure the interpretation of any change in reaction time between experimental and control conditions as either facilitatory or inhibitory. we selected trisyllable and monosyllable words as target stimuli for phoneme and syllable priming, respectively. using target stimuli of equivalent word length corresponding with their primes (one-third, i.e., first phoneme as prime among the three phonemes in monosyllables and first syllable as prime among the three syllables in trisyllables) would control for word length as an extraneous variable. by maintaining an equivalent ratio between the length of the prime and target across the phoneme and syllable priming conditions, any resulting difference between the two primed and corresponding control conditions could be attributed to the nature of the prime itself. the primes for the phoneme (e.g., /s/ for ‘sit’), rime (e.g., /ɪt/ for ‘sit’), syllable (e.g., /bə/ for ‘banana’) and repetition (e.g., /sɪt/ for ‘sit’) priming conditions were audio recorded in a quiet room using praat software (boersma, 2001). for plosive consonants in the phoneme prime condition, we recorded the phonemes with a partial vowel (e.g., /p/ as ‘puh’). we edited the recordings to remove periods of silence before and after the prime for their precise duration in milliseconds: phoneme (m=483, sd=131), rime (m=512, sd=56), syllable (m=638, sd=102), m-r (m=617, sd=82) and t-r (m=874, sd=140). the auditory presentation of primes controls for orthographic influence. any impact on reaction time (latency) in correctly reading aloud the target word would be due to the auditory phonological prime preceding the reading task. we wrote dmdx programs such that the on-screen display began with a fixation point (*) for 500 milliseconds. an auditory prime of its respective duration corresponding with the prime type (sauval et al., 2017) and a silence of 500 milliseconds for the no prime conditions followed. the prime duration was equal to the stimulus-onset asynchrony (soa) as we did not use an interstimulus interval between the prime and target to control for strategic processing to the maximum extent possible (neely, 1991; posner & snyder, 1975). we presented the target word in lower case letters for 3000 milliseconds. we prepared a practice set phonological units in children’s word reading uthappa, wolgemuth & becerra 401 consisting of 10 prime-target pairs from the very familiar or familiar words not selected for the stimulus set. 2.4 procedures the participants sat in a quiet and well-lit room at their elementary school. for the primed word reading experiments, we adjusted seating to ensure visibility of the laptop screen. we verified placement of the headset microphone such that the recorded responses were audible. the participants were instructed as follows, “focus on the laptop screen when you see the ‘*’. you may hear some sounds through the headphones and immediately see a word on the screen. read the word aloud as soon as you can”. we chose the word naming/reading task over lexical decision to avoid cognitive demands associated with choosing the correct versus incorrect responses. the auditory prime presentation with the reading task is functionally relevant as it mirrors tasks in phonology-based reading instruction where one provides spoken phonological cues to support word reading. the participants took the practice trials they became familiar with the task. they needed no more than two repetitions of the practice set. we presented the stimulus for each of the conditions in random order. the software randomized the items within each experiment. we administered the two word reading subtests per instructions in the test manual. the participants took short breaks (approximately 5 minutes) between the experiments or tests, as needed. we gave a small reward to each participant upon completion of the tasks. 2.5 data analysis we analysed the digitally recorded primed word naming responses for onset reaction times in milliseconds using checkvocal software. we excluded erroneous word reading responses (incorrect word identification, response onset before 250 milliseconds – less than 0.1%, participant’s overt inattention). we analysed the data using both descriptive and inferential statistics (statistical package for social sciences software version 26). all statistical tests used p<.05 as the level of significance. we compared the experimental priming conditions with their corresponding control conditions through paired t-tests. effect size using cohen’s d was calculated considering t value for correlated observations (tc), d=tc [2(1-r)/n]½ and tc=md/(sdd/n½) (md is the difference of means, sdd is the standard deviation of differences, r is the correlation co-efficient and n stands for sample size), for all paired comparisons (dunlap et al., 1996). to determine priming effects across the three sub-lexical phonological units, we administered repeated measures anova with a greenhouse-geisser correction and conducted post hoc analyses using the bonferroni correction. we performed pearson’s correlations to examine the relationship between the reaction time values, and word and pseudo-word reading scores. we also conducted correlational analyses by controlling the wi and wa scores for age or grade. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 394-412, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 402 3. findings we calculated mean reaction time values for each of the priming and control conditions and compiled raw scores on the wi and wa subtests for each participant. table 1. summarizes the mean (m) and standard deviation (sd) values for the experimental and control priming conditions, and subtests of word reading ability. table 1 mean and standard deviation for primed word reading reaction times (in milliseconds) and reading raw scores measure m sd error* m sd error* priming condition priming condition m-np 654 131 2 t-np 690 128 6.8 m-r 530 107 2.2 t-r 443 145 3.1 phoneme 631 106 3.1 syllable 670 114 4 rime 667 110 2.1 reading subtest wi 59.5# 6.2 wa 23^ 4.8 note. *percentage of erred word reading responses excluded from analysis; #grade equivalence: 5.2; ^grade equivalence: 5.5 on the paired comparisons of the experimental priming conditions with their corresponding control conditions, we obtained statistically significant differences between m-r and m-np (530 ms vs. 654 ms), t(29)=7.25, p<.001, d=1.03, r=.7, and t-r and t-np conditions (443 ms vs. 690 ms), t(29)=8.8, p<.001, d=1.8, r=.37, with large effect sizes. there were no statistically significant differences between phoneme and m-np (631 ms vs. 654 ms), t(29)=1.61, p=.11, d=.18, r=.8, rime and m-np (667 ms vs. 654 ms), t(29)=.83, p=.41, d=.1, r=.77, and syllable and t-np (670 ms vs. 690 ms), t(29)= 1.875, p=.07, d=.16, r=.88, conditions. next, we administered the repeated measures anova to determine the priming effects across phoneme, rime and syllable primes after obtaining difference values with their respective no prime control conditions as m-np and t-np (654 ms vs. 690 ms) were significantly different with a small effect size, t(29)= 2.48, p<.019, d=.28, r=.81. there was a significant effect of prime type on the adjusted reaction time values, f(1.661, 48.165)=5.97, p=.007, 𝜂𝑝 2=.17, 𝜂2=.17. post hoc analyses using the bonferroni correction for three pairwise tests revealed a statistically significant difference between adjusted phoneme and rime conditions with an effect size approaching the moderate level (mdifference=35 ms), p=.001, d=.46, r =.83. phoneme and syllable (mdifference=2 ms), p=1, d =.03, r =.49, and rime and syllable conditions (mdifference=32 ms), p=.04, d=.44, r=.58, were not significantly different although the latter was approaching significance. last, we performed correlational analyses between the reaction time values and reading scores, also controlling the reading scores for age and grade. table 2. summarizes these results. phonological units in children’s word reading uthappa, wolgemuth & becerra 403 table 2 primed reaction time and reading scores – pearson’s correlation coefficients and p-values priming condition wi wia wig wa waa wag r (p) r (p) r (p) r (p) r (p) r (p) m-np -.41 (.022) -.37 (.047) -.4 (.029) -.31 (.091) -.27 (.153) -.29 (.116) t-np -.47 (.008) -.47 (.01) -.51 (.005) -.36 (.05) -.34 (.065) -.38 (.042) m-r -.24 (.202) -.28 (.128) -.29 (.12) -.11 (.55) -.14 (.463) -.14 (.441) t-r -.1 (.589) -.1 (.603) -.11 (.549) -.1 (.598) -.11 (.57) -.09 (.617) phoneme -.29 (.119) -.27 (.151) -.29 (.118) -.17 (.347) -.15 (.413) -.17 (.358) rime -.26 (.165) -.26 (.162) -.3 (.107) -.16 (.385) -.16 (.399) -.19 (.314) syllable -.35 (.053) -.43 (.02) -.47 (.01) -.3 (.101) -.35 (.06) -.38 (.037) note. acontrolled for age, gcontrolled for grade the two control conditions, m-np and t-np exhibited statistically significant, weak to moderate negative correlations with wi, with and without controlling for age or grade. m-np and t-np did not correlate with wa, except between t-np and wa when controlled for grade. the two repetition priming conditions, m-r and t-r did not correlate with wi or wa. among the sublexical units, phoneme and rime priming did not correlate with wi or wa. syllable priming exhibited weak to moderate negative correlations with wi when controlled for age or grade, and with wa only when controlled for grade. 4. discussion and conclusions the first aim of the study was to determine the role of auditory phonological lexical, and sub-lexical units on word reading, through a primed and timed word reading task. we hypothesized that word reading speed primed by repetition, phoneme, rime, and syllable primes would be different from word reading speed in their absence, if spoken phonological units exerted an influence on word reading. the results of the paired comparisons between the experimental and corresponding control conditions revealed that auditory repetition primes for both monosyllables and trisyllables facilitated word reading speed. phoneme, syllable, and rime units did not exert a similar influence. therefore, the results confirm the role of spoken phonology on word reading at the lexical level but not at the sub-lexical level for this group of participants in grades 4 and 5. the repetition priming effect we observed in this study is consistent with previous findings concerning identity priming on lexical decision making in children and adults (holcomb et al., 2005; sauval et al., 2017). while we know that lexical phonology impacts auditory word repetition in adults (dumay & radeau, 1997), this study provides evidence for the relevance of lexical phonology on a speechproduction-based word reading task in fourthand fifth-grade bilingual journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 394-412, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 404 children. these findings shed light on the direction of priming caused by spoken identity primes and indicate that they are facilitatory regardless of word length. also, this priming effect on third-grade familiar words in children whose reading and pseudo-word reading grade equivalences (5;2 and 5;5, respectively) are well above the third grade suggests that phonology does play a role in familiar word reading, contradicting the idea of a phonological effect associated with orthographically challenging or lessfamiliar words (e.g., eddy et al., 2016; schmalz et al., 2013; ziegler et al., 2014). the only auditory phonological study in children which investigated syllable level facilitation effects support our finding. the spoken sub-lexical units including the syllable did not influence fourthand fifth-grade participants in our study as they were at grades where syllable facilitation reduces (reistma, 1984). to examine the pattern of influence of sub-lexical units further, we compared phoneme, rime and syllable priming after adjusting the reaction time values in relation to their corresponding control conditions. we made this adjustment to account for the difference between no prime monosyllable and trisyllable reading speeds. it supported the orthographic length effect on word reading where words with more orthographic units require a longer time to read (spieler & balota, 2000). the results indicated that the impact of the three sub-lexical units were different. pair-wise comparison revealed that phoneme and rime priming were different with the former being facilitatory and the latter inhibitory compared to the mean reaction time of the control condition. the facilitatory effect may be because phoneme primes elicit prior activation of the initial unit of the target word, thereby requiring lesser time to continue serial activation of the next phonemes. on the contrary, rime primes may activate the latter phoneme units in the word. to produce the target word, the correct sequence of phonemes may have to compete with the activated rime unit or wait until it is back to pre-activation levels, requiring more time. the result for auditory rime priming was similar to findings in adults who show rime interference compared to unrelated primes (meyer & schriefers, 1991). other pair-wise comparisons between phoneme and syllable priming, and rime and syllable priming yielded no significant differences. among them, phoneme and syllable priming effects were similar whereas rime and syllable priming effects were approaching significance. the reduced interference of phoneme priming and syllable priming, to a certain extent, versus rime priming was similar to findings in adults where beginning-related auditory primes interfere less than endrelated primes (meyer & schriefers, 1991; schriefers et al., 1990). overall, the findings point to a facilitatory trend of phoneme and syllable priming and an interfering trend of rime priming. these findings imply that the role of auditory phonological units at different sub-lexical levels may be subtly different. secondly, we aimed to study the relationship between timed word reading under the influence of phonological primes and word reading ability. here, we began by examining whether the two no prime reading reaction times varied as a function of reading ability. the results revealed that both monosyllabic and trisyllabic reading speeds were faster for children who had higher word identification scores. therefore, the speed of reading aloud phonological units in children’s word reading uthappa, wolgemuth & becerra 405 appears to be related to word reading ability, inconsistent with prior research that has suggested an independence between processing speed on visual word recognition and reading ability after eight years of age (floyd et al., 2007). on the other hand, repetition priming reaction times for both monosyllables and trisyllables did not relate with word reading ability. it may be argued that in both the repetition priming conditions, the participants only had to hear the prime and repeat it without reading the word. although it is possible that the participants may not have required to read the written target per se, we only considered word reading responses with an onset of 250 milliseconds after the onset of the written word to ensure that the responses were not initiated upon presentation of the prime. together with the findings of lexical auditory priming, it supports the notion that reading ability does not necessarily override the effects of spoken phonology at the lexical level on a familiar word reading task in children. this is unlike the variable effect of auditory identity priming on a lexical decision task where primes influence less frequent words greater than more frequent words (sauval et al., 2017). among the sub-lexical priming conditions, we found that syllable primed reading reaction time was faster when word identification scores were higher after controlling age or grade. there is no previous research referencing auditory syllable priming and word reading per se; however, the study by reistma (1984) that emphasized the continuing role of the auditory initial syllable in the years of learning to read and these findings support the notion that the syllable is a unit that potentially has an auditory phonological impact which relates to reading ability. there are a couple of possibilities as to why the syllable emerged as the sole auditory phonological unit exhibiting a relationship with reading ability. the phonological syllable effect may continue beyond the early reading years as the syllable is the earliest and largest sub-lexical unit in the developmental hierarchy of phonological awareness (anthony & francis, 2005). interestingly, the repetition prime which is larger than the syllable prime did not yield a similar relationship. considering the presence of spanish-english bilingualism, the syllable unit may have exerted an auditory phonological cross-linguistic influence based on oral language exposure (denton et al., 2000). in addition, there was no consistent relationship obtained with word attack and any of the reading reaction time conditions indicating that the use of phoneme-grapheme correspondence rules during pseudo-word reading did not relate with reading speed. this is a difference in the auditory phonological influence on real and pseudo-word reading. these findings collectively point to a variable role of spoken phonological processing in reading. spoken phonology at the lexical level enhances word reading speed. there is a difference between phoneme and rime priming effects at the sub-lexical level. syllable priming effect on word reading in terms of facilitation relates with real word reading ability, but not word attack. the impact of auditory phonology on reading aligns with the biam model which supports the interaction between speaking and print mechanisms (grainger et al., 2003; diependaele et al., 2010). like the activation of phonological codes for visual word recognition at both lexical and sub-lexical levels according to biam, the present study illustrates that journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 394-412, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 406 speech units in the context of reading aloud process at lexical and sublexical levels. together with the finding that auditory primed word reading speed is not related to pseudo-word reading ability, the priming results suggest that models of reading must account for spoken phonological influences along with phonological influences extracted from the orthography via an indirect route, for a comprehensive account of reading development. this study confirms that spoken phonology influences english word reading in fourthand fifth-grade spanish-english bilingual children without orthographic involvement, through an auditory primed word reading experiment. we recognize limitations which future research may shed light on regarding the phonological aspects of reading from an orthographyindependent perspective. while the role of lexical repetition primes was clear, additions to the priming paradigm may help delineate the impact of sublexical units to a greater extent. we suggest exploring the effect of soas much closer to the target than in the current study where prime onset was at least 300 milliseconds prior to the target. we retained a variable prime duration to match the non-experimental situation of phonology-based instruction in a real clinical/educational setting. priming through soas between 150 milliseconds before and after the target would help investigate the time course of sub-lexical phonological access (e.g., meyer & schriefers, 1991; zeguers et al., 2018). previous studies have considered unrelated primes as controls (meyer & schriefers, 1991; schriefers et al., 1990; sauval et al., 2017). although we identified the direction of priming by using the no prime condition as control, the addition of an unrelated condition may yield more information. particularly, the sub-lexical primes, which showed a difference when compared across themselves (phoneme versus rime) may exhibit stronger effects if individually compared with unrelated primes. since the repetition prime was a real word, we assumed that the phonological effect observed was lexical. using a readable non-word as a target and repetition prime would allow a distinction between a whole-unit non-lexical phonological prime and a lexical one. further investigation of the relationship between sub-lexical phonology at the syllable level and reading ability may reveal a potential bilingual phonological influence by comparing monolingual and bilingual children reading english, as well as children reading both english and spanish languages. in conclusion, this study broadens our understanding concerning the role of auditory phonology on reading in fourthand fifth-grade children. a spoken repetition prime facilitates the speed of reading aloud in children. this facilitation extends beyond a non-speech lexical decision task and is independent of reading ability in these grades. the findings point to differences in lexical and sub-lexical phonological processing across different phonological units. auditory phoneme and rime priming effects occur in the facilitatory and inhibitory directions, respectively. the syllable is the only spoken sub-lexical phonological unit whose priming effects appear to relate with word reading ability. overall, the findings suggest a lexical phonological effect without orthography and sub-lexical phonological units appear to vary in the amount of influence they exert upon word reading. phonological units in children’s word reading uthappa, wolgemuth & becerra 407 acknowledgements we thank the administrators and teachers at the fontana unified school district and locust 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(2005). reading acquisition, developmental dyslexia, and skilled reading across languages: a psycholinguistic grain size theory. psychological bulletin, 131(1), 3–29. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.131.1.3 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 394-412, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 412 appendix phoneme rime syllable m-r t-np bat bag banana bag banana bed beg basketball big butterfly bet big butterfly bus colorful bus bug chocolate cat december cap but colorful dip dinosaur car cat computer fin forgetful cop cup december gum hamburger cut dig different jet lemonade dip dog dinosaur lip november fan dot division man rectangle fat fin forgetful nut sandwiches for fun gorilla pen september get god hamburger pot strawberry gum gun holiday sad tomato jam jar lemonade tap vacation jog jet library m-np t-r lap kid november bat basketball lip leg pineapple bug chocolate mad lit rectangle car computer mat man respectful cop different mud mug sandwiches dig division nut not saturday for gorilla pen pet september god holiday pin pot storybook jar library rat ran strawberry jog pineapple rob red together leg respectful sad run tomato mat saturday sun sit tomorrow not storybook ten tap vacation rat together tub top yesterday run tomorrow ten yesterday journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 499-518, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 499 acquisition of extended prosodic words in greek via consonant harmony anastasios poulidakis1 university of crete abstract the present research examines the use of consonant harmony in the longitudinal data of four greek-speaking children with typical development and how it facilitates language acquisition in an environment that is not well studied with this process in child speech from a phonological perspective. in particular, it is used for prosodic reasons and in order for children to acquire extended prosodic words. properties of consonant harmony such as the domain, direction and degree of assimilation are also examined. our data are couched in optimality theory framework (prince & smolensky, 1993) and more specifically, they are based on pater & werle’s (2001, 2003) proposal, who consider this process as agreement between consonants. this proposal can account for harmonies with full assimilation and change of place in targets only. however, children’s tokens present variation to the degree of assimilation and the number of distinctive features that change in target. so, we also rely on multiple parallel grammars model (revithiadou & tzakosta, 2004), which in combination with the proposal of pater & werle’s (2001, 2003), can adequately account for the additional and variable properties of consonant harmony presented in children’s extended prosodic words. keywords: language acquisition, consonant harmony in greek, optimality theory, extended prosodic word 1. introduction consonant harmony (hereinafter ch) is defined as an assimilation process between non adjacent consonantal segments, which plays a decisive role in linguistic development (see vihman, 1978, p. 288; kappa, 2001, p. 401; pater & werle, 2001, p. 119; tzakosta, 2007, p. 6, among others). a ch example constitutes the following (1). adult’s form  child’s form child: age 1) [kot]  [kok]2 (coat) trevor: 1;5.183 (american english, pater & werle, 2001, p. 119) in (1) the consonant [k], which is characterized as [dorsal4, -continuant, voiced] assigns its place to [coronal, -continuant, -voiced] consonant [t] 1 bio: anastasios poulidakis is a ph.d. candidate student at the university of crete. his research interests include first and second language acquisition, language development and language learning. philp0824@philology.uoc.gr 2 the brackets [...] indicate the adult’s and child’s output respectively. 3 the numbers indicate the child’s years, months and days. e.g. 1;5.18 means that the child is one year, five months and eighteen days old. received : 05.11.2021 accepted : 24.02.2022 published : 21.04.2022 mailto:philp0824@philology.uoc.gr acquisition of extended prosodic words poulidakis 500 and converts it also to [k]. some properties of ch which are examined in child speech are the df that change (place, manner, voice), the direction (progressive, regressive), degree (partial, full) and domain (e.g. foot, prosodic word) of assimilation, whether it is affected by stress and others. alongside the properties of ch, a long standing question that has been formulated and the answer to which has not a generally accepted view is what motivates children to use this process. several aspects have been formulated which concern the consonantal segments as well as prosodic or phonotactic reasons. regarding the consonantal segments, children tend to replace consonants that have not yet been acquired (see vihman, 1978; berg, 1992; among others) or tend to substitute marked consonants with unmarked (e.g. stoel-gammon & stemberger, 1994; goad, 2004). as for prosodic reasons, it is argued that it helps children acquire new prosodic positions (bat-el, 2009). in hebrew for example, it is ascertained that the first syllables produced by children are the stressed ones (e.g. echols & newport, 1992; echols 2001). so, given that in hebrew, stress in most words is located in ultimate or penultimate the first two syllables that children will acquire will be these located as rightmost as possible in a prosodic word (adam & bat-el, 2008). some researchers (e.g. garnica & edwards, 1977; donahue, 1986; berg & schade, 2000; bat-el, 2009) argue that as the prosodic word expands its segmental faithfulness is reduced, namely, when children begin to produce new segments in a word, these do not surface immediately faithfully but with ch (example 2), something that is considered to be the result of a trade-off (bat-el, 2009, p. 121). adult’s form  child’s form 2) [tarneˈgolet]  [ˈgoget] > [ˈgolet] > [gaˈgolet] > [taˈgolet] (hen) (hebrew, bat-el 2009, p. 121) another view mentions that children’s consonants in unstressed syllables are assimilated to consonants in stressed syllables (e.g. bernhardt & stemberger, 1998). other researchers point out that ch is used for phonotactic reasons and in order for specific df to be licensed or aligned in specific positions or for the avoidance of specific df in specific positions (see rose, 2000; kappa, 2001; goad, 2004; among others). an instance is illustrated in the below figure (1). figure 1. consonant harmony via licensing (drawn from goad, 2004, p. 5) 4 the distinctive features (hereinafter df) of place [dorsal], [labial] and [coronal] define the major articulatory areas and they are symbolized with capital letters inside brackets because they are characterized as unary / univalent, (see kappa, (to appear), p. 75 76), namely, each sound characterized by one of the above categories is distinguished due to the presence of its place df and not of its absence. when one sound is characterized in relation to a major articulatory area then it automatically implies its absence of the others. however, the univalent df may appear with double articulation, as in the case of [kw] which is characterized as [labio-velar] and bears as major articulatory area [dorsal] and as secondary [labial]. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 499-518, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 501 in figure 1. ch is argued to take place in a specific domain such as foot where the word [gud] is uttered by the child as [gug]. ch is used in order for a marked df to emerge, as [dorsal] place of consonant [g] in a weak unstressed syllable, such as the last onset of foot via its licensing by a strong stressed syllable, namely, the initial onset of foot which contains the [dorsal] [g] (goad, 2004). in the present study our main question is why children use the process of ch in their speech. we will argue that it is due to prosodic reasons and in order for children to utter extended prosodic words. alongside the main question, it will be shown how ch helps children acquire extended prosodic words and some properties of ch, such as its domain, direction and degree of assimilation will be discussed. the remaining of the paper is organized as follows: next the notion of extended prosodic word is defined and discussed. section 2 includes the research methodology and the ch data of the greekspeaking children are presented and described. section 3 contains the analysis of data based on the theoretical model of optimality theory (hereinafter ot, prince & smolensky, 1993, p. 2) and the proposal of pater & werle’s (2001, p. 122, 2003, p. 386), who count ch as agreement between consonants. for the variable properties of children’s ch the multiple parallel grammars model is additionally used (revithiadou & tzakosta 2004, p. 378). in section 4 the conclusion follows and at the end after the references, the tokens with ch of each child separately drawn for the needs of the present research are cited in appendix. 1.1. extended prosodic word the extended prosodic word emerges when a functional element of small word size is joined as adjunction with the prosodic word and is created one larger structure (itô & mester, 2009; anderson, 2011), as illustrated in figures (2a, b). cl verb verb cl [to ˈeðose] (it gave) [ˈpaɾe to] (take it) figures 2a, b. extended prosodic word via functional element’s adjunction (drawn from tzakosta, 2004a, p. 695 696) the symbol a in figures (2a, b) represents a functional element, such as a clitic (e.g. article, particle or pronoun), while the inner prosodic word may consist of a noun, verb or adjective. clitics which precede the prosodic word are called proclitics, while these that follow enclitics (halpern, 1998, p. 101). acquisition of extended prosodic words poulidakis 502 in children’s tokens with ch of the present study emerge only the first ones (figure 2a). further, clitics come from the non lexicon group of prepositions, pronouns, particles and are considered weak elements (e.g. halpern, 1998; tzakosta, 2004a; revithiadou & spyropoulos, 2008; anderson, 2011). they are usually monosyllabic and do not bear stress because they depend on higher prosodic structures, which act as their host, such as an adjacent prosodic word (e.g. halpern, 1998; tzakosta, 2004a; revithiadou & spyropoulos, 2008; anderson, 2011).5 however, clitics constitute subject of controversy regarding their phonological representation. this happens due to the fact that several researchers disagree whether the clitic group is included as a layer in the prosodic hierarchy (3a, b). 3a) (e.g. selkirk, 1996) b) (e.g. nespor & vogel, 1986) prosodic hierarchy prosodic hierarchy utterance phonological utterance intonational phrase intonational phrase phonological phrase phonological phrase prosodic word clitic group foot prosodic word syllable foot syllable some of them, who reject the existence of clitic group, point out that clitics are integrated into the prosodic word or in other categories of the prosodic hierarchy depending on the requirements of the respective language (e.g. zec & inkelas, 1991; booij, 1996; selkirk, 1996), while others relying on phonological processes, which are accomplished in the domain of clitic group, such as vowel deletion in word edges, consider clitics as independent prosodic elements that are not integrated in other categories and together with adjacent non clitic words constitute the clitic group (e.g. nespor & vogel, 1986; hayes, 1989). in the current study the first view is adopted, as an additional layer in the prosodic hierarchy demands more effort from the children, something that is considered empirically and theoretically less economical in the acquisition of their mother tongue (tzakosta, 2004a). 2. methodology 2.1. information of subjects and way of collecting material all parents before the meetings between researcher and children provided written and verbal consent. the data collection comes from four subjects, two twin and two non twin monolingual greek-speaking children with typical linguistic development. children speak standard modern greek despite living in crete and do not seem to be dialectal. the parents of the subjects were also given a questionnaire, in which they were asked to fill, if they 5 in greek when two enclitics are integrated in the same prosodic word, then stress is presented in this located in penultimate (e.g. [ˈðo.se ˈmu to]). in this specific language, trochaic foots at the right edge of word are created when two consecutive unstressed syllables emerge with the presupposition that, regarding stress, clash (anderson, 2011, p. 2003) is not provoked. this way, the trisyllabic law is satisfied, which prohibits a syllable to be stressed before the antepenultimate (revithiadou & spyropoulos, 2008, p. 46). journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 499-518, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 503 desire, whether children speak the cretan dialect among others and the answer they gave for all the subjects is that they do not. basic tool for children’s data recording is the professional tape recorder marantz pmd661mkii, while the main experimental method is the naming of pictures that were presented in children via a laptop. these pictures were drawn from a research concerning child speech in greek (kappa & paracheraki, 2014) with some additions and subtractions for the needs of the present research, which include everyday words, such as foods, animals, plants, professions, vehicles, buildings, household utensils and others. the pictures were designed to give the children the opportunity to utter all types of consonants and clusters in every position.6 in addition, spontaneous child speech was recorded, which resulted through various activities either inside kindergartens or in their courtyard, such as reading books, playing with bricks, balls, dolls, cars, painting with markers, fun in slide, swings, seesaw and others. children’s speech was recorded 1 2 times per week. the research lasted about 15 months, while the duration of each recording ranged from 15 30 minutes for each of the four children separately. the age of twin children is 1;8.15 on the first recording and 2;10.9 on the last recording. the age of non twin boy is 1;7.5 2;7.18, while of non twin girl is 1;6.26 2;9.12. regarding their tokens the four children utter in total 35.677 out of which 872 with ch (359 by twin children and 513 by non twin). finally, the reproduction, processing and conversion of audio material into phonetic tokens were done via audacity software, while the recording and organization of tokens via microsoft office word. the transcription was done by ear only and for that reason data are included, in which there is a high degree of certainty of what the children utter. for the phonetic rendering of words the international phonetic alphabet was used. 2.2 children’s data that are excluded in this section children’s data are cited that present two processes, in which some researchers argue that they undergo ch, while others do not consider them as a result of ch. examples containing the following processes have not been used in the children’s tokens count, as there is not so far a universal view whether ch is included in these. the first is coalescence, which emerges when children utter from a cluster of consonants targets a new consonant, which includes df from both cluster’s consonants that are usually unmarked (kappa, 2004, p. 210). below an example (4) of coalescence from the present study is provided. adult’s form  child’s form child: age 4) [ˈkra.nos]  [ˈta.no] (helmet) boy (twin): 2;8 in (4) the consonant [t] of output [ˈta.no], which bears df [coronal, continuant, -voiced], arises from the coalescence of consonants of the adult’s output first syllable [k] and [r] with df [dorsal, -continuant, -voiced] and 6 for example each segment that belongs to a category of consonants based on its df (e.g. [dorsal], [labial], [stop], [fricative] and so on) appears at least once in words in initial, medial and final stressed and unstressed syllable. acquisition of extended prosodic words poulidakis 504 [coronal, rhotic, +voiced] respectively. in particular, consonant [t] kept the unmarked df from consonants’ cluster, namely, the [coronal] place from [r], while the [-continuant] manner and [-voiced] voice from [k]. reduplication constitutes the second process, which emerges when a word is exactly repeated as it is or a part or the root or the stem of a word or even the whole sentence or phrase (urbanczyk, 2007, p. 473). furthermore, reduplication and ch has been argued that they look like because both include melody copy (goad, 2001). in other researches though, reduplication has been proposed that it is realized with a syllable or foot copy (tzakosta, 2007), as in examples (5) and (6) respectively, while ch with a df or segment copy (e.g. kappa, 2001; tzakosta, 2007). adult’s form  child’s form child: age 5) [xa.mi.ˈlo.ni]  [xa.ˈlo.lo] ((he / she / it) lowers) girl (twin): 2;9.18 6) [baba]  [babababa] (dad) zosia: 1;7 (polish, dressler, dziubalska-kołaczyk, gagarina & kilani-schoch 2011, p. 464) in example (5) copy of the stressed syllable [ˈlo] in the last syllable [ni] is realized resulting in a change of both its consonant and vowel, while in example (6) copy of the whole foot [baba] is realized. however, other cases as (7) are taken into account in children’s data. adult’s form  child’s form child: age 7) [γu.ˈɾu.ni]  [γu.ˈγu.ni] (pig, 1 / 27) boy (non twin): 2;7.18 in (7), adopting the view that ch is realized with a df or segment copy (e.g. kappa, 2001; tzakosta, 2007), it is not clear that the process of ch is not included in the non twin boy’s output, since the vowel of the first two syllables is same and specifically [u]. 2.3 description of children’s tokens with consonant harmony before the description of children’s data it should be noted at this point that two developmental phases are distinguished, the early phase, which lasts till 2;0 years old and the intermediate, which begins after 2;0 years old. the extended prosodic words of twin and non twin children appear in the intermediate developmental stage, which is considered the transition of unmarked structures to marked ones, such as the emergence of codas, clusters, consonants characterized as [fricative], the utterance of trisyllabic and above words with faithfulness regarding the number of syllables and generally words with marked syllables as ccv, cvc, vc, v (e.g. kappa, 2000; tzakosta, 2003; tzakosta & kappa, 2008). during this stage all the 7 the first number states the times that the output is uttered with ch and the second number how many times in total it is uttered in child’s data. for instance, 1 / 2 means that the child utters the specific token two times, of which one with ch. the remaining can be a faithful utterance or to bear another process. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 499-518, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 505 children utter 739 tokens with ch out of which 34 are observed in extended prosodic words after the age of 2;3 years old (examples 8 41)8, 9. [dorsal] triggers place change adult’s form  child’s form child: age 8) [to ko.ˈli.so]  [ko ko.ˈli.so] (i (will) stick it, 1 / 9) boy (twin): 2;6.17 9) [pu ˈka.nu.me]  [ku ˈka.nu.me] (where we do, 1 / 2) boy (twin): 2;8.7 10) [pu sku.ˈpi.zu.me]  [ku ko.ˈpi.zu.me] (where we wipe, 1 / 1) boy (twin): 2;8.7 11) [to ˈe.vγa.la]  [kxo ˈe.γa.la] (i took it out, 1 / 5) boy (non twin): 2;5.16 12) [ðen ˈka.no]  [ʝe ˈka.no] (i do not do, 1 / 1) boy (non twin): 2;5.23 [dorsal] triggers place and manner change adult’s form  child’s form child: age 13) [θa ˈka.tso]  [ka ˈka.tso] (i will sit, 1 / 1) girl (non twin): 2;6.8 14) [θa ˈka.tsu.me] [ka ˈka.si.a.me] (we will sit, 1 / 1) girl (non twin): 2;7.6 15) [ta ˈҫer.ʝa]  [ҫa ˈҫe.ʝa] (the hands, 1 / 2) girl (non twin): 2;9.12 16) [θa ˈka.ni]  [ka ˈka.ni] ((he / she / it) will do, 1 / 2) girl (non twin): 2;9.12 [labial] triggers place change adult’s form  child’s form child: age 17) [tin ˈpi.ɾa]  [pi ˈpi.a] (i took her, 1 / 3) boy (non twin): 2;3 18) [to ˈspi.ti]  [po ˈpi.ti] (the house, 2 / 4) (m10) girl (non twin): 2;6.13 19) [to ˈspi.ti]  [pa ˈpi.ti] (the house, 2 / 4) girl (non twin): 2;6.13 20) [ta pe.ˈða.ca]  [pal pe.ˈða.ca] (the children, 1 / 1) girl (non twin): 2;9.12 [labial] triggers place and manner change adult’s form  child’s form child: age 21) [θa ˈpe.si]  [pa ˈpe.si] ((he / she / it) will fall, 2 / 4) boy (twin): 2;6.5 22) [θa ˈfi.ʝi]  [pa ˈpi.ʝi] ((he / she / it) will leave, 1 / 1) boy (twin): 2;6.24 23) [θa ˈpe.si]  [pa ˈpe.si] ((he / she / it) will fall, 2 / 4) boy (twin): 2;8 24) [ðe ˈbe.ni]  [be ˈbe.ni] ((he / she / it) does not get in, 13 / 47) girl (non twin): 2;3.22 8 the extended prosodic word is symbolized as: [a [b] pw ] pw, for example [to ko.ˈli.so]  [to [ko.ˈli.so] pw ] pw. 9 in all the examples the age begins from the smallest to the biggest per child. in case the age is same in two or more tokens, then they are listed based on syllables number beginning from disyllabic and ending to pentasyllabic words. 10 (m) = mimicry. as mimicry is considered the direct utterance of a token by the child either faithfully or with different df immediately after the utterance of the same token by the adult. the strategy of adult’s tokens mimicry from child constitutes a learning process. in other words, the child hears the token, processes it and utters it after having heard it again by itself. the process of information’s transfer between adult and child we assume that it contributes to the in depth understanding of the information. for this reason, data that are uttered as mimicry have been included in the present study. acquisition of extended prosodic words poulidakis 506 25) [ðe ˈbe.ni]  [be ˈbe.ni] ((he / she / it) does not get in, 13 / 47) girl (non twin): 2;4.26 26) [ðe ˈbe.ni]  [be ˈbe.ni] ((he / she / it) does not get in, 13 / 47) girl (non twin): 2;4.26 27) [ðe ˈbe.ni]  [be ˈbe.ni] ((he / she / it) does not get in, 13 / 47) girl (non twin): 2;4.28 28) [ðe ˈbe.ni]  [be ˈbe.ni] ((he / she / it) does not get in, 13 / 47) girl (non twin): 2;5.1 29) [ðe ˈbe.ni]  [be ˈbe.ni] ((he / she / it) does not get in, 13 / 47) girl (non twin): 2;5.1 30) [ðe ˈbe.ni]  [be ˈbe.ni] ((he / she / it) does not get in, 13 / 47) girl (non twin): 2;5.1 31) [ðe ˈbe.ni]  [be ˈbe.ni] ((he / she / it) does not get in, 13 / 47) girl (non twin): 2;5.1 32) [ðe ˈbe.ni]  [be ˈbe.ni] ((he / she / it) does not get in, 13 / 47) girl (non twin): 2;5.3 33) [ðe ˈbe.ni]  [be ˈbe.ni] ((he / she / it) does not get in, 13 / 47) girl (non twin): 2;5.10 34) [ðe ˈbe.ni]  [be ˈbe.ni] ((he / she / it) does not get in, 13 / 47) girl (non twin): 2;5.10 35) [ðe ˈbe.ni]  [ba ˈbe.ni] ((he / she / it) does not get in, 13 / 47) girl (non twin): 2;5.15 36) [ðe ˈbe.ni]  [ba ˈbe.ni] ((he / she / it) does not get in, 13 / 47) girl (non twin): 2;6.8 37) [θa ˈpe.si]  [pa ˈpe.ti] ((he / she / it) will fall, 3 / 8) girl (non twin): 2;7.6 38) [θa ˈpe.si]  [pa ˈpe.ti] ((he / she / it) will fall, 3 / 8) girl (non twin): 2;7.6 39) [θa ˈpe.si]  [pa ˈpe.ti] ((he / she / it) will fall, 3 / 8) girl (non twin): 2;7.6 40) [θa ˈpa.ne]  [pa ˈpa.ne] (they will go, 1 / 1) girl (non twin): 2;8.21 41) [θa ˈpa.o]  [pa ˈpa.o] (i will go, 1 / 2) girl (non twin): 2;8.28 regarding the properties of ch, in all the cases the direction of assimilation is ascertained to be regressive, namely, a consonant located in the inner prosodic word affects the initial consonant of the extended. the unilateral development of assimilation’s direction, that is, the replacement always of the initial syllable is due to the order of emergence and acquisition of elements which constitute the extended prosodic words. in other words, in cross-linguistic studies it is argued that in the early developmental stages of children functional elements are not often uttered (e.g. brown & bellugi, 1964; caselli, bates, casadio, fenson, fenson, sanderl & weir, 1995; kedar, casasola & lust, 2006; lleó, 2012; lidz & perkins, 2018). in addition, it is mentioned by researchers that in language acquisition, words as nouns and verbs are acquired earlier than functional elements (e.g. radford, 1990; ninio, 2019). a reason for this is that the former can be learned from singleword utterances, while the latter cannot be isolated from other words and are learned from multiword sentences (ninio, 2019). based on the aforementioned views, we assume that the acquisition of the extended journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 499-518, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 507 prosodic word presupposes the acquisition of the inner prosodic word. so, the segments of functional elements are more likely to be assimilated than to assign their df to these of nouns or verbs and since they precede in all the aforementioned tokens of children, the direction of assimilation is regressive. one additional reason for the emergence of the regressive assimilation only and the replacement of segments in proclitics lies to the fact that they are considered more difficult in their acquisition than enclitics because the latter constitute post-stress constituents and as such, they are adjoined more easily to the prosodic word (e.g. [ˈðo.se mu] (give me)  [ˈðo.sem], [ˈðo.mu], tzakosta, 2004b, p. 94). further, in most tokens the type of assimilation is full, except for examples (11 12), in which partial is ascertained. the degree of assimilation seems to be connected with the place of triggers, since ch with [coronal] triggers is usually partial (table 1) and assimilations in extended prosodic words are observed only with [dorsal] and [labial] triggers. table 1 degree of assimilation with [coronal] triggers twin children boy girl non twin children boy girl partial assimilation 46 / 70 (65.7%) 26 / 34 (76.5%) 22 / 33 (66.7%) 136 / 246 (55.3%) full assimilation 24 / 70 (34.3%) 8 / 34 (23.5%) 11 / 33 (33.3%) 110 / 246 (44.7%) table 1 shows the degree of assimilation in the total tokens observed in the intermediate developmental phase of the four children with ch, in which a [coronal] consonant participates as trigger. we assume that [coronal] consonants trigger mainly partial assimilation due to the fact that they are considered less marked than [dorsal] and [labial] (e.g. menn, 1975; cruttenden, 1978; donahue, 1986; pater & werle, 2003). so, they fail to systematically assign all their df to [dorsal] and [labial] consonants, which being more marked resist their full assimilation. as for the twin girl extended prosodic words with ch are not observed. finally, as it is mentioned in previous section, tokens such as (8, 13 14, 16 17, 24 34, 40 41) are not considered reduplication but ch because in the present study, the view, which mentions that reduplication is accomplished with the copy of one syllable or foot is adopted (tzakosta, 2007). one additional reason for the emergence of ch in this environment constitute several data, in which the first two syllables do not bear the same vowel (9, 11 12, 15, 18 23, 37 39) while in others, although they bear the same vowel, in the output of child the change of one is observed (10, 35 36)11. therefore, ch seems to be applied regardless of the type of vowels located in syllables that participate in the assimilation. 11 the reasons for the change of vowels in tokens of the four children are beyond the scope of the present research. acquisition of extended prosodic words poulidakis 508 3. findings in ot (prince & smolensky, 1993) universal grammar (hereinafter ug) provides a set of universal and violable constraints ranked in a language specific way. ot in language acquisition is viewed as constraint demotion and more specifically, in the initial stages where the structures uttered by children are unmarked, markedness constraints dominate faithfulness constraints, while in the final stage faithfulness constraints dominate markedness, as in adult’s grammar (e.g. demuth, 1995; gnanadesikan, 2004). regarding ch, the proposal of pater & werle’s (2001, 2003) is adopted, who based on lombardi (1999), consider this process as agreement between consonants. so, the general markedness constraint used is agree, which requires two consonants to bear the same place. an advantage of the agreement is that it allows assimilation from distance in child speech (pater & werle, 2001, 2003), while hansson (2010, p. 24 25) mentions that the same also happens in adult’s speech as it is not bound by strict locality, which in the theory of spreading is required. for the direction of assimilation, based on mccarthy (1997) and walker (2000), who propose in markedness constraints the addition of elements such as the place which is copied or the direction of assimilation, pater & werle (2003, p. 389) convert agree to agree-l-[dor], since they observe that dominant triggers in their subject’s data are [dorsal], while the direction of assimilation is systematically accomplished leftwards. faithfulness constraints for every category of consonants regarding place are also used, which demand faithfulness between input and output’s df and in combination with the markedness constraint of agreement predict the dominance of [dorsal] consonants to [labial] and [coronal], the dominance of [labial] to [coronal] and the non application of ch from [coronal] consonants. the same researchers use the ranking faith [dor], faith [lab] >> faith [cor], which kiparsky (1994, p. 1 3) suggests for the faithfulness constraints and it is responsible for the non participation of [coronal] triggers in the process of ch in adults’ speech. indicative example is cited next (table 2). table 2 dominance of [dorsal] consonant and regressive direction (drawn from pater & werle 2003, p. 389) /dɔg/12 agree-l-[dor] faith [cor] ☞ [gɔg]13 * [dɔg] *! the output [dɔg], as formulated in table (2), is rejected due to the fact that it violates fatally (symbolized as *!) the higher ranked constraint, while as optimal the output [gɔg] emerges, which violates the faithfulness constraint 12 the inputs are listed in sidelines. 13 the outputs are listed in brackets, while the optimal is indicated with ☞. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 499-518, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 509 due to assimilation, which though is the lowest ranked. the dominance of one constraint to other is indicated as agree-l-[dor] >> faith [cor]. before analyzing children’s data it should be noted at this point that their extended prosodic words present variation to the properties of ch. so, we rely on multiple parallel grammars model (revithiadou & tzakosta, 2004), according to which in the intermediate developmental stages children employ parallel grammars next to the core, namely, different rankings of constraints, which help them acquire the target grammar. returning to children’s data the constraint agree-l is drawn and for simplicity the general term identity-io is used as a cover term for faith (dor), faith (lab), faith (cor), which demands faithfulness between input and output form (mccarthy & prince, 1995, p. 264). in addition, the accomplishment of the assimilation leads to the satisfaction of the faithfulness constraint integrity (mccarthy & prince, 1995, p. 372; tzakosta, 2004a, p. 701), which prohibits the deletion of any part of the extended prosodic word. the ranking for twin and non twin children’s data is agree-l (dor / lab) >> integr >> ident-io (table 3). table 3 analysis of extended prosodic words [to ko.ˈli.so]14 agree-l (dor) integr ident-io ☞ [ko ko.ˈli.so] * [ko.ˈli.so] *! * [to ko.ˈli.so] *! [pu ˈka.nu.me] agree-l (dor) integr ident-io ☞ [ku ˈka.nu.me] * [ˈka.nu.me] *! * [pu ˈka.nu.me] *! [θa ˈka.ni] agree-l (dor) integr ident-io ☞ [ka ˈka.ni] *  ☞ [xa ˈka.ni] * [ˈka.ni] *! * [θa ˈka.ni] *! 14 the adult’s output is considered as input, namely, the linguistic stimuli that the child receives and hears from its parents, which is modern greek. acquisition of extended prosodic words poulidakis 510 [ðe ˈbe.ni] agree-l (lab) integr ident-io ☞ [be ˈbe.ni] *  ☞ [ve ˈbe.ni] * [ˈbe.ni] *! * [ðe ˈbe.ni] *! the proposal of pater & werle’s (2001, 2003) analysis in some cases seems that it can lead to more optimal outputs in table (3) that are not uttered by the children. this happens due to the markedness constraint, which refers to the place of the harmonized segments only and in the direction of assimilation. for this reason, it can account full assimilations with the harmonized segments having the same df regarding manner and voice before the implementation of ch. in order for the other optimal forms to emerge, in which the harmonized segments may differ from one to all their df before the completion of the assimilation, new constraints need to be added, which can account both types of assimilation, namely, partial or full as well as the additional df beyond place, which are required to change. so, we adopt the constraints anchor-l (-continuant), anchor-l (+continuant), which demand the anchoring of [-continuant] or [+continuant] manner at the left edge of word (tzakosta, 2002, p. 641). the ranking which leads to the optimal tokens of children is agree-l (dor / lab) >> integr >> anchor-l (-cont) >> anchor-l (+cont), ident-io (table 4)15. table 4 extended prosodic words uttered by children with full assimilation 15 two constraints can be equal to each other occupying the same position in a hierarchical ranking symbolized with (,) or with dashed line (kager, 1999, p. 37). [θa ˈka.ni] agree-l (dor) integr anch-l (-cont) anch-l (+cont) ident-io ☞ [ka ˈka.ni] * * [xa ˈka.ni] *! * [ˈka.ni] *! * * [θa ˈka.ni] *! * [ðe ˈbe.ni] agree-l (lab) integr anch-l (-cont) anch-l (+cont) ident-io ☞ [be ˈbe.ni] * * [ve ˈbe.ni] *! * journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 499-518, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 511 in the first example, the outputs [ˈka.ni] and [θa ˈka.ni] are rejected as non harmonic, while the optimal output [ka ˈka.ni] prevails over [xa ˈka.ni] due to the change of the required features to the target in order for full assimilation to emerge, something that is ensured with the dominance of anch-l (cont) to anch-l (+cont). the optimal token of the second example arises for the same reasons as the first with the difference that the trigger bears [labial] place. in a few cases, children’s productions present partial assimilation. the same constraints can deal with the properties of ch presented in them. however, these cases contain consonants in coda position and children have not yet acquired them. so, we need to add the constraint *coda, which prohibits consonants to appear in coda positions (mccarthy & prince, 1995, p. 267). the satisfaction of this constraint leads to the violation of maximality-io, which requires every segment of the input to have a correspondent in the output (mccarthy & prince, 1995, p. 264). the relevant ranking has the form agree-l (dor) >> integr >> anchor-l (+cont) >> *coda >> anchor-l (-cont), ident-io, max-io (table 5). table 5 extended prosodic words uttered by children with partial assimilation [ðen ˈka.no]16 agree-l (dor) integr anch-l (+cont) *coda anch-l (-cont) ident-io max-io ☞ [ʝe ˈka.no] * * * [ʝen ˈka.no] *! * * [cen ˈka.no] *! * * [ˈka.no] *! * * *** [ðen ˈka.no] *! * * candidates [ˈka.no] and [ðen ˈka.no] are excluded as non harmonic. in the candidate [cen ˈka.no] more df change than required resulting in full assimilation and its rejection, while between candidates [ʝe ˈka.no] and [ʝen ˈka.no] the former is selected cause it manages to have the required 16 in this example the adult’s output [ðen ˈka.no] has already incurred assimilation, as the input is /ðen ˈka.no/. however, it is difficult to explain via ot how child’s output [ʝe ˈka.no] results from /ðen ˈka.no/ due to the fact that this model cannot predict the cyclic evaluation of processes in a single ranking, such as for instance two assimilations (mccarthy, 2001). how ot could adequately deal with this example, as other serial derivational models do, is beyond the scope of the present research, since in all the examples the adult’s output is considered as input for the tokens of children. [ˈbe.ni] *! * * [ðe ˈbe.ni] *! * acquisition of extended prosodic words poulidakis 512 properties regarding degree and df that change and simultaneously to delete consonant in coda position. so, the promotion of either anch-l (cont) or anch-l (+cont) over the other and together with the other constraints used, can sufficient account the emergence of both types of assimilation and the accomplishment of the respective type of ch with change of one or two df in the extended prosodic words of children. sometimes an intervening consonant is located between the harmonized segments, which could also be a potential target for assimilation, as [s] in the example [to ˈspi.ti]. however, if assimilation takes place within prosodic word then the extended one cannot be uttered with all its elements. further, the constraints used in the previous data can resolve such situations and there is no need to add another one to force the domain of assimilation in initial syllable. the relevant ranking is agree-l (lab) >> integr >> anchor-l (-cont) >> anchor-l (+cont), ident-io, max-io (table 6). table 6 assimilation with intervening consonant [to ˈspi.ti] agree-l (lab) integr anch-l (-cont) anch-l (+cont) ident-io max-io ☞ [po ˈpi.ti] * * * [ˈfpi.ti] *! * * ** [ˈspi.ti] *! * * ** [to ˈspi.ti] *! * according to table (6), candidates [ˈspi.ti] and [to ˈspi.ti] are rejected due to non application of ch. in the candidate [ˈfpi.ti] the assimilation does not maintain all elements of the extended prosodic word violating this way the second higher constraint. as optimal emerges [po ˈpi.ti], which preserve all parts of the extended prosodic word and the assimilation arises with the features required here, namely, full assimilation with place change. so, there is no need to add a positional specific constraint in order for the assimilation to take place in the consonant of the first syllable, as this role has integrity, which penalizes all the assimilations that cannot retain the whole extended prosodic word, that is, those whose domain of application is restricted to the inner prosodic word. finally, the extended prosodic words of children seem to not play any role if they constitute noun or verb phrase (e.g. article + noun, [to ˈspi.ti] (the house) or particle + verb [θa ˈka.tso] (i will sit), since the constraints used can lead to the optimal tokens in both categories and only the ranking need to change in some of them. 4. conclusion in the present study, we dealt with ch and some of its properties in greekspeaking twin and non-twin children. their data agree with other researches, in which it is pointed out that this process is used for prosodic reasons (e.g. bat-el, 2009). in particular, it helps children utter extended journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 499-518, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 513 prosodic words, in which the consonant of the proclitic is assimilated to one located in the inner prosodic word. regarding ch properties, regressive assimilation arises in all children’s tokens and full in almost all of them. regressive assimilation emerges due to the late acquisition of proclitics in comparison to prosodic words, while full assimilation due to the specific place of triggers. for the analysis of children’s tokens, we relied on ot framework (prince & smolensky, 1993) and we adopted pater & werle’s (2001, 2003) proposal of agreement and the constraints agree-l (place) and identity-io. for the variation that properties of ch present in children’s tokens we used the multiple parallel grammars model (revithiadou & tzakosta, 2004) and the constraints integrity, anchor-l (-continuant), anchor-l (+continuant), which is responsible for the preservation of all the elements in extended prosodic words and the anchoring for [-continuant] or [+continuant] manner at the left edge of word respectively (tzakosta, 2002; tzakosta, 2004a). the two latter can account for ch, in which partial or full assimilations with the change of one or two df are presented. in a few cases, we added the constraints *coda and maximality-io due to non utterance of consonants in coda position, which lead to the deletion of segments in the output forms of children (mccarthy & prince, 1995). a question that remains open and we leave it for future research is why in some cases the trigger assigns only its place to the target while in others its place and manner. a bigger sample of data could address this issue. further, children’s data seem to be against the clitic group as a separate layer, since it would demand extra constraints referring to it and its relation to other layers in the prosodic hierarchy (tzakosta, 2004a), something that is not necessary in this study as the constraints used can adequately provide a proper analysis. acknowledgments the research project was supported by the hellenic foundation for research and innovation (h.f.r.i.) under the “2nd call for h.f.r.i. research projects to support faculty members & researchers” (project number: 3754.). earlier version of the paper was benefited by conversations and suggestions from all members of the phonological reading group eirini apostolopoulou, maria gatsou, katerina iliopoulou, ioanna kappa, theodoro lyriotaki, christina mousga & eirini ploumidi. all errors remain mine. references adam, g., & bat-el, o. 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(ed.), proceedings of the 10th west coast conference on formal linguistics (pp. 505-519). csli publications. acquisition of extended prosodic words poulidakis 518 appendix twin children boy adult’s form child’s form age translation 1 θa ˈpe.si pa ˈpe.si 2;6.5 (he / she / it) will fall 2 to ko.ˈli.so ko ko.ˈli.so 2;6.17 i (will) stick it 3 θa ˈfi.ʝi pa ˈpi.ʝi 2;6.24 (he / she / it) will leave 4 θa ˈpe.si pa ˈpe.si 2;8 (he / she / it) will fall 5 pu ˈka.nu.me ku ˈka.nu.me 2;8.7 where we do 6 pu sku.ˈpi.zu.me ku ko.ˈpi.zu.me 2;8.7 where we wipe non twin children boy adult’s form child’s form age translation 1 tin ˈpi.ɾa pi ˈpi.a 2;3 i took her 2 to ˈe.vγa.la kxo ˈe.γa.la 2;5.16 i took it out 3 ðen ˈka.no ʝe ˈka.no 2;5.23 i do not do non twin children girl adult’s form child’s form age translation 1 ðe ˈbe.ni be ˈbe.ni 2;3.22 (he / she / it) does not get in 2 ðe ˈbe.ni be ˈbe.ni 2;4.26 (he / she / it) does not get in 3 ðe ˈbe.ni be ˈbe.ni 2;4.26 (he / she / it) does not get in 4 ðe ˈbe.ni be ˈbe.ni 2;4.28 (he / she / it) does not get in 5 ðe ˈbe.ni be ˈbe.ni 2;5.1 (he / she / it) does not get in 6 ðe ˈbe.ni be ˈbe.ni 2;5.1 (he / she / it) does not get in 7 ðe ˈbe.ni be ˈbe.ni 2;5.1 (he / she / it) does not get in 8 ðe ˈbe.ni be ˈbe.ni 2;5.1 (he / she / it) does not get in 9 ðe ˈbe.ni be ˈbe.ni 2;5.3 (he / she / it) does not get in 10 ðe ˈbe.ni be ˈbe.ni 2;5.10 (he / she / it) does not get in 11 ðe ˈbe.ni be ˈbe.ni 2;5.10 (he / she / it) does not get in 12 ðe ˈbe.ni ba ˈbe.ni 2;5.15 (he / she / it) does not get in 13 ðe ˈbe.ni be ˈbe.ni 2;6.8 (he / she / it) does not get in 14 θa ˈka.tso ka ˈka.tso 2;6.8 i will sit 15 to ˈspi.ti po ˈpi.ti (m) 2;6.13 the house 16 to ˈspi.ti pa ˈpi.ti 2;6.13 the house 17 θa ˈpe.si pa ˈpe.ti 2;7.6 (he / she / it) will fall 18 θa ˈpe.si pa ˈpe.ti 2;7.6 (he / she / it) will fall 19 θa ˈpe.si pa ˈpe.ti 2;7.6 (he / she / it) will fall 20 θa ˈka.tsu.me ka ˈka.si.a.me 2;7.6 we will sit 21 θa ˈpa.ne pa ˈpa.ne 2;8.21 they will go 22 θa ˈpa.o pa ˈpa.o 2;8.28 i will go 23 ta ˈҫer.ʝa ҫa ˈҫe.ʝa 2;9.12 the hands 24 θa ˈka.ni ka ˈka.ni 2;9.12 (he / she / it) will do 25 ta pe.ˈða.ca pal pe.ˈða.ca 2;9.12 the children journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 2 534-556, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 534 the acquisition of inflectional morphology: the representation of nominal inflections in amharic speaking children’s speeches fikre diress alamirew1 addis ababa university abstract this study describes the acquisition of inflectional morphology with particular focus of nominal inflections and it employed cross sectional research design to gather the speech data from twelve amharic speaking children using picture description, picture narration, spontaneous speech elicitation, and story-telling tasks. the data were audio-recorded, transcribed using ipa, and analyzed. the result indicated that the presence of correct and erroneous production of nominal inflections. the highest percentage of correct nominal inflections was registered, especially; gender, person, and possessive morphemes had a better representation in all children’s speeches. children also appropriately addressed and assigned meaning to plural, definite, and case inflections in a certain utterance. on the other hand, they were seen unable to apply the correct forms in other circumstances. when they were exposed to full paradigms, they encountered difficulty of identifying the distribution of nominal inflections and their assigned meaning. as result, children were committing errors of omission (plural, definite, and accusative inflection errors) and paradigm shift (overgeneralization of regular plural marker) and the situation was measurably visible across age groups. in short, when children were unable to deal with the combinational occurrence of nominal morphemes, the complexity of the assigned meaning and their functional loads, errors of omission and paradigm shift were observable at different levels. this highlighted that a cumulative and complete representation of inflectional morphemes and their mastery require long period to be accomplished. keywords:language acquisition, inflectional morphology, nominal inflection, inflectional errors, and morphological mapping 1. introduction language acquisition is a process by which children learn to speak and communicate with their surrounding they are exposed to at first. normally, children acquire any of the world’s language if they have early exposure to target one (lust, 2006). they also acquire their first language without being taught by adults formally and without conscious learning; this has been a mysterious issue for many scholars. in the last hundred years, scholars have been studying children’s language acquisition for a number of reasons, in different methods and at various length and depth to answer how this special endowment of nature as well as modulation of nurture interact with each other for the development of children’s language and that poses many questions that researchers have to address. 1 mrs. fikre diress is a phd candidate in the department of foreign language and literature at addis ababa university and instructor at ambo university. her research interests include language acquisition, language development, and language learning. contact: fikrediress@gmail.com received : 28.07.2022 accepted : 17.08.2022 published : 21.08.2022 mailto:fikrediress@gmail.com the acquisition of amharic inflectional morphology alamirew 535 in line with this, lust (2006) noted that, the developmental study of language acquisition permits researchers to address different questions and there have been various questions regarding language development that are pursued by different researchers. lust (2006) raised questions in related to language acquisition. there are questions like what is it about human mind that makes possible to acquire language? which aspects of the language components are biologically programmed? what specifically linguistic knowledge is evident at early periods? researchers have contributed a lot by proving different information about acquisition of phonology, morphology, lexicon and syntax and cultural backgrounds. moreover, these topics are investigated in psycholinguistics as well as in other related scientific disciplines such as developmental psychology. one of the most investigated topics in this area is the acquisition of inflectional morphology, which focuses on how children learn various inflectional categories and each inflected word differs substantially (tatsumi, 2017). in line with this, penke (2012:2) states, ‘the acquisition of inflectional morphology has been a central topic in language acquisition research since the seminal works of berko (1958), cazden (1968) and brown (1973) on the acquisition of english’. penke (2012) also explained many researchers have carried out studies on the acquisition of inflectional morphology in many languages all over the world in the last 30 years. as these studies have indicated, most of the languages addressed by different researchers are spoken in europe and asia (lust, 2006) and some are found in african languages. according to deen (2005) explanation, studies on the acquisition of language have contributed a lot to the description of the nature of human language acquisition in one way or another: be it phonological, morphological, or lexical and this situation initiates the researcher to carry out the current study on the acquisition inflectional morphology. 1.1 a brief review of first language theories language acquisition is an unconscious process in which children go through to interact and understand others (soltanieh, 2014) but it is still a debatable issue to describe how and when children learn to listen, speak and understand their first language. in order to describe and theorize the acquisition process, scholars have ingrained their point of views from various perspectives and have attempted to address how language acquisition is described from behaviorism, nativism, cognitivism, and interactionism perspectives. language acquisition from the perspective of behaviorists lay on the idea that it occurs through imitation, and reinforcement. in line with this, assaiqeli (2013) noted that children learn how to speak from other human role models through a process of involving imitation, reward, and practice. human role models in children’s environment provide stimuli and rewards. when children attempt to imitate to speak like the sounds or speech patterns, they are usually praised and given affection for their efforts. however, the theory criticized as it ignored the natural ability of a child, which enables to accumulate knowledge through process. unlike behaviorism, nativism rooted its proposal from child’s innate capacity. the theory is directly associated with noam chomsky’s proposal journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 2 534-556, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 536 that states humans are born with an innate capacity and a knowledge system which is specifically designed for language and language acquisition (tavakoli, 2012; cruz, 2015). clark (2009) also states that children must rely on a certain innate structures and mechanisms, which enable them to acquire their first language. the theory proposed that children have a generative grammar (ug) of their language (cruz, 2015). cognitive theory, on the other hand, emphasizes that language acquisition occurs with the interaction of both a social and cognitive phenomenon. it deeply emphasizes how cognitive development of a child fosters language acquisition process. for piaget, the child’s level of language is determined by whether she/he acquires certain fundamental concepts or complex processing operations, which make children be capable of acquiring language (tavakoli, 2012). generally, cognitive theory is one in which psychologists attempt to understand how humans create and use knowledge for communication purposes. on the other hand, interactionists’ theory of first language acquisition has also been modeled from a wide range of developmental understanding; and social interaction. the theory suggested that a child’s language is developed through close interaction with the environment. in addition, thuresso (2011) noted that the interactional/developmental perspective puts emphasis on cognitive development as a part of the language acquisition, where the hypothesis is that children acquire their language through interaction with people and objects in their surroundings. in sum, behaviorists, nativists, cognitivists and interactionists theories of language acquisition have played significant role to understand how nature and nurture interact to foster the development of children’s language. the interactionist position is especially assumed proper and concurrence of the theories that acknowledges the contribution of both nature and the nurture to the development of children’s language in general and various linguistic components in particular. 1.2 acquisition of morphology by young children language is composed of sounds, words, phrases, and sentences. at each level, language is rule governed. at the sound level, phonology refers to the rules of the sound system and the rules of sound coordination. at the word level, morphology plays a role to govern the grammatical structure and formation of words. thus, acquisition of different morphological elements is one of the significant components of children language acquisition process and even for children to communicate properly using grammatical structured words, phrases and sentences. in relation to this, children who are native speakers of any language with normal development are able to extend morphological rules to novel nouns, verbs, and adjectives; this is evident in children’s everyday interactions with friends and adults (barry, 2013; clark 2003). however, the acquisition of some morphological rules appear frequently in children’s interaction process and they are able to apply these rules to certain nouns and verbs forms before they are able to extend the rules to other nouns and verb forms, and for deriving and inflecting adjectives (barry, 2013; kit, 2003; stolt, 2009). the acquisition of amharic inflectional morphology alamirew 537 in line with this, bittner, et al (2003) categorizes morphological acquisition into three periods: pre-morphology, proto-morphology, and morphology proper. during the pre-morphological period, children do not acquire a grammatical system. they use only forms, which are single, unmarked or, which are morphologically very simple and one form is used for each word. these early morphological patterns of words are first acquired by mere repetition and differ from one language to the other. according to bittner et al (2005) , in certain languages, children acquire verb morphology early: the infinitive or the third person singular present form, either inflected with a person marker (dutch, german), or with the stem vowel (lithuanian) or very non-inflected form(turkish). the multi-syllabic utterances at pre-morphology period are categorized as reduplicated (a string of identical syllables, like [ba.ba.ba] or multicolored babbles (syllable strings with varying consonants and vowels), like [ba.gi.da.bu]). children’s morphology grows vigorously in their productive language and their ability to use inflectional morphology increases within a relative short period. at the end of this pre –morphology period, children also begin to increase the use of those inflectional types as they have already used (bittner, et al, 2003; clark, 2003). at this time, children are not only using rote repetition patterns, but they are processing the rules behind the morphology, for example, the regular form of past tense is applied widely. in relation to this, radford (2009) noted that early language learning is dominantly rote repetition, that is, through hearing. based on the word patterns they hear, young children tend to treat different patterns in the same way. they may form rules for themselves that past tense verb in english ends in/d/or /-ed/ and they overgeneralize that rule to irregular english verbs, such as ‘go’ and ‘bring’ as [goed] and [bringed] before eventually they learn the actual irregular forms ‘went’ and ‘brought’. bittner et al (2003) also attempted to indicate that the onset of proto morphology era is as an essential phase of morphological development. during this transition, active morphological elements are roughly observed and children show dramatic development in lexical diversity. class of words, such as noun, verb, and functional word types are manifested. the main feature of this transition from the pre to the proto-morphological period is observed with measurable enrichment of morphological diversity. children commonly start to utter their first words between twelve and twenty months and they produce regular morphological patterns of words. however, when they develop their ability to use an expression that is more complex, they produce grammatical morphemes: prefixes suffixes, prepositions, and clitics. for example, on nouns, they start to add morphemes, which indicate differences in gender, number, and case; on their verbs, they try to use rules for aspect, tense, gender, number, and person (clark, 2003). rubino (2003) has described that once children hear the plural form of the regular english noun dog is dogs; they overgeneralize this form to irregular nouns as well. over-generalization of the plural formation rule in english occurs when children start treating singular nouns that end with the fricative /s/ as plural nouns and they may think that nouns like house or purse are in plural forms(clark, 2009). similarly, fashold (2010) observation on english learning children indicates that children pass through three journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 2 534-556, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 538 predictable stages in acquiring morphological elements of the target language: among these features, over-generalization commonly occurs in the second stage (proto morphological period). first, children use the correct present and past tenses of verbs (e.g. go and went). however, they do not relate the two forms as belonging to the same verb. they rather treat the two tenses as separate entities in their lexical repertoire. in the second phase, they construct a rule of forming the past tense and begin to overgeneralize by applying it to irregular verbs like ‘go’ they learn the exceptions to the past tense rule and acquire the ability to apply this rule selectively. as bittner et al (2003), the morphological period arises when the first inflectional differences come to be regular and children use the relevant morphological patterns to new lexicons. however, in a certain language, the acquisition of morphological patterns may take a long period due to three basic reasons. some morphological inflections appear to be more complex conceptually; which means they convey meanings that are also perceived by other inflections. the more semantically complex grammatical morphemes, the late to be acquired; for instance, the english past /-ed/ is acquired earlier than auxiliaries ‘is/ was /were’ (clark, 2003; ingram, 1999). the second factor, which affects morphological acquisition, is the nature of the target language’s typology. the proper complexity to express particular differences varies between languages. the concept of number, for example, one versus more than one is normally acquired between the ages of 1;6 and 2;3 (clark 2003; ingram et al, 2006; lieven, 2010; slolt, 2009). however, the acquisition of number can be described differently in different languages. according to gor (2000), some languages, like russian use only one inflection to mark plural nouns and have some exceptions to learn by repetition. on the other hand, other languages may have more complex systems to indicate the plural forms, for example, plural forms of nouns depend on gender and phonological form of nouns. however, the morphemes of number are acquired relatively early. frequency of input may also affect the acquisition. children are more familiar to some morphological patterns, which appear frequently; stem-types have a tendency to be acquired first. the most often used morphemes are acquired earlier than those used less in the target language (ingram, 1999; slolt, 2009). the amazing feature of morphology is its developmental sequence which seems to be partly independent on the frequency input in which the various morphemes occur in adult speech. for example, the determiners /the/ and/a/are the most frequent morphemes in children’s environment but they are acquired relatively late. thus, frequency by itself may not always be a determinant factor to the developmental order of morphemes despite having role to play in conjunction with other factors. it is also clear that pronunciation, by itself is not decisive either, since the three/-s/ morphemes are acquired at different times. what, then, determines the order of acquisition of non-lexical categories and bound morphemes is still a question (o’grady, 2006). children start to apply a certain word formation processes at nearly the same time as their first inflections. in particular, they produce novel compound forms from simple stem combinations. then, during their second year speech production, some inflectional patterns become apparent; they the acquisition of amharic inflectional morphology alamirew 539 also start to produce a few derivational affixes in novel word forms. the occurrence of such derivational and compound morphemes is becoming numerous in numbers between ages three and four (clark 2003). the major word formation processes in english are derivation and compounding both of which emerge early in the acquisition. however, the process of evaluating morphological patterns and inferring meaning is a requirement to describe the acquisition of inflectional morphology. 1.3 the current study language plays a pivotal role to have a better communication and becomes a means to someone to create good relationships with others. having a good command of language bestows power to literacy acquisition and it enables children to make sense of the world around them. to reach to these language uses, children need to acquire various linguistic components of the target language. the acquisition of phonology and morphology plays an important role for the production of grammatically meaningful and different domains of words; the type of words children likely produce are highly influenced by the type of morphological components and their order of acquisition. studies on language acquisition area have a range of differences in terms of approach. several studies have described phonological aspect of language acquisition, while others are motivated on morphological or morphosyntactic aspects; however, most of these studies have a dominant emphasis on european, asian and some in african languages (bittner et al 2003; natalia, 2003; wine et al, 2005; garsho, 2013; lorusso, 2017; westergaard, 2005; demuth et al, 2010). in ethiopia, of course, there is a growing awareness in the field of language acquisition and studies on the area are increasing despite a great requirement to address many local languages. a study on speech production in amharic speaking children with repaired cleft palate by abebayehu (2013), child language and baby talk in amharic by ebenezer (2013), the developmental realization of ejectives by fikre and abebayehu (2021), the acquisition of verbs by amharic speaking children by fikre and abebayehu (2022) are research works found in amharic language. in addition, a phd dissertation on the acquisition of oromo phonology by tariku (2019), an ma thesis on sidamuu afoo by demeke (2015) and an investigation of the acquisition of inflectional morphology by afan oromo speaking children by alemayehu (2022) are studies found in other local languages. apart from these attempts, no other work on the acquisition of ethiopian languages could be found. this calls researchers to conduct studies on the acquisition of various features of ethiopian languages. along the same line, this study, therefore, aimed to describe and document the acquisition of inflectional morphology by amharic speaking children with particular focus of nominal inflections. the study in effect will fill the knowledge gap observed on the topic, particularly in in ethiopian context. it would also be a contribution to cross-linguistic analysis of patterns of language acquisitions. thus, in order to describe and document the representation of nominal inflections by typically developing amharic-speaking children, the research raises the following questions. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 2 534-556, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 540 1.4 research questions this study generally described the acquisition of nominal inflections and answers the following fundamental research questions in the current research 1. what does the order of nominal inflections acquisition look like in amharic speaking children’s speeches? 2. what mechanisms do children employ when they encounter difficulty of mapping and assigning appropriate inflections? 3. to what extent are correct nominal inflections represented in children speeches? 4. to what extent do children’s functional age and gender difference exert an impact on frequency distribution of correct nominal inflections? 2. methodology this current study recruited a cross-sectional research design. its design is defined as a type of observational research that analyzes data collected once in a given point of time across a sample of population or a predefined subset (zoltan, 2007).cross-sectional research design is helpful to include a large representative sample and less demanding to recruit respondents. this allowed researcher to gather a large size of data within a short period and helped to see individual ability of producing various morphological patterns and the representation of nominal inflections in amharic speaking children‘s speeches. 2.1 participants twelve 3;0 to 5;0 years old children were selected as participants of the study. this age bound children were preferred for some reasons. many studies have indicated that children at this age bound have the ability to construct longer and more complex grammatically structured words, phrases and sentences and different class of words with complex morphological inflections and these are highly prominent (o’grady, 2006). this stage of development is also characterized by the emergence of quite different type of morphological elements in children words (ingram, 1988). bearing this in mind, three to five years old, children were taken as subjects to describe the nature and development of children’s morphology and various procedures were followed to select the target participants. table 1 children’s demographic data background group frequency percentage gender male 6 50 female 6 50 age 3;0-3;3 male 1 8.33 females 2 16.66. 3;9-4;0 years male 2 16.66 females 1 8.33 4;5-4;6 years male 1 8.33 female 2 16.66 4;11-5;0 male 2 16.66 female 1 8.33 the acquisition of amharic inflectional morphology alamirew 541 as the above table indicated, twelve amharic speaking children were chosen and grouped in to four with five-month age intervals. equally, six male and six female children were the participant of this study. 2.2 data collection and processing the data were collected using picture description, spontaneous elicitation, and storytelling tasks. the speech data were audio recorded and transcribed using ipa and ext ipa. the transcription was done in elan linguistic annotator tools as it was easy to search the frequency of part of speeches (pos), segmentation and helpful to display the different morphological patterns 2.3 data analysis the research used qualitative and quantitative data analysis methods. first, the audio-recorded files were transcribed in elan annotator tools and were saved in eaf for searching frequency of different morphological patterns. after searching was completed, elan displayed the following search results; the number of utterances, key words, and part of speeches (pos), frequency of derivation and inflectional morphemes and the number of correct and incorrect nominal inflections. the results found in this way were registered in excel format and put into order. each child’s data were registered to spss. then, the analysis was made using descriptive, (sum, frequency percentage, mean and standard deviation) analysis and qualitative analysis was made taking example words and sample extracts that demonstrate nominal i nflections. 3. findings amharic is one of semitic languages, which have a rich and complex morphology, and it is best described by three basic morphological processes; a root-pattern, derivation,intercalation and inflection. amharic uses different affixes to create inflectional and derivational word forms. different nouns and verbs are derived richly by rootpattern morphology; nouns are derived from other basic nouns, adjectives, stems, roots, and the infinitive form of a verb by affixation and intercalation. verbs are also derived from roots and stems but nouns can be derived by adding prefixes and suffixes to basic nouns, and nouns also inflected for different grammatical information; number, person, case, gender, definiteness and possession. the interaction of such inflections likely makes the acquisition process more complex (anbessa and hudson, 2007). 3.1 the total representation of nominal inflectional in children’s speeches inflection is the other complex phenomenon in amharic language. nouns can be inflected for, person, gender, number, possession, definiteness and case. similarly, adjectives have a great possibility to be marked by gender, number, and definiteness in adults grammatically meaningful sentences. however, the representation of these inflectional morphemes may not be typically the same in children’s speeches and most of children’s utterances are errors prone due to complexity of the nominal inflections. in order to journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 2 534-556, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 542 describe the representation of correct and incorrect nominal inflections, the result was presented in the following tables. table 2 the total frequency of correct and incorrect nominal inflections in amharic + stat. cor.n. inflc frq.err.n.inflc total n 12 12 12 total 818 389 1207 % 67.77 32.23 100. mean 68.17 36.5 100.58 sd 22.445 13.021 25.092 as indicated in the above table, an attempt was made to present the total frequency distribution of correct and incorrect nominal inflections. the total size of correct inflections was 67.77 % (mean 68.17) and the incorrect inflections covered 32.23% (mean 36.5). although the frequency of nominal inflections differed from child to child and from one age group to other, the emergent development of correct inflections was by far greater than the representation of total errors. table 3 the total frequency of correct and incorrect nominal inflections across age groups age total cor. n. inflc frq err ninflc 3;0-3;3 n 3 3 3 sum 276 141 135 % 22.86 17.2 34.7 mean 92.00 47.00 45.00 sd 13.892 15.133 18.028 3;9-4;0 n 3 3 3 sum 320 209 111 % 26.56 25.6 28.5 mean 106.66 69.67 37.00 sd 35.679 29.195 2.646 4;5-4;6 n 3 3 3 sum 306 228 78 % 25.35 27.9 20.1 mean 101.67 76.00 26.00 sd 15.503 14.933 7.211 4;11-5;0 n 3 3 3 sum 305 240 65 % 25.6 29.3 16.7 mean 101.66 80.00 21.67 sd 12.097 22.113 6.658 the acquisition of amharic inflectional morphology alamirew 543 according to the data in the above table, the total frequency of correct and incorrect nominal inflections had different distributions across age groups. from the total correct nominal inflections, 17.2 % ( mean 47) was registered from the first age group (3;0 to 3;3 year) ,25.6% ( mean 69.67) from the second (3;9 to 4;0 years ), 27.9%( mean 76) from the third (4;5 to 4;6 years ) and 29.3% (mean 80) from the fourth age group(4;11 to 5;0 years ) children’s speeches. on the other hand, 37.7% (mean 45) of nominal inflection errors were also found in the first age group, 28.5%(mean 37) in the second, 20.1% (mean 26) in the third and 16.7 %( 21.67) in the fourth age group children’s speeches. indeed, the correct and incorrect nominal inflections were registered from each group and the frequency occurrence of correct and incorrect inflection was pertinent to children’s functional age groups. the emergency of correct nominal inflections increased vertically across age groups and the frequency occurrence of inflectional errors decreased although errors were inevitably subjected to the incomplete development of different nominal inflection patterns in children’s utterances. table 4 the frequency of correct and incorrect nominal inflections in relation to gender gender total frq.corr.inflc frq . err. inflc male n 6 6 6 sum 653 360 218 % 50.9 44.0 56.0 mean 108.83 60.00 36.33 sd 33.666 23.409 15.501 female n 6 6 6 sum 629 458 171 % 49.1 56.0 44.0 mean 104.83 76.33 28.50 sd 15.562 20.007 9.793 from the total frequency of correct nominal inflections, 44% (mean 60) was counted from boys’ and 56% (mean 75.33) from girls’ speeches where as 56% (mean 36.33) of nominal inflection errors were from boys’ and 44% (mean 28.50) from girls’ speeches. the data indicated that despite their age and individual difference, girls, as a whole, performed better in using correct nominal inflections than boys but the frequency of errors appeared more frequent in boys’ than girls’ speeches. particularly, the frequent omission of plural markers from elias’s (3;2 years) speech and the absence of correct plural markers production due to phonological difficulty in bruk’s (3;9 years) and elnata’s (4;11 years) increased the frequency of nominal inflections errors in boys’ side. in line with this, the type of correct inflectional patterns and the nature of errors’ paradigms were treated in the following section. 3.2 the type and frequency of correct nominal inflections the acquisition of nominal inflections is also crucial patterns in language acquisition process as they determine adjectivenoun and subject–verb and object-verb agreement in number, gender, and person and case and journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 2 534-556, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 544 definiteness in a grammatically meaningful sentence. in amharic, the acquisition of these nominal inflections may not be as complete as adults in children’s speeches but the vigorously growing lexical development is likely to be a sign to the presence of different types of nominal inflections in this age bound. table 5 the type and frequency occurrence of correct nominal inflections stat total .pl.mrk gend def poss acc. mrk n 12 12 12 12 12 12 sum 818 183 253 236 129 134 % 100. 22 30.9 28.85 15.77 16.38 mean 68.17 15.25 21.08 19.67 10.75 11.17 sd 22.445 10.532 2.906 8.305 5.723 7.756 from the total correct nominal inflections, the plural markers like /-oʈʃ/as in the word /lam-oʈʃ/ ‘cows’ or /-woʈʃ/ as in the word /bəre-wotʃ/ ‘oxen’ and/a-/like in the word /fir-a-fire/ ‘fruits’ had 22% (mean 15.25) representation. morphemes inflected for gender and person covered 30.9% (mean 21.08) of correct nominal inflections. the table also portrays the frequency of definite markers /-u/, /-w/, /-ua/, /-wa/, the accusative marker /-n/ and, possessive markers and these inflections had 28.85% (mean 19.67),16.38 % (mean 11.17) and 15.77% (mean 10.75) of total frequency coverage respectively. the common possessive marker /jə-/ the first person singular, /-e/je/, third person female possessive markers /-ua/ or /wa/, third person male possessive /-u/ or /-w/ `were appeared more frequently than others. although the first person plural, /-aʈʃn/, the second person male possessive marker/-h/, the second person female possessive /-ʃ/, the second person plural /-aʈʃhu/, and the third person plural marker /-aʈʃəw/ were found in some children spontaneous’ speeches like talking about their family or what they do after school. from the researcher’s observation, this age bound children had better realization of nominal inflection for gender, person, and possession. children did not have difficulty of identifying and mapping the meaning to such inflections. however, in the production of the other nominal inflections like number, definiteness, and case, they encountered difficulty of consistency of mapping their meaning in appropriate context. as a result, they were observed being on and off to preserve such nominal inflections and identify how to use potential affixes together. table 6 type and frequency correct nominal inflections across age group age npl. mrk gndr def acc poss 3;1-3;3 n 2 3 3 3 sum 32 55 39 16 21 % 17.5 21.7 16.5 11.9 16.3 mean 10.67 18.33 13.00 5.33 7 sd 2.517 1.155 12.166 0.577 3.25 the acquisition of amharic inflectional morphology alamirew 545 as shown, from the total frequency of correct nominal inflections, number, gender, definiteness, case and possession, 17.5% (mean 10.67) plural inflections was found first age group, 24% (mean 14.67) in second, 26.8% (mean 16.33) in third and 31.7% (mean: 19.33) frequency distribution was registered from the fourth age group children’s speeches. similarly, the correct mapping of meaning for gender had 21.7% (mean 18.33) of frequency coverage in the first age group, 24.1 % (mean 20.33) in the second, 26.1 (mean 22) in the third and 28.1% (mean 23.63) in the fourth age group. the correct representation of definiteness had 16.5% (mean 13.00) of frequency coverage in the first age groups 25.4% (mean 20) in the second, 26.3% (mean 20.67) in the third and 31.8% (mean 25) to the fourth age group. by the same token, the accusative /-n/and the possessive inflections had also different coverage across age groups and their distribution grew a bit larger in older age group children’s speeches. for example, the frequency of appropriate accusative/-n/inflection also covered 11.9% (mean 5.33) of the total in the first age group, 16.4% (mean 7.33) in the second, 32.1% (mean 14.33) in the third and 39.6% (mean 17.67) in the fourth age group. similarly, possessive markers had 16.3% (mean 7) of frequency coverage in the first age group and 18.6% (mean 8) in the second and the frequency grew to 31.8% (mean 16.33) in the third and 33.3% (mean 19.33) in the fourth age group. in sum, all nominal inflections like number, gender, definiteness, accusative and possessive markers had a significant depiction across age groups and their frequency occurrence augmented heretically in older children’s speeches. the increment observed in mapping appropriate meaning for different nominal inflections across age group was evident to say that older age children had better realization and production. although a heavy and complex functional load of such inflections, which occur in a phrase or sentence, forced children to drop or make paradigms shift. for example, the phrase /jə-lɨʤ-otʃ-u-n dəbtər-otʃ/ ‘children’s exercises books’ is loaded by different inflections. the noun /lɨʤ/ ‘child’ is marked by the possessive marker /jə-/, the plural /-otʃ/, the definite /-u/ and accusative /-n/ and such a heavy functional load in a single word was a challenge for most of this age bound children. as a result, some children dropped one or the two 3;9-4;0 n 3 3 3 3 3 sum 44 61 60 22 43 % 24.0 24.1 25.4 16.4 33.3 mean 14.67 20.33 20.00 7.33 14.33 sd 12.702 .577 6.083 4.619 3.055 4;5-4;6 n 3 3 3 3 3 sum 49 66 62 43 49 % 26.8 26.1 26.3 32.1 26.8 mean 16.33 22.00 20.67 14.33 16.33 sd 10.116 4.359 5.859 6.429 10.11 4;11-5;0 n 3 3 3 3 3 sum 58 71 75 53 58 % 31.7 28.1 31.8 39.6 31.7 mean 19.33 23.67 25.00 17.67 19.33 sd 16.773 1.528 7.00 10.786 16.77 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 2 534-556, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 546 due to inability of applying them together whereas the other might not realize the function of each pattern in a connected speech. table 7 the distribution of correct nominal inflections in relation to gender gender pl. mrk gndr def acc poss male n 6 6 6 6 6 total 51 124 101 63 62 % 27.9 49 42.8 47 48.1 mean 8.5 20.67 16.83 10.5 10.33 sd 8.19 2.73 8.23 5.09 6.19 female n 6 6 6 6 6 total 132 129 135 71 67 % 72.1 51 57.2 53 51.9 mean 22 21.5 22.5 11.83 11.17 sd 8.22 3.27 8.04 10.27 5.78 an attempt was also made to describe the frequency of correct nominal inflections from gender perspective. in girls’ speeches, the correct representation of the plural markers /-otʃ / or /-wotʃ/ had 72.1% (mean 22) of frequency coverage whereas, in boys’ speeches, it was 27.9% (mean 8.5). similarly, appropriate mapping of meaning for gender was 51% (mean 21.50) in girls’ speeches and 49% (mean 20.67) in boys and 42.8% (mean 16.83) of correct definite markers representation was registered from boys’ and 57.2% (mean 22.50) from girls’ speeches. besides, the accusative and possessive markers had also a significant representation in both sides but there was an increment in girls (53% mean 11.83) side than boys (47%; mean 10.50). the possessive inflections had 48.1 % (mean 10.33) of frequency coverage in boys and 51.9% (mean 11.17) in girls. indeed, from this analysis it is possible to deduce that different types nominal inflections; plural, gender, definite, possessive and accusative markers were fairly represented in both girls’ and boys’ speeches but most of the girls had better performance on mapping and assigning appropriate meaning for the combinational occurrence of different inflectional morpheme than boys. however, children’s speech production was not completely correct and free from errors and they made phonological, lexical, and morphological errors in their different level utterances. 3.3 type and frequency of nominal inflection errors in children’s speeches children’s language is commonly error prone in their acquisition process. they may drop the significant morphemes due to phonological difficulty whereas others use over generalization mechanisms until they are able to apply the correct form. on the basis of this information, it was tried to examine the nature of nominal inflection errors attested in amharic speaking children‘s speeches. the acquisition of amharic inflectional morphology alamirew 547 table 8 total frequency and types of nominal inflection errors observed in children’s speeches stat total frq. pl. mrk. err def.err acc.err n 12 12 12 12 total 389 202 88 99 % 100.0 51.92 22.62 25.44 mean 32.41 16.83 7.33 8.25 sd 13.021 9.867 3.380 4.115 from the total frequency of nominal inflection errors (389 frq.) counted from twelve children’s speeches, 51.32% (mean 16.83) was plural inflections errors. the remaining 22.62 % (mean 7.33) and 25.44 (mean 8.25) were identified as omission definite and accusative markers respectively. as the table depicts, errors of plural inflections were the highest followed by accusative one. table 9 the frequency occurrence of nominal inflection errors across age groups age total frq. pl. mrk. err def. err acc. err total 135 76 30 29 % 34.7 37.62 34.48 29.29 mean 45.00 25.33 10.00 9.67 sd 18.028 9.614 0.577 5.033 3;9-4;0 n 3 3 3 3 total 111 58 25 27 % 28.5 28.71 28.73 27.27 mean 37.00 19.33 6.66 9.00 sd 2.646 3.229 4.041 3.606 4;5-4;6 n 3 3 3 3 total 78 38 20 20 % 20.1 18.81 22.98 20.20 mean 26.00 12.66 5.33 6.66 sd 7.211 2.646 .577 5.508 4;11-5;0 n 3 3 3 3 total 65 30 12 23 % 16.7 14.85 13.79 23.23 mean 21.67 10.00 4.00 7.66 s d 6.658 6.245 0.577 4.619 the analysis of the data in the table 9 above shows that 34.7% (mean 45) of the total frequency of nominal inflection errors was found in the first age group, 28.5% (mean 37) in the second, 20.1% (mean 26) in third and 16.7% (mean 21.67) from the fourth age group. similarly, 37.62% (mean 25.33) of plural inflection errors were found in the first age group, 28.71% (mean 19.33) in the second, 18.81% (mean 12.66) in the third ,14.85 (mean 10) in the fourth age group children’s speeches. by the same token, from the total (86) frequency of omission of definite markers, 34.48% (mean 10) was detected in the first age group ,28.73% journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 2 534-556, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 548 (mean 6.66) in the second, 22.98% (mean 5.33) in the third and 13.79% (mean 4) in the fourth age group children’s speeches. similarly, from the total frequency (105 frq.) of accusative marker/-n/inflectional error, 29.29% (mean 9.67) of omission was detected in the first age group ,27.3% (mean 9) from the second, 24.8%( mean 8.67) from the third and 20.2% (mean 6.66) of accusative marker inflectional errors was also registered from the fourth age group children’s speeches. in sum, the three nominal inflection errors (plural, definite, and accusative markers) were commonly attested across age groups and in each child’s speech but plural inflection errors had the highest frequency occurrence especially, in the two boys’ (bruk and elnata) speeches. due to their phonological difficulty, no correct plural inflections were detected in two boys’ speeches and that lifted up the total frequency of errors. as far as the three types of inflection errors were concerned, their presence was decreased in older children’s (4; 5 to 5:0 years) speeches but dropping one or more nominal morphemes from different utterances was detectable even children who had better realization and production. it was also undeniable fact that children’s speeches were not free from errors. the complex and functionally loaded morphemes to the nouns or noun phrases most probably forced the children to engage in omission or substitution. in sum, the frequent occurrence of such inflectional errors in each child’s speech likely signaled that how the complete acquisition of inflectional patterns demands time. table 10 types and frequency of errors in relation to gender gender total frq. pl. mrk def acc male n 6 6 6 6 total 239 128 48 63 % 61.43 63.36 54.54 63.7 mean 19.91 21.33 8.00 10.5 sd 10.501 9.766 5.347 4.637 female n 6 6 6 6 total 150 74 40 36 % 38.56 36.63 45.5 36.3 mean 12.5 12.33 6.66 6.00 sd 9.793 7.847 3.724 4.893 similar attempt was made to examine the frequency of nominal inflection errors from the perspective of gender difference and more erroneous productions were attested in boys’ speeches than girls did. for example, 61.43% (mean 19.91) of total nominal inflection errors were registered from boys’ and 38.56% (mean 12.5) from girls’ speeches. in line with this, the representation of plural inflection errors was 63.36% (mean 21.33) in boys and 36.64% (mean 12.33) in girls’ speeches and omission of definiteness markers covered 54.54% (mean 8) in boys and 45.5% (mean 6.66) in girls’ speeches. corresponding to other inflection errors, the frequency of dropping accusative marker/-n/ from their utterances were greater (63.7%; mean 10.5) in boys’ speeches than girls' (36.3%; mean 6) speeches. the acquisition of amharic inflectional morphology alamirew 549 generally, the data in the table 10 above indicates that the frequency of nominal inflection errors was dominantly visible in boys’ speeches; the boys’ utterances were more erroneous than those of girls were. most of the girls had better realization and production of nominal inflections despite uncertainty of assigning meaning for different nominal inflections due to their complex combination occurrences. 3.4 types of plural markers’ errors as far as errors of plural inflections are concerned, amharic speaking children who participated in this study had inconsistent realization of plural morphemes and their utterances hosted three distinct categories of errors; over-generalization, omission and phonological difficulty errors. the frequency of these plural inflection errors had different depiction as presented the following table. table 11 types and frequency of plural inflection errors total.frq overg. omission phon.dff n 12 12 12 12 sum 202 60 92 70 % 100 29.7 41.70 29.95 mean 16.83 5.00 8.58 6.166 sd 8.806 0.718 4.926 7.082 from the total frequency (202 frq) of plural inflection errors, 29.7% (60 frq) was overgeneralization, 41.7% (92 frq) of omission and 29.95.% (103 frq) occurred due to phonological difficulty. the researcher’s close observation during recording and transcription also indicates that over-generalization and omission of plural marking morphemes were commonly visible across age groups. phonological difficulty errors were particularly seen in 3; 9 and 4;11 years old two boys’ (bruk’s and elnata’s) speeches respectively; in the two boys’ utterances, majority of their plural inflection errors occurred due to inability of uttering plural nouns. they totally substituted the plural markers/-otʃ/ and /-wotʃ/ by [-ot] or [oth]. generally, errors of plural inflection had the highest frequency. omission and over-generalization were evidently visible in all children’s speeches but the most frequent omission of the plural marking morphemes was pertinent to younger age (3;0 to 3;3 years) children. example 1 words illustrating overgeneralization of [-otʃ] for the target realization target amharic script meaning [bəre-otʃ] /bərewotʃ/ <በሬ-ዎች> oxen [kətʃ’n-otʃ/kət’notʃ] /kətʃne -wotʃ/ ‹ቀጭኔ-ዎች> giraffes [ɡumar-otʃ] /ɡumarre-wotʃ/ <ጉማሬ-ዎች> hippopotamus [elli -otʃ] /elli -wotʃ/ <‹ኤሊ-ዎች> tortoise [dor-otʃ] /doro-wotʃ/ <ዶሮ-ዎች> chickens as shown in the above example, most (75%) of aged between 3;0 to 5;0 years old children committed over-generalization errors; they simply realized the journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 2 534-556, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 550 plural marker /-wotʃ/ as the other allomorph [-otʃ] and these children could easily utter the morpheme [-otʃ] in their entire speeches. children who made such errors already realize how to assign meaning to plural nouns but they were not yet able map the representation of/-wotʃ/.this implies that children acquire the regular plural inflectional morpheme /-otʃ/ prior to /wotʃ/ example 2 overgeneralization of [-otʃ] for /-an/ and /-a-/ realization [-otʃ] target amharic script meaning [fɨjəwotʃ/fɨrəwotʃ] /fɨr-a-fɨre/ <ፍራፍሬ> fruits [kɨt’l-otʃ] /k’ɨt’əl-a-kɨt’əl/ <ቅጠላቅጠል> leaves [tɨle-wotʃ] /tɨr-a-tɨt’re/ <ጥራጥሬ> cereals [məmhɨr-otʃ] /məmhɨr-an/ <መምህራን> teachers [dejak’on-otʃ] /dak’on-at/ <ዲያቆናት> deacons in amharic language, the other type of plural formation occurs through intercalation of the morpheme /-a-/ and by adding the geez originated morphemes /-an /, and /-at/ and others. in order to see how this age range children reacted with such plural markers, the above nouns were included in the picture description task. however, except aged between; 4;5 to 5;0 years old two girls, the other ten children did not utter a word with correct plural inflection /-a-/; they completely replaced it by [-otʃ] or some with /-wotʃ/ as illustrated above. for example, the target plural noun /fɨr-a-fɨre/ ‘leaves’ were uttered as [fɨjəwotʃ] (younger children) or [fɨrəwotʃ]. in addition, no child from this age range who was able to map the plural morphemes /-an /, and /-at/ in their speeches and they overgeneralized the targets by others like the target nouns /məmɨhr-an/ ‘teachers’ as [məmɨhj-otʃ] or [məmɨhl-otʃ] (younger age children) and [məmɨhr-otʃ]. such plural mapping errors are also observed in some adults’ speeches. thus, such a complete overgeneralization, in most of the children’s speeches was likely observed because of lack of input children should get from the environment or the realization and the correct production of such morphemes require long period to be mastered but it needs a particular treatment to get a sound confirmation. example 3 plural inflection errors due to their phonological difficulty realization target amharic script gloss [bəllot/ bəlloth] /bəre-wotʃ/ <በሬዎች> oxen [bəgot/bəgoth] /bəg-otʃ/ <በጎች> sheep [tototh ] /t’ot’a-wotʃ/ <ጦጣዎች> apes [səwot/səwoth] /səwotʃ/ <ሰዎች> people [lɨdoth] /lɨʤ-otʃ/ <ልጆች> children [wondoth] /wond-otʃ/ <ዎንዶች> males the acquisition of amharic inflectional morphology alamirew 551 as illustrated above, the other plural inflection errors occurred due to phonological difficulty. such error was not detected in most children’s speeches, except in two boys. one of the boys was a 3;9 years old from the second age group and the other was 4;11 years old from the fourth. these two boys completely changed all plural morphemes /-otʃ/, /-wotʃ/, /-a/,/an/ and /-at/ as the aspirated [-oth] or [-ot] like in the word [bəlloth] for the target word /bəre-woʃ/ ‘oxen’, [lɨdoth] for the target word /lɨʤ-otʃ/’children’ and in their entire production of plural nouns. generally, as the findings indicated, in children’s speeches, the three types of plural inflection errors (over-generalization, omission, and phonological difficulty errors) were attested. although the frequency of omission of plural markers and over-generalization was highly prominent in the first and in the second (especially in boys) age group children’s speeches, the presence and absence of such errors in others was also a good sign to the incomplete and partial mapping of different nominal inflections in the development of children’s language in particular. 3.5 words illustrating omission of definite and accusative markers omission of definite and accusative morphemes is the other inflectional error attested in children’s speeches. as different morphological (derivational and inflectional) elements interact with each other in nouns, adjectives and due to this complex morphological phenomenon, a sole word hosts different morphological errors. children who participated in this study were also unable to preserve all the morphological elements in their utterances, especially, when they uttered long phrases (more than two words) and sentences. in other words, when children came across morphologically complex word or phrases, they were not able to keep all inflections and they dropped one or more morphological patterns. example 4 illustrating omission of plural, definite and accusative markers realization types omission target amharic meaning [sost dɨmət] def/pl/acc /sost-u dɨmət-otʃ/ <ሶስቱ ድመቶች> the three cats [ajit’] def/acc /ajit’-ua-n/ <ኣይጧን> the rat [wuʃa təɲɲitual] def /wuʃa-w təɲɲitual/ <ዉሻዉ ተኝቷታ> the dog’s slept [hullət zɨhon] pl/def/acc /hullətu-n zɨhonotʃ <ሑለቱ ዝሆኖች> the two elephants [arat lɨʤotʃ] def arat-u lɨʤ-otʃ <አራቱ ልጆች> the four children the above examples indicate that children had a tendency of dropping one or more nominal inflections. from the total twelve children, 33.33% (4 children) of them did not totally realize the use of definite and accusative markers and others had inconsistently uncertain realization and production. as a result, most of their nouns appeared open missing one or more inflections. a case in point, the target sentence /sost-u dɨmət-otʃ ajit’-ua-n jəbarər-u-at nəw/ ‘the three cats are chasing the rat’ was produced in different forms. as the above example indicates, some children totally dropped all inflectional morphemes whereas the other retained the plural and definite marker and dropped accusative /-n/ but few girls produced it correctly. older age girls only journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 2 534-556, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 552 dropped such inflectional markers when they produced a string of ideas to narrate or describe something they saw or heard. 1. extract taken from aman’s(3;9 years) speeches realization = [sost dɨmət ajitabaləll-u] adj.num[sost] three+ n.subj [dɨmət]cat+n.obj [ajit]rat+v.3rd.plpast [abaləll-u]chased gloss: three cat chased rat. target : /sost-u dɨmət-otʃ ajt’ua-n abarɜr-u-at / adj.num. def /sost—u/ the three +subj 3rd pl .n /dɨmət-otʃ/ cats + obj 3rd.sig. f.def.acc /ajt’ua-n/ the rat + v. past .3rd.pl suj 3rd sig. f/abarɜr-u-at/ chased. target gloss: the cats chased the rat. 2. extracts taken from bruk’s (3;9 years) speech realization :[ t’ot’a hullət k’ətʃne ajətʃ] n,subj[t’ot’a]ape+adj.num.[hullət]two+3rd.sig n.obj[k’ətʃne] giraffe +3rd sig.pat. v [ajətʃ] saw. gloss: ‘ape saw two giraff’ target : /t’ot’a-wa hullət-u-n k’ətʃne-wotʃ ajətʃ/ 3rd.sig.def.sig.subj/t’ot’a-wa/ the ape+ adj.num.def.acc /hullət un/ the two + 3rd pl.obj/k’ətʃne-wotʃ/giraffes +3rd sig.f.v/ajətʃ/ target gloss: the female ape saw the two giraffes. the above extract (1) taken from aman’s speech also indicated that the definite marker/-u/ from the word/sostu/, the plural marker/-otʃ/, from the noun /dɨmət-otʃ /, the gender marker/-ua/ and accusative markers /n/ from the noun /ajt’ua-n /were dropped. the boy uttered the subject /sost-u dɨmət-otʃ/ ‘the three cats’ as [sost dɨmət] and the object/ajt’ua-n/ ‘the rat’ as [ajt] and the nouns appeared open missing such significant inflections. similarly, bruk dropped the plural /-otʃ /,the definite marker/u/ and accusative /-n/ from the target noun phrase /hullət-u-n k’ətʃnewotʃ/ ‘the two giraffes and from the subject /t’ot’a-wa/, he left the definite marker morphemes /-wa/ as he was unable to map and assign meaning of definiteness and case and such inflectional errors were also visible in other children’s speeches 4. discussion lexical and syntactic development of children’s language is directed by phonological and morphological acquisition of a target language. especially, morphologically complex language, like amharic, the acquisition of morphol -ogical elements plays a significant role to the meaningful production of wellstructured phrases and sentences as well as the whole language development. on this regard, this study indicated that three to five years old children had progressive development but the correct and incorrect mapping of nominal inflections were measurably visible although the total percentage of correct representation was greater than the erroneously occurring frequency. most of the children, who participated in this study, were able to produce nouns and noun phrases mapping and assigning meaning for number, person, gender, definiteness, possession, and case. the findings also confirmed that children were able to use the gender, person, and the acquisition of amharic inflectional morphology alamirew 553 possessive markers appropriately. especially, the possessive marker/jə-/ was common in all children’s utterances like in the example /jə-ɨne/’ mine’, /jə-səw/ ‘someone’s’, /jə-t’ot’a/’ ‘ape’s’ etc. despite less frequent, the first person plural possessive /-aʈʃn/ as in the word /beta-aʈʃn/ ‘our house’, the second person singular male /-h/ as /kuas-h/ ‘your ball’ and the second person female /-ʃ/ as in the word /k’əmisʃ/ ‘your dress’ were detected. in addition, the second person plural possessive/-aʈʃhu/ /wəde-bet-atʃhu/ 'to your home' were appropriately used by different children to marking gender, person as well as possession, whereas, if the morpheme /-ua/ or /-wa/ and the third person male /-w/ and /-u/ which were inflected for possession, did not host omission. on the bases of this information, it is likely to deduce that most of the children (particularly older ones) were able to master mapping and assigning meaning for gender, number, and possessive inflections. the other nominal inflections like number, definiteness, and case were appropriately marked when they occurred independently or the noun, noun phrase appeared being a single utterance, there were only one, or two inflections existed in sentence. a case in point, some children uttered the noun phrase /hullət lam-otʃ/ ‘two cows’ with plural inflection as soon as they saw the pictures of the two cows drinking water from the barrel. the others properly assigned the plural and definite inflection as /hullət-u lamotʃ/‘the cows’ but the other four children from different age groups, described the picture as/hullət lam/ missing all the inflections. surprisingly, the remaining two older age girls, bethy (4;6 years from the third age group) and samiry (5; 0 years from the last age group ) had a complete and correct production of the sentence with appropriate nominal and verbal inflections, like/hullət-u lam-otʃ wuha bə-safa ɨjə-t’ət’-u nəw/ ‘the two cows are drinking water from the barrel’. these two girls were able to map and assign appropriate meaning for all nominal and verbal inflections in spite of the heavy functional loads. preserving such a complex functional load of nominal inflections was difficult for other children. when the functional load of nominal and verbal inflection’s patterns increased at sentence level utterances, most of the children were not able to mark the noun or noun phrase with complete and all the necessary nominal morphemes. they dropped or made a paradigm shift (over-generalization) as they encountered difficulties. in relation to nominal inflection errors, plural, definite, and accusative morphemes often hosted frequent omission because younger age children (3;0 to 3;3 years) were not able to map properly the function of these morphemes in a complex situation. whereas, the other dropped as they encountered inability of producing functionally loaded nouns in a sentence due to phonological difficulty. as a result, omission of these nominal inflections was inevitable. in addition, children also made paradigm shift (over-generalization) to unfamiliar plural marks such as /-a-/,/-an/,/-at/ and /-wit/. almost all of the children made a paradigm shift (over-generalization) for the nouns their plural forms exist with one of the above plural markers like in the target plural noun /k’ɨt’əl-a-kɨt’əl/ ‘leaves’ and appeared in children utterance as [k’ɨt’əl-otʃ] through over-generalization of the regular plural [-otʃ]. the findings of the study from different tables (3,4, 6,7,9 and 10) also indicated journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 2 534-556, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 554 that the frequency occurrence of correct and incorrect nominal inflections differed across age groups and in relation to gender. the highest frequency of correct nominal inflections was registered in older children’s (age 4;5-5;0 years) speeches despite individual child's variation and girls also had a better realization. in sum, the number of correct productions of different nominal inflections excelled when children grew older and older age girls particularly had almost adult like morphological parsing even if errors were not completely avoidable. 5. conclusion the acquisition of some nominal inflection rules was frequently seen in children’s interaction process and children were able to apply these rules to nouns before they were able to use other rules. in this regard, one of the greatest challenges that children encountered in the acquisition of inflectional morphology was the functional load of different inflectional morphemes added to a noun or a noun phrase and their combination in the target language. when children were presented with these full paradigms, they were facing a challenge and unable to realize the distribution of inflectional morphemes. from the discussion, it is possible to conclude that children’s inflectional morphology in general and nominal inflections in particular appeared in a progressive development in relation to children’s functional age. the errors found in their utterances were also those of omissions (plural, definite and accusative markers) and paradigm shift from infrequent plural morphemes/-a/, /an/, /-at/ and /-wit/ to the familiar and regular one (overgeneralization of regular plural marker [-otʃ]). the presence of errors is less frequent than the correct mapping of nominal inflections, especially, in older children’s and in girls’ speeches. this is a good sign to show the vigorous development of inflectional morphology in children’s language. however, the low frequency of errors did not necessarily indicate children’s complete mastery of mapping and assigning meaning. the combinational aspects of inflectional morphemes and their sequential occurrence are the determinant factors to the correct and erroneous production. in short, children need to explore the nominal inflection forms they encounter, identify their functional meaning, and able to assign their meaning to the nouns and noun phrases to preserve the nominal morphemes. however, children’s ability to do this is likely challenged by the complexity of the meaning to be assigned and the combination of these nominal inflections load added to nouns and noun phrases. thus, errors are predictably observable although the progressive development of mapping correct nominal inflections was significantly measurable. to conclude, it is obviously considerable that the acquisition of cumulative and combinational nominal inflections was completed far later than this age bound. the acquisition of amharic inflectional morphology alamirew 555 references abebayehu, m. m. 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(2007). research methods in applied linguistics. oxford: oxford university press journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 343-361, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 343 language transfer: a dead issue? reflecting on ‘reverse transfer’ and ‘multicompetence’ hosni mostafa el-dali1 united arab emirates university abstract there has been extensive research into how l1 affects l2, commonly known as ‘negative influence’, but a lot less about the opposite direction, commonly known as ‘reverse or backward’ transfer. as well as the first language influences the second, the second language influences the first. the present study, therefore, attempts to examine and critically review pertinent research into the question of bidirectional influence between languages. first, it traces the conceptual framework of the notion l1→l2 effect. second, it attempts to demonstrate how an emerging new language (l2) affects the existing l1. third, it examines the pedagogical aspects of both directions, as manifested in l2 classroom. special focus will be given to how the concept of “multicompetence” sees the goal of l2 learning and how language teaching should reflect such a goal. in addition, the advantages and disadvantages of using learners’ first language in l2 classroom will be highlighted and specific methodological recommendations will be made. keywords: l1 effect on l2; reverse transfer; the native speaker as a norm, multicompetence, pedagogical aspects 1. introduction the issue of whether the l2 affects the l1has provided a rich new question for l2 acquisition research to investigate. relatedly, it has profound implications not only for our conceptualization of the mind with two languages, but also for our view of all human minds. it is commonly believed that the first language (l1) has an effect on the second language (l2). second language acquisition (sla) literature has shown extensive research on how the learning and use of an l2 is affected by the l1. what has hardly been investigated, however, is the influence that foreign language has on the learner’s first language. the reason for this neglect may have been twofold: (a) for a long time, researchers have been interested in the non-advanced learners of l2. at the beginning stages of l2 learning the influence is mostly unidirectional, from l1 to l2. (b) l2 acquisition research has been 1 dr. hosni mostafa el-dali is an associate professor of linguistics at the college of humanities and social sciences, united arab emirates university. he holds a ph.d. degree in linguistics from the university of pittsburgh, united states of america in 1991. he has authored and published over 45 scientific papers in national and international journals, and he authored eight books. he attended several national and international conferences and presented papers. he supervised several ma and ph.d. dissertations in linguistics in the department of english at the universities of ain shams, tanata and menufiya, egypt. he is a member of several committees inside and outside the university and in his recognition of his work, he received many scholarships and honors certificates. e-mail: hasan.mostafa@uaeu.ac.ae received : 17.05.2021 accepted : 08.11.2021 published : 05.12.2021 mailto:hasan.mostafa@uaeu.ac.ae reverse transfer’ and multicompetence el-dali 344 dominated by english as an l2. advanced learners of english who supplied the data for research were immigrants to english-speaking countries, and knowledge of english was vital for their integration into the new society. therefore, the development of this knowledge provoked researchers’ interest and the state of their native language, on the other hand, was less important, and did not raise the same amount of interest. 1.1. statement of the problem although we can find textbooks, articles, and workshops on the art and science of teaching and learning l2, we are a long, long way from finding ultimate answers to the many difficult questions we have been asking. according to brown (1988), we have grown accustomed to the absence of final solutions as we discover an overwhelming multiplicity of variables at play in the process of l2 learning. specifically, there has been considerable progress in the study of native language influence during the last hundred or so years; however, because of the controversies that have accompanied this progress, the findings of transfer research must be interpreted cautiously (oldin, 1996). skepticism about the role of language transfer has had a long life not only among l2 teachers and researchers, but also among linguists interested in questions of language contact and language change. some scholars have argued for the importance of transfer; some have gone so far as to consider it the paramount fact of l2 acquisition. yet other scholars have been very skeptical about its importance. moreover, schachter (1994) made the point that although it is true that much uncertainty remains about many issues related to cross-linguistic influences, and it is undeniably true that researchers are far from able to predict with full accuracy when transfer will occur, it is also true that skeptics are far from able to predict when transfer will never occur. 1.2. rationale: cross-linguistic influences in discussing the state of l1 and l2 knowledge in fl learners, we need to keep in mind that there is no single scientific truth. in this connection, mclaughlin (1988: 6), correctly, pointed out that “disciplines tend to become fragmented into 'schools', whose members are loath to accept, and are even hostile to the views of other schools using different methods and reaching different conclusions. each group becomes convinced that it has a corner on 'truth'. one philosophical position contends that truth can never be known directly and, in its totality,”. mclaughlin (1988) adds that “multiple ways of seeing result in multiple truths. scientific progress is achieved as we come to illuminate progressively our knowledge in a particular domain by taking different perspectives, each of which must be evaluated in its own right” (p.6). in this regard, brown (1988) points out that “no single discipline or theory or model or factor will ever provide a magic formula for solving the mystery of second language acquisition” (p. xii). keeping the above in mind, i would like to emphasize the following points: (1) viewing transfer as the single most important reality of second language acquisition is risky, though no more so than viewing transfer as a negligible factor in l2 acquisition; and (2) the learning of a language must be viewed as a very complex process of which the development of a grammatical system is only one part. properties journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 343-361, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 345 of l1 and l2 certainly do have some influence on this process and may account for some aspects of the learner's interlanguage (oldin, 1996). other factors especially psychological ones are likely to be of much greater importance for our understanding of the process of l2 acquisition, including linguistic and non-linguistic strategies involved. this view seems to be compatible with ellis (1985) view: “while the learner's native language is an important determinant of second language acquisition, it is not the only determinant; however, and may not be the most important. but it is theoretically unsound to attempt a precise specification of its contribution or even try to compare its contribution with that of other factors” (p.40). 1.3. theoretical background 1.3.1. “transfer” as a notion although language transfer has been a central issue in applied linguistics, l2 acquisition, and language teaching for at least a century, its importance in l2 learning has been reassessed several times. there are a number of reasons for language teachers and linguists to consider the problem of transfer. as odlin (1996) points out (1) teaching may become more effective through a consideration of differences between languages and between cultures. (2) consideration of the research showing similarities in errors made by learners of different backgrounds will help teachers to see better what may be difficult or easy for anyone learning the language they are teaching. (3) research on transfer is also important for a better understanding of the nature of language acquisition in any context and is thus of interest to anyone curious about what is common to all languages; that is; language universals. (4) for historical linguists, knowledge about native language influence can lead to insights about the relation between language contact and language change. most sla research in the 1960s was conducted within the framework of contrastive analysis. in the course of the controversy over the viability of the cah, two versions of this hypothesis have emerged: “the strong vs. the weak” versions. the idea of the strong version is that it is possible to contrast the system of one language with the system of l2. on the basis of the result of this contrast, investigators can discover the similarities and differences between the two languages in question so that they can make predictions about what will be the points of difficulty for the learners of other languages. according to the strong version, wherever the two languages differed, interference would occur. that is, language transfer is the basis for predicting which patterns of the target language will be learned most readily and which will prove most troublesome. this version relies on the assumption that similarities will be easier to learn and differences harder. on the other hand, the weak version relies on two assumptions. first, error analysis may help investigators know, through errors the learners make, what the difficulties are. second, investigators may realize the relative difficulty of specific errors through the frequency of their occurrence. the weak version may be easier and more practical than the strong version on the basis that it requires of the linguist that he/she use his/her linguistic knowledge to explain the observed difficulties in l2 learning. the error reverse transfer’ and multicompetence el-dali 346 analysis (ea) approach is based on the assumption that the frequency of errors is proportional to the degree of learning difficulty (brown, 1980). as a reaction to the ‘product’ orientation of the morpheme studies and error analysis, and the feeling that a more ‘process’ oriented approach was needed, researchers began to work according to the interlanguage framework, which was developed in the late 1970s and 1980s. so, rather than focusing on the first or the target language, researchers began to develop data analytic procedures that would yield information about the dynamic qualities of language change that made the interlanguage a unique system; both similar to and different from the first and target languages. interlanguage has come to characterize a major approach to l2 research and theory. generally speaking, the term "interlanguage" means two things: 1) the learner's system at a single point in time, and 2) the range of interlocking systems that characterize the development of learners over time. the interlanguage is thought to be distinct from both the learner's l1 and from the target language. 1.3.2. transfer in the cognitive theory individuals working within the cognitive theory framework apply the principles and findings of contemporary cognitive psychology to the domain of l2 learning (see bialystok, craik and luk, 2008; jiang, 2007). in this regard, lightbown (1985) pointed out that l2 acquisition is not simply linear and cumulative, but is characterized by backsliding and loss of forms that seemingly were mastered. she attributed this decline in performance to a process whereby learners have mastered some forms and then encounter new ones that cause a restructuring of the whole system. “[restructuring] occurs because language is a complex hierarchical system whose components interact in non-linear ways. seen in these terms, an increase in error rate in one area may reflect an increase in complexity or accuracy in another, followed by overgeneralization of a newly acquired structure, or simply by a sort of overload of complexity which forces a restructuring, or at least a simplification, in another part of the system” (p.177). on the other hand, sla theorists have argued whether bilingual individuals have two separate stores of information in long-term memory, one for each language, or a single information store accompanied by selection mechanism for using l1 or l2 (mclaughlin 1988). in this regard, o'malley, chamote and walker (1987) pointed out that if individuals have a separate store of information maintained in each language, they would select information for use appropriate to the language context. to transfer information that was acquired in l1 to l2 would be difficult because of the independence of the two memory systems. an individual in the early stages of proficiency in l2 would either have to translate information from l1 to l2 or relearn l1 information in l2, capitalizing on existing knowledge where possible. a contrast to this argument for separate l1 and l2 memory systems, cummins (1984) has proposed a common underlying proficiency in cognitive and academic proficiency for bilinguals. cummins argues that at least some of what is originally learned through l1 does not have to be relearned in l2, but can be transferred and expressed through the medium of l2. l2 learners may be able to transfer what they journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 343-361, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 347 already know from l1 into l2 by (a) selecting l2 as the language for expression, (b) retrieving information originally stored through l1 but presently existing as non-language-specific declarative knowledge, and (c) connecting the information to l2 forms needed to express it (see montrul, 2008; ribbert and kuiken, 2010). learning strategy research indicates that students of english as l2 consciously and actively transfer information from their l1 for use in l2. 1.4. reverse/backward transfer: l2 l1 there are several ways of conceptualizing l2 influence on l1. (1) the concept of multi-competence (cook, 1991); (2) the common underlying conceptual base (cucb); (3) representational redescription model; (4) the dynamic model of multilingualism; (5) analysis/ control model; (6) the chomskyan minimalist program. the above approaches share the following common features: (a) at some level of the l2 users mind is a whole that balances elements of the l1 and l2 within it; (b) keeping in mind the number of people who use second languages, monolingualism can be considered the exception, not only statistically but also in terms of human potential; (c) relatedly, if monolingualism is taken as the normal condition of humanity, l2 users can be treated as footnotes to the linguistics of monolingualism. 1.5. focus on multi-competence 1.5.1. multi-competence: a declaration of independence for the l2 user the concept “multicomptence” was introduced by cook (1991) to mean “knowledge of two or more languages in one mind”. it was introduced because while “interlanguage” had become the standard term for the speaker’s knowledge of a second language, no word existed that encompassed their knowledge of both the l2 and their l1 (cook, 2003). the notion of multicompetence has added a new spin by shifting the evaluation angle of the interlanguage system (selinker, 1972) from one being filled with deficiencies, when compared to native speakers’ competence, to one that deserves to be studied in its own right. multicompetence thus presents a view of second language acquisition (sla) based on the second language (l2) user as a whole person rather than on the monolingual native speaker. it, therefore, involves the whole mind of the speaker, not simply their first language (l1) or their second. it assumes that someone who knows two or more languages is a different person from a monolingual and so need to be looked at in their own right rather than as a deficient monolingual. from the multicompetence perspective, the different languages a person speaks are seen as one connected system, rather than each language being a separate system. people who speak a second language are seen as unique multilingual individuals, rather than people who have merely attached another language to their repertoire. multi competence changes the angle from which second language acquisition is viewed. to avoid implying deficiency of the part of second language speakers, cook prefers the term l2 user to l2 learner. an l2 user is anyone who knows a second language and uses it in real life, irrespective of their language level. particular developments from multi-competence were: (a) the re-evaluation of the use reverse transfer’ and multicompetence el-dali 348 of native speakers as the norm in favour of l2 users in their own right; (b) seeing transfer as a two-way process in which the l1 in the l2 user’s mind is affected by the l2, as well as the reverse (see cook, 2006; 2007; 2008, 2009, 2011) 1.5.2. the concept of “native speaker”: re-evaluation until the 1990s it was tacitly assumed that the only owners of a language were its native speakers. the objective of l2 learning was therefore to become as like a native speaker as possible; any difference counted as failure. a working definition of a native speaker is “a person who has spoken a certain language since early childhood” (mc arthur 1992). the native speaker construct has, however, become increasingly problematic in sla research. sla research has then been questioning its faith in the native speaker as the only true possessor of language. on the one hand, it is a highly idealized abstraction. native speakers of any language vary from each other in many aspects of grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary for dialectal, social and regional reasons. on the other hand, this seemed to be one group exercising power over another. since boas, linguistics has refrained from value judgments about different groups of speakers. treating the native speaker as the model for sla is falling into the same trap of subordinating the group of l2 users to the group of native speakers, to which they could never belong by definition. the object of acquiring a second language should be to become an l2 user, and people should be measured by their success at being l2 users, not by their failure to speak like native speakers. the l2 user is a person in his or her own right, not an imitation of someone else. relatedly, one group of human beings should not judge other people as failures for not belonging to their group. the interest of sla research should be ‘discovering l2 users characteristics, not their deficiencies compared with native speakers” (cook, 2003:5). the concept “multi competence” leads us to see the l2 user a person in his or her own right, not as an approximation to a monolingual native speaker. l2 users make up the majority of human beings, and they form a very substantial group. accordingly, people who have native-like skills in both languages are the exception rather than the norm among l2 users. accordingly, the use of native-speaker measure “will blind us in the future to the overwhelming majority of l2 users who are far from native – like across two languages. however, a comparison of the l2 user with the native speaker may be legitimate provided any difference that is discovered is not treated as matters of deficiency. persistent use of this comparison led, for example, to a view that code-switching in adults or children was to be deplored rather than commended. (is it a sign of confusion or a skillful l2 use? two points to remember: (a) according to kecskes and papp (2003), two interacting factors play a decisive role in shaping the l2⟶l1 influence: (1) level of proficiency and the development of a common underlying conceptual base; and (2) nature of transfer. (b) the nature of the l2⟶ l1 effect can vary depending on the social context of the language contact situation. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 343-361, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 349 1.6. positive effects of l2 on l1 1.6.1. knowledge of the first language when people learn a second language, the way they speak their first language changes in subtle ways. these changes can be with any aspect of language, from pronunciation and syntax to gestures the learner makes and the things they tend to notice (cook, 2003). garfinkel and tabor (1991) found that children in elementary foreign language programs outperformed their monolingual peers in the acquisition of basic skills. hakuta (1986) found a correlation of bilingual proficiency with higher scores on standardized tests and tests of both verbal and nonverbal intelligence. yelland, pollard and mercuri (1993) found that english children who are taught italian for an hour a week read english better than those who are not. balcom (1995) found different acceptability judgments of french passive sentences in francophone speakers who did or did not know english. kecskes (1998) has found beneficial effects on the development and use of mother skills with regard to structural well-formedness in hungarian students of modern languages. marcos (1998) found that learning a second language in an elementary school usually enhances a child’s learning ability in english. satterfield (1999) showed that knowledge of english as an l2 caused increased use of overt pronouns in non-emphatic contexts in l1 spanish by spanish/english bilinguals. another study on the influence of the second language on the first language is a study conducted by darwish (1999) in australia on arab migrants which showed that negative transfer from english into arabic seems to produce a new variety of arabic that diverges from the norms of arabic spoken in the arab world (see thomas, collier and abbott, 1993; arcay-hands, 1998). dumas (1999) showed that regardless of race, gender or academic level, students taking foreign language classes did better in the english section of the louisiana basic skills test than those who did not. kecskes and papp (2003) found that hungarian children who know english use measurably more complex sentences in their l1 than those who do not. bialystok (2001) has found that l2 user children have more precious metalinguistic skills than their monolingual peers. genoz (2002) found that there was a bidirectional interaction between english and spanish in the pragmatic component of spanish / bosque l1 speakers. murphy and pine (2003), also revealed that bilingual children represented the knowledge of language more explicitly than the monolinguals of the same age. laufer (2003) showed that an experienced russian speaker of hebrew uses a less rich vocabulary in russian than comparative new comers. pavlenko (2003) showed that russian learners of english begin to rely on expressing emotions as states rather than as process. cook (2003) showed that japanese speaker of english are more prone to prefer plural subjects in japanese sentences than japanese who do not know english. serrano and howard (2003) conducted a study in the united states of america on the influence of english on the spanish writing of native spanish speakers in two-way immersion programs. they discovered some influences of the second language (english) on the students’ first language (spanish). reverse transfer’ and multicompetence el-dali 350 kaushankaya, yoo and marian (2011) examined the influence of second language experience on native-language vocabulary and reading skills in two groups of bilingual speakers. english-spanish and english-mandarin bilingual adults were tested vocabulary knowledge and reading fluency in english, their native language. participants also provided detailed information regarding their history of second-language acquisition, including on the age of l2 acquisition, degree of l2 exposure, l2 proficiency, and preference of l2 use. comparisons across the two bilingual groups revealed that both groups performed similarly on native-language vocabulary and reading measures. however, in english spanish bilinguals, higher selfreported reading skills in spanish were associated with higher english reading-fluency scores, while in english-mandarin bilinguals, higher selfreported reading skills in mandarin were associated with lower english reading –fluency scores. these findings suggest that second-language experiences influence native-language performance and can facilitate or reduce it depending on the properties of the second-language writing system (see kecskes and papp, 2000). 1.6.2. thought processes the effects extend outside the area of language. l2 users think more flexibly than monolinguals, are more aware of language in general, and have better attitude towards other cultures. bialystock (2001) found that children who have learned a second language have a sharper view of language if they speak an l2. yelland et al., (1993) found that they learn to read more quickly in their l1. diaz (1985) found that they have better conceptual development, creativity and analogical reasoning (see athanasopoulos, 2009; cook et al., 2010; imai & gentner, 1997; cook et al., 2003; jarvis, 2003). current research is exploring whether certain basic concepts are modified in those who know a second language. for example, athanasopoulos (2001) found greek speakers who knew english had a different perception of the two greek words covered by the english “blue”, namely (ghalazio “light blue”) and (ble, “dark blue) than monolingual greek speakers. dewale and pavlenko (2003) found that japanese people who had longer exposure to english chose shape rather than substance more often in a categorization experiment than those with less exposure. this means that some concepts in the l2 users’ minds may be influenced by those of the second language; others may take forms that are the same neither as the l1 or the l2. this seems to suggest that people who speak different languages think, to some extent, in different ways. to conclude, central to cook’s argument is the way in which people’s language knowledge changes when they learn a second language. he makes three main points: (1) l2 users’ knowledge of the second language is not the same as native speakers’ knowledge of their languages; (2) l2 users’ knowledge of their first language is not the same as that of monolingual native speakers; (3) l2 users think in different ways than monolinguals. metaphorically, one could compare the language in contact in the individual’s mind to two liquid colors that blend unevenly; i.e. some areas, will take on the new color resulting from the mixing, but other areas may look like the new color, but a closer look may reveal a slightly different hue journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 343-361, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 351 according to the viewer’s angle. multicompetence should be seen as a neverending, complex, non-linear dynamic process in a speaker’s mind (dewaele & pavlenko, 2003). it is hoped that cook’s recommendations, “can convince students that they are successful multicompetent speakers, not failed native speakers” (cook, 1999, p. 204). 1.7. negative effects of l2 on l1 changes in the first languages have been investigated in the framework of language attrition. the increasing dominance of the l2 was presented as one of the factors responsible for the gradual disappearance of the l1 (see ben rafael and schmid, 2007; tsimpli, 2007). many studies have looked at language loss as a societal, socio-cultural phenomenon, focusing on language shift or language death affecting entire speech communities. few studies have looked at a language loss as an individual, psycholinguistic phenomenon focusing on process of l1 attrition in individuals (jarvis, 2003: 82). most of the studies in the latter position have looked at l2 effects in cases where individuals are losing their ability to function in the l1. (see schmid, 2011, 2012; schmid et al., 2004). in language learning theory, psycholinguistic perspectives of language attrition are mostly linked with partial acquisition and/or non-pathological language loss. in other words, either a language system is acquired only incompletely because of cross-linguistic contact, or some of the linguistic knowledge of a sufficiently acquired language system has been forgotten (jessner, 2003). the question of what exactly is lost and when attrition starts is difficult to answer. of the several hypotheses that have been formulated (schmid, 2001) is the regression hypothesis. this claims that you forget items in the same order that you learned them. what remains an issue to be explored in psycholinguistic research in whether parts of a language system can be forgotten or whether they are simply not accessible for some reasons? in recent literature on forgetting, there is no loss of memory but only “inaccessibility of information if the might cause is not used” (de bot, 1996) (p.583). olshtain (1986) adds the component of proficiency level when she points out that last learned forms which have not as yet been fully mastered, are early candidates for attrition. in this regard, jessner (2003) has maintained that forgetting is a gradual process of information decay that is dependent on time. l1 language attrition has been shown to be significantly related to length of residence in the foreign country. according to porte (2003), it might be useful to try to visualize the process of l1 attrition on a continuum along which various stages of maintenance and loss can be located, from “intact” knowledge of the l1 at one end of the continuum to complete loss at the other. it follows that there would be various stages along this hypothetical continuum at which one would expect to find greater degrees of loss and/or progressively more dominance of the l2; these would correspond to what content and amount of the first language is no longer readily accessed. however, along the continuum, these stages might also be expected to relate to the amount of control consciously maintained by the speaker over the foreign and native languages. reverse transfer’ and multicompetence el-dali 352 vilar sanchez (1995) argued that l1 erosion might be encouraged by mixing or switching between languages, and it might later be manifested in occasional and momentary lapses of memory where the native speaker might have a word or expression on the tip of the tongue” and remembered it after some kind of internal or external prompting. jervis (2003) reviewed some research studies that investigated l2 english effects on l1 finnish. the major finding from these studies is that first generation finnish immigrants tend to be highly successful in maintaining their finnish proficiency. they also tend to be quite proficient in english. the third generation finnish immigrants in english speaking countries, tend to be essentially monolingual english speakers with only a limited knowledge of finnish. 1.8. implications for language teaching the idea of multi competence as the compound state of a mind with two grammars has many implications. the starting point for language teaching should be the recognition that the second language user is a particular kind of person in their own right with their own knowledge of the first language (l1) and the second language (l2), rather than a monolingual with an added l2. an l2 user is a person who uses another language for any purpose at whatever level (cook 2002). multi competence has two major implications for language teaching. the first is about the question of what the final goal should be for language learners. the multicompetence viewpoint sees the goal of learning as becoming a successful l2 user. language teaching therefore should reflect this: the goal of language learning should be based on what successful l2 users can do; not what monolingual native speakers can do. also, teaching materials should show positive examples of l2 use and l2 users. the second implication is for the use of the first language in the classroom. if the first language can never truly be separated from the second language in the mind, it makes no sense to forbid the use of the first language in the language classroom. cook argues that banning the use of the first language will not stop learners from using it to help with their language learning. it will only make its use invisible to the teacher. instead, cook suggests that teachers should think about how they can make use of both languages in suitable ways. cook (2001) stated that over the last century, the use of the first language has been largely taboo in second language teaching. in the strongest form, l1 use is banned, and in the weakest sense, it is minimized. however, he advocates a more positive view: maximum l2 use. since multi competence means that the l1 is always present in the user’s minds, it would be artificial and sometimes inefficient to avoid its use. language is not compartmentalized within the mind, so there is little reason they should be in the classroom. some reasons for using the l1 in the classroom are to convey and check the comprehension of lexical or grammatical forms and meanings, to give directions, and to manage the class. these things may be difficult or impossible to do without resorting to the l1. the issue of the place of mother-tongue in fl instruction is one of the controversial topics in the field of foreign language teaching. many arguments have been raised and the various language teaching methods (conventional and non-conventional) hold different fluctuating opinions. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 343-361, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 353 some recommend while others condemn the use of mother-tongue in the fl classroom. there are two extremes which are represented by the grammar translation method and the direct method. the former, as its name suggests, makes iiberal use of mother tongue. it depends on translation and considers the first language a reference system to which the foreign language learner can resort so as to understand the grammatical as well as the other features of the foreign language. the latter(the other extreme)tries to inhibit the use of mother tongue. it depends on using the foreign language in explanation and communication in the language classroom and excluding the first language and translation altogether. those who condemn mother-tongue use view that optimal fl learning can be achieved through the intralingual tackling of the various levels of linguistic analysis as this helps provide maximum exposure to the foreign language. it is true that providing maximum exposure to the foreign language helps a lot in learning that language. but this, with confining oneself to the foreign language only, may be done at the expense of understanding and intelligibility or in a routine and non-creative way. with careful and functional mother tongue use, intelligibility can be achieved and the time saved (by giving the meaning in the mother-tongue) can be used for practice. therefore, mother-tongue use does not mean wasting time that can be better used for providing maximum exposure to the foreign language. disregarding the mother tongue and considering it "a bogey to be shunned at all costs" is a myth. those who recommend nothing but english in english lesson neglect many important facts: first, they have forgotten that fl learners translate in their minds and think in their own language and this cannot be controlled: "the teacher who says: i forbid the use of the pupil's own language in my class, nothing but english in the english lessons is deceiving himself. he has forgotten the one thing he cannot control what goes on in the pupil's mind, he cannot tell whether, or when, his pupils are thinking in their own language. when he meets a new english word, the pupil inevitably searches in his mind for the equivalent in his own language. when he finds it, he is happy and satisfied, he has a pleasurable feeling of success". (french 1972: 94). supporting this idea, finocchiaro (1975) says: "we delude ourselves if we think the student is not translating each new english item into his native language when he first meets it (p.35). second, they have also forgotten that "the unknown (a second language pattern) cannot be explained via something less known (the second language)" (hammerly, 1971) (p.504). third, they have forgotten that the mother-tongue is first in terms of acquisition and proficiency and so fl learners cannot escape its influence: "the mother-tongue is so strongly ingrained that no amount of direct method drill can override its influence. therefore, according to this line of thought it is better to capitalize on the students' knowledge of (mother-tongue) than to pretend it is not there" (grittner, 1977) (p.165). fourth, they have forgotten that there are individual differences among students and that the weaker students may have difficulties in grasping a point in the foreign language. they don't advise fl teachers what to do in cases where attempts at english-english explanations have failed. reverse transfer’ and multicompetence el-dali 354 in a study conducted by latke-gajer (1984), she tried to look for a solution for what she observed while teaching english. the problem is that students, to understand an utterance in the foreign language, translate each word separately and then add together the meaning of individual words. this is harmful as it does not enable students to grasp the meaning of more complex statements, especially those that contain idiomatic expressions. she decided, in this study, to introduce english-english explanations of new words and expressions. she started the experiment with her advanced students by giving them a list of words to be explained in english at home and then they compared their explanations with the definition in hornby’'s dictionary. although the experiment proved successful, especially with advanced students, it was not possible to totally eliminate polish (as a mother-tongue) from the lessons. it was necessary to use it to explain several difficult and complicated grammatical patterns so that the weaker students could understand. with the beginners it was impossible to use this same method. for them, she suggests using different ways such as: opposition, describing pictures and using games. the mother tongue cannot be totally excluded or disregarded. there are many situations in which a few words in the mother tongue will help clarify something students may not have comprehended in english. it is a myth to believe that "the best criterion for effective target language teaching is the absence of the mother-tongue in the classroom. although the need for a target language environment in the classroom is controvertible, this does not imply, however, that the mother tongue has no role to play in effective and efficient language teaching. where a word of arabic can save egyptian learners of english from confusion or significant time lost from learning, its absence would be, in my view, pedagogically unsound." (altman, 1984) (p.79). absence of the mother tongue may result in meaningless and mechanical learning situations. this contradicts the recent research findings which stress that the two-way type of communication should be the ultimate goal of instruction and the tool which ensures better teaching results. with total exclusion of the mother tongue the teaching learning situations may degenerate into a mechanical process in which "one may memorize (learn how to repeat) a phrase or a sentence in a foreign language, without knowing what it means. in such a case, one could say the person knows it (knows how to say it), but we could also say that the person does not understand what he or she is saying (comprehend its meaning)." (see portocarrero and burright, 2007). it is pedagogically important to emphasize the element of meaningfulness in the teaching learning process. students become motivated and active if they understand what is involved and if they know what they are doing. therefore, it is important not to disregard the learners' need for the comprehension of what they learn or exclude the mother tongue because it is their right that they should make sense in their own terms of what they are learning. it is also important to use the learners' native language so as to avoid misunderstanding and achieve intelligibility (see sparks et al., 2008). mother tongue plays a vital role in diminishing or at best eliminating the psychological factors that have an inhibiting effect on fl teaching and journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 343-361, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 355 learning. it has been noticed that the non-conventional methods of language teaching make use of the mother tongue and translation in fl/sl teaching and learning. they emphasize that mother tongue employing removes the fear of incompetence, mistakes and apprehension regarding languages new and unfamiliar. one point is that, to overcome the problems of dissatisfaction and avoidance, fl teachers should permit some mothertongue use. students, having linguistic inadequacies, can get confused and become hesitant about their oral participation. they may abandon a message they have started because a certain idea or a thought is too difficult to continue expressing in the foreign language. to overcome the feeling of dissatisfaction and psychological avoidance, fl learners should come to terms with the frustrations of being unable to communicate in the foreign language and build up, cognitively and effectively, a new reference system which helps them communicate an idea. this reference system is the mother tongue which is indeed very important for enhancing the fl learners' feeling of success and satisfaction. another point is that mother-tongue use helps create a climate that alleviates the learners' tension, insecurity and anxiety. it makes the class atmosphere comfortable and productive and helps establish good relationships between the teacher and his students. however, it must be kept in mind that mother tongue should be used as little as possible, but as much as necessary. 2. conclusion multi competence has two major implications for language teaching. the first is about the question of what the final goal should be for language learners. the multicompetence viewpoint sees the goal of learning as becoming a successful l2 user. language teaching, therefore, should reflect this: the goal of language learning should be based on what successful l2 users can do, not what monolingual native speakers can do. also, teaching materials should show positive examples of l2 use and l2 users. the second implication is for the use of the first language in the classroom. if the first language can never truly be separated from the second language in the mind, it makes no sense to forbid the use of the first language in the language classroom. cook argues that banning the use of the first language will not stop learners from using it to help with their language learning. it will only make its use invisible to the teacher. instead, cook suggests that teachers should think about how they can make use of both languages in suitable ways. the problem does not lie in whether mother-tongue has a place in fl teaching/learning or not, but in how much of it is permitted. in this respect, it can be said that there are many factors determining the quantity to be used. the quantification will differ according to the maturity level of the learners and their linguistic level. it also depends on the competence of the teacher, the material to be taught and the availability of teaching aids. another point is that it is the individual teacher who sensitizes when to switch codes and when not to. it is also the teacher who can decide the pragmatic quantity to be used because what is workable in a certain class may not be so in another. reverse transfer’ and multicompetence el-dali 356 it is important to emphasize the fact that mother tongue should not be used in the wrong way. it is desirable in cases where it is necessary, inevitable and where otherwise valuable classroom time would be wasted. we do not want the fl teacher to use the mother tongue freely and to automatically translate everything on the learners' book. this unlimited use is so harmful that it discourages the learners from thinking in english (the language they are learning) and so it will not be taken seriously as a means of communication. "translating can be a hindrance to the learning process by discouraging the student from thinking in english" (haycraft, 1979, p.12). students in most cases think in their mother tongue and lean too much on it. this makes them acquire and develop the habit of mental translation. they interpose the mother tongue between thought and expression developing a three-way process in production and expressing their intentions: meaning to mother tongue to english expression. they always think, while trying to express themselves (in the foreign language), in their mother-tongue and all their attempts to communicate in the foreign language are filtered through the mother-tongue: "the mother-tongue is not relinquished, but it continues to accompany and of course to dominate the whole complex fabric of language behavior.... all referent whether linguistic or semantic are through the mother tongue". grittner 1977) (p.81). this is pedagogically dangerous as it makes the fl learners believe that, to express themselves in the foreign language, the process is mere verbal substitution of words of the mother-tongue to their equivalents in the foreign language and this is an extremely a tiring way to produce correct sentences in the foreign language and creates no direct bond between thought and expression. the non-existence of this bond results in: hindering fluency in speech and proficiency in productive writing. interposing the mother tongue between thought and expression hinders the intralingual associative process which is necessary for promoting fluency and automatic production of fl discourse: "the explicit linkage of a word in one language with a word in another language may interfere with the facilitative effects of intra-language associations. thus, for instance, if a student repeats many times the pair go: also, the association between the two will become so strong that the french word will come to the student's mind whenever he uses the english equivalent and inhibit the smooth transition from 'go' to the other english words, a skill necessary for fluent speech". fl teachers should guard against mental translation. this can be achieved by permitting the learners to express themselves (in speech or writing) within their linguistic capacities and capabilities. this means that the student, for instance, should first practice expressing given ideas instead of trying to fit language to his free mental activities and "if he is freed from the obligation to seek what to say, he will be able to concentrate on form and gradually acquire the correct habits on which he may subsequently depend". it is important to familiarize the learners with the fact that no word in one language can have or rightly be said to have the same meaning of a word in another language. fl teachers should provide more than one native equivalent for the fl word; give the meaning on the sentential level and in various contexts (see nakamoto, lindsey and manis, 2008). journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 343-361, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 357 cook (1999) also advocates more l2 user representation in the textbooks and materials teachers use in class. just as there may be gender or ethnic bias in textbooks in general, there is a bias towards native speakers in esl and efl textbooks. as cook explains, "the status of l2 users is in even more need of redress, because they are virtually never represented positively" (p. 200). many times, the l2 user is represented as ignorant or incompetent. appearances of successful l2 users would be helpful as they provide positive models and could contribute to the motivation and confidence of the students. taken to the extreme, advanced learners and users of the l2 may not be much different from a native speaker in language use. however, it is important that these advanced l2 user models be provided to students because they are multicompetent, like the students, and unlike monolingual native speakers. similarly, non-native speaker teachers and teaching materials that include successful l2 users may boost morale by providing attainable goals. another model that could be provided to the l2 learners is a non-native speaker teacher. cook (2002) points out those students are more likely to identify with and to be able to emulate non-native speaker teachers than native speakers. also, these teachers would be able to share their own experiences of learning the language, and may be more sensitive to the difficulties faced by the students. a non-native speaker teacher (nnst) is an l2 user who has acquired another language; a native speaker teacher (nst) is not. hence the nnst can present a role model for the students, has learnt the language by a similar route to the students and can codeswitch to the students' own language when necessary. the nst's only substantive advantage may be a greater facility in the target language, but as a native speaker not as an l2 user. references altman, h. 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(1993). the metalinguistic benefits of limited contact with a second language. applied psycholinguistics, 14(4), 423-444. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 706-727, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 706 the cohesive patterning in the written texts of bilingual russian-german second graders anna andreeva1 ludwig-maximlians-universität münchen abstract the cohesive patterning is an important aspect of textual competence that plays a crucial role in the educational context and in literacy development. this paper investigates the types of cohesive patterning in the written texts of 12 russian-german (8 simultaneous and 4 sequential) bilingual second graders and contributes therefore to the research of the biliteracy development peculiarities at primary school age. furthermore, the paper focuses on the possible impact factors which could influence the microstructural coherent performance in both languages. for this, a mixed-method study design was chosen which combines the quantitative and qualitative data analysis. in addition to the text corpus which contains 12 german and 12 russian narratives composed on the basis of given picture stimuli, sociolinguistic data were elicited from parental interviews. the data analysis shows tendentially more elaborate cohesive patterning in german than in russian texts. this corresponds to the previous assumptions that textual competence should be considered as a cultural achievement which can be successfully attained in the institutionalized educational context despite of bilingualism type. the influencing role of the heritage language instruction on the textual competence development in russian could not be proved. instead, the three presented casestudies imply that the bilingual children’s motivation and literal practices are important impact factors. keywords multiliteracy, biliteracy, russian-german bilingualism, textual competence, cohesive patterning, written data analysis, narratives, mixed-method study 1. introduction primary school is obviously an important stage of children’s language development. a change of cognitive language representation takes place due to the successive shift from the concrete to abstract thinking (tomasello, 2002; hüttis-graff, & wieler, 2011). this goes together with the acquisition of important competences such as writing and spelling skills and the emergence of language awareness which includes for example the knowledge about various text patterns and language registers that can be used in the different communicative contexts. this process does not happen immediately, but, beginning with school enrollment, it is carried out in the institutionalized context. in fact, school must enable children to acquire the adequate literacy-related skills common academic language proficiency (cummins, 2000). these skills should be understood as an opposite of the 1 anna andreeva's research interests cover russian language acquisition, german language acquisition, bilingual language acquisition and bilingual writing development. contact: anna.vl.andreeva@googlemail.com received : 31.05.2019 accepted : 26.12.2022 published : 30.03.2023 doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7792491 mailto:anna.vl.andreeva@googlemail.com https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7792491 cohesive patterning in written texts andreeva 707 basic interpersonal communication skills the acquisition of which is a natural result of socialization in a language community. accordingly, literacy is to be regarded as a cultural achievement that is crucial for the social participation (street, 2003) and educational ability (gogolin, 2014). in the context of the growing globalization and omnipresent migration processes, multiliteracy is becoming an important topic of the scientific research. according to the actual debate on the use of the life-world multilingualism as a social and individual resource (bialystok, craik, & luk, 2012; benmamoun, montrul, & polinsky, 2013; polinsky, 2018), multiliteracy can be regarded as a social enrichment. therefore, this paper should contribute to the research of first multiliteracy development stage in the primary school by discussing its functional peculiarities in the russiangerman bilingual setting and investigating the factors which are likely to improve the biliteracy abilities of bilingual children. the decision to examine this topic in the russian-german bilingual context is conditioned by the fact that, due to the different migration processes in the last 30 years, russian is one of the biggest heritage languages2 in germany with a wide speaker community (brehmer, 2007). however, the linguistic research on russian-german bilingualism were dominated by the studies based on the analysis of (oral) data collected in spontaneous speech situations (e.g. meng, 2001; meng, & protassova, 2005; anstatt, & dieser, 200; anstatt, 2011; brehmer, 2013; tribushinina, valcheva, & gagarina, 2017). the researchers began investigating multiliteracy in the russian-german context increasingly only in recent years (böhmer, 2015; 2016; usanova, 2016; brehmer, & usanova, 2017; brehmer et al., 2017; usanova, 2019) and there are still only few studies on the bilinguals at primary school age (gagarina, 2016; gogolin, akgün, & klinger, 2017). accordingly, this paper should fill this research gap by examining the cohesive patterning in bilingual’s written texts. 1.1. text cohesive patterning as a special aspect of multiliteracy at first, we should define the main term which is to be used in this article multiliteracy. multiliteracy is to be understood as writing proficiency and discourse competence in several languages (riehl 2014). the acquisition of literacy skills such as writing and spelling is an essential part of multiliteral competence. orthographically correct writing is undoubtedly to be regarded as a basic component of academic language proficiency (bialystok, luk, & kwan, 2005; ehlers, 2009). a particular difficulty can be observed when involved languages use different scripts. in this case, the bilingual individuals have to get biscriptual (noack, & weth, 2014; usanova, 2016; brehmer, & usanova, 2016; brehmer et al., 2017; usanova, 2019). however, the literacy acquisition is not reduced to the adequate grapheme 2 according to the definition of polinsky, the heritage language speaker is a “simultaneous or sequential <…> bilingual whose weaker language corresponds to the minority language of their society and whose stronger language is the dominant language of the society” (polinsky, 2018: 9). if we transfer this definition to the russian heritage speakers in germany, this term should subsume all people who live in a german-speaking society and had acquired russian as a first language and either simultaneously or subsequently acquired german. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 706-727, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 708 phoneme-assignment and orthographical correct transcription but it also presupposes the ability to approach the text as a whole and to understand discourses of different purposes and structures and to produce them in a subject-related and recipient-oriented way. in the german linguistic discourse, this ability is referred as textual competence (portmann-tselikas, 2002; schmölzer-eibinger, 2008). textual competence is crucial for both the formulation of every-day communicative contributions and for elaborate discourses. the latter seems to be the most difficult task, because it presupposes knowledge of conceptual literacy structures (koch, & oesterreicher, 1994; maas, 2010). according to the immediacy-distance-model of koch, & oesterreicher we have to distinguish between two different dimensions of language use: the mode of realization spoken vs. written on the one hand and the conceptualization of the speech production on the other hand conceptual orality vs. conceptual literacy. the distinction of spoken and written language is therefore not equal to the categories of conceptual orality and literacy. the coincidence of these two categories could be received only in the prototypical situation. but otherwise, it is a continuum with the different constellations of immediacy and distance. the conceptual literacy is obviously much more difficult as it presupposes a decontextualized communication register which is also important for educational language (gogolin, roth, 2007; gellert, 2011). thus, textual competence as a part of literal ability requires conceptual literacy knowledge (maas, 2010; woerfel et al., 2014; yilmaz woerfel, & riehl, 2016; böhmer, 2016) that combines such partial competences as the appropriate discourse planning and usage of adequate lexical-semantic und syntactic patterns (gogolin, & lange, 2011; gogolin, & duarte, 2016). within the scope of this article, only one aspect of text production will be examined – the cohesive patterning of the written texts. the following section should clarify the special significance of cohesion for the textual competence and thus the particular research interest. as mentioned above, literacy is an intricate phenomenon at the cognition/language-interface. the production of conceptually and linguistically coherent texts in the adequate discourse contexts seems to play a crucial role here. such text production requires the implementation of bottom-up and top-down cognitive processes on the level of linguistic expression (berman, & nir, 2009: 421). in this regard, the linguists use the notions coherence and cohesion. there is no agreement about the definition of these two phenomena. however, they can be theoretically distinguished (halliday, & hasan, 1976; van dijk, 1980; de beaugrande, & dressler, 1981; karmiloff-smith, 1985; linke, nussbaumer, & portmann, 2004; brinker, 20053). coherence is considered to be a global macrostructural conceptual connectivity of discourse based on the underlying homogeneous and logical semantic representation schemata. cohesion belongs to the microstructural linguistic level of discourse structuring and ensures that sentences and large 3 due to a very close interdependence between cohesion and coherence, some theoretical models combine these two phenomena. for example, brinker proposes to talk of coherence as a superior concept (brinker, 2005). however, brinker distinguishes between two kinds of coherence grammatic and semantic. cohesive patterning in written texts andreeva 709 parts of discourse are syntactically related or considered to be connected. although coherence seems to be the most important textual criterium, different psycholinguistic studies emphasize the very tight connection between the coherence and cohesion as well as the relevance of their interplay for text production and comprehension (witte, faigley, 1981; liles, 1987; liles et. al., 1995; shapiro, & hudson, 1997; hickmann, 2004). thus, cohesion guarantees text constitutive semantic relation and makes the content of the text perceived as coherent in the decontextualized communicative situation. particularly, previous research has claimed the significant impact of various forms of cohesion on the reading comprehension, on the one hand, and on the recipient judgment about the text quality, on the other hand (mcnamara, & kintsch, 1996; crossley, & mcnamara, 2011; meyer, 2003; mcnamara, ozuru, & floyd, 2011; schmitz, gräsel, & rothstein, 2017). such findings highlight the important role of cohesion for the textual competence. in the multilingual setting, this role seems to be particularly significant, as the macrostructural coherence can be considered as language-independent whereas the cohesion level is language-specific (pearson, 2002). 1.2. previous research state and research questions although the development of cohesive structuring of discourses seems to be an important research question, the previous studies on the multiliteracy often focus primarily on the macrostructural level of global text coherence in order to show special features in the multilingual setting, to elicit differences and similarities in language development between the multilinguals and monolinguals or in order to reveal some language development disorders (gutiérrez-clellen, 2002; montanari, 2004; rapti, 2005; uluçam, 2007; gantefort, 2013; kupersmitt, yifat & blum-kulka, 2014; woerfel et al., 2014, yilmaz-woerfel & riehl, 2016). although recent research examines cohesion as an important part of textual competence which can reveal the developmental peculiarities of bilinguals (serratrice, 2007; iluz-cohen & walters, 2012; tribushinina et. al., 2017; fichman & altman, 2019), in the russian-german biliteracy context, there are only very few studies which take this aspect of bilinguals' performance into consideration. for example, böhmer (2015, 2016) investigates the biliteracy ability of russian-german adolescents and focuses mainly on the macrostructure of text production examining, additionally, different literal phenomena on the lexical and syntactical level. regarding the multiliteracy development in the primary school, there are two relevant studies to be mentioned in this context: kibis-study from the university of hamburg (gogolin, akgün & klinger 2017) and the study on the narration development of russian-german bilinguals at the transition from kindergarten to primary school (gagarina, 2016). nevertheless, the interest of kibis-study is the literacy competence in the german language without respect to the heritage language. although this study analyzes the relationship between receptive (reading) and productive (writing) competence of primary school children, its main focus is on the extralinguistic impact factors of literacy development such as social environment, parenting style etc. in contrast to this educational science approach, the second study (gagarina, 2016) journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 706-727, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 710 investigates the discourse production of bilingual russian-german children explicitly from the linguistic perspective analyzing the macrostructural level of narratives in both languages. however, the analysis is first based on the oral data, second, the microstructural level of textual coherence and particularly cohesion patterning does not play an important role in the study. so far, the previous research has not considered enough the interaction between russian and german languages in the development of cohesion as an important aspect of textual competence in the primary school. however, the approach to examine the interdependencies between involved languages is likely to be the most important one according to the recent theoretical multilingualism models such as dynamic model of multilingualism (herdina & jessner, 2002; de bot, lowie & verspoor, 2007). adopting the presumptions of dynamic systems theory, this multilingualism model considers the cognition of the multilingual speaker as an intricate psycholinguistic system and the language acquisition as a non-linear process based on the interdependence between the involved languages and different variable impact factors. therefore, this study is committed to this research paradigm and aims to investigate the biliteracy in the primary school analyzing the microstructural cohesion performance in both languages of russian-german bilinguals and trying to elicit possible influencing factors which could be regarded as important for the biliteracy development. accordingly, this study presupposes that cohesive patterning, i.e. the diversity of different cohesive devises (linke, nussbaumer & portmann, 2004; halliday & hasan, 1976) used for transphrastical linking of discourse elements makes the text more elaborate and testifies in particular the better level of writing competence (becker-mrotzek & böttcher, 2011). thus, the most important research questions to be answered in this article are as follows: 1. in what language can a more elaborate cohesive patterning be observed and what explanation can be found for this fact? 2. is there a correlation and interdependence between the level of cohesive patterning in both languages? can the strategy of cohesive patterning be transferred from one language to another? 3. what factors should be regarded as influencing for development of text cohesive patterning as a part of textual competence? 2. study-design and methodology in order to answer the research questions formulated in the previous paragraph, it was decided to design a mixed-method study that combines the analysis of written data of bilingual children and biographical and sociolinguistic data elicited from parental interviews. all data originate from the running pilot study which is now being conducted as a preparation for a long-term investigative project on the russian-german biliteracy development in the primary school. cohesive patterning in written texts andreeva 711 2.1. participants the participants are 12 russian-german bilingual second graders who attend a public german primary school. they were recruited in the primary schools and in the russian heritage language schools in the region of munich. the average age of the participants at the moment of data elicitation is 7 years and 8 months (median 7;8, standard deviation – 0;4). two participants are males and ten of them are females. eight participants can be regarded as simultaneous bilinguals (mostly born in germany) due to already simultaneous onset of second language exposure. another four participants are to be considered as sequential bilinguals as they came to germany at the age of 3 years (2 participants) and 5 years (2 participants) and began acquiring german as a second language after the fundamental structure acquisition in russian was completed4. as russian and german use different scripts (latin and cyrillic), in the context of russian-german biliteracy, the bilingual script acquisition is needed (usanova, 2016; brehmer & usanova, 2016; brehmer et al., 2017; usanova, 2019). speaking about biliteracy as an ability to produce (written) texts in both languages, the acquisition of biscriptual skills seems to be rather important in order to master two different writing systems. although the acquisition of latin script and german orthography is self-evident for the participants by attending the german primary school, the cyrillic script acquisition is not obvious and can be guaranteed only if the child has been specially instructed. among the participants, there are nine children who have acquired writing skills in russian (attending the russian language school or by parental instruction). all participants were given the opportunity to write russian texts in cyrillic script or to transcribe russian texts using the latin alphabet5. eight participants decided to write the russian text in cyrillic script, two in latin and two refused to transcribe and dictated their stories. 2.2. written data elicitation and processing for the purpose of this study, there were elicited cross-sectional written data collected in the region of munich in november and december 2018. in total, 24 written texts of participants (12 in russian and 12 in german) were analyzed. these are narrative picture stories composed on the basis of standardized picture stimuli. it was decided to borrow the picture stimuli 4 there is no agreement about the l2 onset age that marks the difference between simultaneous and sequential bilinguals in the previous research. so, meisel (2009) and montrul (2008) postulate the age of 4 years as crucial for the differentiation. ruberg (2013) and gagarina (2016) assume l2 onset at the age of no later than 24 months for the classification as a simultaneous bilingual, whereas geneese, paradis & crago (2004) and paradis (2008) consider the age of 3 years as a differentiating mark between the bilinguals’ groups. in this paper, the latter setting is adopted. the age of 3 years seems to be crucial as the acquisition of the fundamental structure of first language is completed at this age. from another point of view, the age of 3 years plays an important role in the socialization of the bilingual children in german language due to the extension of the language environment as the children can be admitted to kindergarten. 5 this is a common practice used in the latest works (see böhmer, 2015; usanova, 2016; brehmer & usanova, 2016; brehmer et al., 2017; usanova, 2019). the analysis of these independent transcriptions allows conclusions to be drawn on the perception of the phonematic features of russian and on the existing metalinguistic knowledge. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 706-727, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 712 from the multilingual assessment instrument for narratives (main) developed by gagarina et al. (2012) and used in the study of gagarina (2016): the picture story “the cat” was used for the russian task, the picture story “the dog” for the german task. the decision to analyze narratives is motivated by the peculiarities of the writing competence of children at the age between 7 and 10 years. according to becker-mrotzek andböttcher (2011), there can be observed the phase of orientation on own experiences what makes all kind of narratives most important and central at this stage of child language development. narrative discourse seems therefore to play a crucial role in the world interpretation (herman, 2001) whereas narrative skills can be regarded as a bridge between orality and literacy due to coherent discourse production and increasing cohesion elaboration (westby, 1991; hickmann, 2004; berman 2009). all written data were transcribed, saved and analyzed with the qualitative and mixed-method data analysis software maxqda. 2.3. written data analysis the written data were at first analyzed qualitatively with respect to the cohesive devices used in both languages. there are partly different approaches to the differentiation of these phenomena in the german and english tradition, particularly due to the systematic differences between the languages (halliday & hasan, 1976; linke,nussbaumer &portmann, 2004). as the performance in german (and hence the categories of german language) is one of the aspects investigated in this paper, the classification of cohesive devices in this article is mainly adopted from linke, nussbaumer & portmann, (2004: 254 ff.). accordingly, the important cohesive devices are as follows: a. recurrence – repetition of one mentioned element in the forthcoming text; b. substitution with full-content words/phrases – replacement of mentioned text elements through other words or phrases with the same reference (e.g. synonyms, hypoand hypernyms, metaphors etc.); c. substitution with pro-forms (e.g. pronouns and adverbs), in this case, the used items do not carry their own meaning and derive it from the text elements they substitute; d. text and knowledge deixis – these cohesive devices regard the definite and indefinite articles which make the recipient search for a reference element in the previous text or activate general world knowledge; e. situational deixis – deictic expressions which refer to a situation the text is embedded in (e.g. local and temporal adverbs, which can be understood relatively); f. ellipsis – omission of a text element in the following discourse which can be regarded as structural necessity; g. metacommunicative text linking – explicit expressions of author which refer to her/his own text; h. tempus which can express the coherence of described action; i. connectives (conjunctives and pronominal adverbs) – linguistic devices to join part of one sentence and different sentences together and to build a logical concept of the text world. thus, after the analysis of cohesive devices used in the corpus, the texts were scored regarding the elaboration of cohesive patterning. for this, a type-token principle was used. so, each different cohesive device was counted only once for the respective text, regardless of the number of its cohesive patterning in written texts andreeva 713 usage in the text. this allowed the quantification of cohesive patterning elaboration and hence the comparison of microstructural performance in different languages between the participants. 2.4. data from parental interviews in addition to the written data, the parental interviews6 were conducted to elicit the biographical and sociolinguistic data which could provide insight into the possible influencing factors of biliteracy development. following factors should be discussed in this article: the type of bilingualism, the heritage language instruction, the socioeconomic and educational status of the parents, the parental language usage and the literacy practice at home. as the type of bilingualism and the heritage language instruction can be regarded as most objective factors, they will be considered as variables for quantitative data analysis. for discussing the other factors, i decided to present three cases in order to highlight the interdependence between different possible impact factors. thus, the next paragraph is divided into two subchapters. the first part presents the findings regarding different types of cohesion devices in text corpus and the quantitative analysis of these data in respect to the interrelation between the performance in german and russian, and to the correlation of the findings with the type of bilingualism and the heritage language instruction. the second part is dedicated to the presentation of three cases (participant 12, participant 11 and participant 6) which can give implications regarding the further influencing factors. 3. findings in general, there could be found different types of cohesive devices used in both languages. not all cohesion types from the classification of linke, nussbaumer, and portmann (2004) were found in texts. as it can be seen in table 1 below,, there were no occurrences of substitution with full-content words or phrases. this fact is likely to be due by the fact that the second graders do not use metaphors or abstract hypernyms for reference and nominalization. the common reference devices used in corpus are recurrence in form of complete repetition of the used item or substitution with pro-forms (personal, demonstrative and possessive pronouns). as for the text and knowledge deixis, the usage of definite and indefinite article in german could be elicited. there is no article in russian, but the usage of indefinite pronoun “один“ /odin/ (in english like “one”) could be observed in two russian texts in order to introduce the main character of the story. this obviously could be regarded as a contact speech phenomenon as this pronoun is used in russian normally only at the very beginning of fairy-tale narratives often in the combination with the verb “жить” /ʒyt´/ (in english “live”). regarding the situational deixis, we can identify different items (local and temporal adverbs and adverbial phrases) in both languages used in order to explicitly refer to a depicted situation. furthermore, some participants use different tempus in their texts to emphasize the temporal coherence of their story action. nevertheless, connectives should be 6 data from parental interviews were transcribed, saved and analyzed also with maxqda. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 706-727, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 714 considered as one of the most differentiated cohesive devices types in the analyzed corpus. thirteen different connectives in german and 8 in russian corpus could be elicited. table1 elicited cohesive devices in the analyzed narratives cohesive device types cohesive devices in german texts cohesive devices in russian texts connectives und, aber, weil, oder, dass, doch, als, wie, so..dass, relative pronoun (die, wo), um … zu, derweil чтобы, и, но, поэтому, что, a, пока, что recurrence explicit repetition of the nouns explicit repetition of the nouns reference with pro-forms personal pronoun (er, sie, es, ihn, ihr, sie), possessive pronoun (sein) demonstrative pronoun (dieser,der, alle) personal pronoun (он, она, его, её) possessive pronoun (её, его), demonstrative pronoun (все) text and knowlegde deixis definite/indefinite article indefinite pronoun (одна) situational deixis da, dann, in dem moment, dabei потом, тем временем, уже, в то время, там tense präteritum vs. präsens, plusquamperfekt vs. präteritum surprisingly, the participants do not use elliptic sentences in their texts. this might be due to the existing underlying understanding of conceptual literacy, as ellipsis is more significant for oral communication, where different non-verbal means can be used to clarify the meaning, than for the decontextualized communication. on the other hand, there are no metacommunicative text linking expressions in corpus. nevertheless, the conclusion about the knowledge and usage of this cohesive device cannot be drawn, as it seems to be not very appropriate for the narrative storytelling context. the variety of cohesive devices listed above allows the assumption that the german texts seem to be more elaborate in respect of cohesive ties. in general, this can be proved by evaluation of the score of cohesive patterning in each text. figure 1 highlights the tendency that the cohesive patterning is more elaborate in german texts than in russian. this is obviously related to the visit of german primary school and to the acquisition of new writing competences according to the curriculum. as it can be seen in figure 1, only two participants (p.1 and p.5) show a better performance in their russian stories. both children belong to the group of sequential bilinguals who came to germany at the age of 5 years. so, this deviation can probably be explained by the later german language onset and not enough advanced level in german as a second language at the moment of data elicitation. cohesive patterning in written texts andreeva 715 figure 1. cohesive patterning in german and russian texts however, this finding suggests to take the type of bilingualism into consideration as a possible impact factor for the development of microstructural level of the textual competence at this age. figure 2 visualizes the differences in the performance in german and in russian between simultaneous and sequential bilinguals. as it could be expected, the performance in the heritage language is better in the group of sequential bilinguals (m=6 vs. m=4,5). this can be explained by the longer exposure to the russian language and the language acquisition environment. interestingly, the sequential bilinguals have also a better score in german (m=7 vs. m=6) than their simultaneous bilingual peers. this slightly better performance of the children with german as l2 testifies the presumption the textual competence is to be considered not as a product of the natural socialization in the respective language community but as a cultural achievement (cummins, 2000) where the institutionalized education seems to be crucial. 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 p.1 p.2 p.3 p.4 p.5 p.6 p.7 p.8 p.9 p.10 p.11 p.12 cohesive patterning in the texts german russian journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 706-727, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 716 figure 2. cohesive patterning according to the type of bilingualism this assumption should therefore be reviewed regarding the cohesive patterning in russian. for this, it is important to investigate whether the concomitant regular heritage language instruction in the russian saturday school can be considered as a positive impact factor for the development of coherent structuring of texts in l1-russian. as can be seen in figure 3, there is no relevant difference between the participants who attend a russian school regularly (once a week) and their peers without regular heritage language instruction. the role of the russian school cannot be evaluated properly due to a minor number of participants, because the individual deviations can falsify the result. this finding must therefore be proved in a wider cross-sectional study. however, the fact that there is no significant difference allows to suggest that the visit of russian school may not be considered as an important impact factor, at least at this age. for the development tendency implication, a long-term monitoring of writing skills of bilinguals is needed. figure 3. cohesive patterning in l1-russian and heritage language instruction at the age of 7-8 years, the lack of heritage language instruction in respect to the coherent structuring of texts by means of cohesion can 7 66 4,5 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 sequential bilingual simultaneous bilingual m e d ia n cohesive patterning and type of bilingualism german russian 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 no heritage language instruction heritage language instruction mean: cohesive devices in russian texts russian cohesive patterning in written texts andreeva 717 probably be compensated by the literal practices at home. also, there must be considered other possible extralinguistic influencing factors such as child motivation (woerfel et al., 2014; yilmaz-woerfel, & riehl, 2016) and socioeconomic and educational status of parents (hoff, 2013). for this, the following section should present three cases from the conducted study to illustrate the complexity of interrelationship of different factors. 3.1. case lisa 7 (p.12, female) lisa was born in italy in the family of russian-speaking parents from moldova. lisa did not attend a kindergarten in italy and had only a russianspeaking environment at home and in the circle of acquaintances. so, we can assume in case of lisa a monolingual first language acquisition (russian) up to the age of 3 years. when lisa turned 3, the family moved to germany, where lisa immediately started to attend a german kindergarten (for 6 hours) and thus began to acquire german as l2. therefore, she can be considered as a sequential bilingual. at the moment of the data elicitation, lisa was 7;8 years old. lisa’s mother told the interviewer that both parents speak only russian with each other at home and that the 90% of communication with lisa is also carried out in russian. the parents try to be consistent in their language use because the language maintenance is very important for them. the grandparents usually visit them two times per year, and lisa have to communicate with them in russian. as for the literal practices at home, in the interview, the mother stated that she used to read books in russian to lisa till she was 3, however, it was not a mandatory every day ritual. the family does not have a lot of russian books at home. after the family came to germany, almost only german books were read by the parents. lisa has never attended a russian school. the mother tried to teach lisa the cyrillic script when lisa was 5 years old, but it was problematic and she gave it up. lisa began to acquire the german writing system due to school enrollment at the age of 6;6 and developed a keen interest in reading and writing in german. she is registered in a children library, lends the german books regularly and reads in german every day. lisa also keeps a journal where she writes down her experiences. as it can be seen in figure 1, lisa (p.12) has the best result regarding the cohesive patterning in german (score 18). in addition, the text composed in russian language was one of the best with the score of 7. the better result can be observed only in case of p.1 (score 9) who is a sequential bilingual with the l2-onset at the age of 5 years. as lisa cannot write in cyrillic script, she used a latin transcription to fulfill the russian task. both texts are typed with the author's spelling and can be found in table 2 below. 7 the names of the participants are changed due to the privacy policy. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 706-727, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 718 table 2 cohesive patterning in german and russian texts of p.12 german text cohesive devices type of cohesive devices ein hund hat eine maus endekt und will auf die maus schpringen. der hund leuft auf die maus zu aber die maus ferschwindet schnel in einer baum höhle. im hientergrund erschin ein junge mit einem gelben balong und würstchen in der hand. doch die maus ferschwindet so schnel das der hund gegen den baum kracht boom! und als der junge es sah lies er vor überaschung den gelben balon los. weil das sooo wetad als der hund gegen den baum gekracht ist rent er schnel wie der blitz zu den würstchen die der junge auf das gras geleckt hate. und der junge rante zu dem baum wo der balong hing. und dan sprang der junge hoh um den balon zu hohlen. der junge schafe es das der balong runter fiel und der hund hate alle würstchen auf gegesen oder war da noch eine würstchenkete? definite/indefinite article:(e.g. ein hund – der hund, eine maus – die maus in der hand (vom jungen), das gras) text/knowledge deixis 8 repetition of nouns (hund, maus, junge, der gelbe ballon, baum, würstchen) recurrence personal pronoun (er, es) reference with pro-forms local adverb and adverbial phrase (da, im hintergrund) temporal adverb (dann) situation deixis conjunctions: und, aber, doch, so..dass, als, weil, wie, um zu inf., dass, oder relative pronouns: die, wo connectives plusquamperfekt, perfekt, präteritum, perfekt, präsens tense russian text cohesive devices types of cohesive devices koschka hotschit paeimat babatschku. koschka prignua no babatschka ulitela i tagda maltschik prieschol s matschikam i matschik upal i koschka upala f kust. i matschik upal wosera i koschka uwidala ribu w wiedre. i maltschik wsal udatschku i wsal matschik s udatschkei is osera. i nackanetsta maltschik palutschil apat iwo matschik i koschka wsala riebu i iu kuscheiit. repetition of nouns (кошка, бабочка, мальчик, мячик, удочка, озеро, рыба) recurrence personal pronoun (её) possessive pronoun (его) reference with pro-forms temporal adverb (тогда, наконец) situation deixis conjunctions: и, но connectives lisa’s german text shows a very elaborate cohesive patterning. the big variety of used connectives is impressive. hence, the causal and conceptual ties within the text reality can be reflected due to semantically different conjunctions (additive, adversative, consecutive, final, temporal) and this 8 as the article is used as a text and knowledge deictic resource, this type of cohesive device was calculated with one point by the evaluating of cohesive patterning. the same reasoning was implemented to the scoring of recurrence, reference with personal pronoun and tense. in case of situation deixis, other pro-forms and connectives, it was decided to calculate each different realization type individually. cohesive patterning in written texts andreeva 719 contributes to the coherence of the story. the russian text is much less elaborate. the repetition of the same cohesive devices makes the style monotonous. nevertheless, lisa reaches a good cohesive patterning score in comparison with her peers. by looking at the data elicited in the parental interview, this case seems to be interesting in several respects. first, lisa has the best performance in german, despite being a sequential bilingual. she acquired german in the german kindergarten and the literal practice at home does not seem to be very regular. also, the socioeconomic status of the family is not very high (see unesco international standard classification of education isced), as both parents’ education is only a middle school diploma and an apprenticeship. the fact that lisa is interested in reading and writing testifies the girl’s high motivation of the girl. obviously, the motivational factor seems to be most influencing for the development of textual competence. the second implication that could be drawn from this case regards the interrelationship between the competences in l1 and l2. as almost the whole literal practice of lisa has been carried out in german beginning at the age of 3 years, it allows the assumption that lisa transfers her knowledge of textual competence from german composing her written text in russian. although the russian text does not show such variety of conjunctions, lisa tries to connect the sentences (see the repetition of the additive conjunction “и”) with the available cohesive devices. this fact would also prove the assumptions of dynamic systems theory (herdina & jessner, 2002; de bot, lowie, &verspoor, 2007) that there is no linear language development in the bilingual individual, as various factors can contribute to the competence leap. 3.2. case anna (p.11, female) anna was born in germany in the family of russian-german repatriates. both parents speak german fluently, but they speak russian with each other, the communication with anna and her elder sister is 75% in russian and 25% in german. for the parents it is important to contribute to the heritage language maintenance. during the interview with the mother in russian, the mother often switched between the languages. hence, the codeswitching and code-mixing seem to be rather common in the family. this allows to assume that the quality of input in russian is not always constant. anna should be regarded as a simultaneous bilingual, as she came to the nursery when she was 1 year old, then she attended the german kindergarten. at the moment of data elicitation, anna was 7;7 years old. anna’s family can be considered to belong to a high socioeconomic stratum (both parents have a high school diploma). regarding the literal practices at home, the mother indicated to read to anna russian and german books till she was in the preschool age. anna was taught to read in german before school enrollment. from the beginning of first grade till today, anna has been used to read german books 4-5 days per week, often encouraged by the parents. at the age of 5 years, she also started to attend russian language classes once a week where she acquired the cyrillic script. nevertheless, the russian classes do not have a strong curriculum as the journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 706-727, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 720 group is not homogeneous in respect to the age of the pupils. in general, there is only very little homework. anna does not read books in russian regularly, unless she has homework. as it can be seen in table 3, the cohesive devices in the german text are slightly more elaborate than in the russian story: cohesive patterning score in german is 6, whereas in russian it is only 4. however, these results belong to the last half in the rating. table 3 cohesive patterning in german and russian texts of p.11 german text cohesive devices type of cohesive devices eine maus war draußen ein hund ist hinterhergelaufen. die maus ist unter den baum gelaufen der hund hat sich angestosen und ein junge ist spaziren gegangen sein luftballon ist weggeflogen er ist im baum stecken gebliben und der junge ist schnell gelaufen und dabei ist sein essen runtter gefallen der hund ist schnell zum essen gelaufen und die würstchen gegesen. definite/indefinite article: (e.g. ein hund – der hund, eine maus – die maus, ein junge – der junge, das essen) text/knowledge deixis repetition of nouns (hund, maus, junge, baum, essen) recurrence personal pronoun (er) possessive pronoun (sein) reference with pro-forms modal adverb (dabei) situation deixis conjunction: und connectives russian text cohesive devices types of cohesive devices кот гулaяeт пaтом пaшол мaлчик нa рибанку и паямал пару рипки и патом мачик в воду упал и малчик с удочкя паямал мачик и патом он сиба силни пачучтавл и кот пашол к вибром и рипку пакушал repetition of nouns (кот, мальчик, мячик) recurrence personal pronoun (он) reference with pro-forms temporal adverb (потом) situation deixis conjunction: и connectives despite the slight difference, we can state some interdependencies between two texts. the used types of cohesive devices are the same except for the text and knowledge deixis that is used not very often in russian anyway due to a lack of article as a part of speech. regarding the connectives, only one coordinating additive conjunction “und”/“и” (/i/) can be found in both texts. it is difficult to decide whether, in this context, we deal with a transference of cohesive patterning from one language to another as the used cohesive devices are very common. nevertheless, we can see some regularities, particularly in respect to the conjunction usage in both texts. the introduction of new information is accompanied often by the additive conjunction (e.g. “und ein junge ist spaziren gegangen”; “и кот пашол к вибром и рипку пакушал”). this occurrence highlights a strategy for composing a conceptual coherent text, which could be acquired through the literal practices in the school and at home. cohesive patterning in written texts andreeva 721 in the case of anna, the impact factors of the textual competence development cannot be elicited clearly. the parents’ educational level and the family’s socioeconomic status do not seem to play a significant role. we can assume some relatively regular literal practices at home. however, it is not very transparent whether anna uses to read on her own initiative or rather at the parental direction. so, the motivational factor can probably be considered crucial. 3.3. case olga (p.6, female) the last case discussed in this paper is the case of olga. olga was born in a bilingual family in russia. her mother is german and her father is russian. the family moved to germany when the girl was 1 year old. olga is a simultaneous bilingual as parents spoke to her in different languages from birth. at the moment of data elicitation, olga was 7;8 years old. olga’s father has an academic doctoral degree and her mother has a university diploma. thus, the socioeconomic status of the family is obviously high. the german language seems to be dominant in the every-day life, as the circle of acquaintances consists mostly of german-speaking persons. as the maintenance of russian as a heritage language is very important for olga’s father, he is following the parental strategy “one person, one language” and communicates with olga only in russian. furthermore, olga began to get regular heritage language instruction when she was 4 years old. the curriculum of the russian school which olga attends is rather tight, she has a lot of homework which includes writing and reading tasks. as for literal practices at home, in the interview, the father stated that both parents read to olga in both languages every day. there are a lot of books at home. olga was instructed regarding reading in german by her mother before school enrollment. after that, she started to read a lot in german. furthermore, olga keeps a journal where she writes down her experiences almost every day. the motivation to read in russian is not very obvious, the reading in russian is just restricted to the tasks from the russian school. as can be seen in figure 1, olga has a rather good cohesive patterning score in both languages (9 in german and 7 in russian). both texts (see table 4) show a big variety of cohesive devices. in the german story, only two conjunctions are used. however, there can be found different pro-forms to refer to the subjects introduced before. also, the russian text shows different cohesive ties. olga is the only one among the study participants who use the partial recurrence in her text. this seems particular interesting as russian nouns could be easily modified by suffixing in order to give some emotional connotation. in general, both of olga’s stories can be regarded as coherent and well comprehensible in the decontextualized situation. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 706-727, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 722 table 4 cohesive patterning in german and russian texts of p.6 german text cohesive devices type of cohesive devices es war sommer. und ein hund jagte eine maus. da kam der besitzer des hundes. er hatte würstchen und einen luftballon. die maus lief in ein loch im baumstamm, und der hund folgte ihr. die maus glitt durchs loch, aber der hund sties an den stamm des baumes. es gab noch ein zweites loch im baum stamm, und durch das zweite loch glitt die maus hindurch. plötzlich lies der besitzer des hundes den luftballon los, und der flog gerade auf den baum zu. der besitzer erschrack. der luftballon verhackte sich in den ästen. der besitzer lies die tasche mit den würstchen los. der hund starte die tasche mit den würstchen an. der besitzer kletterte auf den baum, und hatte den luftballon zurück. der hund gibg zu der tasche mit den würstchen, und aß ein par davon. am ende waren alle glücklich. definite/indefinite article: (e.g. ein hund – der hund, der besitzer des hundes, ein luftballon – der luftballon, der stamm des baums) text/knowledge deixis repetition of nouns (hund, maus, besitzer, die tasche mit den würstchen) recurrence personal pronoun (er, ihr, es) demonstrative pronoun (der, alle) pronominal adverb (davon) reference with pro-forms temporal adverb and adverbial phrase (da, am ende) situation deixis conjunctives: und, aber connectives russian text cohesive devices types of cohesive devices билла висна. кошка гуляла у речки и увидела бабочку. бабочка седела на кусте. кошка прыгнула в куст, чдобы поймать бабочку, но бабочка улетьела. тут пришол мальчик с мячикам, удочкой и ведром с рибой. мальчик увидьел в кустах кошку и уранил мяч. мяч упал в речку и кошка выбралась ис куста и увидела ведро с рыбой. пока мальчик доставал мячик, кошка падащла к ведрой с рыбой. мальчик достал мяч и кошка съела рыбку и все быльи давольным. repetition of nouns (речка, кошка, бабочка, мальчик) partial repetition of the nouns (мяч мячик, рыба рыбка) recurrence demonstrative pronoun (все) reference with pro-forms temporal adverb (тут) situation deixis conjunctives: и, но, пока connectives olga’s textual competence seems to be well-balanced in both languages. we can observe some semantic interdependencies between the texts, for example, olga at the beginning describes the season in which the action of the story takes place and sums up the emotional state of all protagonists in cohesive patterning in written texts andreeva 723 the end (“am ende waren alle glücklich” vs. “и все быльи давольным“). this is a typical narrative fairy-tale structure that must have been acquired due to the extended literal practices. olga’s case seems to be a very interesting sample regarding the mixture of different factors which contribute to the development of textual competence. the combination of regular literal practices at home, heritage language instruction and olga’s own high motivation can therefore be considered as a best prerequisite for the successful development of biliteracy. 4. conclusions and discussion the cohesive patterning in written texts is an import aspect of academic language proficiency. the analysis of the text corpus and elicited sociolinguistic data has shown that the german texts composed by the russian-german bilinguals are in general more elaborate in respect to the cohesive devices. at the same time, the type of bilingualism does not seem to play a crucial role as sequential bilinguals do not have a worse performance. this supports the assumption that the ability to communicate in the decontextualized contexts, which is mostly important for the educational environment and academic success, must be considered as a cultural achievement (cummins, 2000; gogolin, 2014). however, the weekly heritage language instruction cannot be ranked as a very decisive influencing factor of the literacy development in russian. there are different reasons why the heritage language instruction is difficult to be clearly categorized as a significant impact factor at this age. first, the input in the classes seems to vary between different russian schools. hence, the participants began to visit heritage language classes at different ages, so it depends on the level of the course curriculum. second, the lack of heritage language instruction can probably be compensated by the literal practices at home, at least at this age. for the better understanding of this setting, the long-term monitoring of writing skills in bilingual children with and without heritage language instruction is needed. as it could be seen from the presented case studies, the additional extralinguistic factors must be considered as possible influencing factors for literacy development. the parents’ socioeconomic and educational status does not seem to be really significant. however, the motivational factors and the child’s, as well as parental, literal practices must be considered as crucial for the textual competence development. this corresponds with the findings of previous research (e.g. woerfel et al., 2014; yilmaz-woerfel, & riehl, 2016; gogolin, akgün, & klinger, 2017). finally, the qualitative analysis of the written data allows to assume an interdependence between the textual competence in both languages. as it could be seen in the presented case of p.12, the children without an obvious literal input in russian seem to transfer the discourse strategy from german. this could support the assumptions of the dynamic model of multilingualism (herdina, & jessner, 2002; de bot, lowie, & verspoor, 2007) about the dynamic interrelationship between the cognitive language representation and therefore the competence development. this decisive theoretical finding should also be proved in the future long-term qualitative studies on biliteracy development. journal of child language acquisition and 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(2016). mehrschriftlichkeit: wechselseitige einflüsse von textkompetenz, sprachbewusstheit und außersprachlichen faktoren. in p. rosenberg & c. schroeder (eds.) mehrsprachigkeit als ressource in der schriftlichkeit, s. 305-336. berlin. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 362-384, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 362 parent’s perception on autism spectrum disorder (asd): a focus group discussion study divya sivagnanapandian1 merf-institute of speech and hearing hemavathy raju2 merf-institute of speech and hearing abstract the aim of the study was to explore the parental perception on autism spectrum disorder using focus group discussion (fgd). 41 participants were included in the study, who were parents of children with autism spectrum disorder. the participant’s children aged from 3 to12 years and were receiving speech and language intervention. the study comprises of three phases. phase i include the development of guides/ questions from literature review, content validation was done. in phase ii focused group discussion were carried out for parents of children with autism spectrum disorder and in phase iii thematic analysis was done. parental knowledge on autism spectrum disorder; their views and perspectives, communication modalities used by their children were explored. parents reported that their children showed inappropriate emotions and behaviors but during focus group discussion few parents helped other and advised them regarding the coping strategies used to manage their asd child. the author also gave some recommendations to the parents/caregivers for the same. knowledge about child’s social relationship and pragmatic skills in his/her communicative environment and various treatment options available for children with autism spectrum disorder (asd) were also explored using focus group discussion. throughout fgd parent’s gained knowledge, on usage of different strategies, available treatment options, environmental modifications and approaches used by parent’s and found to have a better outcome. thereby it helped parents to reduce child’s inappropriate behavior in social situations and to facilitate communication and improved their positive attitude towards their children. keywords autism spectrum disorder, focus group discussion, thematic analysis, parental perception 1. introduction autism spectrum disorder (asd) is the common developmental disorder found worldwide. the incidence and prevalence varies between each country. prevalence of asd in united states were 14.6 per 1000 (1 in 68) children in the age of 8 years (elsabbagh, divan, koh, kim, kauchali, & marcin, 2012). india is a populated country which contains nearly 1.3 billion and the prevalence of asd found in indian population was nearly about 1 in 1000 children in the age of < 10 years (arora et.al, 2018). rate of prevalence in 1 bio: divya sivagnanapandian is an assistant professor in the department of speech language pathology, merf-institute of speech and hearing (p) ltd. 1/1, tamilnadu, india. her research interests cover developmental and acquired neurogenic speech, language and swallowing disorders. corresp. author: phone: 9962615650 email divyaaslp228@gmail.com 2 bio: hemavathy raju (maslp) works in the department of speech language pathology, merf-institute of speech and hearing (p) ltd. 1/1, tamilnadu, india. received : 16.05.2021 accepted : 22.09.2021 published : 05.12.2021 mailto:divyaaslp228@gmail.com parent’s perception on autism spectrum disorder sivagnanapandian, raju 363 india was found to be roughly about 1 in 500 or more than 2,160,000 people. rate of incidence in india was roughly about 1 in 90,666 or 11,914 people. characteristics of asd and its impact on quality of life (qol) were assessed through international classification of functioning, disability and health (icf framework) (icf, and children and youth version, icf-cy). icf framework consists of 3 domains, body function include global psychosocial functions dispositions and intra-personal functions attention functions; activities and participation include complex interpersonal interactions, basic interpersonal interactions and handling stress and other psychological demands and environmental factors were: immediate family, individual attitudes of immediate family members and health professionals (mahdi et al., 2018). parent’s participation plays a major role in the intervention of children with asd. they encounter several challenges in their life, which could impact them psychologically. parenting children with asd causes chronic stress and difficulties (harper et.al, 2013; mcstay, dissanayake, scheeren, koot, & begeer et al., 2013). this could lead to reduced social interaction with the child. some literatures have indicated that lesser outcomes from parents might be due to the exhibition of inappropriate behaviors (lecavelier, leone, &wiltz, 2006) and impairment in social interaction (baker-ericzen, stahmer, brookman-frazee, et al., 2005) in children with asd. caring and raising children with asd is a task for parents and caregivers. and the parents need to adapt their professional lives and relationships to find the specific and appropriate solution for their children (segui, ortiz-tallo, & de diego, 2008). in spite of difficulties faced by the parents of caring for a child with asd, many families take that in a positive way and achieve a good fit between the child’s needs with asd and the needs of the other family members (bayat, 2007; gerstein, crnic, blacher, & baker, 2009). the way parent perceives the problem, situational adaptation and their attitude towards the problems are important predictors of how they adapt to it. when it comes to perception of asd it differs from parent to parent based on their cultural group they belong to, age etc. a negative perception of the situation as a catastrophe and feelings and guilt faced by the parents in daily living were main predictors of stress for parents of children with intellectual disabilities (saloviita, itaelinna & leinonen, 2003) and parent of children with asd (bristol, 1987), whereas parent’s positive perception helped in the reduction of stress and improved their welfare (belchic, 2006; olsson, & hwang, 2002; pozo, sarria, & brioso, 2014; pozo & sarria, 2014; oelofsen & richardson, 2006; weiss, 2002). the parents’ viewpoint on asd and the way they implement intervention strategies could influence the child’s outcome. to find the parents perception of asd, their experiences, challenges faced by the parents in daily routine, and the strategies used to control their child’s ib, focus group discussion (fgd) can be used an assessment method in which it allows the participants to share their experiences; it helps in obtaining depth of information about the children, also help the clinician to gather parent’s perception about asd. it aids in parental counseling which would improve the participants’ belief/acceptance of their children. focus group discussion is a qualitative journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 362-384, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 364 research method (group discussion) in which the moderator asks questions to the participants regarding specific topic. in this not only moderator asks questions there will be interaction happen among group members this helps in exchanging their ideas, thoughts, their points of view and their experiences. focus groups are gaining popularity in health and medical research (kitzinger, 1994). it is one of the ways to obtain information about personal and group feelings, perceptions and opinions about autism spectrum disorder from parents of children with asd. it also assists parents of children with autism spectrum disorder. as for the need for this study, pozo (2015) had found that there had been some factors (coping strategies and parents’ positive and negative opinions on raising/ dealing with their child with asd that may guide the method of intervention strategies which in turn promote parents’ well-being. it was also noticed that parents with children with asd undergo stress and anxiety. it has also been found that the emotional barriers the parents have faced have changed over a course of time. as an adverse effect on changing negative perception to positive one, by providing professional interventions that help parents to adapt and apply the appropriate strategy to address the situation at a given time (pozo, 2015). with all of the above in mind, the aim of the study was to explore the parental perception on autism spectrum disorder (asd) using focus group discussion in the guidance of the following objectives. 1. to investigate parental knowledge and views on asd, 2. to discover the communication modalities, speech and language abilities of children with asd, 3. to predict parental concern about their child’s inappropriate emotions in social situations, 4. to describe various behavior and sensory issues exhibited by children with asd, 5. to explore the child’s social relationship and pragmatic skills in his/her communicative environment, 6. to explore parent’s knowledge on various treatment options available about asd 2. methodology the study was carried out through focus group discussion (fcd) method. theme based inferences were done through thematic analysis. 2.1. participants the participants included in the study were 41, who were parents of children with asd. the participant’s children aged from 3 to12 years and were receiving speech and language intervention. the participants in the group were divided based on child’s age and based on duration of obtaining speech and language therapy. 2.2. selection criteria the participant children’s age ranged from 3 to 12 years. all the participant children should have undergone speech and language parent’s perception on autism spectrum disorder sivagnanapandian, raju 365 intervention. native tamil speaking participants were included. participant children who had different severity of asd can range from mild to severe degree. parents who were in middle socio-economic status were included in the present study. children with comorbid conditions were excluded. 2.3. procedure the study comprises of three phases. phase i include the development of guides/ questions from literature review, content validation was done, pilot study was carried out and revisions of the questions were made. in phase ii focused group discussion were carried out for parents of children with asd and in phase iii data analysis was carried out. 2.3.1. phase i development of fgd guides and content validity step 1: familiarization over viewing all data and transcribing audio, reading through the text and taking initial notes, step:2 coding the data coding in this study means highlighting sections of our text – usually phrases or sentences – and coming up with short and labels or “codes” to describe their content. all of the data were collated into groups identified at the stage of coding. these codes allow us to gain a condensed overview of the main points and common meanings that recur throughout the data. step 3: generating themes this includes the identification of patterns among the codes that were created, and to start coming up with themes. themes are generally broader than codes. several codes were assigned into a single theme. step 4: reviewing themes the themes that are useful and accurate representations of the data were confirmed. if any problem encountered with the themes that are generated, they are split up, combined, discarded or new ones are created: into whatever makes them more useful and accurate. step 5: defining and naming themes defining themes involves formulating exactly what we mean by each theme and figuring out how it helps us understand the data. naming themes involves coming up with a succinct and easily understandable name for each theme. step 6: writing up using the final themes responses were collected from the participants (e.g. through semi-structured interviews or open-ended survey questions). the results or findings section usually addresses each theme in turn. and inferences were determined from the theme responses. finally, our conclusion explains the main takeaways and shows how the analysis has answered our research question. the guides for conducting fgd for parents of children with asd was collected and developed based on the literatures (such as isaa national institute for the mentally handicapped-the national trust; gona, newton, journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 362-384, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 366 rimba, and mapenziet al., (2015); asd parent interview(oregon health and science university), open ended questions only were included in the study. the developed guides were given to 5 experienced speech and language pathologist for the content validation. then the guides were structurally revised and translated further into tamil. total of 21 questions were developed and was included under 5 domains. the domains were as follows: 1. knowledge about asd 2. speech, language and communication abilities in children with asd 3. emotions 4. social relationship and pragmatic skills 5. behavioral aspects and sensory issues pilot study: pilot study was conducted using developed guides which contain 4 participants in it. participants were made to sit in a semicircle form, video recorder and audio recorder was kept in a center position for recording the participant’s speech. after that the moderator had given information to participants about the topic and the rules in it. and then the moderator started asking questions from the developed guides. the session was carried for about 45 minutes. the responses which were recorded from the audio recorder were analyzed and the results were used to modify the questions, those modified questions were given to the experienced speech and language pathologist. at the end, questions were simplified and finalized. 2.3.2. phase ii: administration fgd was conducted using developed guides. total of 7 groups, each group contains 5 or 6 participants in it. participants were made to sit in a semi circle form, video recorder (nikon d3300) and audio recorder (sony recorder icdux 533f) was kept in a center position for recording the participant’s speech. study was carried out in a quiet ambience. group discussion was started by welcoming the participants and the moderator introduces herself and the note taker. to build a rapport between each participant they were asked to introduce themselves. initially the moderator had given information to participants about the topic, purpose of the focus group discussion and the rules in fgd. after that the moderator was started asking questions from the developed guides, the moderator started asking the general questions to build up the rapport between participants and then moved on to the specific questions, then the answers were collected from each participant as well as discussion was carried out between participants. all those answers were recorded in a video and audio recorder; the answers were also taken by the note taker in a written format. none of the participants were left out, all were made to discuss. the session was carried for about 45 minutes. 2.3.3. phase iii: analysis the collected data were transcribed in an international phonetic alphabet (ipa) revised to 2005; each participant answers were transcribed and were given for the parent’s perception on autism spectrum disorder sivagnanapandian, raju 367 analysis. written notes from the note taker were also used to analyze the data for clarification. as the data collected was qualitative in nature, thematic analysis (braun, &clarke, 2006) was done for analyzing each data. in thematic analysis deductive approach was done in which the clinician will predict the data with some preconceived themes and expect to find reflected there, based on theory or existing knowledge. 3. findings and discussion findings and inferences obtained from the focus group on parent’s perception on autism spectrum disorder are reported in descriptive summary method. forty-one participants were included in the study, seven fgds were conducted and the responses were analyzed and transcribed. the responses were compiled and discussed under the following domains. 1) knowledge about asd 2) speech, language and communication abilities in children with asd, 3) emotions, 4) social relationship and pragmatic skills 5) behavioral aspects and sensory issues. verbatim transcription was done for better understanding of the results.few responses which were unique have been mentioned under each domain. the domains are as follows. 3.1. knowledge about asd 3.1.1. parental knowledge about asd overall, 37 out of 41 parents reported that children with autism spectrum disorder exhibit inappropriate behaviors such as hand flapping, unexpected crying, frequent clapping, and inappropriate laughing. because those children with asd experience communicative difficulties they exhibit their emotions and needs through behaviors such as unexpected crying, inappropriate laughing etc. similar results were also found by pearson et.al, (2006) that there was higher risk of, atypical behaviors, social skills problems, social withdrawal, depression were found in children with autism. repetitive, stereotyped behaviors and self-injurious behaviors were the most commonly occurring symptoms in children with asd as reported by matson, wilkins, and macken (2008). fifteen parents stated that children with asd were reported to have hyposensitivity to tactile and auditory stimulus. it could be because of the disturbances in the central nervous system this result in the failure of modulating and inhibiting the stimuli which in turn cause hyposensitive to tactile and auditory stimuli (fisher, & dunn, 1983). related results were also found by wiggins, robins, bakeman, and adamson (2009) they found that children with asd showed more abnormal reactions to sensory input particularly for tactile stimulation, taste/ smell, and for auditory stimulation. such sensory abnormalities were found to be one of the symptoms in asd which has to be considered in diagnostic algorithms journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 362-384, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 368 for young children. klintwall et.al, (2011) found that children who had selfinjurious behaviors were presented with more sensory abnormalities. american speech-language-hearing association (1981) suggested that children with asd had severe communication impairment with completely absent speech or restricted that it cannot meet the individual’s communication needs similar findings were also reported by 12 parents who stated that children with asd had restricted communication and these children communicate predominantly through actions. 3.1.2. knowledge about the cause for asd cause for asd was discussed and inferred that blood pressure during pregnancy were the cause for asd as reported by 16 parents, seizures also one of the cause for asd as reported by 10 parents, similar results were also given by kinney, munir, crowley, and miller(2008) they found that prenatal stress played a significant role in the etiology of autistic disorder, prenatal stress caused post-natal abnormalities such as seizures, cognitive deficits, and also triggered children to develop inappropriate behaviors. six parents mentioned as heredity which caused asd. muhle, trentacoste, and rapin (2004) reported that asd was not a disease but a syndrome with multiple causes related to genetic and non-genetic factors and they also found that monozygotic twins were more prone to have autism compared to dizygotic twins and monozygotic twins also had predominant communication and inappropriate social behaviors. one parent reported that zinc deficiency could be one the reason causing autism. yasuda, yoshida, yasuda, and tsutsui (2011) suggested that infantile zinc deficiency might cause neural development disorders and autism spectrum disorders, and they also stated that autistic disorder could be treated or prevented using zinc supplementation. twelve parents stated post term birth as the cause for developing asd. this could be because birth complications might result in brain injury which results in the increased risk of asd. xie (2017) found that preterm birth had a higher risk of developing asd alone, both pre and post term birth had a higher risk of developing asd with intellectual disability (id) and also they found that with post term birth female children were more prone to develop asd with id than male children. 3.1.3. symptoms exhibited by children with autism spectrum disorder when the parents were asked to describe about the symptoms which were exhibited by children with asd laughing, crying, screaming, hands flapping these are all the symptoms of asd children as reported by 30 parents. pearson et al., (2006) suggested that asd children should be carefully monitored for the occurrence of comorbid behavioral and emotional concerns, they also suggested that not all asd children exhibit similar behaviors. many parents (30) reported that child with asd display preservatory/ stereotypic behaviors. the reason of child exhibiting such behavior is explained in various theories, which state the following reason such as, as a resultant of behavior issue, self-calm strategy, as manifestation of real interests, or by anxiety or a chemical or neurological issue child demonstrate parent’s perception on autism spectrum disorder sivagnanapandian, raju 369 stereotypic behaviors. in such cases management options such as behavioral techniques to "extinguish" the behavior; if repetitive behaviors are a selfcalming technique, sensory integration techniques help in regain a sense of control; if perseveration is a manifestation of real interests help the child to turn perseverative actions into meaningful activities; if it is caused by anxiety or a chemical or neurological issue, behaviors can be controlled through the use of pharmacotherapy. only one parent reported that a child with asd doesn’t accept the modifications on their daily routine, or variation in their constant use of objects. insistence on sameness and an inflexible adherence to routines. any deviation from these routines, can result in enormous anxiety and tantrums from an asd patient similar results were given by khan (2015) found that asd children had low adaptation or adjustment capacity and they recommended parents to help the children with asd to overcome the problem. hence applied behavior analysis (aba) (lovaas, 1987) proven to be an effective treatment both to break down resistance to changes and to build routines that reinforce positive behaviors, it helps children with asd deal with transitions. applied behavior analysts are adept at using the repetitive nature of autistic patients to create patterns and methods that are beneficial for long-term well-being and social skills. 3.1.4. parental knowledge about existing treatment options and consultation parents were asked about the treatment options available for children with asd. forty-one parents reported speech therapy, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, special education and behavioral modification as the treatment options. werner (2010) suggested the importance of interprofessional collaboration between physiotherapist, speech therapist, occupational therapist, social workers etc. three parents reported swimming class and music therapy as the treatment option for asd children, similarly lofthouse, hendren, hurt, arnold, and butter(2012) found that swimming lessons reduced hyperactive and repetitive behavior through the release of certain neurotransmitters, such as acetylcholine, or beta-endorphins and music therapy improved imitation of signs and words, increased longer eye contact and turn-taking, joint attention, it also initiated engagement and compliant behavior. forty parents reported pediatrician, neurologist, psychologist, speech therapist, occupational therapists, ent doctors and physiotherapist as the consultants. strunk, leisen, and schubert (2017) suggested that inter professional relationship using multidisciplinary approach was found to be one of the best practices for the intervention, which results in effective treatment for children with asd, to find the number of interprofessional relationship using multidisciplinary approach they took 47 literatures and found that there was the lesser number of interprofessional collaboration found using multidisciplinary approach. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 362-384, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 370 3.2. speech, language and communication abilities in children with asd 3.2.1. child’s communication modality when the parents were asked to describe about the mode of communication. 36 parents mentioned that children with asd communicate their needs through crying, sign language, vocalization, by pointing, and by protodeclarative pointing. some asd children have developed language in a slow manner, some have had difficulty in how to use the language to communicate with others, and overall children with asd had delay in speech and language development. so they used sign languages, gestures, facial expression, proto-declarative, proto imperative pointing etc. to communicate their needs. diehl, wegner, and rubin (2010) found that children with asd used multiples of communication modes such as speech, facial expressions, pointing, hand-flapping, vocalizations, picture symbols, negative emotions and assistive technology (e.g., speech-generating devices). 3.2.2. child’s receptive and expressive language skills parents were asked to give suggestion regarding the following question ‘are there any differences between comprehension and expression for the child?’18 parents reported that their children needed repeated commands and object pointing. only one parent reported that the child confused between the commands given to them. as the asd children have reduced attention span they have difficulty in comprehending the commands. so, the comments were needed to be repeated. papadopoulos (2018) reported that as children with asd have difficulty in understanding other’s speech; the author recommended that children should be treated according to the child’s developmental level and child’s age. 3.2.3. presence of echolalia in child’s speech and alternative method tried by parents to facilitate meaningful communication parents were asked to report whether their children repeat the speech of others. 07 parents mentioned that their children repeat others speech. 3 parents mentioned that if the child repeats others speech, clues were given for the child to answer the question. children with asd might not be able to effectively communicate with others because they struggle express their own thoughts and also, they might have delayed speech and language development so they imitate other’s speech which in turn caused echolalia to the children with asd. only one parent reported that there was the delay in repeating the speech or questions which was asked to them. similarly, neely, gerow, rispoli, lang, and pullen (2015) suggested that there was not a single treatment available to treat echolalia in asd children and they stated that for immediate echolalia cues-pause-point intervention was effective, for delayed echolalia script training plus visual cues (ganz, kaylor, bourgeois, & hadden. 2008) and tact modeling plus positive reinforcement for appropriate responses were found as effective. they concluded that cues-pause-point and operant based treatments found as effective in treating echolalia in asd children. parent’s perception on autism spectrum disorder sivagnanapandian, raju 371 3.3. emotions 3.3.1. child’s emotional status the parents were asked to explain about how they identify their child’s emotional status and inferred that most of the parents suggested that they identified their child’s emotional status through facial expression and inappropriate behaviors. yirmiya, kasari, sigman, and mundy (1989) suggested that interpreting asd child’s emotional reactions especially through facial expressions were more difficult to identify and they also stated that children with asd exhibit inappropriate emotions when compared with normal children. 3.3.2. strategies used by the parents to reduce inappropriate behaviors in inappropriate situations parents were asked to explain about the strategies which were used to control their child’s inappropriate behaviors. based on severity and the behaviors exhibited, the strategy used to control their child’s inappropriate behaviors would differ. 15 parents reported that their children didn’t like the crowded places and they produced inappropriate sounds, screamed a lot and the strategy used was parents brought their child out from that place. children with asd may process some sounds from their senses differently. they may not be able to filter out those unwanted noises (eg: noise form the bell, mixie noises) from the signal which caused hypersensitive to those particular stimuli. fritz (2017) suggested functional communication training, non-contingent reinforcement, differential reinforcement which helped in reducing inappropriate behaviors (such as hitting or biting in unpleasant events) in asd children. 3.3.3. parent’s emotional reaction parent’s perception on asd will greatly impact on the child’s outcome. to find the perceptions, parents were asked to explain about their emotional feelings towards their children. 21 parents accepted their child’s condition and they felt happy when they were with the child, 27 parents worried about their child’s condition, 10 parents were concerned about their child’s future. similar results were given by depape, and lindsay (2014) that some parents accepted their child’s diagnosis and they moved on, but some of the parents were worried about their child’s future and they were concerned about their child’s difficulty in independent living. these differences could be because of the parent’s perception towards asd. 3.3.4. parent’s emotional reaction towards others concern twenty parents annoyed when others advised them regarding child’s condition, similar results given by brazier (2016) found that the parents were frustrated when others do not understand how asd affects a child, and when others critic both the child and the parent unfairly. 3.4. social relationship and pragmatic skills 3.4.1. children’s initiation and finishing of tasks fifteen parents reported that their children do not have problems in initiating or terminating the tasks. 11 parents stated that their children did journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 362-384, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 372 the activity with the parent’s assistance. these problems in initiating and terminating the tasks could be due to the inability to withstand problem solving capabilities and inhibition in the executive function for asd children. they often have difficulty in achieving the goals, and also an inability in sequencing and prioritizing which in turn cause difficulty in achieving the goals. 3.4.2. children’s social interaction with peer group children with asd experience difficulties in adjusting to new environments, problem solving, peer group interaction; trouble understanding other’s facial expression and body language. themes related to children’s socialization with peers were explored. 23 parents indicated that their children do not mingle with the peer group. another three parents reported that in spite of mingling, they throw tantrums. three parents explained that their children mingle well with other children. eight parents mentioned that their children mingle with other children but suddenly they beat or pinch or hug their peers. four parents reported that their children just started mingling with their peer group. two parents mentioned their children mingle with others but for a shorter period of time. finke (2016) reported that asd children had difficulty in making and maintaining friends and also suggested that asd children comprehends the concept of friendship, but they omit the concepts of self-disclosure, affection (bauminger, & kasari, 2000; calder, hill, & pellicano, 2012). to overcome these issues, slps recommended few concepts to help the asd children mingle with their peer group. the recommendations were the idea of equal status, the use of motivating and authentic activities, and the provision of repeated opportunities for interaction. 3.4.3. child’s performance in group activities (interactions, turn taking). strategy used by the parents to overcome the difficulties themes were discussed about children’s performance in group activities and inferred that 19 parents reported that their children had poor turn taking skills, they didn’t mingle with others in the group (the child used to cry, scream), lack of group participation might be due to the deficits in the development of social skills and motor development which limits the child to engage in group activities. memari, et al., (2015) found that only minimal group (12%) of asd children were physically active in participation. and also found some of the factors which limit their physical activities those are lack of opportunities, financial concerns and socio demographic factors. 3.4.4. support from their family members themes were discussed regarding their family members support.20 parents reported that there was good support from their family members. 13 parents reported that there was not enough support from their family members. similar results given by khan, ooi, ong, and jacob (2016) they found that most of the parents felt that there was not enough support from the public as well as from their relatives but parents from the same boat provided support to them, as well as some of the parents reported that there was enough support from the family members. and the parents from the same parent’s perception on autism spectrum disorder sivagnanapandian, raju 373 boat helped other parents, by acting as advocates for other parents who have asd child; they also advised them regarding the coping strategies used to manage their asd child. 3.5. behavioral aspects and sensory issues 3.5.1. child’s expression of inappropriate behavior and strategies used by parents to reduce the behaviors most of the children with asd exhibit their emotions or they communicate their needs through behaviors, this could be due to the impairment which is present in both comprehension and expression of language and also due to the difficulty which is present in expressing their emotional feelings. themes regarding child’s behavior were explored. 12 parents stated that the children flapped their hand and the parents asked the children to stop the behavior or they scolded them, or they beat their children or by giving positive reinforcement parents reduced the child’s behavior. jumping was one of the behaviors exhibited by the children and the parents used to scold or beat their children or they asked their children to stop the behavior as reported by 08 parents. most of the times children with asd exhibit their feelings through emotional outbursts this was because they have difficulty in identifying others’ emotions as well as difficulty in communicating their own emotions this causes trouble in communicating with others in the social situation. boyd, mcdonough, and bodfish (2011), they used consequence based intervention (e.g., repetitive vocalizations, saying no, differential reinforcement etc.) and antecedent based intervention (e.g., social initiation skills) for lower order behaviors (i.e., stereotyped movements, repetitive manipulation of objects, and repetitive self-injurious behaviors) and for higher order behaviors (i.e., compulsions, rituals and routines & insistence on sameness) they used cognitive behavioral therapy and applied behavioral approach, and they found there was the reduction in the repetitive behaviors which was noted in asd children using those interventions. 3.5.2. child’s behavior in specific situation acts as a communication barrier. if yes, what situations are most difficult and strategies used by parents to overcome the same? children with asd exhibit symptoms of hypersensitive or hyposensitive to the auditory stimuli and most of the children express their negative emotions through behaviors. 24 parents reported that the children do not like to be in the crowded place (such as function, temple, bus) they scream, cry, beat others, pull the parent from that place, run here and there, beat and bite themselves, produced inappropriate sound. among the parents, six beat their child to control their behaviors, six parents scold their children, three parents gave positive reinforcement (such as bubbles, eatables, balloons) to the child, two parents lifted their child and keep with them, nine parents came out from that place. the reason behind this hypersensitive to particular stimulus is because children with asd may process some sounds from their senses differently. they may not be able to filter out those unwanted noises (eg: noise form the bell, mixie noises) form the signal which causes hypersensitive to those particular stimuli. maskey, lowry, rodgers, journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 362-384, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 374 mcconachie, and parr (2014) took nine fluent children with asd and they reported that those children had fear for crowded places or for stimulus (eg: pigeon, bus, car, vacuum cleaner), they used cognitive behavioral therapy (cbt) with exposure in a virtual reality environment (vre) and they found that eight of nine children were able to tackle the fear towards particular situation and four children was able to completely overcome from the fear. results evidences cbt with vre was the effective treatment for specific phobia in asd children. 3.5.3. behaviors expressed by the child. if yes, how will you overcome that? when child expressed inappropriate behaviors/ temper tantrums, parents controlled the behaviors using various strategies. few avoided the situations and some parent showed anger towards the child, only one parent stated that reinforcement as the strategy these are all the strategies used by the parents to control the child’s behavior. similarly bennie (2017) reported that temper tantrums are the behaviors which were exhibited by asd children due to the delay in the development of speech and language. to overcome that the author gave some recommendations to the parents/caregivers those are: recommended to determine if it’s a tantrum or a meltdown, recommended to remove the audience, change the topic, recommended to encourages the child, also recommended to praise the child once the tantrum was over. 3.5.4. child’s sensory perception of taste children with asd also experience difficulty in taste sensation. themes regarding taste were explored. 31 parents reported that their children were able to identify various taste. in contradictorily, 2 parents reported that their children have poor taste sensation, they had difficulty in identifying the differences between each taste. bennetto, kuschner, and hyman (2007) they used electro-gustometry to identify the taste detection threshold in asd children. they found that asd children were significantly less accurate in identifying sour tastes compared to normal children and marginally less accurate for bitter tastes, but there was no difference in identifying salty and sweet stimuli. and they concluded that chemosensory problems in asd children occur at the cortical level rather than brainstem level. 3.5.5. child’s ability of discrimination between hard and soft object seven parents reported that their children had difficulty in identifying the soft and hard. fifteen parents stated that their children don’t had problem in identifying the differences. dysfunction in brainstem was found to be a key region which caused sensory modulation (ornitz, 1983) and also there was the role of cerebellum which caused sensory abnormalities (schmahmann, weilburg, & sherman,2007). klintwall et.al., (2011) reported that sensory issues among asd children differs between each asd children according to autistic subgroups, that in the subgroup of nuclear autism sensory/perceptual abnormalities were founded to be more. parent’s perception on autism spectrum disorder sivagnanapandian, raju 375 3.5.6. child’s behavior on environmental sound and the methods used by parents to overcome themes discussed on the topic of sensory issues15parents reported that their children exhibit odd behaviors for specific environmental sounds and the strategy used was they used to pamper their child, or they avoid those situations, parents also tried various strategies to desensitize the sounds the child exposed to. klintwallet.al., (2011) found that over reactivity to sound was one of the sensory issues found in asd children, 44% of the children had this issue. maskeyet.al., (2014) they also found that in asd children there was a reduction of fear towards sounds after the implementation of cbt and vre, they concluded that this may be the effective treatment for specific phobia in asd children. 3.5.7. hyper/ hyposensitivity to tactile stimuli and the strategy used by parents to overcome most of the children with asd have the symptom of hypersensitive or hyposensitive to the tactile stimuli. themes regarding the sensitivity were explored. when exposed to tactile stimuli, children with asd didn’t express any specific behaviors as reported by twenty-three parents. fourteen parents reported that their children are hypersensitivity to tactile stimuli. similarly klintwallet.al, (2011) found that 19% of the asd children had sensory issue of over reacting to touch. 4. conclusion fgd were carried out for parents of children with asd and data analysis was carried out. inferences were derived under the following domains. 4.1. knowledge about asd across 7 fgds which was carried out, it was inferred that parents reported that children with asd exhibit inappropriate behaviors such as hand flapping, unexpected crying, frequent clapping, and inappropriate laughing. it could be because those children with asd experience communicative difficulties. the reason of child exhibiting such behavior was explained in various theories, which state the following reason such as, as a resultant of behavior issue, self-calm strategy, as manifestation of real interests, or by anxiety or a chemical or neurological issue child demonstrate stereotypic behaviors. in such cases management options such as behavioral techniques to "extinguish" the behavior; if repetitive behaviors are a self-calming technique, sensory integration techniques help in regain a sense of control; if perseveration was a manifestation of real interests help the child to turn perseverative actions into meaningful activities; if it was caused by anxiety or a chemical or neurological issue, behaviors can be controlled through the use of pharmacotherapy. regarding management options parents stated that speech therapy, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, special education and behavioral modification as the treatment options for children with asd. other parents mentioned pediatrician, neurologist, psychologist, speech therapist, journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 362-384, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 376 occupational therapists, ent doctors and physiotherapist as the consultants for asd. 4.2. speech, language and communication abilities in children with asd parents mentioned that children with asd communicate their needs through crying, sign language, vocalization, by pointing, and by proto declarative pointing. because some children with asd have delay in language development, some have had difficulty in how to use the language to communicate with others, and overall children with asd had delay in speech and language development. so, they used sign languages, gestures, facial expression, proto declarative, proto imperative pointing etc. to communicate their needs. children with asd might not be able to effectively communicate with others because they struggle express their own thoughts and also, they might have delayed speech and language development so they imitate other’s speech which in turn caused echolalia to the children with asd. few children needed repeated commands and object pointing. as the asd children have reduced attention span they have difficulty in comprehending the commands. so, the comments were needed to be repeated. 4.3. emotions most of the parents suggested that they identified their child’s emotional status through facial expression, through child’s inappropriate behaviors. children with asd display inappropriate expressions this was because those children with asd face difficulties in sharing emotions due to anxiety, they don’t know to show appropriate emotions and others also experience difficulties in reading those children’s emotional reactions. children with asd may process some sounds from their senses differently. they may not be able to filter out those unwanted noises (eg: noise form the bell, mixie noises) form the signal which caused hypersensitive to those particular stimuli. hence the children make inappropriate sounds. from the findings it was also inferred that 21 parents accepted their child’s condition and expressed a sense of ease. few annoyed when others advised them regarding child’s condition and expressed difficulty. so, counseling to parents can be provided. so, through counseling parent can accept the child’s behavior and through behavioral modifications therapy, these inappropriate behaviors can be controlled and monitored by parents in social situations. hence parents also will not develop any negative emotions towards their child with asd. 4.4. social relationship and pragmatic skills eleven parents stated that their children did the activity with parent’s help. this problem in initiating and finishing tasks could be due to the inability to withstand problem solving capabilities; and there was the inhibition in the executive function which was noted in asd children. they often have difficulty in achieving the goals, and also due to the inability in sequencing and prioritizing which in turn caused difficulty in achieving the goals. parents of children with asd indicated that their child doesn’t mingle with the peer group. the reason behind this difficulty mingling with peer group for children with asd because they h had trouble with starting and keeping parent’s perception on autism spectrum disorder sivagnanapandian, raju 377 conversations going they also had difficulty adjusting to new environments, difficulty in problem solving, difficulty taking part in other children’s activities, trouble understanding other’s facial expression and body language. lack of group participation might be due to the deficits in the development of social skills and motor development which limits the child to engage in group activities few parents reported that the child expressed poor turn taking skills. hence speech language pathologist can counsel the parent about the importance of reinforcement. so, when parents provide well socially use behavior-specific praise (and concrete reinforcement if needed) to shape pro-social behavior can help the child with asd. parents can model and practice desired behaviors to child; providing structured social interactions; communication through possible social scenarios and use visual aids, turn taking and reciprocity during social interaction, these skills can make child acquire coping skills and techniques that boost their social skills. 4.5. behavioral aspects and sensory issues behavioral issues such as children flapping their hand, temper tantrums and also children with asd expressed inappropriate behaviors. from the above findings it was inferred that nearly 30 parents reported children exhibit odd behaviors for specific environmental sounds. the reason behind this hypersensitive to particular stimulus is because children with asd may process some sounds from their senses differently. they express difficulty in identifying and differentiating unwanted noises (eg: noise form the bell, grinder noises) form the signal which causes hypersensitive to those particular stimuli. hence the parents instructed the child to stop the behavior or they provide negative/ positive reinforcement. most of the times children with asd exhibit their feelings through emotional outbursts this was because they have difficulty in identifying others’ emotions as well as difficulty in communicating their own emotions this causes trouble in communicating with others in the social situation. parents also used strategies like to calm the child or desensitize the sound. few expressed that their children are hypersensitivity to tactile stimuli. this could be because of the sensory issues which present in children with asd. hence occupational therapy and sensory integration therapy should be incorporated. therefore, selective intervention for few sensitivity issues can be provided for better outcome 5. future directions through fgd, parental perception on children with asd was explored. hence parent’s gained knowledge, on usage of different strategies, available treatment options, environmental modifications and approaches used by parent’s and found to have a better outcome. thereby it helped parents to reducing child’s inappropriate behavior in social situations and to facilitate communication. this 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(1989). facial expressions of affect in autistic, mentally retarded and normal children. journal of child psychology and psychiatry, 30(5), 725–735. https://doi.org/10.5772/58966 http://hdl.handle.net/10201/8145 https://doi.org/10.1111/ppe.12413 https://doi.org/10.1038/srep00129 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 362-384, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 382 appendices appendix 1 focus group discussion themes (in english) research question 1: knowledge about autism spectrum disorder (asd) 4.1.1 what do you think about autism? 4.1.2 what would be the causes for autism, based on your perception? 4.1.3 what type of symptoms does the children with autism exhibits, based on your perception? 4.1.4 what type of treatment will be given for the child with autism and to whom will you go for consultation? research question 2: speech, language and communication abilities in children with asd 1. how does your child communicate his/her needs with you or others (for eg: gestures, crying)? 2. are there any differences between what he/she expresses and what he/she understands? eg: is your child has the ability to follow your commands. give some examples 3. when you question or communicate with your child, have you observed any repetitive use of language (echolalia)? if yes, what would you do/ what modification you do to correct that? research question 3: emotions 1. how will you find your child’s emotional status (eg: he/ she is happy or sad about something)? 2. what strategies will you use to reduce your child’s inappropriate emotions in social situations? 3. how do you feel when you are with your child? explain about that 4. how do you feel when others concern about your child’s attitudes? research question 4: social relationship and pragmatic skills 1. does your child have difficulty initiating or finishing tasks such as homework?, if yes what type of strategies will you use to overcome that? 2. does your child mingle with his/her peer group, if yes describe how? 3. how does your child perform in group activities (interactions, turn taking). if you find it to be difficult for them, how do you help them overcome that 4. how your family members do support you? research question 5: behavioral aspects and sensory issues 1. does your child show any odd physical mannerisms or odd way of moving his hands or his body that look the same each time, e.g., flapping hands when excited, walking on his toes, flicking his fingers, spinning his body?. if yes, what type of strategies will you use to stop that? 2. does the child exhibit any kind of odd behaviors at any situations, which leads to interrupt child’s communication? if yes, what situations are most difficult and explain how will you overcome that? 3. if the child doesn’t like the situation, will the child become aggressive, show temper tantrums, self -injurious behavior. if yes, how will you overcome that? 4. do you feel that your child has any difficulty in sensing taste (bitter, sour, sweet, and spicy). if yes, give some examples parent’s perception on autism spectrum disorder sivagnanapandian, raju 383 5. does the child have difficulty in discriminating/ differentiating between hard and soft touch. if yes, give some examples 6. does the child exhibits any odd behaviors for any kind of environmental sounds? if yes, what kind of sounds exhibits odd behaviors, what behaviors does the child exhibits and how will you overcome that 7. do you feel that your child doesn’t like others to touch him/ her? if yes, what type of behavior does the child exhibit to avoid that? appendix 2 focus group discussion themes (in tamil language)international phonetic alphabet i. /ͻtisλmpλtriarid͉λl/ 1. / ͻtisλmpλtrijɘ ᴜŋɘlinkarᴜt͉ᴜ/ 2. /ͻtisλt͉irka:nɘka:rɘnλmjenɘva:gɘirᴜkᴜmjendrᴜ niŋλljenᴜgirirgλl/ 3. /ͻtisλmulɘkᴜlɘnd͉λigλljend͉ɘvid͉ɘarigurigalλivælipλdᴜt͉ᴜva:rgλl/ 4. /ͻtisλmulɘkᴜlɘnd͉λigλlᴜkᴜ jevid͉ɘma:nɘsigiʧλivλlaŋɘpλdᴜm ᴜŋalinkλrᴜt͉ᴜ, niŋλlja:rλiλnᴜgᴜvirgλl/ ii. /pæʧᴜ mλtrᴜmmolit͉odλrbᴜ/ 1. /ᴜŋλlkᴜlɘnd͉λiavλn/ avλlint͉ævλigalλijeva:rᴜvælipadᴜt͉ᴜva:rgλl/ λrivipa:rgλl (je. ka: sλigλimulɘma:gɘ, alᴜgλimulɘma:gɘ) / 2. /avλn/ avλlpᴜrind͉ᴜkolvλd͉ilᴜm, velipλdᴜt͉ᴜvλd͉ilᴜmjed͉enᴜmværᴜpa:dᴜ ᴜlɘd͉a/ 3. /niŋλlkelvikæta:loλlad͉ᴜ ᴜrλija:dina:lo ᴜŋλlinkᴜlɘnd͉λikilkλndɘnλdat͉ajλivelipλdᴜt͉ᴜgira:rgλlɘ, mindᴜmmindᴜmsorkɘlλikurᴜd͉λl, a:mendra:lλd͉ɘnλieva:rᴜ niŋλlsλriseivirgλl/ iii. /ᴜnλrvᴜgλl/ 1. /ᴜŋλlkᴜlɘnd͉λin ᴜnλrʧinilλjλiniŋλleva:rᴜkλndλrind͉ᴜ kolvirgλl (je. ka: avλn/ avλlmλgilʧija:gɘalad͉ᴜ sogɘma:gɘirᴜkira:l/ irᴜkira:njenbɘd͉λi)/ 2. /sλmugɘnilɘjil ᴜŋλlinkᴜlɘnd͉λiværᴜpλtɘsejλlgɘlλivælipλdᴜt͉ina:lniŋλljevid͉ɘjᴜkt͉ijλipajλnp adᴜt͉iaʧæjalλikᴜrλipirgλl/ 3. / ᴜŋλlkᴜlɘnd͉λijᴜdλnniŋλlirᴜkᴜmpolᴜd͉ᴜ eva:rᴜ ᴜnλrgirirgλl, viriva:gɘkuravᴜm/ 4. /mλtravλrgλluŋλlkᴜlɘnd͉λinnλdɘt͉λjλipλtriλkarλikolᴜmpod͉ᴜ ᴜŋλlin ᴜnλrvᴜ eva:rᴜirᴜkᴜm, viriva:gɘkuravᴜm/ iv. /sλmugɘ ᴜrλvᴜ mλtrᴜmnλdλimᴜrλit͉irλnŋλl/ 1. /ᴜŋλlkᴜlɘnd͉λijed͉enᴜmsejλlgalλit͉odλŋᴜvat͉λrkᴜmmᴜdipad͉λrkᴜmsiramɘpλd ᴜgira:lɘ/ siramɘpλdᴜgira:nɘ (je. ka: vitᴜpa:dλm), a:mjenra:lniŋλlaʧæjalλima:trᴜvλd͉λrkᴜ jevid͉ɘjᴜkt͉ijλikλija:lᴜvirgλl/ journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 4 362-384, 2021 issn: 2148-1997 384 2. /ᴜŋλlkᴜlɘnd͉λisλgɘvjad͉ᴜ kᴜlɘnd͉λigλlᴜdλnpλlɘgᴜva:la/ pλlɘgᴜva:na, a:mjendra:ljevid͉λma:gɘpλlɘgᴜva:rgλlvivλrikλvᴜm/ 3. /ᴜŋλlkᴜlɘnd͉λikᴜlᴜ nλdavλdikλigλliljeva:rᴜsejλlpλdᴜgira:r, avλrgλlsiramɘpλdᴜgira:rjendrᴜ niŋλljenᴜgirirgλljenilλd͉anλieva:rᴜ sλma:lipirgλl/ 4. /ᴜŋλlkᴜdᴜmbλt͉inarinot͉ᴜlλipᴜ jeva:rᴜ ᴜlλd͉ᴜ vilλkᴜgɘ/ v. /nλdλt͉λiλmsλŋλlmλtrᴜm ᴜnλʧisikλlgλl/ 1. /ᴜŋλlkᴜlɘnd͉λi ᴜŋλlkᴜlɘnd͉λijed͉enᴜmverᴜpλtɘsejλlgalλiseivλd͉oλlλd͉ᴜ kλigλlλiλlλd͉ᴜ ᴜdλlλiλsλit͉ᴜkondᴜ irᴜpλd͉ᴜ ᴜnda:, (je. ka: sλnd͉osλma:gɘirᴜkᴜmpolᴜd͉ᴜ kλigλlλia:tᴜvλd͉ᴜ, ka:lvirλlgλlilnλdλpλd͉ᴜ, kλi virλlgalλiλsλit͉λi ᴜ kondirᴜpλd͉ᴜ, ᴜdɘlλisᴜlλtrᴜvλd͉ᴜ) a: m endra:laʧæjalλinirᴜt͉ɘjevid͉ɘjᴜkt͉ijλipλyλnpadᴜt͉ᴜvirgλl/ 2. /ᴜŋλlkᴜlɘnd͉λijed͉enᴜmværᴜpλtɘnλdat͉λigalλijed͉enᴜmsulalilvelipλdᴜt͉ginra nara:,λvid͉ɘnλdλt͉λigala:l ᴜŋλlkᴜlɘnd͉λipirλrᴜdλnt͉odλrbᴜkolvλd͉ilt͉λdλijerpλdᴜgirad͉a, a:mendra:ljevid͉ɘsulλlt͉odλrbᴜkolvad͉λikλdinɘma:kᴜgirλd͉ᴜ λd͉anλieva:rᴜ niŋλled͉irkolgirirgλl/sλma:lipirgλlenbλd͉λivirivᴜpλdᴜt͉λvᴜm/ 3. /ᴜŋλlkᴜlɘnd͉λikᴜ jed͉enᴜmsulnilλigλlpidikλvilλiendra:lkilkλdɘedᴜt͉ᴜka:tiled͉ænᴜmnλdλt͉λig alλivelipλdᴜt͉ᴜvλd͉ᴜ ᴜnda: (nid͉a:nλmilλnd͉ɘveripidit͉λl, λd͉igama:nɘkobλmvλrᴜd͉λl, tλnλit͉a:neka:jλpλdᴜt͉ikolᴜd͉λl) a:mendra:leva:rᴜ λd͉λnλisλriseivirgλl/ 4. /ᴜŋλlkᴜlɘnd͉λikᴜ sᴜvλiλrivλd͉iled͉ænᴜmkλdinλmirᴜkirɘd͉ᴜ endrᴜ niŋλlenᴜgirirgλla: (inipᴜ, kλsλpᴜ, t͉ᴜvλrpᴜ, ka:rλm) a:mendra:lje. ka: t͉λrᴜgɘ/ 5. /kλdinɘma:nɘmλtrᴜmmenmλja:nɘt͉odᴜd͉λlᴜkᴜ idλjeirᴜkᴜmverᴜpa:tλikλndλrijɘ ᴜŋλlkᴜlɘnd͉λikᴜ siramλm ᴜlλd͉a:, a:mendra:lje. ka: t͉λrᴜgɘ/ 6. /ᴜŋλlkᴜlɘnd͉λikᴜ jed͉enᴜmsᴜtrᴜʧulλloligλlᴜkᴜ jed͉enᴜmvit͉jasλma:nɘnλdat͉λigalλivelipλdᴜt͉ᴜvλd͉ᴜ ᴜnda:, a:mendra:levid͉λma:nɘnλdat͉λigalλievid͉λma:nɘsλt͉λt͉irkᴜ velipλdᴜt͉ᴜva:rgλlmλtrᴜmniŋλlλd͉λnλieva:rᴜ ed͉irkolvirgλl/ 7. /ᴜŋλlkᴜlɘnd͉λikᴜ mλtravλrgλlλvarλit͉odᴜvλd͉ᴜ pidika:d͉ᴜendrᴜ niŋλlenᴜgirirgλla:, a:mendra:l ᴜŋλlkᴜlɘnd͉λievid͉ɘsejλlgalλivælipλdᴜt͉iλd͉anλit͉λdᴜpa:r/ journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 451-475, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 451 markedness in the acquisition of kiswahili phonology: an optimality theory perspective henry simiyu nandelenga1 university kibabii university, bungoma-kenya university abstract child language acquisition process is, among other factors, determined by the degree of linguistic markedness of the structures under acquisition. in the acquisition of phonology, phonological markedness has been posited to affect both the rate and route of acquisition. marked phonological structures are those which are difficult to articulate or perceive, rare in phonemic inventories and in typological occurrence, structurally complex and cross linguistically avoided or banned. the inverse is true for the unmarked which typically enhance the acquisition process. however, there are different phonological variables determining markedness across languages and children besides variation in both constraint choice and ranking. the paper addresses these questions by examining the acquisition of kiswahili phonemic inventory and the syllable structure. this is a longitudinal study of two children aged one to five years old observed for four years. the data was obtained from parental diary, audio recordings and observations. it is argued that unmarked structures (the voiceless, plosives, coronals and cv syllables) are acquired faster and dominate the lexicon. in optimality theory (otprince & smolensky, 1993/2004), linguistic markedness is recast into markedness constraints which demand surface forms to be structurally unmarked. the study identified universal constraints responsible for the acquisition of kiswahili phonology and the language particular ranking of those constraints. the findings show that markedness constraints are typically ranked higher above the faithfulness constraints in the initial stages of acquisition. the acquisition process is viewed as a gradual demotion of the markedness constraints over faithfulness constraints with sufficient exposure to adult input. furthermore, markedness constraints against voiced and prenasalised fricatives, coda and syllabic consonants, remain undominated in the constraint hierarchy at age five in spite of adult input having such marked structures. the degree of markedness of the structure, determines how fast it is acquired. keywords: child language, acquisition, markedness, constraints, optimal, harmony 1 henry simiyu nandelenga is a senior lecturer of english and linguistics in the department of english, literature and journalism, kibabii university, kenya. his main research interest is in phonological theory (mainly optimality theory-ot) with a focus on phonological acquisition, language-speech disorders and loanword phonology within the constrained-based framework. his recent publications include ‘phonological processes in the acquisition of kiswahili phonology’ and ‘positional faithfulness in *nc onset resolution in lubukusu’. he is an editorial board member and reviewer of a number of international peer-reviewed journals. corresponding email: khwamu@gmail.com received : 26.11.2021 accepted : 11.04.2022 published : 17.04.2022 mailto:khwamu@gmail.com markedness in the acquisition of kiswahili phonology nandelenga 452 1. introduction child language acquisition is of immense interest not only to linguists but to the general public largely because of the centrality of language in day-to-day communication. our humanity and our very existence are intimately tied with our language. it is not surprising that among the first issues that linguists were concerned about was the design features of language which makes us unique arguing that our ability to acquire and possess language is what makes us human (chomsky, 1965). for linguists, interest in child language acquisition stems from the fact that it does not just explain our uniqueness (language being species specific), but it offers an opportunity to test and validate linguistic theories. there is a consensus that phonological theory and child language have a symbiotic relationship because they inform each other (chomsky, 2004; hayes, 2004; fikkert, 2007). in addition, child language sheds light on what aspects of speech are likely to be lost and recovered faster among the atypical population. this was captured quite early by jakobson (1941) in his work ‘child language, aphasia and phonological universals’ in which he argues that adult grammars are governed by ‘laws of irreversible solidarity’. these ‘laws’ were later referred to as implicational universals in child language studies. for example, the acquisition of fricatives presupposes the acquisitions of stops. this implication is irreversible and is manifested across languages; fricatives tend to be acquired after plosives. jakobson’s observation is supported by findings from this study. similarly, child language studies give insight into our mind, what knowledge of language entails and the ‘continuity hypothesis’. it is argued that there is continuity between child and adult phonology to the extent that they should differ in a very limited way (fikkert, 2007). the recurrent overriding question in child language studies has been why children across cultures and facing very different ambient languages, seem to acquire it so fast and effortlessly. this happens in the absence of instruction, modified input and negative feedback from adults. any child without neurophysiological disorders will master this feat regardless of their level of intelligence, personality, cultures, memory, among other factors (meisel, 2011). in essence, every study on language acquisition is directly or indirectly confronted with this enduring question and any adequate linguistic theory must provide an answer to this question to meet the criteria of ‘adequacy’ (chomsky, 1999, 2000). it is no accident that early works on child language focused on these questions by developing theories of language structure and use that should mirror the ease with which children acquired their first or native language. consequently, competing theories emerged, among them; the rule-based derivation (generative theory), natural generative grammar, connectionist and usage based, learnability and constraint-based optimality theory (ot), (smith, 1973; stampe, 1973; plunkett, 1998; tomasello, 2000; tesar & smolensky, 2000; gnanadesikan, 2004; hayes, 2004, among others). we briefly examine the generative and constrained-based ot mainly because they are the most dominant theories that have shaped the current debate on child language acquisition. in generative theory, language acquisition involves getting the phonological rewrite rules of the native language for mapping the underlying forms on to journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 451-475, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 453 the surface. in chomsky’s (1965) argument, all children are endowed with a biologically predetermined language learning faculty the i-language and a universal template (universal grammarug) that enables them acquire any language with utmost rapidity. this happens in spite of what he refers to as ‘impoverished’ and ‘degenerate’ input data or what has popularly been referred to as ‘the poverty of the stimulus’. however, generative grammar ascribed to a child many complex rules that does not match the ease with which children acquired their first language (l1). often, the child had more rules than what is attributed to adults, contradictory rule ordering paradoxes and rule duplications (menn, 2004; gnanadesikan, 2004). in natural generative phonology (ngp), stampe (1973) attempts to solve the problems of linear rule ordering paradoxes, duplication and ‘conspiracies’ in generative phonology, by converting generative rules to ‘innate processes’. this is because linear rule-ordering fails to capture the fact that some rules operate simultaneously (e.g., nasal place assimilation which takes place alongside post-nasal voicing) and so it is not clear which rule should be ordered first. in duplication of rules, multiple rules were posited for the same process, i.e., avoidance of marked sequence of a nasal followed by a voiceless obstruent. ngp was meant to show that certain phonological processes are possible while others are impossible. in stampe’s view, acquiring a language proceeds in the same way as natural processes which are under ug. however, his approach was faulted for introducing an extra level of representation, lacked ‘discovery, experimentation and hypothesis testing’. it was dismissed as too deterministic (kiparsky & menn, 1977). it also failed to handle the ushaped acquisition route (becker & tessier (2011) in which a child produced an error-free form, then unlearns it only to re-learn it later and process such as consonant harmony in children that depends on a natural process. as a consequence, the generative phonologists revised their proposals replacing rules with principles and parameters (pp). the key tenets are that principles are inviolable while parameters are violable and may vary among languages thus responsible for language typology. the parameters have a binary setting mode, a child’s task was assumed to be easier like switching from ‘off’ to ‘on’, based on evidence from their native language. similarly, they were part of ug which limits the class of possible grammars as parameters come with a ‘default’ setting. children learned parameters only because principles were given for free as part of ug. however, pp could only account for acquisition involving privative features such as voicing and was criticized for parametrization of a complex child language acquisition process. the foregoing shortcomings led to the emergence of constraint-based theories of phonology of which optimality theory (hereafter, ot; prince & smolensky, 1993/2004) is central. ot puts emphasis on input-output mapping thus mirror acquisition because the child has to process the input data and generate output surface forms. the key tenets of ot that are directly relevant to child acquisition is the claim that a language is a system of conflicting constraints that are phonetically grounded (determined by our articulatory and physiological abilities and limitations). these constraints are universal and thus found in every language and that differences among languages are due to the different rankings of these constraints. the child, therefore, is born markedness in the acquisition of kiswahili phonology nandelenga 454 with these universal constraints innately and acquisition process involves ranking these constraints appropriately based on ambient language (gnanadesikan, 2004). in an ot grammar, constraints come in two forms; markedness that demand wellformedness on surface forms, and faithfulness that demand faithful mapping between the input and output forms. markedness constraints demands change, that output forms meet certain structural wellformedness, conflicting with faithfulness which militates against any surface change for purposes of maintaining contrast. the concept of markedness was first mentioned intuitively by trubetskoy in the late 30s, then, jakobson (1941) and formalized in chomsky and halle (1968) seminal work ‘the sound patterns of english’. they offer what is described as the ‘intrinsic content’ of markedness in phonological features. odden (2017) argues that markedness is about formal properties of language on one hand and functional probability of occurrence on the other. de lacy, (2006) provides what he calls a theory of ‘markedness’ arguing that structures that are avoided are marked’ while those that are generated are unmarked’. he defines them thus (de lacy, 2006:4) unmarked elements can be the sole output of processes, fail to trigger alternations, and undergo processes alone. in contrast, ‘marked’ elements are rarely the output, are often the only triggering elements, and are often exempt from undergoing processes. markedness relations can be expressed as a hierarchy based on some dimension, such as place of articulation (poa-hierarchy). markedness relations are not universally invariant, there could be reversals in the hierarchy or conflation, and even preservation of the marked for contrast purposes. he categorizes markedness into two; competence markedness (ilanguage mechanism) and performance markedness (p-markedness). the ilanguage, in our case, is the phonological component of the language faculty; speakers’ internalized knowledge about the language. performance refers to everything outside the i-language, how language is used i.e., mechanisms of perception and limits on the phonetic implementation (de lacy, 2006:11). the p-markedness is responsible for typological and inventory occurrences. in this study, we adopt both concepts and we shall simply use the cover term ‘markedness’. this paper is organized as follows; section 2 provides data and methodological issues, section 3 focuses on the analysis, section 4 provides the results and discussion while section 5 sums up with the conclusion. 2. methodology and data this is a longitudinal study of two children acquiring kiswahili as their first language. the data for the study was collected for a period of four years from the time when the subjects were one year old up to the period when they attained five years of age. 2.1. participants the participants who provided data were two female children as subjects. they are siblings and were coded as ms1 for the first born and ms2 for the second born. they had no known neurophysiological disorders nor language and speech pathology. their developmental milestones were similar and their journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 451-475, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 455 cognition normal. they were exposed to one language right from birth up to their pre-school years. during this period, they constantly had three main interlocutors; their parents (both teachers) and a caregiver. the three spoke kiswahili at home in the presence of the two children. their playmates and neighbours also used kiswahili because of the cosmopolitan nature of the neighbourhood. both their rural and urban homes were inhabited mainly by speakers of different kenyan languages, hence the main medium of communication was kiswahili because it is the lingua franca in both rural and urban homes. due to such a language ecology, there was no exposure to any other language. generally, the language used at home (including visitors) and outside the home environment was kiswahili. note that the two children were two years apart; the first born was three years when the younger was one year old. 2.2. data collection data collected was both in the form of audio and text (written text) collected over a period of four years. speech tokens were recorded when the subjects are engaged in natural conversations at home. they were not aware of being observed or recorded. two main instruments were used: parental diary and audio recorder. parental diary recorded any observable change and speech of interest in the utterances of the children. this tool was used as need arises noting the date, time and context of the utterance and any accompanying paralinguistic cues. the audio recording was done every fortnight strictly in the house. during this period, the parent could start a conversation to induce the subjects to speak. similarly, the recording parent could ask questions that lead to specific responses containing the target sounds, syllables or prosodic words. the audio files were transferred to the praat software (boersma & weenick, 2015) for verification of speech based on phonetic features, (because the markedness of a sound is determined by its phonetic/phonological features), for example, the formant values of vowels and spectrographic characteristics of consonants such as vot in plosives. however, because this is purely a phonological study, no acoustic speech analysis was done using the software. a third tool, a syllable/word list, supplemented the two tools mentioned above. the word list was generated from the parental diary and audio recorder. in this case, the parent asked the children to repeat specific words by prompting. this was done to verify the children’s utterances and confirm if there are any or existing variations in the child’s output. in the table (appendix 1) a sample of the data is provided. for each word, there are two output tokens, one for each subject. seven stages are identified in the developmental path of the subjects. each stage is indicated by an initial y (for year) followed by numerals; the first indicates the year and the second, the month (typically, 6 months). this is because studies indicate that it is only after about six months that there is noticeable difference in developmental grammar. however, after three years, most sounds and syllables are in place and therefore, noticeable progress is only visible after about a year. in the data, (see appendix 1), the stages after three years follow this pattern (a year apart; y3, y4, y5). markedness in the acquisition of kiswahili phonology nandelenga 456 2.3. data analysis the child data in appendix 1 were analyzed using ot formalism by first determining the constraint for each emergent grammar, their kiswahili specific constraint hierarchy and finally, a comparative assessment of the optimal candidate (the true attested output form). the paper assumes some basic understanding of ot architecture especially with regard to constraint determination, their ranking, construction of the tableaux and evaluation of candidate harmony. note that, in this study, unassimilated(non-nativized) loanwords, especially from arabic (the dominant donor language), are not considered because they have a transitional syllable structure and/or deviate from the core grammar of standard kiswahili 2.3.1. acquisition of the kiswahili phonemic inventory standard ipa transcription protocol is used. in transcription, the phonemic symbol [c] is used and not [ʧ] as some authors have done due to the influence of english pronunciation of the sound. in most eastern bantu generally, the [c] of ‘chama’ is actually a palatal plosive and not a post-alveolar affricate as it is the case in english. evidence for this argument comes from nasal place assimilation (npa) in which the palatal nasal stop [ɲ] assimilates to the palatal plosive [c] resulting in the voiced prenasalised palatal stop [ɲɟ]. similarly, in this study, [c] as a voiceless plosive is shown to be acquired early alongside the voiceless coronal (alveolar) plosive [t]. note also that the [ɲɟ] is a singleton (single phoneme) and not a sequence of two consonants according to syllabic phonotactics of the language. the study assumes the following phonemic inventory of standard kiswahili (mgullu, 2001). standard kiswahili has five pure vowels and five long counterparts of the same (ten monophthongs) as follows; /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/ and /u/ on one hand, and /a:/, /e:/, /i:/, /o:/ and /u:/ for the long vowels respectively. the language has a three-vowel height system comprising of three height contrasts of low, mid and high. the language has thirty consonants spread across the different places of articulation as follows; bilabials: /p/, /b/, /m/, /mb/; labio-dentals: /f/, /v/; interdentals: /θ/, /ð/; alveolars: /t/, /d/, /n/, /l/, /r/, /s/, /z/, /nd/, /nz/; post-alveolar: /ʃ/; palatals: /c/, /ɟ/, /ɲ/, /j/, /ɲɟ/; velars: /k/, /ɡ/, /ɣ/, /ŋ/, /ŋɡ/; labio-velar /w/ and one glottal sound /h/. note that the five prenasalised consonants are phonemic, they are fully contrastive/distinctive in the language. (cf. chacha, 2007, for an argument to include them in the ipa chart). these phonemes are plotted in the following vowel and consonant charts. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 451-475, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 457 table1 kiswahili vowels table 2 kiswahili consonants (ladefoged & maddieson, 1996; mgullu, 2001) adapted with modifications bilabial labio dental interdental alveolar postalveolar palatal velar glottal plosives p b t d c ɟ k ɡ fricatives f v θ ð s z ʃ ɣ h nasals m n ɲ ŋ liquids l, r glides j w pre-nasals m b n d, nz ɲ ɟ ŋ ɡ the consonant inventory shows that the language has five prenasalised sounds; four are prenasalised stops and one prenasalised fricative /nz/. by the age of one year, all the vowels had been acquired and five consonants i.e., the /p/, /m/, /t/, /j/ and /n/. the first two sounds are universally acquired first (macwhinney, 1995; clark, 2003; lust, 2007) because from sucking, the muscles moving the jaws and lips are said to be adapted; children are physiologically able to handle these bilabial sounds. as for the other three, they are all coronals and studies have shown that that they are the unmarked place of articulation (paradis & prunet, 1991; kang, 2000; de lacy, 2004, 2006; flack, 2007) based on universal markedness hierarchy or scale (lombardi, 2002; de lacy, 2006). the data shows that children have all vowels acquired before the consonants. in the tableau (tableaux/tableaus for plural), the vertical solid lines indicate domination, dotted lines mean there is no crucial domination while shaded cells mean that the optimal (winner) is already determined by constraint above (before them). after each tableau, a brief explanation of the ot analysis is done as a convention. it is here argued that markedness constraints invariably markedness in the acquisition of kiswahili phonology nandelenga 458 outrank faithfulness constraints. in the analysis, therefore, it is proposed that the markedness constraints onset (demands that syllables have onsets), *obsvoi (which demands that obstruents are not be voiced) and *vowel (long) (*[vlong]) (which bans long vowels) are top ranked dominating max-io (demanding no deletion) and ident-io (demanding no feature change). we use the input word /va:/ ‘dress up’. tableau 1a /va:/  [pa] ‘dress’ (v) /va:/ onset *obsvoi/cont *v[long] max-io ident-io a. ☞[pa] ** b. [pa:] *! * c. [va:] *! * d. [a] *! * * at one year, the child produces the voiceless plosive [p] and the short vowel [a] for [va:] because at this stage, long vowels and fricative consonants are considered marked and are not yet acquired. the optimal candidate (true attested form indicated by ‘pointing finger ☞’) produced by the child is candidate (a) [pa], candidate (b) is suboptimal because it has a long vowel not yet acquired, (c) loses because it has a voiced fricative which is very marked (fricatives are generally acquired last and voiced sounds are considered marked if they are obstruents). at one year and half, the subjects demote the markedness constraint against long vowels while promoting the faithfulness constraint demanding similar length feature correspondence between input and output. this results into [pa:] as shown in the following tableau. tableau 1b: /va:/  [pa:] ‘dress’ (v) /va:/ onset *obsvoi/cont identv[long] max-io *vlong a. ☞[pa:] * b. [pa] *! c. [va:] *! * d. [a] *! * * after two years and half, the markedness constraints against fricatives (*[obscont]) is demoted below the faithfulness constraints ident [cont] as part of the learning process in an ot grammar. the child produces the fricative [f] and due to the demands of onset constraint, that dominates dep-io (no insertion), the child inserts the palatal glide [j] to satisfy the onset requirements producing [fa.ja]. this is shown in tableau 1c as follows. tableau 1c: /va:/  [fa.ja:] ‘dress’ (v) /va:/ onset *obsvoi&cont identcont ident v[long] maxio depio a.☞[fa.ja] * * b. [pa] * *! c. [va:] *! d. [a] *! * * journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 451-475, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 459 the final optimal candidate similar to adult grammar is attained at four years when the markedness constraint against voiced fricatives ([*obsvoi/cont) is demoted while faithfulness constraint; identvoi/cont is promoted above it. the result is as follows; tableau 1d: /va:/  [va:] ‘dress’ (v) /va:/ onset identcont/voi *obsvoi/cont identv[long] maxio *vlong a. ☞[va:] * * b. [pa] *!* * c. [fa:] *! * d. [a] *! * * the sound [j] appears to be the preferred epenthetic segment replacing many phonemes such as /l/, /c/, /r/, /h/, /s/ and / ɡ/ among others. this is expected considering that it is a coronal and specifically, a palatal. there is a preference for palatals over alveolars. on the other hand, by the age of five years, the subjects had not acquired the voiced fricatives /ɣ/ and /ð/. fricatives as said to be phonologically marked compared to other manner of articulation classes of sounds. the fact that they are voiced enhances this markedness further. it is no wonder that the two fricatives are acquired last. in the data, it is apparent that the two subjects could not master the voiced interdental fricative at five years old. this is because they ranked obsvoi markedness constraint higher up in the constraint hierarchy. in the following tableau, the subjects’ inability to produce the prenasalised stop [mb] is due to initial ranking of compseg high in the hierarchy thus; onset, *obsvoi, *compseg ≫ max-io, dep-io. tableau 2a: /ðambi/  [pi] ‘sin’ /ðambi/ onset *obsvoi *compseg max-io identio a. ☞[pi] ** * b.[ðambi] *! * c. [tabi] *! ** d. [i] *! *** ** the optimal candidate is one which satisfies the three top-ranked markedness constraints by being voiceless, having an onset and avoiding the complex (contour) segment altogether thus realized as [pi]. by the age of two years, the child has demoted the general obsvoi to a lower level but a specific obsvoi/cont relativized to the fricatives is still top ranked. this implies that the child can produce [p] but not the interdental [ð] as shown in tableau 2b. markedness in the acquisition of kiswahili phonology nandelenga 460 tableau 2b: /ðambi/  [tapi] ‘sin’ /ðambi/ onset *obsvoi&cont *compseg *obsvoi maxio identio a.☞[tapi] *** b. [ðambi] *! * ** c. [tabi] *! ** d. [i] *! *** to produce [tabi] at two years, the child has to demote the markedness constraint against voiced stops further down the hierarchy below ident-iovoi. this is shown in tableau 2c. tableau 2c: /ðambi/  [tabi]] ‘sin’ /ðambi/ onset *obsvoi&cont *compseg identvoi maxio *obsvoi a.☞[tabi] * * b. [ðambi] *! * ** c. [tapi] **! d. [i] *! *** at three years of age, the subjects produced the complex segment [mb], implying that they had also demoted the markedness constraint against such contour segment; *compseg while elevating the faithfulness constraint identcompseg above the former as in tableau 2d. the cover term is used for identity constraint; ident-iovoice, continuant and complex segment. tableau 2d: /ðambi/  [tambi] ‘sin’ /ðambi/ onset *obsvoi&cont identio *compseg maxio *obsvoi a.☞[tambi] ** * * b. [ðambi] *! * * ** c. [tapi] ***! d. [i] *! *** at four years of age, the two subjects display variable ranking of the identio constraint by giving priority to different aspects of the feature values of faithfulness; ms1 satisfies ident-voi at the expense of identcont while ms2 does the reverse as shown in tableaux 2e & 2f respectively. similarly, while ms1 satisfies *obscont&voi, by avoiding a fricative altogether, ms2 satisfies it partially by using the voiceless fricative thereby satisfying identcont as well. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 451-475, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 461 tableau 2e: /ðambi/  [dambi] ‘sin’ /ðambi/ onse t *obscont&v oi identvoi&/co nt *compse g max -io *obsv oi a.☞[damb i] * * ** b. [ðambi] *! * * ** c. [tapi] **!* d. [abi] *! * the tableau 2e indicates that ms1 has one violation mark for ident-cont but respects the [+voice] specification. in 2f below, ms2 violates the voicing feature but satisfies the continuant requirement by having a voiceless fricative [θ] instead of the voiced fricative [ð] as optimal tableau 2f: /ðambi/  [ θambi] ‘sin’ /ðambi/ onse t *obsvoi&con t identvoi&con t *compse g max *obsvo i a.☞[θambi ] * * * b. [ðambi] *! * * ** c. [θapi] **!* d. [abi] *! * note that at age five, ms1 converges at the same level with ms2, by having the constraints and ranking shown in tableau 2f. the voiced interdental fricative is not yet acquired because the markedness constraint against a voice continuant that is not a sonorant, is still an undominated constraint in the subjects’ constraint hierarchy. finally, we analyze another sound that was not acquired by age five; the rarest and probably, the most difficult sound to articulate; the voiced velar fricative [ɣ]. it occurred only once in adult input and worse, it was mispronounced as it often occurs among many adult speakers of kiswahili. in the analysis, we examine only two stages because the subjects’ outputs are very close to the near similar form [ɡari] that they acquire fully at five years old, however, the final form of [ɣali] is not the adult norm but an intermediate form of [ɡari] reported at four years. tableau 3a: /ɣali/  [ji] ‘expensive’ /ɣali/ onset *dorsal *liquid *glidecor maxio identio a. ☞[ji] * ** * b. [ɣali] *! * c. [ɡali] *! * * d. [ja] * ** **! markedness in the acquisition of kiswahili phonology nandelenga 462 at five years of age, the subjects could only produce [ɡali] as the optimal candidate implying that markedness constraints against dorsals and liquids have been demoted from being top ranked. however, a specific constraint against voiced velar fricative must be undominated to prevent [ɣ] while promoting identdor and identlateral together with max-io as shown in tableau 3b. note that in the initial state of the aquisition process, all markedness constraints outrank faithfulness constraints. tableau 3b: /ɣali/  [ɡali] ‘expensive’ /ɣali/ onse t *dor cont/voi identdo r /lat maxio *glid e cor *liqui d *dorsa l a.☞[ɡali ] * * b. [ɣali] *! * * c. [ɡari] *! * * d. [ja] *!* * the fact that at five years old, both subjects ranked the markedness constraint *dorsal continuant as top ranked implied that they could not acquire the voiced dorsal continuant fricative [ɣ]. but based on the concept of minimal violation in ot, they opt to produce a near similar dorsal plosive [ɡ] that posses two of the features in the substituted fricative; [+voice] and [+dorsal] thus violating only one identity constraint; identcont. note that the dominated and general *dorsal allows for the emergence of [k] or [ɡ] as optimal in place of [ɣ]. 2.3.2. acquisition of kiswahili syllable structure the kiswahili core syllable structure can be divided into four types; the universal and canonical [cv] -consonant vowel, onsetless [v] -vowel alone, [ccv] -typically consonant glide vowel and the [n̩] -syllabic nasal structure. this structure is typical of most eastern bantu languages including luhya, gikuyu, taita, among others (maddieson & ladefoged, 1993; nandelenga, 2015). only nasals function as syllabic consonants occupying the peak (nucleus) of the syllable because they are the least marked sonorant consonant (rice & avery, 1991; rice, 2007). the subjects invariably acquired the [cv] syllable first regardless of the input from the ambient language. this syllable is said to be the most unmarked across languages, in fact all languages have a [cv] structure and in a few, the only type allowed (blevins, 1995, 2004; levelt & de vijver, 2004; zec, 2007; goldsmith, 2011). in an ot analysis, it implies that markedness constraints such as onset, *coda, *complexonset, and *peak-c dominate faithfulness constraints max-io, dep-io and ident-io. these are the universal constraints that will be used in analyzing the data by ranking them in a kiswahili specific constraint hierarchy. initially, subjects rank markedness constraints above the faithfulness thus; onset, *coda, *componset, *peak-c ≫ max-io, dep-io. syllable break is indicated by a period in accordance with the ipa notation. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 451-475, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 463 tableau 4a: /mtoto/  [to] ‘a baby’ /mtoto/ onset *coda *componset *peak-c max-io dep-io a. ☞[to] *** b. [m̩.to.to] *! c. [mto] *! ** d. [tot] *! ** e. [o.to] *! ** tableau 4a shows that [to] is the optimal candidate when all markedness constraints are top ranked which ensures that only the [cv] syllable structure can emerge at one year old. however, with more evidence from adult data, the subjects reduce violations of max-io by producing [to.to] but the ranking remains because only [cv] syllables are permitted based on the ranking. at age five, the subjects could not produce the expected syllabic nasal because they still rank the markedness constraint peak-c as undominated constraint. their ranking does not converge with the adults’ ranking but there is less violation of faithfulness (none for max-io and one for dep-io) constraints as depicted in the tableau 4b that has an extra candidate (f). tableau 4b: /mtoto/  [mu.to.to] ‘a child/baby’ /mtoto/ onset *coda *componset *peakc max-io dep-io a. ☞[mu.to.to] * b. [m̩.to.to] *! c. [mto] *! ** d. [tot] *! ** e. [o.to] *! ** f. [to] **!* by producing [mu.to.to] the subjects are being faithful to the unmarked core [cv] syllabe type which they acquire easily and very fast. in an input with an initial onsetless syllable, the subjects produce [cv] syllables before converging on the optimal [v] syllable structure. this provides evidence that [cv] is acquired before the [v] syllable type. to rule out [c] in favour of [j] in the following analysis, subjects need a markedness constraint *coronal [sonorant] but violating the feature [obstruent] in the word /aca/ ‘abandon, leave, let go’ in tableau 5a. tableau 5a: /aca/  [ja] ‘let go/leave’ /aca/ onset *coda *cor[-son] identobs max-io dep-io a. ☞[ja] * * b. [a.ca] *! * c. [ca] *! * d. [ja.ca] *! * e. [ac] *! * * markedness in the acquisition of kiswahili phonology nandelenga 464 at two years, the subjects were producing the target word with the onsetless initial syllable. this is because they revised their constraint ranking demoting the markedness constraints onset and *cor[-son] so that they can be violated at no cost to the harmony of the output candidate. this is apparent in tableau 5b in which the optimal candidate is the attested form. tableau 5b: /aca/  [a.ca] ‘let go/leave’ /aca/ identobs *coda max-io dep-io *cor[-son] onset a. ☞[a.ca] * * b. [ja] *! * c. [ca] *! * d. [ja.ca] *! * * e. [ac] *! * the optimal candidate is the expected form, a testimony of the efficacy of the constraint choice and its ranking. however, it remains to be seen if the same constraints can account for the acquisition of the [ccv] syllable structure. an anti-consonant cluster markedness constraint is introduced and another constraint that militates against labio-velar [w] and syllabic consonants as was the case in tableaux 4 above. tableau 6a: /mwana/  [ma] ‘a child’ /mwana/ onse t *cod a *componse t *peak -c *labi o velar max -io dep -io a. ☞[ma] *** b. [mu.wa.na ] *! * c. [m̩̩.wa.na] *! * d. [mwa.na] *! * e. [wan] *! * ** f. [a.na] *! ** by age five, the [cc] consonant cluster is acquired, implying that the markedness constraints *componset and *labiovelar are now low ranked in the constraint hierarchy and can be violated to produce the most harmonic and optimal candidate. tableau 6b: /mwana/  [mwa.na] ‘a child’ /mwana/ onse t *cod a *peak -c max -io dep -io *labi o velar *componse t a.☞[mwa.na ] * * journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 451-475, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 465 b.[mu.wa.na ] *! * c.[ma] *!** d. [m̩.wa.na] *! * e. [wan] *! ** * f. [a.na] *! ** the tableau shows that once *componset is dominated by some faithfulness constraint, the input [cc] typically [cg] consonant cluster will be mapped faithfully on to the surface. finally, the adult data (see appendix 2) reveals that there are syllabic consonants which are invariably nasals. however, the subjects’ final grammars at five years of age indicate that this syllable type is not acquired by then. crosslinguistically, syllabic consonants are considered marked and typologically quite rare in syllabic inventories. often, very few consonants qualify as syllabic peak. failure to acquire syllabic nasals is due to the undominated markedness constraint peak-c, as shown in the following tableau. tableau 7a: /nne/  [ne] ‘four’ /nne/ onset *coda *componset *peak-c max-io dep-io a. ☞[ne] * b. [n̩.ne] *! c. [nne] *! d. [i.ne] *! ̩̩ * e. [e] *! ** at five years old, the subjects had demoted onset to the low rank but still retained peak-c, therefore, they could not acquire the syllabic nasal as shown in tableau 7b. tableau 7b: /nne/  [i.ne] ‘four’ /nne/ *coda *componset *peak-c maxio dep-io onset a. ☞[i.ne] * b.[n ̩.ne] *! c.[nne] *! d. [ne] ̩̩ *! e. [e] *!* * the same findings are obtained when the input form is /mtoto/ which is realized by the subjects as [mu.to.to] and not the expected [m̩.to.to] in which the nasal is syllabic. markedness in the acquisition of kiswahili phonology nandelenga 466 3. results and discussion the following section discusses the findings from the analysis showing what is of interest to the key questions concerning child language acquisition raised in the introduction section. the role of markedness is revisited with specific reference to markedness hierarchies assumed in the study based on crosslinguistic findings (lombardi, 2002; de lacy, 2004, 2006; rice, 2007) 3.1. the phonemic inventory acquisition of the phonemic inventory is correlated with acquisition of the system of contrast. the child has to determine the contrasts that exists in the ambient language. contrasts that are typologically frequent are acquired early. in the study, the three vowels [a], [i] and [u] are acquired first. by age one, the subjects had fully acquired all the short vowels. they could use them in producing their first syllables and words. the most contrastive peripheral vowels [a, i, u] are the most distinct and consequently acquired ahead of the mid vowels. this is due to their extreme dispersion in the vowel space, therefore, least likely to be confused (flemming, 2006). similarly, beckman (2004) argues that these three are the unmarked (the high and low). at one year and half, the subjects had acquired the length contrast but produce them variably due to likely maturation and other factors. the markedness constraint *[long] ensures that children acquire the short vowels before the long ones. in terms of markedness, *[long]  *[-long] ‘reads more marked than’. in ot terms, the children rank the markedness constraint *[+consonantal] above *[-consonantal], thus acquiring vowels before consonants. phonetically, producing vowels is less effortful due to the open vocal tract than the constriction associated with consonants which requires muscle coordination and synchronizing articulators. in addition, [m] and [p] are acquired early because they contrast in voicing and orality, but also because they are in contrast with other consonants in terms of place and manner of articulation. maximal perceptual contrast would favour the two bilabial stops because they enhance perceptual distinctiveness with low articulatory effort (flemming, 2006). among consonants, three parameters have been proposed to determine their markedness based on specific features. acquisition is thus viewed as the unfolding of preexisting feature hierarchy with positive evidence (fikkert, 2007:540) the markedness hierarchies are based on place of articulation, manner of articulation and voicing (phonation). these three parameters provide us with universal markedness hierarchies as follows (note ‘ ’ reads; more marked than) place of articulation (poa) markedness hierarchy (lombard, 2002; de lacy, 2006; rice, 2007) | dorsal  labial  coronal  laryngeal | most marked least marked voicing (phonation) markedness hierarchy | voiced  voiceless | manner of articulation (moa) markedness hierarchy |fricative  liquid  nasal  plosive| journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 451-475, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 467 the fact that the dorsal, voiced velar fricative [ɣ] is not acquired at all at five years of age can be read off from the three subhierachies above. it is a dorsal (being velar), voiced and also a fricative, and therefore, as predicted by the hierarchies above, it should be the most likely to be acquired last. the analysis reveal that markedness constraints are initially ranked higher than faithfulness ones in which marked structured are banned or difficult to articulate. the consonant that is acquired first is the voiceless plosive [p] which is the least marked in terms of voicing and also in terms moa hierarchy. the nasal [m] and [n] follow. from the point of view of moa, they are considered unmarked among the class of sonorants (rice, 2007). however, functional reasons have been argued to be the reason why the bilabial nasal stop [m] is acquired first across languages (blevins, 2004; de lacy, 2006; smith, 1973, 2009). in terms of poa, coronals were acquired quite fast in line with what has been termed ‘coronal unmarkedness’ (paradis & prunet, 1991; de lacy, 2006). in acquisition rate and segmental epenthesis, the unmarked sound is preferred. lombard (2003), de lacy (2006) and rice (2007) observe that epenthesis is a valid markedness diagnostic. the data shows that the coronal glide [j] is the preferred epenthetic segment by subjects. majority of languages tend to have a high number of coronals in their phonemic inventories (paradis & prunet, 1991; rice, 2007) and the same is observed in the subjects’ consonant inventory. among the early coronals were; [n], [t], [c], [j], and [ʃ]. though fricatives are typically late in acquisition, the coronal [θ] was acquired first among all fricatives. the results are in accord with the predictions of the markedness hierarchies provided above and crosslinguistic studies (de lacy, 2006; bavin, 2009). generally, plosives are acquired ahead of nasals, which in turn precede the liquids and, finally, the fricatives. all voiceless plosives were acquired before their voiced counterparts (see [p] vs [b], [t] vs [d], [k] vs [ɡ]). the same scenario obtains for fricatives. all the consonants that were not acquired by age five were fricatives and, in addition, they were all voiced; [ð], [ɣ] and [nz]. the markedness of the latter is enhanced by being a complex segment as well. this lends some credence to the markedness hierarchy above. however, it is important to note that hierarchies do conflict and one may be more visible in one sound than the other. this may explain why the simplex /z/ a voiced coronal is acquired earlier than [ð] also a voiced coronal fricative. the data established that frequency plays a critical role because children can only acquire what they hear and how often they are exposed to it. this is a case of ‘performance’ markedness that has to do with frequency of occurrence that makes one sound marked than another. the role of frequency has been shown to be critical in other studies too (bybee, 2001; levelt & de vjver, 2004). while voiced velars are generally difficult to produce phonetically, the study also reveals that the voiced velar fricative is too infrequent in adult input to be acquired. throughout data collection, only one word containing the voiced velar fricative [ɣ] was used in the presence of subjects. frequency effects may, therefore, contribute to the absence of [ɣ] in the subjects’ phonemic inventories at age five. markedness in the acquisition of kiswahili phonology nandelenga 468 3.2. the syllable structure the analysis reveals that the [cv] syllable type was the most prevalent and preferred regardless of the input form. this type has been described as ‘an absolute universal’ in the sense that it occurs in all languages (blevins, 1995; carlisle, 2001; goldsmith, 2011). in fact, some languages are said to have only this type (hawaian and hua) and it is the only type that is not banned by any language (prince & smolensky, 2004; levelt & de vijver, 2004). the preference for a [cv] type is due to both ease of articulation and perception. the subjects faithfully ranked markedness constraints; onset, *coda and *componset above some faithfulness constraints which ensure that only the [cv] syllable type can surface optimally. the [v] syllable structure followed only if the input was onsetless and after the onset constraint was demoted to a lower rank in the constraint hierarchy of the language. note that [cv] syllable type was preferred even with inputs beginning with a vowel in the initial stages of acquisition. the [ccv] was acquired only after the other two syllable types: [cv] and [v] were in place. this was only possible after the constraint against onset cluster was demoted below faithfulness constraints (max-io and dep-io) that oppose insertion or deletion to repair the cluster. both children never acquired the syllabic nasal due to the undominated markedness constraint *peak-c that forbids consonants from occupying the peak of the syllable. similarly, most adults have difficulties producing a syllabic sound as noted during data collection and often insert a vowel after the nasal. in terms of the feature-based markedness theory, the unmarked status of a syllable nucleus is [-cons]. therefore, markedness may play a role in syllable acquisition based on the following hierarchy. syllable structure markedness hierarchy | n ̩  ccv  v  cv | while onset and *componset were eventually ranked low to allow for the emergence of onsetless syllables and [cc] onset clusters, the *coda constraint was never demoted. this is a universal ranking for all bantu languages because their syllables are strictly open. similarly, another reason why the subjects eventually produced ccv is because the language allows a specific type of ccv structure (the cgv-consonant, glide vowel). a markedness subhierarchy is proposed to account for the preference of cg among eastern bantu languages based on nandelenga (2015). ccv markedness subhierarchy |*co  *cn  *cl  *cg | most marked least marked the markedness *co reads; no consonant obstruent onset, *cn reads; no consonant nasal onset, *cl reads; no consonant liquid onset while *cg reads; no consonant glide onset cluster. the subjects produced only one type of onset cluster; the [cg] because this is the least marked onset cluster based on the markedness subhierarchy above. among other factors, such an onset cluster respects the sonority sequencing principle (ssp) by ensuring a rising journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 451-475, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 469 sonority in the onset cluster regardless of the initial consonant in the [cg] cluster. this is because the glide has the highest inherent sonority index among all the consonants in any languages’ phonemic inventory. note that the subjects could have ranked the constraints in the same order thus: *co ≫ *cn ≫ *cl ≫ *cg which implies that the constraint against a consonant glide sequence is low ranked and, therefore, violable. this explain why [cg] onset cluster is not only acceptable, but also the preferred onset cluster type in the child’s developmental grammars. 4. conclusion the acquisition of kiswahili phonology, like any other language, is determined by universal constraints that are ranked in a language specific hierarchy. in ot, language acquisition is a process of constraint re-ranking given new input and in the face of new data or evidence. in initial stages, both subjects rank markedness constraints above faithfulness constraints. the result is acquisition of unmarked phonological forms. this often leads to neutralization of contrast (see both /ɣali/ ‘expensive’ and /ɡari/ ‘a vehicle’ being mapped on to [kali] at age three by both subjects). progress along the development path is a matter of demoting the markedness constraints allowing more marked structures to emerge and, therefore, allowing more contrast. the study shows that there is a strong continuity between child and adult grammars. constraints attributed to both are the same, the only difference is their ranking. children are able to attain adult phonological norm and grammar by re-ranking the constraints as they approximate to the target form. this is in acord with the gradual learning algorithm (gla) and constraint demotion algorithms (cda) learnability modelling (tesar & smolensky, 2000) which simulates constraint demotion in the acquisition process. child language acquisition in ot grammar involves gradual demotion of markedness constraints while promoting the faithfulness constraints above the markedness constraints. this is the stage at which the child’s phonological grammar converge with the adult input by producing adult’s marked phonological structures. the fact that only the voiced fricatives [ɣ], [ð] and [nz] are not acquired at age five shows that indeed manner of articulation (moa) markedness of the form under acquisition is a key variable in determining the acquisition process. these findings are in accord with studies on other languages (gnanadesikan, 2004; fikkert, 2007, among others). indeed, fikkert (2007:539) posits that “markedness has always played a key role in accounting for acquisition patterns. researchers usually find that children start out producing relatively simple and unmarked phonological patterns, which become more marked in the course of development”. both competence-based markedness (determined by the i-language) and performance markedness (determined by factors external to the language) are central. yet with little exposure to the voiced fricative sounds, the subjects could not acquire them. this is in line with observations by zamuner et al; (2004) that high frequency words produced accurately and with high phonotactic probability led to faster acquisition. this may explain why the infrequent [ð] and [ɣ] and the poorly articulated syllabic nasals were not yet acquired at the age of five years. that a key property of markedness in the acquisition of kiswahili phonology nandelenga 470 language is ‘cultural transmission’ is made manifest; children acquire the language they hear, they do not inherit the language of their parents. in the current study, both parents were native luhya (bantu, kenya) speakers, but the subjects acquired kiswahili, the language they hear around them. back to the key question linguists must answer mentioned in the introductions, the results may provide an account as to why children acquire their first language so fast and effortlessly. this lies in the universality of constraints which are also similar in both adults and children. because they are innate, they are given for free by ug. the child has a simple task of reranking them as evidence may demand. problematic cased in which different repair mechanisms target the same marked form are handled through a ranked system of constraints avoiding rule duplication issues of the generative tradition. the child is able to acquire any language so easily because of the shared universal constraints which are also operative in in all languages. this may provide an account as to why children from diverse cultures and languages acquire their first language so effortlessly without any instruction and irrespective of the ‘impoverished’ adult input. acknowledgement i wish to express my gratitude to my family for the support in obtaining data and participants in the 2019 inaugural conference of the language association of east africa-laea where the initial draft was presented. their insightful comments have significantly improved the paper. references bavin, e. 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(2007). the syllable. in de lacy (ed.), the cambridge handbook of phonology, (pp.161-194). cambridge: cambridge university press. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 451-475, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 473 appendix 1: developmental milestones & data note the subj=subjects, [-] implies the subject has acquired the target form in the preceding stage or previous stages. the period indicates syllable boundary. the gloss and the orthographic representation appear in appendix 2: the input (or), output (pr) and the gloss. note: or=orthographic representation, pr=surface (phonetic) representation. subj tokens y1 y1:6 y2 y2:6 y3 y4 y5 ms1 [ma.ma] [mama] [-] [-] [-] [-] [-] [-] ms2 [ma.ma] [mama] [-] [-] [-] [-] [-] [-] ms1 [ba.ba] [papa] [papa] [baba] [-] [-] [-] [-] ms2 [ba.ba] [papa] [papa] [baba] [-] [-] [-] [-] ms1 [m̩.to.to] [to] [toto] [itoto] [mutoto] [mutoto] [mutoto] [mutoto] ms2 [m̩.to.to] [to] [toto] [utoto] [mutoto] [mutoto] [mutoto] [mutoto] ms1 [sa.ha.ni] [ni] [jani] [ja:ni] [ca:ni] [ʃa:ni] [sa:ni] [sahani] ms2 [sa.ha.ni] [ni] [jani] [a:ni] [ca:ni] [ʃa:ni] [sa:ni] [sahani] ms1 [ɲu.mba] [pa] [jupa] [uba] [u:ba] [u:mba] [[ɲumba] [-] ms2 [ɲu.mba] [pa] [jupa] [cuba] [cu:ba] [u:mba] [[ɲumba] [-] ms1 [ca.ku.la] [ja] [uja] [akuja] [cakuja] [cakula] [-] [-] ms2 [ca.ku.la] [ja] [uja] [akuja] [cakuja] [cakula] [-] [-] ms1 [ma.ti.ti] [ti] [titi] [atiti] [matiti] [-] [-] [-] ms2 [ma.ti.ti] [ti] [cici[ [aθiθi/ʃiʃi] [maiti] [-] [-] [-] ms1 [la.la] [ja] [aja] [jaja] [laja] [lala] [-] [-] ms2 [la.la] [ja] [jaja] [jaja] [jala] [lala] [-] [-] ms1 [ɡa.ri] [ji] [aji] [jaji] [kaji] [kali] [ɡali] [ɡari] ms2 [ɡa.ri] [ji] [jaji] [kaji] [kaji] [kali] [ɡali] [ɡari] ms1 [ða.mbi] [pi] [api] [tapi] [tabi] [tambi] [dambi] [θambi] ms2 [ða.mbi] [pi] [api] [tapi] [tabi] [tambi] [θambi] [θambi] ms1 [sa.fi] [pi] [api] [capi] [ʃapi] [ʃafi] [safi] [-] ms2 [sa.fi] [pi] [api] [capi] [fafi] [ʃafi] [safi] [-] ms1 [me.za] [me] [meca] [meca] [meʃa] [mesa] [meza] [-] ms2 [me.za] [me] [meca] [meca] [meʃa] [mesa] [meza] [-] ms1 [va:] [pa] [pa:] [paja] [faja] [fa:] [va:] [-] markedness in the acquisition of kiswahili phonology nandelenga 474 ms2 [va:] [pa] [pa:] [paja] [faja] [fa:] [va:] [-] ms1 [ŋo.mbe] [pe] [mope] [obe] [o:be] [o: mbe] [o: mbe] [ŋombe] ms2 [ŋo.mbe] [pe] [ope] [obe] [o:be] [o: mbe] [o: mbe] [ŋombe] ms1 [ɣa.li] [ji] [jaji] [aji] [kaji] [kali] [ɡali] [ɡali] ms2 [ɣa.li] [ji] [jaji] [jaji] [kaji] [kali] [ɡali] [ɡali] ms1 [n̩.ne] [ne] [ne] [nene] [ene] [ine] [ine] [ine] ms2 [n̩.ne] [ne] [ne] [nene] [ene] [ine] [ine] [ine] ms1 [mwa.na] [ma] [mama] [mana] [ana] [muwana] [muana] [mwana] ms2 [mwa.na] [ma] [mama] [mana] [ana] [muwana] [muana] [mwana] ms1 [sa.li.mi.a] [ma] [ija] [mija] [ami:ja] [ʃa:milia] [samilia] [salimia] ms2 [sa.li.mi.a] [ma] [ija] [mija] [ami:ja] [camilia] [samilia] [salimia] ms1 [ka.la.mu] [mu] [amu] [a:mu] [ka:mu] [kajamu] [kalamu] [-] ms2 [ka.la.mu] [mu] [amu] [a:mu] [ka:mu] [kajamu] [kalamu] [-] ms1 [hu.ju] [u] [u.u] [ju:] [juju] [uju] [uju] [huyu] ms2 [hu.ju] [u] [ju:] [ju:] [juju] [uju] [uju] [huyu] ms1 [a.ca] [ja] [ca] [aca] [-] [-] [-] [-] ms2 [a.ca] [ja] [ca] [caca/jaca] [-] [-] [-] [-] ms1 [e.mbe] [pe] [pepe] [epe] [ebe] [embe] [-] [-] ms2 [e.mbe] [pe] [pepe] [jepe] [jebe] [embe] [-] [-] ms1 [fu.nza] [ja] [ca] [uca] [fuca] [fuʃa] [fuɲɟa] [fuɲɟa] ms2 [fu.nza] [ja] [ca] [uca] [fuca] [fuʃa] [fuɲɟa] [funsa] ms1 [ɟa.na] [ja] [jana] [cana] [cana] [ʃana] [ɟana] [-] ms2 [[ɟa.na] [ja] [jana] [cana] [ʃana] [ʃana] [ɟana] [-] journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 1 451-475, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 475 appendix 2: the or, pr data and the english gloss input (or) output (pr) english gloss input (or) output (pr) english gloss 1. mama [ma.ma] mother 13. safi [sa.fi] clean 2. papa [pa.pa] father 14. meza [me.za] table 3. mtoto [m̩.to.to] baby 15. vaa [va:] dress up 4. sahani [sa.ha.ni] plate 16. ng’ombe [ŋo.mbe] cow 5. nyumba [ɲu.mba] house 17. ghali [ɣa.li] expensive 6. chakula [ca.ku.la] food 18. nne [n̩.ne] four 7. matiti [ma.ti.ti] breasts 19. mwana [mwa.na] child 8. lala [la.la] sleep 20. salimia [sa.li.mi.a] greet 9. gari [ɡa.ri] vehicle 21. kalamu [ka.la.mu] fountain pen 10. dhambi [ða.mbi] sin 22. huyu [hu.ju] this (person) 11. acha [a.ca] leave(let go) 23. embe [e.mbe] mango 12. funza [fu.nza] teach 24. jana [ɟa.na] yesterday journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 86-115, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 86 preschoolers’ interpretation of habitual and deontic conditionals: a delayed mapping between concept and language jing lin1 leiden university abstract by investigating dutch children’s interpretation habitual and deontic conditionals, this paper explores their mapping of the concepts of hypotheticality and conditionality into a corresponding linguistic form of if-conditionals. results of 46 children (20 girls; age range = 3;11-6;00; mean = 4;11) in a truth value judgment task with three types of stimuli, i.e. habitual conditionals, deontic conditionals, and conjunctive/additive constructions, show the following. first, the preschoolers do not exhibit different interpretation performances with the two types of conditional stimuli and the conjunctive/additive type. second, the preschoolers show more target-like interpretation performances with deontic conditionals than habitual conditionals when it comes to the concept of conditionality. these results suggest a delayed mapping of the two concepts investigated into the corresponding linguistic construction. in other words, the syntactic construction of if-conditional in dutch is first acquired before the two concepts are assigned to it. taking into consideration different factors, this paper discusses possible explanations for the delay. keywords conditional constructions, conditionality, dutch, hypotheticality, truth value judgment task 1. introduction the way in which we conceptualize the world surrounding us is reflected in the language we speak. gender is one example, the distinction of which is made by different linguistic means, e.g. by pronouns. countability is another example, which can be realized in some languages by means of plural morphemes, for instance. the mapping between our mental and linguistic representations does not only exist for these concrete and simple concepts, but is also applicable for abstract and/or complex concepts like hypotheticality and conditionality. in many languages, both these concepts can be mapped into a two-clause construction marked by a conditional connective like if in english (traugott, 1985), which is further referred to as if-conditionals in this paper. if the mapping between hypotheticality and if-conditionals is established, one is expected to accept both the scenarios in which the event or situation referred to in the if-clause may and may not take place, respectively. take 1 bio: dr. lin is working currently as a lecturer at leiden university. she studied how children acquire syntax-semantic interface phenomena. in her ph.d. at university of amsterdam, she investigated how children from different language backgrounds acquire the restricted distributions associated with negative polarity items. she collaborated with prof. jeannette schaeffer (university of amsterdam) in a project exploring chinese children's knowledge of mass-count distinction. contact: jing@la-mascotte.net received : 01.05.2020 accepted : 21.10.2020 published : 30.12.2020 mailto:jing@la-mascotte.net interpretation of habitual and deontic conditionals lin 87 (1) as example. both possibilities of jong being ill and john not being ill should be admitted by both the speaker and the addressee. (1) if john is ill, he stays at home. if the mapping of conditionality and if-conditionals is established, one is then expected to interpret the event or situation referred to in the ifconditionals as merely a sufficient condition for what is referred to in the main clause to take place. thus, john being ill in (1) is an only sufficient but crucially not a necessary condition on which he stays at home. the syntactic complexity of if-conditionals (i.e. two-clause structure) together with their mappings with the two conceptual representations mentioned above, gives rise to several questions from the perspective of child development. do children first acquire the linguistic form of if-conditionals, or do they first develop and grasp the concept of hypotheticality and that of conditionality? when both the linguistic form and the concepts are developed, how do children then establish the mapping between the two? is the mapping immediately target-like, as described above in terms of interpretations? or is it rather subject to development during the childhood? what facilitates the mapping, and what counts as a delaying factor? it is hardly possible to address all these questions in one single study. nevertheless, in order to gain some insight in some of these respects, this paper explores the mapping between hypotheticality and conditionality, and if-conditionals in dutch acquiring children. since so far, little has been reported on dutch children’s syntactic, semantic or concept knowledge of conditional constructions, the current investigation moreover fills a knowledge gap. before describing the current research and presenting the results, some common semantic types of if-conditionals in dutch will be first introduced, which is followed by a summary of previous findings on children’s production and comprehension of if-conditionals. 1.1. background 1.1.1. some common semantic types of conditionals in dutch the literature so far exhibits different proposals on the classification of conditional constructions in natural languages (including if-conditionals) (arregui, 2007; athanasiadou & dirven, 1997; bryant & mok, 2003; celcemurcia et al., 1983; comrie, 1986; dancygier, 1993; dancygier & sweetser, 2005; declerck & reed, 2001; von fintel, 2011; huddleston & pullum, 2002; jespersen, 1961; nieuwint, 1992; quirk et al., 1985; rescher, 2007; stalnaker, 1968; sweetser, 1990; among many others). since hypotheticality is one of the two concepts that the current research focuses on, the hypotheticality continuum of comrie (1986) is adopted, which can be illustrated as in figure 1. figure 1. the hypotheticality continuum highly plausible highly hypothetical journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 86-115, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 88 comrie interprets hypotheticality as a gradual concept, which refers to “the degree of probability of realization of the situations referred to in conditional, and more especially in the protasis” (comrie, 1986: 88-89). by interpreting hypotheticality as such, factual clauses like john speaks dutch, for instance, represents the lowest degree of hypotheticality, whereas counterfactual clauses like i wish i wasn’t ill represent the highest degree of hypotheticality. alongside the continuum, from the end of highly plausible, some commonly used conditional types in dutch, marked by als ‘if’ will now be briefly introduced. in dutch, the conditional type that represents the highest degree of plausibility, and thus the lowest degree of hypotheticality, are those that express a mere temporal relationship between two future events or situations (pollmann, 1975; reilly, 1986: 300). the speaker is certain that the “condition” described in this type of als-clause is going to take place at a time following the utterance time, as a consequence of which, the event or situation referred to in the main clause follows in time in the future. given the extremely high probability of the als-event/situation, we may call this conditional type non-hypothetical future predictives, as illustrated in (2). (2) a. als we thuis zijn, mag je weer spelen. if we home are may you again play ‘when we are home, you may play again.’ b. als je klaar bent met eten, gaan we tekenen. if you finish are with eat go we draw ‘when you finish eating, we will draw.’ the conditional type of a slightly higher degree of hypotheticality than the non-hypothetical type are low-hypothetical future predictives (bowerman, 1986), or future predictives (dancygier, 1993). this type expresses a conditional relationship between two possible events or situations in the future, which have not taken place at the utterance time. the event or situation described in the als-clause are very likely to take place in the time span following the speaking moment; the event or situation referred to in the main clause, then, generally follows the als-event/situation as a consequence in time, as shown in (3). (3) als ik een baan vind, koop ik een nieuwe iphone. if i a job find buy i a new iphone ‘if i find a job, i will buy a new iphone.’ habitual conditionals, generic conditionals, and deontic conditionals are three conditional types that represent an even higher degree of hypotheticality than those two types introduced above. they all describe events or situations that may possibly but not necessarily take place, although they display other semantic differences. habitual conditionals describe events or situations as a usual but definitely not an inevitable consequence of a certain condition being satisfied, which repeatedly take place but is still subject to uncertainty interpretation of habitual and deontic conditionals lin 89 (bowerman, 1986; huddleston & pullum, 2002; reilly, 1982; schouten, 2000). see (4). (4) als papa op kantoor zit, drinkt hij koffie. if dad on office sit, drinks he coffee ‘every time when dad is at his office, he drinks coffee.’ generic conditionals are used to express a relationship between situations or events, which either appears to be a scientific truth or have the force of a physical law (e.g. (5a)), or belongs to part of the speaker’s knowledge based on past experience (e.g. (5b)) (dancygier, 1999; dancygier & sweetser, 2005). in both cases, the als-event/situation is to some extent hypothetical: it is possible that what is described in the als-clause is not going to happen. (5) a. als het boven nul is, gaat het ijs smelten. if it above zero is goes the ice melt lit. ‘if it is above zero-degree, ice will melt.’ ‘ice melts above zero degree celsius.’ b. als ik vijf uur slaap, krijg ik hoofdpijn. if i five hour sleep get i headache ‘if i sleep five hours, i get a headache.’ different from habitual and generic conditionals, deontic conditionals are in fact a subtype of speech-act conditionals (haegeman, 1984; sweetser, 1990; van der auwera, 1986). this type of conditionals normally combines a certain action or behavior referred to in the subordinate clause, and the speaker’s judgment, attitude or evaluative value described in the main clause (akatsuka & clancy 1993). as such, this conditional type typically expresses deontic modality in a sense that it describes what the speaker thinks should or should not take place. one example in dutch is given in (6). (6) als je je bordje leegeet, krijg je een ijsje. if you your plate empty eat get you one ice-cream ‘if you eat your plate empty, you will get an ice-cream.’ according to the speaker, the addressee should eat his or her plate empty. however, he or she is not sure whether this is indeed going to happen. the plausible but uncertain state of the als-event/situation here is similar to what is illustrated for habitual and generic conditionals. therefore, habitual, generic, and deontic conditionals are considered representing a similar degree of hypotheticality. conditional types that exhibit higher degrees of hypotheticality are those that are generally referred to as unreal conditionals. these types of conditionals normally describe an imagined condition that can hardly take place, including hypothetical conditionals (athanasiadou & dirven, 1997; comrie, 1986; edgington, 2011; nieuwint, 1992; palmer, 1971; quirk et al., 1985; among many others) and counterfactuals (see e.g. athanasiadou & journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 86-115, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 90 highly plausible highly hypothetical non-hypothetical future predictives low-hypothetical future predictives deontic conditionals generic conditionals habitual conditional s hypothetical conditionals counterfactuals dirven, 1997; bennett, 1988; comrie, 1986; dancygier & sweetser, 1996; edgington, 2011; goodman, 1947; lewis, 1973; wierzbicka, 1997). examples of such types will not be given since they are beyond the current research aim. recall comrie’s interpretation of hypotheticality as the degree of probability of realization of the event or situation described in the conditional clause. the above-introduced conditional types can be presented alongside the hypotheticality continuum as shown in figure 2. figure 2. commonly used conditional types on the hypotheticality continuum 1.2. children’s production and perception of if-conditionals cross-linguistically, conditional constructions explicitly marked by a conditional connective like english if first arise around the age of two and a half years old. data supporting this finding are collected from children’s spontaneous speech, longitudinally recorded or cross-sectionally analyzed, in but definitely not restricted to the following languages: italian (bates, 1976), german and turkish (clancy et al., 1976), english (mccabe et al., 1983; bowerman 1986; reilly 1982, 1986), polish, (smoczyńska, 1986), french (bowerman, 1986), japanese and korean (akatsuka & clancy, 1993), chinese (erbaugh, 1992), and dutch (lin, under revision), among others. there thus seems to be a clear cross-linguistic picture of the acquisition of the two-clause syntactic form of if-conditionals. however, the semantic types that children first acquire differ from language to language. in english, french, and italian, for instance, the first emerged type is low-hypothetical future predictives. although the low-hypothetical type predominates among children’s early production of if-conditionals in these languages, other conditional types are used as well. for example, english three-year-olds are able to use if-conditional constructions to describe habitualized activities in the present (bowerman, 1986; reilly, 1986). generic conditionals are attested with three-year-olds as well (bowerman, 1986; reilly, 1986). according to bowerman (1986), the observed similarities in cross-linguistic research on the production of if interpretation of habitual and deontic conditionals lin 91 conditionals should be explained in terms of some linguistic universality. she argues that children start the acquisition by cutting into the semantic range of if-conditionals with a universal meaning of low-hypothetical future predictives, and then extend their usage to more particular meanings of conditionals based on linguistic experience. akatsuka and clancy’s (1993) investigation of the spontaneous speech of japanese and korean children, however, shows a different picture. different from their english peers, for instance, the first conditionals used by japanese and korean children are not low-hypothetical future predictives, which refer to an uncertain but predictable event or situation in the future, but rather deontic conditionals, i.e. a subtype of speech-act conditionals. akatsuka and clancy propose that deontic conditionals may be the starting point for children to acquire the semantics of if-conditionals in japanese and korean because deontic conditionals combine a certain behavior referred to in the subordinate clause with an evaluative value described or inferred in the main clause. as such, this conditional type can be considered involving reinforcement, which is very common in children’s communication with caregivers. therefore, deontic conditionals are conceptually speaking very easy for young children to grasp, explaining their early emergence in child language. recently, by analyzing dutch children’s spontaneous speech, lin (under revision) reports that the conditional type that first emerges in child dutch is non-hypothetical future predictives, which are already attested before 2;06. as already introduced, this type of conditionals describes a temporal relationship between two propositions, and exhibits the lowest degree of hypotheticality, which is explained by the temporal layer in the semantics of the dutch conditional connective als ‘if’. similar to their english peers, dutch toddlers are reported to be able to produce some other conditional types in their spontaneous speech as well, such as habitual conditionals, which first appeared around 2;06, low-hypothetical future predictives and generic conditionals, both of which first emerge around 2;11. in order to explain the emergence pattern of different conditional types in dutch, lin adopts the notion of concept complexity. she argues that the order in which different conditional types emerge in child dutch development represents the degree of complexity of the concepts underlying different conditional types: the more concepts a conditional type involves, the more complex the involved concepts are, the later this conditional type emerges in child language. let’s now look at some crucial findings on children’s interpretation of ifconditionals. a substantial body of research on this topic can be found in the literature (brainerd, 1977; dias & harris, 1988, 1990; ennis, 1971, 1975, 1976; evans, 1982; knifong, 1974; kuhn, 1977; markovits, 1984, 1985; matalon, 1962; o'brien et al., 1989; overton, 1990; paris, 1973; staudenmayer & boume, 1977; taplin et al., 1974; ward & overton, 1990; among many others). due to space limitations, only crucial findings reported for english-acquiring children will be summarized below. a majority of the previous research in which children’s interpretation of ifconditionals is investigated has aimed to explore the development of logical reasoning in children from the perspective of material conditionals, which is associated with the truth table of conditionals presented in table 1. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 86-115, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 92 table 1 the truth table of if-conditionals (i.e. if john is ill, he stays at home.) condition p: john is ill q: he stays at home if p, q. 1 t t t 2 t f f 3 f t t 4 f f t viewing if-conditionals as such, a great number of the previous studies have employed a truth value judgment task (badger & mellanby, 2018; crain & mckee, 1985; crain, 1991; crain & thornton, 1998; gordon, 1998; thonton, 2017; among others) or some variant of it, e.g. the prediction mode (chierchia et al., 1988) to investigate children’s interpretation of if p, q by manipulating the truth-values of the propositions p and p as described in table 1. for example, children were asked to give a truth-value judgment, which was either true or false, to a conditional sentence having of the form of if p, q, after seeing some pictures or a video clip illustrating a certain manipulation of the truth-values of p and q (barrouillet et al., 2008; gauffroy & barrouillet, 2009; o’brien & overton, 1982; o’brien et al., 1989; paris, 1973; taplin et al., 1974; among others). results collected in these previous studies all show that children, both preschoolers (e.g. dias & harris, 1988, 1990) and adolescents (e.g. barrouillet et al., 2008; gauffroy & barrouillet, 2009; paris, 1973; taplin et al., 1974) perform poorly on tasks that require them assigning or selecting a truth-value to conditional statements that have the form of if p, q, when they are confronted with different truth-values of the propositions p and q. in particular, there is a lack of a target-like interpretation response in condition 3, and condition 4 (if applicable) in table 1. children below eight years old treat if-conditionals as either conjunctions or biconditionals, since instead of a target-like reasoning pattern of conditionals (i.e. table 1), they either display an interpretation pattern of conjunctions as presented in table 2, or that of biconditionals as illustrated in table 3. although a target-like conditional interpretation pattern gradually supersedes the conjunctive or biconditional interpretation patterns when children grow older, there does not seem to be convincing evidence showing that children have developed the target-like interpretation pattern of if-conditionals until sixteen years old. table 2 the truth table of and-conjunctions (i.e. john is ill and he stays at home.) condition p: john is ill q: he stays at home p and q. 1 t t t 2 t f f 3 f t f 4 f f f interpretation of habitual and deontic conditionals lin 93 table 3 the truth table of iff-biconditionals (i.e. if and only if john is ill, he stays at home.) condition p: john is ill q: he stays at home iff p, q. 1 t t t 2 t f f 3 f t f 4 f f t how can we then understand the late emergence of a target-like interpretation pattern of i̇f-conditionals, which does not even seem to be developed around the age of sixteen years old? different explanations have been proposed in this respect. whereas some scholars claim that the child’s general cognitive development is responsible for the delayed emergence of a logical interpretation pattern of conditionals that have the form of if p, q (inhelder & piaget, 1958; matalon, 1962; taplin et al., 1974), others argue that the child’s interpretation is (negatively) influenced by their limited working memory capacities (barrouillet et al., 2008; gauffroy & barrouillet, 2009; 2011; evans, 2006; 2008). from a more linguistic perspective, reilly (1986), for instance, tries to link the delay of a target-like interpretation pattern of i̇f-conditionals to the semantic overlap shared by conditional connectives like if and temporal connectives like when in english (könig 1985; harris 1986). as discussed in o’brien et al. (1998), it has also been questioned whether conditional reasoning performance based on material implication (i.e. table 1) represents one’s interpretation of conditionals in real life scenarios. summarizing the previous results presented so far, it is clear that there is a large age gap between the production and the comprehension of ifconditionals, which is also confirmed by a recent study by badger & mellanby (2018). on the one hand, children seem to have acquired the linguistic form of if-conditionals as early as two and a half years old. on the other hand, a fully target-like interpretation pattern of this conditional construction does not seem to arise until sixteen years old. 2. methodology 2.1. design recall that the aim of the current study is to explore dutch children’s mapping of conditionality and hypotheticality into if-conditionals. based on what has been introduced in 1, examining the mapping between the two concepts and the corresponding linguistic structure in fact amounts to examining the comprehension of if-conditionals in terms of their hypotheticality and conditionality. the current research therefore followed the previous studies on children’s comprehension of if-conditionals (see relevant references in 2.2) in employing the truth value judgment task (hereafter tvjt), in particular, the prediction mode of the tvjt (chierchia et al. 1988; see also gualmini & crain, 2005; su & crain, 2013). moreover, the current research also adopted the perspective of material implication in journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 86-115, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 94 investigating children’s comprehension of if-conditionals. therefore, the four truth-value conditions in table 1 were all included in the current design. the current tvjt took the form of a game with mickey mouse and his friends, to make it interesting and accessible to preschoolers. in order to maximize the ecological validity of the experiment, a context was first introduced to the child. mickey mouse and his friends were just back from vacation. they had a lot of fun. however, mickey forgot what he and his friends had planned to do. the task of the child was whether he or she could help mickey finding it out. first, children heard a conditional stimulus having the form of if p, q, presented as a prediction. they then saw two pictures on a laptop screen illustrating the truth-values of the propositions p and q, respectively. after the presentation of the visual stimulation, children were asked to assign a truth-value to the conditional stimulus by giving a yesor no-response, representing a true or false truth-value judgment, respectively. two conditional types were examined in the current study, namely habitual conditionals (e.g. (4) in 2.1), and deontic conditionals (e.g. (6) in 2.1). habitual and deontic conditionals first appear at 2;05:03 and 2;11:09, respectively (lin, under review: table 2). the early emergence of these two conditional types in child dutch helped exclude the possibility that the child would be confronted with unknown or unfamiliar constructions. more relevant and crucial for the current research, the two conditional types express similar degrees of hypotheticality (see figure 2 in 2.1). thus, possible differences between children’s interpretations of habitual and deontic conditionals should not be a consequence of different hypotheticality degrees. in addition to the two conditional types motivated above, the current experiment also had a third sentence type, namely and-conjunctions, marked by en ‘and’ in dutch (see also table 2). conjunctions do not involve the concept of conditionality; nor do they require children’s understanding of hypotheticality. they therefore functioned as a baseline sentence type, further referred to as additive due to their conjunctive meaning. since the additive stimuli differed from the two conditional types in both syntax and semantics, they also functioned as distracters in the current experiment. each sentence type was manipulated for four test conditions, based on the truth-values of the two propositions of a stimulus: a tt-condition in which both p and q were true, a tf-condition in which p was true and q was false, an ft-condition in which p was false whereas q was true, and an ffcondition in which both p and q were false. the current design is given in table 4, and examples of the stimuli follow in 3.3. table 4 the experimental design sentence type test condition number of stimuli habitual tt-condition 3 tf-condition 3 ft-condition 3 ff-condition 3 interpretation of habitual and deontic conditionals lin 95 sentence type test condition number of stimuli deontic tt-condition 3 tf-condition 3 ft-condition 3 ff-condition 3 additive/distracters tt-condition 6 tf-condition 2 ft-condition 2 ff-condition 2 total 36 by comparing children’s interpretation responses in ttand tf-conditions, and their comprehension performances in ftand ff-conditions of the conditional stimuli, we may obtain insight into their knowledge of hypotheticality encoded in the linguistic construction in question. by investigating children’s interpretation of if p, q in each of the four truth-value conditions, we may learn more about their knowledge of conditionality as mapped into if-conditionals. the number of the conditions in tt is 6, as it is seen in table 4. there were two reasons for this. first, the tt-condition of additive/distracter functioned as the most important indicator for whether the experiment went as it should. thus, this indicator category contained a relatively large number of stimuli. but on the other hand, we could not enlarge the number of other conditions too much as the pre-schoolers normally only have 15 minutes of good attention. increasing the stimuli number in all other conditions too much would give us a larger number of unusable results. we therefore opted for this “non-logical” design regarding the stimuli number. 2.2. participants a total of 49 monolingual dutch children, all typically developing, as reported by their teachers, recruited via two primary schools in the province of noord-holland in the netherlands, participated in the current experiment (20 girls; age range = 3;11-6;00; mean = 4;11). although children as young as two years old are reported to be able to participate in tvjts (crain & mckee, 1985), twoand three-year-olds were not included in the current experiment as they may have difficulties with stimuli containing a complex syntactic structure, due to e.g. the presence of two clauses. ten adult native speakers of dutch also participated (6 females; all 18 years old). they were bachelor students at the faculty of humanities of the university of amsterdam (non-linguistic majors), and formed the control group. 2.3. stimuli bearing the limited working memory capacity of preschoolers in mind, which has been reported as a confounding factor in explaining their interpretation behavior in similar experiments (e.g. barrouillet et al., 2008; gauffroy & barrouillet, 2009; 2011), the length of the stimuli – both conditional ones and additive ones – was restricted to a maximum of ten words. words appearing in the stimuli were familiar to dutch preschoolers, excluding the journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 86-115, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 96 possibility that the child would have difficulty comprehending a stimulus due to the lack of lexical knowledge of a certain word. whereas some examples of the employed stimuli are given below, the reader is referred to appendix i for a complete overview of the test stimuli. examples (7) and (8) represent the habitual and the deontic type, respectively. example (9) is an additive stimulus. (7) als mickey ziek is, eet hij ijs. if mickey sick is eats he ice cream ‘when mickey is ill, he eats ice cream.’ (8) als pluto bijt, moet hij buiten slapen. if pluto bites must he outside sleep ‘if pluto bites, he’ll have to sleep outside.’ (9) de zon schijnt en minnie voetbalt. the sun shines and minnie plays football ‘the sun is shining and minnie is playing football.’ to ensure that the participants’ performance was not influenced by the audio presentation of the stimuli, all stimuli were pre-recorded using a smartphone with a young female native dutch speaker. the stimuli were pronounced as naturally as possible, avoiding any special intonation or stress on a particular word. the order was counterbalanced. 2.4. procedure the experiment was structured as a powerpoint presentation on a laptop and was conducted individually. the procedure is as follows. first, a child was invited from the classroom for a game by a female experimenter. she then explained to the child how the game proceeded and what he or she was expected to do by the instruction in (10): (10) hallo daar! welkom bij mickey en zijn vrienden! mickey is vergeten wat hij en zijn vrienden deze vakantie gedaan hebben. kan je hen helpen? vertel mickey of het plaatje klopt met de zin! “hi there! welcome to micky and his friends! micky forgets what he and his friends have done in their holiday. can you help them? tell micky whether the picture matches the sentence!” each participant underwent two trials to become familiar with the experimenter and the experiment. if the participants appeared to understand that they were expected to give either a yesor no-response (representing the true and false truth-value, respectively), the experiment continued. two experimenters (both female) were present during the experiment: one for communicating with and testing the child and the other for recording the child’s responses for later transcription and taking notes. the procedure with the adult participants was similar, except that they were aware that they formed the control group in a child experiment. the experiment lasted interpretation of habitual and deontic conditionals lin 97 an average of ten minutes per child, and approximately seven minutes per adult. 2.5. response categorization responses were divided into three categories: yes-responses, no-responses, and non-responses. yes-responses referred to responses in which the participants answered “yes” to a stimulus, whereas no-responses referred to those in which the participants answered “no” to a stimulus. non-responses referred to situations in which neither “yes” nor “no” was given by the child. non-responses were further treated as missing values. 2.6. the target-like interpretation pattern different truth-value judgments were expected for different stimulus types in different truth-value conditions. habitual and deontic conditionals both belong to the category of conditionals and are associated with the truth table in table 1, whereas additive sentences belong to the category of conjunctions and are associated with the truth table in table 2. these two truth tables together give rise to the following target-like response pattern. see table 5. table 5 the target-like interpretation responses target-like interpretation response test condition habitual deontic additive tt-condition yes-response yes-response yes-response tf-condition no-response no-response no-response ft-condition yes-response yes-response no-response ff-condition yes-response yes-response no-response 2.7. data analysis in order to investigate dutch preschoolers’ comprehension of the three tested sentence types manipulated in four truth-value conditions over time, which provides us with insight into their mapping of conditionality and hypotheticality into the linguistic if-conditionals, a general linear mixedeffect logistic regression model was employed. r (version 3.6.0; r core team, 2019) was used. packages ggplot 2 (version 3.2.0; wickham, 2016), lme4 (version 1.1-21; bates et al., 2015), and sjplot (version 2.7.0; lüdecke, 2019) were employed. there were three fixed factors: age, type, and condition. age, coded in terms of months, centered, was a continuous factor. type, representing the different stimulus types, was a categorical factor. condition, representing the different truth-value conditions, was a categorical factor as well. type had three levels: habitual, deontic, and additive, representing the three sentence types. condition had four levels: tt, tf, ft, ff, representing the four truthvalue conditions. participant and stimulus were modeled as random factors. the main effect of the fixed factors, together with the interaction effects of the two categorical fixed factors, was included in the model. the predicted variable was the interpretation performance of the participants, in terms of adult-likeness, i.e., adult-like response, coded as 1 or 0, representing an adult-like or a non-adult-like response, respectively. it will become clear in journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 86-115, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 98 the next section why adult-likeness but not target-likeness was used when interpreting the child responses. since both of the two categorical fixed factors had more than two levels, contrasts needed to be manually set in order to obtain theoretically informative interpretation of the regression results. two contrasts were set for the three-level factor type. the first was set between habitual and deontic on the one hand, and additive on the other. the reason was straightforward: additive sentences were the baseline in the experiment. this gave rise to the second contrast between habitual and deontic. table 6 shows the two contrasts for type. table 6 two contrasts for type contrast (ctr.) 1 (habitual, deontic) vs. (additive) 2 (habitual) vs. (deontic) condition was a four-level categorical factor, suggesting three contrasts. since one of the aims of the current study was to explore the mapping of hypotheticality into if-conditionals, which was examined by manipulating the truth-value of the proposition p being either true or false, the first contrast for condition was set between the two truth-value conditions in which p was true (i.e. the ttand tf-conditions), and those two in which p was false (i.e. the ftand ff-conditions). this first contrast being made, the other two contrasts logically followed, which were set between the ttand tf-conditions, and the ftand ff-conditions, respectively. the three contrasts made for the fixed factor condition are summarized in table 7. table 7 three contrasts for condition contrast (ctr.) 1 (tt, tf) vs. (ft, ff) 2 (tt) vs. (tf) 3 (ft) vs. (ff) as for the adult results, only the frequencies of different response types were counted in each test condition. no further statistical analysis was run on the adult results given the current research aim. 3. findings 3.1. adult results the percentages of target-like responses with adult controls are presented in table 8, which clearly shows few variations. depending on the sentence type and the test condition, the adult participants gave either almost always (between 90% and 100% of the time) or virtually never (0% to 7% of the time) interpretation of habitual and deontic conditionals lin 99 target-like responses. this first impression of the control group results strongly suggests that in the current experiment, target-likeness is not the same as adult-likeness. table 8 percentages of target-like responses with adult controls tt-condition tf-condition ft-condition ff-condition habitual 100% 97% 7% 7% deontic 100% 97% 0% 7% additive 100% 90% 100% 90% zooming in at the percentages of target-like responses of each sentence type, it becomes clear that the control group only showed a target-like interpretation pattern with additive stimuli. since the additive type also functioned as baseline in the experiment, the extremely high percentages of target-like responses of the adult control group with this sentence type at least indicate that the experiment went as expected. as for the two conditional types, i.e. habitual and deontic conditionals, target-like responses of the adult controls are only found in the ttand tfconditions. in the other two conditions, the adult participants gave exactly the opposite truth-value judgments, echoing previous findings reported for english adolescents, for instance (see further 2.2). table 9 presents the adults’ interpretation pattern found in the current experiment. table 9 the adults’ interpretation responses test condition habitual deontic additive tt-condition yes-response yes-response yes-response tf-condition no-response no-response no-response ft-condition no-response no-response no-response ff-condition no-response no-response no-response comparing table 5 with table 9, it is clear that the adult participants, instead of a target-like yes-no-yes-yes-pattern, show a yes-no-no-nopattern when interpreting the conditional stimuli. now the question arises as how the differences between these two interpretation patterns can be explained. after presenting first the child results, possible answers to this question will be discussed in section 5. 3.2. child results as introduced in 3.2, a total of 49 monolingual dutch children, all typically developing, participated in the experiment (20 girls; age range = 3;11-6;00; mean = 4;11). however, three out of these children were excluded from the dataset and further statistical analyses as they either always gave a yesresponse to all the stimuli, or always answered “no” to all the stimuli, irrespective of the type or the condition. thus, only the results of the journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 86-115, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 100 remaining 46 child participants were considered. since even the adult participants did not exhibit an entirely target-like interpretation pattern, the child results were encoded in terms of adult-likeness. table 10 reports the results of the logistic regression analysis. note that only the results of the three fixed factors (including the interaction effect) are included. results regarding the two random factors, i.e. participant and stimulus, are given in appendix ii. table 10 results of the regression analysis adult-like response or ci (95%) coef. β se β z p predictor (intercept) 1.88 1.49-2.36 0.63 0.12 5.38 <.001 age 1.01 0.98-1.04 0.01 0.01 0.84 0.40 condition (ctr.1) 0.17 0.09-0.33 -1.79 0.34 -5.26 <.001 condition (ctr.2) 0.99 0.63-1.56 -0.01 0.23 -0.05 0.96 condition (ctr.3) 4.07 2.51-6.59 1.40 0.25 5.71 <.001 type (ctr.1) 0.81 0.56-1.17 -0.21 0.19 -1.13 0.26 type (ctr.2) 1.05 0.59-1.90 0.05 0.30 0.18 0.86 type (ctr.1):condition (ctr.1) 0.90 0.21-3.85 -0.10 0.741 -0.14 0.89 type (ctr.2):condition (ctr.1) 0.17 0.02-1.77 -1.79 1.201 -1.45 0.14 type (ctr.1):condition (ctr.2) 0.58 0.22-1.52 -0.55 0.490 -1.11 0.27 type (ctr.2):condition (ctr.2) 5.48 1.01-29.79 1.70 0.864 1.97 0.04 type (ctr.1):condition (ctr.3) 1.40 0.47-4.16 0.34 0.555 0.61 0.54 type (ctr.2):condition (ctr.3) 7.42 1.45-38.11 2.00 0.835 2.40 0.02 as is summarized in table 10, not each (contrast) of the three main factors has a significant effect on the participants’ responses in terms of adultlikeness. in fact, only ctr.1 of condition (i.e. (tt, tf) vs. (ft, ff)) and ctr. 3 of condition (i.e. (ft vs. ff)) are significant. as for the interaction effects, only two out of the six are significant, namely that between type (ctr.2) and condition (ctr.2), and that between type (ctr.2) and condition (ctr.3). in the next section, these regression results will be further described and interpreted. 3.3. interpretation as reported in 3.1, there is a lack of target-likeness when we look at the adult participants’ interpretation responses to the two types of conditional stimuli manipulated in the ftand ff-conditions. this section will first propose some possible explanations in this respect. before doing that, let’s use (15) as example to illustrate the relevant test conditions: als mickey ziek is, eet hij ijs ‘if micky is ill, he eats ice-cream’. in the ft-condition, participants first saw a picture showing mickey happily playing outside, representing the false truth-value of the proposition p, after which they saw a picture showing mickey eating an ice-cream, representing the true truth-value of the proposition q. recall that in the ft-condition, the adult participants almost always gave a no-response (representing a false interpretation of habitual and deontic conditionals lin 101 truth-value judgment) to the conditional stimuli, irrespective of their semantic types. this non-target-like performance reflects a phenomenon which is commonly observed in real life communications and is explained as a consequence of language speakers’ application of a pragmatic mechanism, usually referred to as conditional perfection in the literature (geis & zwicky, 1971; horn, 2000; van canegem-ardijns & van belle, 2008; van der auwera, 1997; among others). as introduced at the beginning of the paper, the proposition p in if-conditionals merely expresses a sufficient but not a necessary condition under which the proposition q takes place. this means that the conditional is logically true when p is false and q is true. however, when p is not only a sufficient but moreover a necessary condition for q to take place, like in biconditionals introduced by if and only if in english, for instance, the conditional sentence is false when p is false and q is true, as in the ft-condition in the experiment. the non-target-like performance of adults in this test condition then strongly suggests that they "perfected” the conditional stimuli to the corresponding biconditional stimuli, by upgrading p from being merely the sufficient condition for q to take place to being a not only sufficient but moreover necessary condition for q to happen. since this is a common observation in real-life conditional reasoning (e.g. horn, 2000; van canegem-ardijns & van belle, 2008), it is not unexpected that the adult participants were applying conditional perfection to the conditional stimuli in the current experiment too. as for the lack of target-likeness in the adult participants’ responses to the conditional stimuli in the ff-condition, let’s again use (15) as example to illustrate the manipulation. after hearing als mickey ziek is, eet hij een ijsje ‘if mickey is ill, he eats an ice-cream’, participants first saw a picture showing mickey happily playing outside, representing the false truth-value of the proposition p, after which they saw a picture showing mickey drinking lemonade, representing the false truth-value of the proposition q. recall that in this ff-condition, the adult participants almost always gave a non-targetlike no-response. why did they fail to perform target-like in this condition? a possible answer is that the adult participants were not viewing the conditional stimuli through the lens of material implication, as previously noticed in o’brien et al. (1998). instead, they took absence of evidence as evidence of absence, and thus gave a false truth-value judgment to the stimuli in the ff-condition. such a finding strongly suggests that conditional reasoning based on material implication (i.e. as presented by means of the truth table in table 1) is not the same as conditional reasoning in real life scenarios. let us now turn to the regression results summarized in table 11. as can be clearly read, among the three main factors included in the regression model, only two contrasts of condition, i.e. ctr. 1 and ctr. 3, turn out to be significant. the non-significance of age (coef. β = 0.01) suggests that there is no evidence showing that the child participants became more adult-like when growing older. this may seem unexpected at first sight, as we know that both children’s language and cognitive abilities do develop over time. how should we then interpret the non-significance of age? adopting meyer et al. (2016, 2018), who investigate dutch children’s knowledge of cardinality journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 86-115, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 102 and number words, a language-concept interface phenomenon as well as that explored in the current study, it can be assumed that when it comes to the mapping of conditionality and hypotheticality into if-conditionals, each dutch child follows a distinct trajectory. like age, type is non-significant either. in particular, neither contrasts made for type (coef. β = -0.21 for ctr. 1; coef. β = 0.05 for ctr. 2) are significant. there is thus no evidence showing that the children’s interpretation responses in terms of adult-likeness were likely to vary across the different sentence types. it thus seems that dutch fourand five-year-olds have assigned the same conceptual representation to the different sentence types, i.e., habitual, deontic, and additive. this suggests the same semantic analysis of both conditional als ‘if’ and conjunctive en ‘and’ in the child grammar. a conclusion that can be drawn here is that neither the concept of hypotheticality nor that of conditionality has been mapped to ifconditionals in dutch before the age of six. the main factor condition, of which ctr.1 (coef. β = -1.79), i.e. (tt, tf) vs. (ft, ff) and ctr. 3 (coef. β = 1.40), i.e. (ft vs. ff) are significant, whereas ctr. 2 (coef. β = -0.01), i.e. (tt vs. tf) are not, can be interpreted as follows. first, the child participants were likely to show different performances in terms of adult-likeness between the two truth-value conditions in which the truth-value of p was true, and those in which the truth-value of p was false (i.e. ctr. 1). the negative sign of the corresponding z-value, i.e. -5.26, further indicates that the children were less likely to give adult-like responses to the stimuli in the two p-false conditions (i.e. the ftand ff-conditions) than the two p-true conditions (i.e. the ttand tf-conditions) – irrespective of their semantic type. the preschoolers thus exhibited more difficulties interpreting the stimuli in an adult-like way in the ftand ff-conditions than the tt and tf-conditions. recall that ctr. 1 of condition was set to examine the mapping between the concept of hypotheticality and the conditional stimuli. if the mapping was established, the participants, when confronted with the conditional stimuli, should not only allow the interpretation of p being true but also accept that of p being false. the significance of ctr. 1 of condition therefore gives rise to the conclusion that dutch preschoolers have not mapped the concept of hypotheticality into the corresponding if-conditionals, in line with the conclusion drawn based on the non-significant effect of type. second, the significant effect of ctr. 3 of condition, together with the corresponding z-value of 5.71, suggests that the child participants were more likely to show adult-like interpretation performance with the stimuli in the truth-value condition in the ff-condition than in ft-condition. the dutch preschoolers had thus more difficulties giving adult-like responses in the ftthan the ff-condition, irrespective of the sentence type. in the case of additive sentences, which had the logic form of p and q, this significant difference seems to suggest that it was easier for the child to give an adult/target-like no-response when both the propositions p and q were false (representing the ff-condition) than when merely one of the two was false (representing the ft-condition). as for the conditional stimuli, the significant effect of ctr. 3 of condition is interpreted differently. recall that with the two types of conditional stimuli, the adult-like responses were exactly the opposite of the target-like interpretation of habitual and deontic conditionals lin 103 responses in the ftand ff-conditions. thus, the significance of ctr. 3 of condition actually suggests that the dutch fourand five-year-olds were more likely to give target-like interpretation responses to the conditional stimuli in the ft-condition than the ff-condition. in order to understand this difference, we need to revisit conditional perfection, a pragmatic mechanism that plays a crucial role in explain the lack of target-likeness in the adults’ interpretation response to the conditional stimuli in the ftcondition. in particular, the adult participants “perfected” the conditional stimuli to the corresponding biconditional stimuli and interpreted the proposition p as not only a sufficient but moreover a necessary condition for q to take place. the more target-likeness in the child’s interpretation responses to the conditional stimuli in the ft-condition thus indicates less often application of conditional perfection by the child, which does not seem to be surprising given the fourand five-year-olds’ underdeveloped pragmatic knowledge. finally, the non-significant result with respect to ctr. 2 of condition suggests that we cannot report any likely differences in the children’s performances in terms of adult-likeness between the ttand tf-conditions – irrespectively of the type. now let’s look at the two interaction effects that turn out to be significant. one is the interaction between ctr. 2 of type and ctr.2 of condition (coef. β = 1.70). recall that ctr. 2 of type was set between the two conditional types, i.e. habitual and deontic conditionals, and that ctr.2 of condition was set between the tt-condition and the tf-condition. given the positive sign of the relevant z-value, which is 1.97, the significance of this interaction effect means that in the tf-condition, the child participants were more likely to show more adult-like performances with the deontic conditional type than with the habitual conditional type, than in the tt-condition. figure 3 visualizes this interaction effect. the black circles indicate the probabilities of adult-like responses in each truth-value condition when the participants were confronted with habitual conditionals; and the red triangles demonstrate the probabilities of adult-like responses in each truth-value conditions when the participants were provided with deontic conditionals. figure 3. interaction effect between type and condition journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 86-115, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 104 as illustrated in figure 3, the significant interaction effect under discussion is in fact related to the extremely high probability of adult/target-like performance of the participants with deontic conditionals in the tf-condition (the red triangle above tf in figure 3). this means that the child participants were the most adult/target-like with the deontic conditional stimuli manipulated in the tf-condition. in other words, the preschoolers had the least difficulties with the deontic conditionals in the tf-condition. the other significant interaction effect is found between ctr. 2 of type and ctr. 3 of condition (coef. β = 2.00, z = 2.40). given that ctr. 2 of type was set between habitual and deontic conditionals, and that ctr.3 of condition was set between the ft-condition and the ff-condition, the significance of this interaction effect means that when p and q were both false, the child participants were more likely to show more adult-like responses with the deontic stimuli than the habitual stimuli, than when p was false and q was true. if we look at figure 3, in which the interaction effects of the current regression model are visualized, it is not hard to see that the significant interaction effect between ctr. 2 of type and ctr. 3 of condition is actually related to the extremely low probability of adult-like performance with the deontic stimuli in the ft-condition. this means that between the two conditional types manipulated in the ftand ff-conditions, the dutch preschoolers were the least adult-like with the deontic conditional stimuli in the ft-condition. since the adult-like responses to the conditional stimuli in the ft-condition were exactly the opposite of the target-like responses, we can also say that the dutch preschoolers were the most target-like with the deontic conditional stimuli in the ft-condition. the interaction effects interpreted so far gives rise to the conclusion that the preschoolers were more target-like in comprehending deontic conditionals than habitual conditionals in two out of the four truth-value conditions (i.e. tfand ft-conditions). although there is no statistical evidence showing any differences in the child’s interpretation performances between deontic and habitual conditionals in the other two conditions, we may still conclude that dutch children become first target-like with deontic conditionals. this, together with the absence of any significant effect of the main factor age, suggests that the concept of conditionality is first mapped to deontic conditionals in child language, which seems to have already taken place before the age of four, i.e. the lower boundary of the tested age range. along this line of reasoning, we may further draw the conclusion that at least until the age of six, i.e. the upper boundary of the tested age range, dutch children have not yet mapped the concept of conditionality into habitual conditionals. summarizing the regression results interpreted so far, it seems that the concept of hypotheticality is not mapped to if-conditionals in child dutch, at least not before the age of six years old. since the linguistic if-structure is first attested in child dutch already before the age of three (see 2.2), there is a clear delay in children’s mapping of the conceptual representation of hypotheticality into the corresponding linguistic representation. as for the concept of conditionality, there also seems to be a delay, although this delay interpretation of habitual and deontic conditionals lin 105 turns out to be only attested with one of the two examined conditional types, namely with habitual but not with deontic conditionals. 4. discussion a straightforward way to understand the delayed mapping of hypotheticality and conditionality into the corresponding linguistic construction in dutch preschoolers is to assume that dutch fourand five-year-olds have not yet developed the concept of hypotheticality or that of conditionality. if that is the case, it is far from surprising that they show a delay in mapping the two concepts into the corresponding linguistic structure. however, bowerman (1986) reports evidence showing that the cognitive basis underlying different conditional types (thus including hypotheticality and conditionality) are already present in toddlers. this means that at the moment that the child can linguistically utter his or her first explicitly marked conditional construction, which, cross-linguistically speaking, takes place around two and a half years old (see 2.2), he or she has already grasped the relevant cognitive basis. how shall we then explain the delay? as presented in 2.1, dutch if-conditionals can be divided into different types depending on their meanings and functions. one of these types is termed non-hypothetical future predictives (see (2) and (3) in introduction), which, although categorized as conditionals, express a mere temporal relationship between two future events or situations (pollmann 1975; reilly 1986: 300). as can be inferred from its term, this type of conditionals is associated with little hypotheticality, as there is little chance that the event or situation referred to in the subordinate clause will not take place. this means that even in the adult’s grammar, hypotheticality is not necessarily present in this conditional type. let us assume the same for the child grammar. recall that non-hypothetical future predictives are the first conditional type used by dutch-acquiring children, which emerge already before the age of two and a half (see 2.2; see also lin, under revision: table 2). as also reported in lin (under revision: table 1), non-hypothetical future predictives are moreover one of the two most frequently used conditional types by dutch twoand three-year-olds. the early acquisition of this conditional type, in which the concept of hypotheticality is not necessarily present, may hinder dutch children’s development of hypotheticality for the connective als. this in turns explains the delayed mapping of hypotheticality into if-conditionals as found in the current study. another possibility in this respect is to assume that the so-called delay is caused by the children’s difficulties in processing a conditional stimulus in the two p-false conditions. this explanation is inspired by dancygier & sweetser’s proposal (1997, 2005), in which the notion of mental space play a central role. they authors illustrate that when hearing a conditional sentence having the form of if p, q, the addressee sets up a mental space containing only the possible worlds in which p is true. by doing so, the addressee is not considering all possible worlds in which p can be either true or false but disregards those in which p is false. this may be what happened with the preschoolers in the current experiment. when hearing a conditional stimulus, irrespective of its semantic type being either habitual or deontic, the child participants immediately set up a mental space that only contained journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 86-115, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 106 the possible worlds in which p was true. this prevented them from considering other possible worlds in which p was false. when confronted then with a scenario in which p indeed took place, i.e. the ttand tfconditions in the experiment, which “validated” the already set-up mental space, the preschoolers displayed little difficulties in giving an adult/targetlike truth-value judgment to the stimulus. however, when confronted with the ftand ff-conditions, which represented possible worlds in which p was false, the preschoolers showed difficulties in giving a target/adult-like truth-value judgment to the stimulus since these two test conditions “falsified” the already set-up mental space. in terms of evans (2007), the above-sketched explanation can be also formulated as follows. when the participants encountered a conditional stimulus, they placed p being true into their stock of knowledge and judged the truth-value of the stimulus based on the assumption that p had to be true. this was compatible with the two p-true conditions, i.e. the ttand tfconditions. the ftand ff-conditions, representing the scenarios in which p was false, were therefore considered irrelevant, and then disregarded. this gave rise to difficulties in giving target/adult-like truth-value judgments to the conditional stimuli in the relevant conditions, resulting in an apparent delay of the mapping of hypotheticality into if-constructions in child dutch. turning to the concept of conditionality, the question that we need to address is why this concept is mapped into deontic conditionals before the age of four whereas there is a delay of such a mapping when it comes to habitual conditionals. as already argued in akatsuka and clancy (1993) (see also 2.2), conditional constructions expressing deontic modality are conceptually speaking very easy for young children to grasp. this is because such conditionals normally link certain behaviors of the addressee to certain evaluative values or judgments of the speaker, involving reinforcement as shown by (8), which is very common in parental speech, for instance. this reinforcement layer in the semantics of deontic conditionals may facilitate the child’s mapping of the concept of conditionality into the corresponding conditional type. turning to habitual als-conditionals, which describe events or situations as a usual but definitely not an inevitable consequence of a certain condition being satisfied that may repeatedly take place, such a layer of reinforcement is clearly missing in the semantics. instead, habitual als-conditionals are more like temporals than conditionals in their meanings and functions, as they describe habits, to which the notion of condition may seem less crucial than that of temporality. it can therefore be assumed that the semantic overlap of habitual conditionals with temporals may hinder dutch children’s mapping of conditionality into habitual als-conditionals. this, together with the conceptual ease of the deontic type, may explain the current finding with respect to the mapping between conditionality and if-conditionals in dutch preschoolers. the findings reported in this paper strongly suggests that the mapping between our conceptual representations and the language we speak is not influenced by just one single factor. language-specific properties, our pragmatic knowledge, conceptual transparency or ease, together with the function or meaning of a particular linguistic construction with respect to interpretation of habitual and deontic conditionals lin 107 the rest of its category all seem to influence the mapping pace. on top these, the current study also shows that the way in which the mapping is examined also matters, which calls for further exploration of similar language-concept interface phenomena using different test paradigms. acknowledgments i would like to thank anouk van der knaap, sara koops, and tessa sparreboom for their practical help in setting up the experiment, recruiting participants and collecting the data. i would also like to thank sanne berends for her valuable input regarding the experimental design. this research was supported by two language diversity in the world fellowships (october 2016–december 2017; november 2018–june 2019) at leiden university. references akatsuka, n., & clancy, p. 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(eds.), on conditionals again, 15–60. amsterdam: john benjamins. wickham h (2016). ggplot2: elegant graphics for data analysis. springerverlag new york. isbn 978-3-319-24277-4, https://ggplot2.tidyverse.org https://www.r-project.org/ https://ggplot2.tidyverse.org/ journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 86-115, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 112 appendices appendix i: test items trials: (1) de zon schijnt en minnie voetbalt. the sun shines and minnie plays football ‘the sun is shining and minnie is playing football.’ (2) als de zon schijnt, danst goofy. if the sun shines dances goofy ‘if the sun shines, goofy dances.’ deontic conditional stimuli: (1) ff-condition als donald schreeuwt, moet hij in de hoek staan. if donald shouts must he in the corner stand ‘if donald shouts, he’ll have to stand in the corner.’ (2) tt-condition als pluto gaat liggen, krijgt hij botten. if pluto goes lie gets he bones ‘if pluto lies down, he’ll get bones.’ (3) ft-condition als minnie een kus geeft, krijgt ze bloemen. if minnie a kiss gives gets she flowers ‘if minnie gives a kiss, she’ll get flowers.’ (4) tt-condition als mickey appels plukt, krijgt hij een taart. if mickey apples picks gets he a cake ‘if mickey picks apples, he’ll get a cake.’ (5) ft-condition als mickey schoonmaakt, krijgt hij een lolly. if mickey cleans gets he a lollipop ‘if mickey cleans, he’ll get a lollipop.’ (6) ff-condition als minnie koekjes bakt, krijgt ze een cadeautje. if minnie cookies bakes gets she a present ‘if minnie bakes, she’ll get a present.’ (7) tf-condition als goofy in een zwembadje springt, krijgt hij een if goofy in a swimming pool jumps gets he an appel. apple ‘if goofy jumps into a swimming pool, he’ll get an apple.’ (8) ft-condition als donald een foto maakt, krijgt hij snoepjes. if donald a picture makes gets he candies ‘if donald makes a picture, he’ll get candies.’ (9) tf-condition als mickey gaat voetballen, krijgt hij een banaan. if mickey goes play football gets he a banana ‘if mickey plays football, he’ll get a banana.’ interpretation of habitual and deontic conditionals lin 113 (10) tt-condition als pluto bijt, moet hij buiten slapen. if pluto bites must he outside sleep ‘if pluto bites, he’ll have to sleep outside.’ (11) tf-condition als donald boos wordt, moet hij binnen blijven. if donald angry becomes must he inside stay ‘if donald loses his temper, he’ll have to stay inside.’ (12) ff-condition als donald zijn bord leegeet, krijgt hij een ijsje. if donald his plate empty eat gets he an ice cream ‘if donald eats his plate empty, he’ll get an ice cream.’ habitual conditional stimuli: (1) tf-condition als pluto uitgelaten is, gaat hij slapen. if pluto go for a walk is goes he sleep ‘when pluto is back from a walk, he goes to sleep.’ (2) tf-condition als mickey ziek is, eet hij ijs. if mickey ill is eats he ice cream ‘when mickey is ill, he eats ice cream.’ (3) tt-condition als de chocopasta op is, pakt minnie if the chocolate spread finished is takes minnie kaas. chees ‘when the chocolate spread is finished, minnie takes chees.’ (4) ff-condition als er een regenboog is, gaat minnie vliegen. if there a rainbow is goes minnie fly ‘when there is a rainbow, minnie flies a kite.’ (5) ft-condition als de thee op is, krijgt katrien limonade. if the tea finished is gets daisy lemonade ‘when the tea is finished, daisy gets lemonade.’ (6) ft-condition als donald pannenkoeken bakt, eet hij ze op. if donald pancakes bakes eats he them up ‘when donald bakes pancakes, he eats them.’ (7) ff-condition als het regent, blijft donald thuis. if it rains stay donald home ‘when it rains, donald stays at home.’ (8) tt-condition als de trein vol is, rijdt mickey in de auto. if the train full is drives mickey in the car ‘when the train is full, mickey drives the car.’ journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 8 issue: 4 86-115, 2020, december issn: 2148-1997 114 (9) ft-condition als de zon schijnt, gaat minnie rolschaatsen. if the sun shines goes minnie roller skate ‘when the sun shines, minnie roller skates.’ (10) ff-condition als het sneeuwt, gaat mickey sleeën. if it snows goes mickey sleigh ‘when it snows, mickey sleighs.’ (11) tt-condition als mickey buiten is, krijgt hij een kus. if mickey outside is gets he a kiss ‘when mickey goes outside, he gets a kiss.’ (12) tf-condition als mickey jarig is, krijgt hij twee taarten. if mickey birthday is gets he two cakes ‘when it’s mickey’s birthday, he gets two cakes.’ additive stimuli (baseline): (1) tt-condition mickey heeft appels geplukt en mickey krijgt een mickey has apples picked and mickey gets a taart. cake ‘mickey has picked apples and mickey gets a cake.’ (2) tf-condition mickey is jarig en mickey krijgt twee taarten. mickey is birthday and mickey gets two cakes ‘it’s mickey’s birthday and mickey gets two cakes.’ (3) tt-condition de trein is vol en mickey rijdt in de auto. the train is full and mickey drives in the car ‘the train is full and mickey drives the car.’ (4) ff-condition het sneeuwt en mickey gaat sleeën. it snows and mickey goes sleigh ‘it is snowing and mickey is going to sleigh.’ (5) tt-condition mickey is buiten en mickey krijgt een kus. mickey is outside and mickey gets a kiss ‘mickey is outside and mickey gets a kiss.’ (6) ff-condition donald eet zijn bord leeg en donald krijgt een donald eats his plate empty and donald gets an ijsje. ice cream ‘donald eats his plate empty and donald gests an ice cream.’ (7) tt-condition pluto gaat liggen en pluto krijgt botten. pluto goes lie and pluto gets bones ‘pluto lies down and pluto gets bones.’ interpretation of habitual and deontic conditionals lin 115 (8) ft-condition minnie geeft een kus en minnie krijgt bloemen. minnie gives a kiss and minnie gets flowers ‘minnie gives a kiss and minnie gets flowers.’ (9) tt-condition de chocopasta is op en minnie krijgt the chocolate spread is finished and minnie gets kaas. chees. ‘the chocolate spread is finished and minnie gets chees.’ (10) tf-condition mickey gaat voetballen en mickey krijgt een mickey goes play football and mickey gets a banaan. banana ‘mickey plays football and mickey gets a banana.’ (11) ft-condition de thee is op en katrien krijgt limonade. the tea is finished and daisy gets lemonade ‘the tea is finished and daisy gets lemonade.’ (12) tt-condition pluto bijt en hij moet buiten slapen. pluto bites and pluto must outside sleep ‘pluto bites and pluto has to sleep outside.’ appendix ii: results of the random parts of the regression model random effects σ2 3.29 τ00 participant 0.29 τ00 stimulus 0.12 icc 0.11 n participant 46 n stimulus 36 observations 1648 marginal r2 / conditional r2 0.121 / 0.220 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 2 223-248, 2021, june issn: 2148-1997 223 associations between social emotional and language domains in toddlerhood – the steps study sabina rajalin1 abo akademi university päivi pihlaja2 university of turku and university of helsinki alice s. carter3 university of massachusetts boston pirkko rautakoski4 abo akademi university abstract this research has highlighted a risk for social-emotional and behavioural (seb) problems in children with developmental language disorder. associations with delays in social-emotional competencies and language development have been found in both children with language delays and children with language disorders, but findings on the association between seb problems and language delay in very young children are mixed. the purpose of this study was to explore whether there is an association between social-emotional competencies and seb problems measured at 18 months and language skills measured at 2 years of age. in addition, background factors often related to language development were controlled statistically. the data were gathered from parents of 591 children with questionnaires in a finnish cohort study (the steps study). social-emotional competencies and seb problems were assessed with brief infant-toddler social and emotional assessment (bitsea) and language skills with macarthur communicative development inventories (cdi-t). the data were analysed with forced entry multiple linear regression analyses with three language variables (expressive vocabulary, grammar and m3l) as outcome variables and seb problems, social-emotional competencies and background variables as independent variables. children with delay in social-emotional competencies in early toddlerhood according to the bitsea cut-off scores had significantly smaller expressive vocabularies measured half a year later at 24 months of age than children with no delay in social-emotional competencies. seb problems were not associated with weaker language skills. child’s sex was the most important background factor contributing to all of the language variables in favour of girls. 1 bio: ma sabina rajalin has graduated from department of speech and language pathology at the abo akademi university, turku, finland. her research interests include early language acquisition in children. 2 bio: dr. päivi pihlaja is an adjunct professor (docent) and a senior lecturer at the department of education at the university of helsinki, finland and at the university of turku, finland. her research interests are social-emotional difficulties in childhood, inclusive special education and early childhood special education. 3 bio: dr. alice s. carter is a professor in the department of psychology at the university of massachusetts boston, boston, usa. her research interests include identification of and interventions on infants and toddlers at risk for psychopathology and neurodevelopmental disorders; the role of family functioning in child development. 4 bio: dr. pirkko rautakoski is a senior lecturer in the department of speech and language pathology at abo akademi university, turku, finland. her current research interests are the effects of environmental factors in early language development. corresponding author: pirkko.rautakoski@abo.fi received : 06.02.2021 accepted : 10.06.2021 published : 30.06.2021 mailto:pirkko.rautakoski@abo.fi social emotional and language domains rajalin, pihlaja, carter, rautakoski 224 findings indicate that a delay in social-emotional competencies in early toddlerhood can be associated with a delay in development of expressive vocabulary in later toddlerhood. language development of young toddlers with a delay or deficit in social-emotional competencies should be examined as early as possible to support language development when needed. keywords bitsea, cdi, early language development, social-emotional competence, socialemotional problems 1. introduction language and social-emotional development are interconnected in the early stages of a child’s development. social interaction with other people and sufficient exposure to language are prerequisites for language development (tomasello, 2009). in interaction with adults, children are also socialized with respect to how to behave and how to read what others are conveying, which supports social-emotional development (eisenberg et al., 2014). for some children, language development does not progress in a typical way and many of them can have social-emotional and behavioural problems (seb problems hereafter). the associations between these difficulties have been studied but results in young children are slightly contradictory. 1.1. social-emotional competencies and problems social-emotional competencies refer to factors in social relationships with others such as attention skills, compliance, imitation and play behaviour, emerging empathy, and prosocial peer behaviours, which create a foundation for other social-emotional skills in children (carter et al., 2003). the main elements of social-emotional competencies are emotional self-regulation, social problem solving and prosocial behaviour, which are important contributors to the child’s effective and successful interaction with other people (rose-krasnor & denham, 2009, 163–172). social-emotional competencies develop in interaction with other people (rose-krasnor & denham, 2009, 164). to be able to interact with others requires communication skills. in fact, good communication skills in toddlerhood have been associated with good social-emotional competencies (haapsamo et al., 2012; horwitz et al., 2003), and late talkers have been found to have more problems in these competencies than children with typical language development (thurm et al., 2018). good social-emotional competencies are also important in preventing earlyemerging seb problems, because they help the developing child face the challenges met in interaction with others (briggs-gowan et al., 2001; carter et al., 2003). on the other hand, children lacking age-appropriate socialemotional competencies may have a risk of developing seb problems. in previous research it has been observed that even young toddlers can have seb problems, for example in a study conducted by möricke et al. (2013) with young children at 14–15 months of age. the prevalence of seb problems in toddlers was 12–16% in a study by briggs-gowan and colleagues (2001) and 16–18% in a study by skovgaard and colleagues (2007). in a literature review by brauner and stephens (2006), the estimated journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 2 223-248, 2021, june issn: 2148-1997 225 prevalence of these problems in children aged between 0 and 5 years ranged from 9.5% to 14.2%. seb problems are usually divided into three domains: externalising, internalising and dysregulation (carter et al., 2003). some externalising problems are expressed as difficulties with impulsivity, high activity and aggression or defiance. almost every child shows some of these behaviours, but when these types of behaviours are too frequent and persistent it can cause problems (carter et al., 2003). internalising problems include e.g. depression, social withdrawal, fearfulness, worry, nervousness, and distress when separated. these behaviours belong to typical development but are considered problematic if they become too frequent and/or over-intense, and if the child has many co-occurring internalising problems (briggs-gowan & carter, 2006; carter et al., 2003). children start regulating their emotions as young as 6 months old by looking away or self-soothing, which lowers the child’s negativity in frustrating situations (eisenberg et al., 2014). self-regulation has an important role in social development and is used to regulate negative emotionality and also behaviour. poor self-regulation skills have been shown to predict weaker social skills later in life, especially for those who have a risk for developmental language disorder (aro et al., 2012). dysregulation problems have been defined as problems with negative emotionality, sleeping, eating, and sensory sensitivities (briggs-gowan & carter, 2006; carter et al., 2003). 1.2. associations between difficulties in language development and social-emotional competencies and problems approximately 7% of children in kindergarten have a developmental language disorder (dld) according to tomblin et al. (1997). typically, children with dld have receptive problems in language comprehension (montgomery et al., 2016) and tend to have delays in vocabulary growth (fisher, 2017; rice et al., 2010; rice & hoffman, 2015) and grammatical development (rice et al., 2010). in addition, they tend to have lower levels of mean length of utterance (mlu) measured in words and morphemes than children with typical language development (rice et al., 2010). language dimensions affected later in development are particularly syntax and morphosyntax (rice et al., 2008). elevated risk for seb problems in preschool and school-age children with dld is well documented (see the meta-analysis by yew & o´kearney, 2013). toddlers cannot be diagnosed with dld, but they can be considered to have a delayed language development and are then called late talkers (rescorla, 2002; weismer, 2007, p. 86). studies of seb problems in younger children with language delay provide slightly contradictory results. some have found elevated risk for seb problems and poorer social-emotional competencies in these children compared with their typically developing peers (henrichs et al., 2013; irwin et al., 2002; thurm et al., 2018). other studies have found significant associations between delays in social-emotional competencies and delays in language development, but not with seb problems (horwitz et al., 2003; rescorla et al., 2007). social emotional and language domains rajalin, pihlaja, carter, rautakoski 226 different hypotheses on the relationship of these associations exist. it has been suggested that language difficulties at an early age may have a negative influence on social interaction, which can lead to emotional and selfregulation problems (st clair et al., 2019). according to the results of a longitudinal study by roben, cole and armstrong (2013), children with weaker language skills and slower growth of them in toddlerhood had weaker skills in regulating anger than children with better language skills. evidence in support of this theorised causal pathway is the observed association between language difficulties and increases in social problems with age (clegg et al., 2015; st clair et al., 2011). on the other hand, problems with adaptability and withdrawal have been found as early as at 9 months of age in children who have shown language difficulties later in preschool, indicating that seb problems may possibly precede language problems (st clair et al., 2019). another hypothesis is that the association is bidirectional (thurm et al., 2018). in addition, apart from a few studies that also included comprehension as a measurement (clegg et al., 2015; irwin et al., 2002; thurm et al., 2018), usually the only language variable used in studies on this association is the size of expressive vocabulary. it is important also to measure other language variables in the studies to get a more comprehensive picture of the language skills of children when this association is studied. 1.3. factors influencing language development several biological and environmental factors can influence early language development in children. the effect of biological sex on language development has been widely studied. there is evidence of toddler girls having a significantly larger expressive vocabulary and a faster expressive vocabulary growth than toddler boys (eriksson et al., 2012; fenson et al., 1994; stolt et al., 2008). toddler girls also combine words more than toddler boys in several language communities (eriksson et al., 2012). however, in a meta-analysis by fisher (2017), no significant associations between late talkers and child’s sex were found. additionally, children born preterm have a higher occurrence of language delay than full-term children (barre et al., 2011; gayraud & kern, 2007; schults et al., 2013; stolt, 2009). one area of interest for researchers has been the association between early language development and the socioeconomic status (ses) of the parents. in a meta-analysis by fisher (2017), a small significant association was found between lower ses and a smaller expressive vocabulary. in previous studies, ses has been defined variously based on parent´s educational level, occupational status or income, but the results are nonetheless quite similar. pungello et al. (2009) found that toddlers living in a family with a lower ses had slower development of expressive vocabulary than children of families with a higher ses. fernald and colleagues (2012) reported a similar pattern in children as young as 18 and 24 months old. however, the effect sizes were small. another demographic factor that has been shown to have a positive impact on the language development of infants and toddlers is young age of the mother (mcnally & quigley, 2014; westerlund & lagerberg, 2008). however, the results of some studies favour older mothers over younger ones (keown et al., 2001; sutcliffe et al., 2012). the differences in the results may journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 2 223-248, 2021, june issn: 2148-1997 227 depend on the age range of mothers included and which background factors have been controlled for. for example, in the latter studies, more positive parenting behaviour of older mothers interrelated with language development. furthermore, studies exploring familial aggregation of language difficulties have found that children with language delay have a higher risk of having a family member who has experienced language difficulties in childhood (keegstra et al., 2007; zambrana et al., 2014). 1.4. the current study the research described above has highlighted the risk for seb problems in older children with a dld diagnosis, but slightly contradictory results concerning this association can be seen in young children with delayed language development. in addition, the language measure used in previous studies has mostly been expressive vocabulary, with some exceptions including receptive vocabulary. thus, it is important to add more language variables describing language skills when studying this relationship. the purpose of the present study was to explore whether there is an association between social-emotional competencies and seb problems measured at 18 months of age and the subsequent speech and language development measured at 24 months of age. the hypothesis was that children with seb problems and/or delay in social-emotional competencies have weaker language skills than children with developmentally adequate social-emotional functioning. the second aim was to examine whether different background factors, often related to language development, have an effect on language skills in addition to seb problems and social-emotional competencies. this study extends earlier research on the relationship between social-emotional competencies and seb problems and language development in toddlerhood. an additional extension is the use of grammatical language variables along with expressive vocabulary when assessing language skills. if there is an association between seb problems and lacking social-emotional competencies measured at 18 months of age and language skills measured at 24 months of age, it indicates that it would be beneficial to start supporting language development as soon as unfavourable socio-emotional difficulties can be detected. 2. methodology the study is part of a finnish cohort study, steps to the healthy development and well-being of children (the steps study), which is a longitudinal, population-based multidisciplinary study of children born to mothers in an area of southwest finland during 1.1.2008–31.03.2010 (for more detail see lagström et al., 2013). the cohort includes 9811 mothers and their 9936 children. the ministry of social affairs and health and the ethics committee of the hospital district of southwest finland have approved the steps study (27 february 2007). social emotional and language domains rajalin, pihlaja, carter, rautakoski 228 2.1. participants and sample selection a subset of mothers in the cohort were recruited to participate in an intensive follow-up, either during the first trimester of pregnancy when visiting the maternity clinic or after delivery on the hospital ward. altogether 1797 finnishand swedish-speaking mothers with 1827 children accepted the invitation. the majority of them (76.8%) were recruited from a maternity clinic and about a quarter (23.2%) from the delivery hospital. written informed consent was obtained from the parents. in this study, swedish-speaking and bilingual children were excluded and only finnish-speaking children (n = 1370) were included, due to differences in the language structure between finnish and swedish. families were asked to fill out two questionnaires, the brief infant-toddler social and emotional assessment (bitsea; briggs-gowan & carter, 2006) and macarthur communicative development inventories (cdi; fenson et al., 1994). altogether 704 families had filled out both questionnaires. the families had been instructed to fill out the bitsea when the child was 18 months of age and the cdi when the child was 24 months of age. however, the ages of the children varied from 10 to 48 months upon completion of the bitsea and 20 to 29 months for the cdi. to narrow the age range of the bitsea assessment, children younger than 16 months and older than 20 months were excluded, as well as children whose age upon completion of the bitsea questionnaire was missing. some children can experience a lexical growth spurt after 2 years of age (clark, 2003), which is why only children aged 23–25 months upon cdi completion were included. children younger or older than this age range upon cdi completion or whose age was missing were excluded. children born prematurely (< 37 gestational weeks; parikka & lehtonen, 2017, p. 9) and children with missing information on gestational weeks were also excluded. additionally, two outliers were excluded as they had a higher competence score than was possible in the bitsea questionnaire. the final sample included a total of 591 children. a flowchart of the inclusion and exclusion process is presented in figure 1. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 2 223-248, 2021, june issn: 2148-1997 229 figure 1. flowchart of inclusion and exclusion criteria for the sample total cohort 9936 children 1797 mothers of 1827 children in the intensive follow-up finnish-speaking children n = 1370 children within both bitsea and cdi-t assessments available n = 704 final sample n = 591 swedish-speaking and bilingual children excluded n = 457 children born pre-term excluded (20) children with missing gestational age (5) total n = 25 children aged <16 or >20 months when bitsea had been filled out (3) or missing age (23) excluded total n = 36 children with missing cdi-t and/or bitsea excluded total n = 666 children aged <23 or >25 months when cdi-t had been filled out (31) or missing age (19) excluded total n = 50 children with an impossible competence score excluded n = 2 children within the chosen age range for both bitsea and cdi-t assessment n = 618 social emotional and language domains rajalin, pihlaja, carter, rautakoski 230 there were 303 boys (51.3%) and 288 girls (48.7%) in the sample. over half of the children had no siblings (55.0%), nearly a third had one sibling (29.9%), a tenth had two siblings (11.7%), and the remainder had between three and eight siblings (3.4%). almost all parents were married (63.3%) or cohabiting (35.2%), with 1.5% reporting another status and five families this information was missing. the ses of the parents was defined in two categories based upon occupational status as at least professional or other. those in high or intermediate positions were classified as professionals and those working in the service and industry sectors as other. of the mothers 63.6% and of the fathers 58.0% were considered professionals. the family monthly net income was at least 3000 euro for 48.4% of the families and under 3000 euro for 51.4%; this information was missing for 11 families. the average net family earnings in finland during the data gathering years was 3120 euro (2008) and 3173 euro (2009) (statistics finland’s px-web databases). out of the sample, 1.2% of the mothers and 2% of the fathers reported having had late onset of speech as a child. other descriptive statistics are given in table 1. table 1 descriptive characteristics from data collected shortly after birth (n = 591) characteristic m mdn sd min max age of mother at birth age of father at birtha gestational days agpar (5 min) 31.18 33.02 280.57 9.05 31.12 32.41 281.00 9.00 4.19 5.17 8.54 0.81 18.25 18.35 259 5 42.76 55.78 299 10 aage missing for four fathers. 2.2. attrition due to dropouts from the cohort study and numerous exclusion criteria, the present study experienced high rates of attrition. to avoid attrition bias, we checked for any systematic difference in the background and outcome variables between participants and those who had been excluded. from the previous studies in this cohort, we know that mothers participating in the steps study were on average 7 months older when giving birth than mothers in the whole cohort population, and that the child participating was most likely their first. in addition, the couples were more likely married, and their occupational status was somewhat higher than in the cohort population (see lagström et al., 2013). the participating families of the present study differed from non-participants with regards to two background variables (table 2). the participating mothers were slightly older than nonparticipating mothers (31.18 vs 30.57 years) and were more likely to be married (63.3% vs 55.6%). the difference in gestational age was calculated without the premature children in excluded families because they were also excluded from the study sample. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 2 223-248, 2021, june issn: 2148-1997 231 table 2 comparison of characteristics of excluded and included study participants based on the chi-square test for categorical variables and t-test for numerical variables variables excluded participantsa included participantsb p outcome variables cdi-t, expressive, mean (sd) cdi-t, grammar, mean (sd) cdi-t, morphosyntax, mean(sd) 290.43(167.74) 8.94(5.31) 6.09(2.70) 300.14(164.14) 9.34(5.23) 6.40(2.57) .510 .400 .231 sociodemographics (n=1236) (n=591) child gender; boys, % 52.4 51.3 .647 gestational days, mean (sd) 280.06(8.69)c 280.57(8.54) .247 mother age in years, mean (sd) 30.57(4.77) 31.18(4.19) .005 marital status married, % 55.6 63.3 < .001 first child, % 52.1 55.0 .164 late onset of speech, % 1.1 1.2 .799 ses, occupational class; at least professional, %d 59.5 63.6 .119 father age in years, mean (sd) late onset of speech, % ses, occupational class; at least professional, %d 32.74(5.59) 1.1 56.0 33.02(5.17) 2.0 58.0 .289 .130 .474 family family income; at least 3000e/month, % 44.3 48.6 .088 cdi-t = mcarthur communicative development inventories, toddler-form a (n=129–159); including only finnish-speaking children aged between 23 and 25 months b (n=498–591) c (n=1101, premature children excluded) d classification: professionals (in high positions, e.g. managerial, but also intermediate positions such as nurses) vs others [blue-collar workers (e.g. service and industry)] 2.3. data collection and processing data were gathered from parents using questionnaires sent by post or electronically. one questionnaire was used to assess the child’s social, emotional and behavioural problems and competencies at 18 months of age (bitsea; briggs-gowan & carter, 2006), and another to assess their language development at 24 months of age (cdi-t; fenson et al., 1994). further questionnaires assessed family demographics. 2.3.1. questionnaires on demographic information demographic and other family-related information was collected from mothers during pregnancy weeks 10 to 15 with questionnaires sent out to the families. in addition, both mothers and fathers completed separate forms social emotional and language domains rajalin, pihlaja, carter, rautakoski 232 at the 20th and 30th gestation weeks. mothers recruited from the delivery ward completed the forms there. additional information concerning the family and the child was gathered from one or both of the parents when the child was 13, 18 and 24 months of age. questions concerned physical, psychological and social development of the child and demographic information of the parents. background variables used as covariates in the present study were child’s sex, gestational days, age of mother at childbirth, ses of the parents, and parent’s self-reported history of late onset of speech. 2.3.2. brief infant-toddler social and emotional assessment (bitsea) the brief infant-toddler social and emotional assessment (bitsea; briggsgowan & carter, 2006) used in this study is a parent-report screening tool to identify delays in social and emotional competencies, as well as potential social, emotional and behavioural problems in children between the ages of 12 months and 35 months and 30 days. it includes 42 items, of which 11 concern potential delays or deficits in social-emotional competencies and 31 cover externalising, internalising and dysregulation problems. bitsea has been shown to be a valid parental-report tool in measuring infants’ and toddlers’ social-emotional development (bagner et al., 2012; briggs-gowan et al., 2001; haapsamo et al., 2009; pontoppidan et al., 2017). the finnish translation of the bitsea has been applied in a number of previous studies (alakortes et al., 2017; haapsamo et al., 2009; paavolaruotsalainen et al., 2018). the results of the bitsea give a total problem score and a total competence score. the maximum total problem score is 62 and the maximum total competence score is 22. possible socialemotional and behavioural problems (seb problems) and delays in socialemotional competencies is defined with certain clinical cut-off points in these scores depending on the age and sex of the child. a total problem score above the cut-off value indicates possible socio-emotional and behavioural problems and a total competence score below the cut-off value indicates a possible delay or deficit in social-emotional competencies. for children aged 12–17 months the total problem cut-off score is 13 for both sexes, and for children aged 18–23 months it is 13 for girls and 15 for boys. the total competence cut-off score for children aged 12–17 months is 12 for both sexes, and for children aged 18–23 months it is 14 for both sexes. 2.3.3. macarthur communicative development inventories (cdi) the finnish version of the mcarthur communicative development inventories, toddler-form (cdi-t; fenson et al., 1994) was applied in the present study (lyytinen, 1999). it is a parent-report questionnaire aimed to assess the child’s communicative and language development. cdi-t is intended for children aged 16–30 months and includes sections measuring expressive vocabulary and covering grammatical and morphological development. the expressive vocabulary section includes 595 words in 20 different categories and parents are asked to mark the words the child both understands and produces. the grammar section includes questions about the child’s use of plural, case suffix, verb conjugation and word combinations, with maximum points of 16. morphosyntax is measured as a mean number of morphemes in the child’s three longest utterances (m3l) journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 2 223-248, 2021, june issn: 2148-1997 233 (fenson et al., 2007). macarthur communicative development inventories have been shown to be a valid parent-report instrument for measuring early communication and language development in children (fenson et al., 1994, 2007; lyytinen, 1999). when the finnish cdi-t was validated, the expressive vocabulary of children aged 18 months correlated statistically significantly with the reynell developmental language scales (rdls; edwards et al., 1997) expressive scale (r = .85, p < .001) and receptive scale (r = .35, p < .001). at 24 months of age the expressive vocabulary in cdi-t correlated with baileys mental developmental index (r = .70, p < .001) and baileys scales of infant development (naming tasks) (r = .59, p < .001) (lyytinen, 1999). 2.4. data analysis parametric tests were applied when analysing the data, and we used the statistical package for the social sciences (spss) version 25.0 for windows (ibm corporation, armonk, ny, usa). p-values < 0.05 were considered statistically significant. independent samples t-tests were conducted to examine group differences between boys and girls in total scores from the bitsea and cdi-t. additionally, t-tests demonstrated the difference in mean scores between the two age groups. the association between seb problems and social-emotional competencies at 18 months of age and language skills at 24 months of age was analysed with multiple linear regression analyses. three separate forced entry multiple linear regression analyses were performed with (1) expressive vocabulary, (2) use of grammar and (3) m3l as the outcome variables. the background variables included in the analysis were sex of the child, maternal age, gestation days, mother’s ses, father’s ses, mother’s history of late onset of speech and father’s late onset of speech. the children included in the present study were between 16 and 20 months of age when the parents filled out the bitsea form. according to the manual, there are different cut-off points for total scores of children aged 12– 17 months and children aged 18–23 months. therefore, the total problem scores and total competence scores were reported for two different age groups in the descriptive statistics. because after this conducted cut-off procedure takes into account the age and sex of the child, the children could be divided into two groups with and without seb problems, as well as into two groups with and without delay in social-emotional competencies. these variables were entered as independent variables in the regression analysis along with background variables that could potentially influence the language outcome variables. the correlations between the independent variables and all three language outcomes were examined before the regression analysis was conducted, to check for any correlations that could have an effect on the regression model. child’s age at the time of filling out the bitsea and cdi-t questionnaires varied and therefore these ages were added as covariates into the regression model. social emotional and language domains rajalin, pihlaja, carter, rautakoski 234 3. findings 3.1. descriptive statistics descriptive statistics of total scores in the bitsea are presented in table 3. there was no statistically significant difference in the problem scores of children aged 16–17 months (m = 8.29, sd = 5.00) and those aged 18–20 months (m = 7.95, sd = 4.79) and no sex differences in total problem scores. for the total competence score, girls had a significantly higher total competence score (m = 17.80, sd = 2.43) than boys (m = 16.91, sd = 2.56) in the group of children aged 16–17 months (t(413) = 3.71, p < .001, d = 0.357) but not in the group of 18–20 month-olds. table 3 total scores of the bitsea questionnaire for each of the age groups and sexes (n = 588 a) 16–17 months 18–20 months seb statistic total (n = 414) girls (n = 197) boys (n = 217) total (n = 174) girls (n = 90) boys (n = 84) total problem scoreb m 8.29 8.47 8.12 7.95 7.64 8.27 mdn 8.00 8.00 7.00 7.00 7.00 7.00 sd 5.00 5.04 4.97 4.79 4.81 4.77 range 0–34 0–34 0–26 0–29 1–29 0–25 total competence scorec m 17.34 17.80 16.91 17.39 17.64 17.11 mdn 18.00 18.00 17.00 18.00 18.00 17.50 sd 2.54 2.43 2.56 2.55 2.34 2.75 range 10–22 11–22 10–22 7–22 12–22 7–22 a three participants were missing a total problem score b max 62, c max 22 according to the bitsea cut-off scores, 16.6% (n = 98) of the children were considered to have seb problems and 6.9% (n = 41) delays in socialemotional competencies. the descriptive statistics of the cdi-t results are shown in table 4. the results show that there was a statistically significant difference in expressive vocabulary between girls (m = 354.03, sd = 144.50) and boys (m = 283.57, sd = 155.53; t(588.528) = 6.08, p < .001, d = 0.469). girls also had higher scores on average in the grammar section (m = 11.29, sd = 4.31) than boys (m = 8.95, sd = 5.96; t(518.492) = 6.48, p < .001, d = 0.450). the mean number of morphemes in the three longest utterances the children had produced was also slightly higher for girls (m = 6.86, sd = 2.35) when compared to boys (m = 5.73, sd = 2.52; t(496) = 4.60, p < .001, d = 0.464). journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 2 223-248, 2021, june issn: 2148-1997 235 table 4 descriptive statistics of cdi-t including total scores and scores for each of the sexes language outcomes n m mdn sd range expressive vocabularya (all children) 591 300.14 329.00 164.14 4–595 girls boys 288 303 354.03 284.57 385.50 297.00 144.50 155.53 4–595 9–579 grammar (all children)b 526c 9.34 10.00 5.23 0–16 girls boys 258 268 11.29 8.95 12.50 8.00 4.31 5.96 0–16 0–16 m3l (all children) 498d 6.40 6.42 2.57 0–15.67 girls boys 255 243 6.86 5.73 7.00 5.670 2.34 2.52 0–13 0–15.67 a max 595 b max 16 c 65 participants were missing a total grammar score d 93 participants were missing data on m3l 3.2. results of multiple linear regression analyses to analyse the possible associations between seb problems and socialemotional competencies and language skills, the categorical variables of seb problems and social-emotional competencies, created with the cut-off score procedure, were used. separate forced entry multiple linear regression analyses were conducted with expressive vocabulary, use of grammar and m3l as outcome variables. seb problems and social-emotional competence variables were included in the model as independent variables. additionally, the background variables sex of the child, maternal age when giving birth, gestational days, ses of both the mother and the father, as well as late onset of speech of mother and father were included to control for variables known to influence language outcomes. age of the child at the time of filling out the cdi-t and bitsea questionnaires were added as covariates to control for child’s age affecting the results. an examination of correlations revealed that none of the independent variables were highly correlated with each other. the collinearity statistics between independent variables were all within accepted limits (tolerance > 0.1, field, 2009, p. 224) and therefore the assumption of multicollinearity was met. social emotional and language domains rajalin, pihlaja, carter, rautakoski 236 3.2.1. expressive vocabulary table 5 shows the results of the multiple linear regression analysis with expressive vocabulary as the dependent variable. a statistically significant regression equation was found (f(11, 432) = 5.94, p < .001) and accounted for 13.1% of the variance in the outcome variable (r2adj = 0.109). there was a significant association between social-emotional competence and expressive vocabulary (β = -.131, p = .005), indicating that children with a delay in social-emotional competencies had a mean expressive vocabulary of 83 words fewer than children with developmentally appropriate social-emotional competencies. seb problems did not significantly contribute to the variance in expressive vocabulary. in addition, one of the background variables that significantly contributed to the model was sex of the child (β = .232, p < .001), meaning girls had on average 76 words more in their expressive vocabulary than boys. another significant variable was father’s ses (β = .124, p = .010), which suggests that children with a father with a higher ses produced on average 41 words more than children with a father with a lower ses. father’s late onset of speech (β = -.111, p = .016) also had a significant association with the expressive vocabulary, suggesting that children with a father who had a history of late onset of speech as a child on average had an expressive vocabulary of 117 words fewer than children with a father without a history of delay in speech development. a multiple regression analysis was conducted to examine whether an interaction effect was present between the sex of the child and socialemotional problems and competencies on expressive vocabulary. the results revealed no evidence of a statistically significant interaction effect between the sex of the child and social-emotional problems on expressive vocabulary. however, a statistically significant interaction effect was observed between sex and social-emotional competencies on expressive vocabulary, f (1, 588) = 4.446, p = .035, and accounted for 8.7 % of the variance. table 5 coefficients for the forced entry multiple regression with expressive vocabulary as the dependent variable dependent variable: express. vocabulary predictors b se b β sig. sex mother’s age gestational days mother’s ses father’s ses mother’s late onset of speech father’s late onset of speech age when cdi-t completed age when bitsea completed seb problems social-emotional competence 76.132 -3.489 -.418 27.956 41.307 41.836 -117.081 9.046 9.991 -16.254 -83.165 14.803 1.833 .901 16.300 15.936 64.234 48.350 12.297 9.063 20.127 29.320 .232 -.087 -.021 .082 .124 .029 -.111 .033 .051 -.037 -.131 .000 .058 .642 .087 .010 .515 .016 .462 .271 .420 .005 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 2 223-248, 2021, june issn: 2148-1997 237 3.2.2. grammar and morphosyntax a forced entry multiple linear regression analysis was conducted with grammar as the dependent variable. independent variables included the social-emotional competence and seb problems, as well as control variables as in the previously mentioned regression analysis. a statistically significant regression equation was found in the regression model, (f(11, 381) = 4.20, p < .001) and accounted for 10.8% of the variance (r2adj = 0.082). neither seb problems nor social-emotional competence proved to be predictors for grammar (appendix a). the only variable that significantly predicted grammar was sex (β = .256, p < .001), suggesting that girls on average scored 2.7 points higher than boys. another forced entry multiple linear regression was conducted with morphosyntax as the dependent variable and the same independent variables as in the previously mentioned multiple regression analysis. a statistically significant regression model was found (f(11, 364) = 4.18, p < .001) and accounted for 11.2% of the variance in the dependent variable (r2adj = 0.085). neither seb problems nor social-emotional competence predicted morphosyntax but several sociodemographic variables did (appendix b). these were sex of the child (β = .218, p < .001), maternal age (β = -.115, p = .024), mother’s ses (β = .104, p = .049), father’s ses (β = .148, p = .005), and father’s late onset of speech (β = -.107, p = .032). 4. discussion and conclusions the aim of this study was to explore whether there is an association between social-emotional competencies and behavioural problems measured at 18 months of age and the early speechand language development measured at 24 months of age. the hypothesis was that children with seb problems or delay in social-emotional competencies have weaker language skills than children with developmentally adequate social-emotional functioning. in addition, the effect of different background variables was controlled for. language outcomes of cdi-t seemed to coincide with the normative data of the standardization study of the finnish adaptation of the cdi by lyytinen (1999), apart from the expressive vocabulary, which was slightly larger for the children in the present study. however, it was well in accordance with a more recent finnish study by stolt et al. (2008). number of morphemes was in accordance with finnish normative data (lyytinen, 1999) and another finnish study by stolt (2009). mean scores of the bitsea were very close to those in other finnish studies with children aged 18 months (alakortes et al., 2015; haapsamo et al., 2009; paavola-ruotsalainen et al., 2018). however, the percentage of children with seb problems (16.6%) according to the cut-off points was slightly higher and the percentage of children with delays in social-emotional competencies (6.9%) clearly lower than in other finnish studies. the reason for this could be the wider age range when the bitsea form was filled out in this study. another reason could be that premature children, who often have some delays in development, were excluded from the sample. however, in spite of the lower percentage of children with delays in social-emotional social emotional and language domains rajalin, pihlaja, carter, rautakoski 238 competencies in the present study, an association between having low scores in this domain and expressive vocabulary at 24 months of age was observed. 4.1. associations between social-emotional competencies and problems and language skills in toddlerhood according to the results, there was a statistically significant association between social-emotional competencies in early toddlerhood and expressive vocabulary measured half a year later, which partly supports the hypothesis. children with a delay in social-emotional competencies had smaller expressive vocabulary than children without a delay in these competencies. however, this association was not present for the two other language variables, grammar and mean length of utterance. there were no associations between seb problems and the three language variables measured. thus, the hypothesis that seb problems would also have associations with weaker language skills, was not supported. the results of the present study are in accordance with those of horwitz et al., (2003) and rescorla et al., (2007), with no associations between language delay and seb problems in toddlers but rather an association between language delay and delay in social-emotional competencies. many other studies have also found significant associations between delays in socialemotional competencies and difficulties in language development, but also associations with seb problems occurring simultaneously (henrichs et al., 2013; irwin et al., 2002; longobardi et al., 2016; thurm et al., 2018). it is possible that social-emotional competencies have a close relationship with language development, and this is why toddlers with a delay or deficit in social-emotional competencies have a risk of delayed vocabulary development. language is acquired in social interaction with others (tomasello, 2009). delayed social-emotional competencies can hinder interaction and reduce opportunities to learn language from communication partners. social-emotional competencies include skills such as attention skills, following instructions, play behaviour and prosocial interactions with peers (carter et al., 2003), all needed for social interaction where speech and language are used and learned. on the other hand, it is possible that delays in both domains are present already at an early age. it is difficult to draw conclusions on how these factors influence each other if the measuring points are not several and concordant, which was missing from the present study. the result concerning the lack of an association between seb problems and weaker language skills is in conflict with many previous studies, which have demonstrated this association in toddlers (henrichs et al., 2013; irwin et al., 2002; paavola-ruotsalainen et al., 2018; thurm et al., 2018; tervo, 2007). the difference may be due to grouping of the children into two groups with delayed language development and typical language development in almost all of the previous studies, which was not done in the present study. another reason could be that because of the large variation in language development in children at 24 months of age, some of the children with weaker language skills might have belonged to the lower end of the normal variation without manifesting any seb problems. the results and knowledge from previous research indicate that social-emotional competencies are important skills journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 2 223-248, 2021, june issn: 2148-1997 239 needed in language development, and if there is a delay in these skills it can be a risk factor for development of language disorder, and for progression to seb problems (carter et al., 2003). grammatical and morphosyntactical development did not show any statistically significant associations with social-emotional competencies or seb problems. finnish-speaking children begin using a few grammatical expressions, such as the plural and the genitive, at about 18 months of age, increasing towards 2 years of age, and use them even more between 2 and 3 years of age (stolt, 2009). language abilities of the participating children were measured when they were between 23 and 25 months of age. the range of scores in these language skills varied from 0 to maximum regarding grammar and from 0 to quite a high number of m3l, which is a mean number of morphemes in children’s three longest utterances. the wide variation in language development, even in children with typical development at this age, may mean that even though some of the children with weaker results in these language variables had a slower language development, they still had good social-emotional competencies and no seb problems. this could possibly explain why weaker skills in grammar and morphosyntax did not have a significant association with either seb problems or delays in social-emotional competencies. it is also possible that these types of language measures are not effective to differentiate children with language delay at this age, because these skills do not develop further until after 2 years of age. 4.2. associations between demographic factors and language development several demographic and environmental factors contributed to language variables in addition to social-emotional competencies, but in somewhat different ways depending on the language variable. child´s sex contributed to all language variables studied, in favour of girls. this result is in accordance with the findings of fenson et al. (1994; 2007) and of a study by eriksson et al. (2012) conducted in 10 non-english language communities, as well as studies by lyytinen (1999) and stolt et al. (2008) with finnish children. in addition to child’s sex, father’s ses and late onset of speech contributed to the size of the expressive vocabulary. children of fathers with higher ses had a larger vocabulary than children of fathers belonging to the lower ses category. korpilahti et al., (2016) also found that father’s as well as mother’s ses had significant links to the toddler’s language development. çakır (2016) found that fathers with high ses provide more language input and more open-ended questions when playing with toddlers, which subsequently increases the child’s conversational participation, hence supporting language development positively. a significant effect of paternal language input on toddler’s vocabulary has also been observed in a study by reynolds et al. (2019). it is possible that these fathers interact with their children in a way that stimulates their language development. similar results as in the present study on the effects of parent’s own history of language disorders have been observed in previous studies on familial social emotional and language domains rajalin, pihlaja, carter, rautakoski 240 aggregation. results have shown that children with language delay are significantly more likely to have a family member with a history of language difficulties than children with typical development (keegstra et al., 2007; zambrana et al., 2014; zubrick et al., 2007). a potential explanation for why the mother’s history of language delay did not have a significant association with language development in children in the present study could be the small number of mothers reporting such a delay in their own language development. child’s sex was the only background factor contributing to the use of grammatical expressions, but there were several background factors which contributed to skills in morphosyntax. these factors were child’s sex, father’s late onset of speech, both father’s and mother’s ses, and mother’s age. just as fathers in the higher ses group may have a more stimulating way of interacting with their children (reynolds et al., 2019), so may mothers with higher ses also have a different way of talking with their children, which has a positive effect on language development. pan et al. (2005) found that mothers with higher ses used more varied word types in their child-directed speech than mothers with lower ses. mother’s age was one of the contributing factors to morphosyntactic development. children of younger mothers produced on average slightly longer utterances. over half the participating children were firstborns in their families. it is possible that mothers of firstborns were younger than those who already had several children, and that this caused some bias in the data. in addition, mothers of firstborns have, for example, been found to participate more in shared reading than mothers with several children (westerlund & lagerberg, 2008), which could indicate that they also spend more time fostering other types of interactions with their children that stimulate their language development. families with older mothers may already have more than one child, and the mother needs to share her time with all of them. it is possible that time spent interacting with the youngest child has been less than for younger mothers who possibly had only one child. 4.3. limitations of the study and recommendations for future research one of the strengths of this study is the large sample size and the amount of data collected. however, the study also has some limitations to be considered when interpreting the results. because this was a cross-sectional study measuring social-emotional competencies and problems and language skills at different time points half a year apart, we cannot interpret the results as showing a causal relation between delays in social-emotional competencies and later-observed weaker vocabulary in some of the children. it can only be concluded that there is an association between socialemotional competencies and expressive vocabulary development in toddlerhood. further research is needed to see whether the association persists and to find the possible developmental trajectory between delays in social-emotional competencies and language development. in the future, it would be important to study these associations longitudinally, measuring all these factors concurrently and several times during the developmental stage. one limitation of the study was the wide variation in age of the children upon completion of the bitsea questionnaire. although parents had been journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 2 223-248, 2021, june issn: 2148-1997 241 asked to complete the parental report when the child was 18 months old, many of them did so earlier or later; thus children aged 16–20 months had to be included to maximise sample size. this was, however, considered by using ageand sex-matched cut-off points when defining groups with and without a delay in social-emotional competencies and seb problems, and including child’s age upon completion of the bitsea questionnaire as a covariate in the regression model. relying solely on parent reports to measure both social emotional problems and competencies and language development was also a limitation of this study, but because of the large sample size it was not possible to meet all of the children to conduct objective tests. on the other hand, both the methods we used have been shown to be valid measures of parent reporting. when it comes to the background variables studied, the number of parents with a history of late onset of speech was considerably lower than expected, possibly because they may not be aware of having had difficulties in language development as a child. 4.4. conclusion there is an association between social-emotional competencies and early language skills in toddlerhood, but there are other contributing factors, primarily the child’s sex. the findings of this study indicate that a delay in social-emotional competencies during the second year of life can be associated with a smaller expressive vocabulary at 24 months of age. regarding clinical work, the results set a foundation for a recommendation to examine language development of young toddlers with a delay or deficit in social-emotional competencies, to be able to support their language development as early as possible when needed. this is especially important for children who also have other risk factors potentially influencing their language development. acknowledgements we are grateful to the finnish national agency for education and to the foundation c g sundells stiftelse for their financial support for conducting this study and preparation of the paper. we also wish to thank professor emerita pirjo korpilahti for her collaboration in gathering data, and all the families who took part in the study, the midwives for their help with recruiting participants, and the entire steps study team. additionally, we would like to thank statistician anne kaljonen for her excellent advice, and adelaide lönnberg for providing language help. references alakortes, j., kovaniemi, s., carter, a.s., bloigu, r., moilanen, i. k., & ebeling, h. e. 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(2007). late language emergence at 24 months: an epidemiological study of prevalence, predictors, and covariates. journal of speech, language, and hearing research, 50(6), 1562-1592. https://doi.org/10.1044/10924388(2007/106) https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12009 https://doi.org/10.1111/1460-6984.12073 https://doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2007/106) https://doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2007/106) social emotional and language domains rajalin, pihlaja, carter, rautakoski 248 appendices appendix a coefficients for the forced entry multiple regression with grammar as the dependent variable dependent variable: grammar predictors b se b β sig. sex mother’s age gestational days mother’s ses father’s ses mother’s late onset of speech father’s late onset of speech age when cdi-t completed age when bitsea completed seb problems social-emotional competence 2.671 -.110 -.006 1.044 1.001 1.691 -2.479 .001 .336 -.259 -.801 .509 .062 .031 .559 .547 2.078 1.647 .419 .306 .689 .987 .256 -.088 -.010 .097 .095 .040 -.075 .000 .054 -.019 -.041 .000 .077 .837 .062 .068 .416 .133 .997 .274 .707 .417 appendix b coefficients for the forced entry multiple regression with m3l as the dependent variable dependent variable: morphosyntax predictors b se b β sig. sex mother’s age gestational days mother’s ses father’s ses mother’s late onset of speech father’s late onset of speech age when cdi-t completed age when bitsea completed seb problems social-emotional competence 1.085 -.070 .003 .544 .749 -.340 -1.748 .183 .239 -.171 -.462 .249 .031 .015 .275 .266 .993 .813 .204 .156 .333 .514 .218 -.115 .011 .104 .148 -.017 -.107 .045 .078 -.026 -.045 .000 .024 .832 .049 .005 .732 .032 .369 .125 .608 .369 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 680-705, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 680 faithfulness vs truncation: a prosodic account of children’s disyllabic to pentasyllabic words anastasios poulidakis1 university of crete abstract in the present study faithfulness and truncation in language acquisition are investigated. the data come from pictures naming and spontaneous speech produced by four greek-speaking children aged 1;6.26 to 2;10.9 years old. our hypotheses are based on words containing two to five syllables. from the beginning of the research only disyllabic words remain faithful to the number of syllables, while the remaining words are initially truncated and are gradually uttered more and more accurate as children’s linguistic development proceeds. words with faithfulness are not affected by the position of stress and type of rhythm. in truncations, the stressed syllable is maintained in the majority of cases. generally, rhythm remains stable, even in tokens where the stressed syllable is omitted. truncations also show that children construct their words from strong to weak elements, namely, from stressed syllable and strong foot to weak foot or syllable. our analysis is couched in optimality theory framework (prince & smolensky, 1993), while for the different patterns observed in children’s tokens we rely on multiple parallel grammars model (revithiadou & tzakosta, 2004), where different rankings of the same constraints relative to prosody and structure of prosodic word can interpret the aforementioned observations. keywords: language acquisition, faithfulness and truncation in greek, prosody, phonology, optimality theory 1. introduction a non-controversial hypothesis is that children tend to acquire unmarked structures before marked ones (e.g., jakobson, 1968). for example, cv syllable is followed by cvc syllable, then ccvc and ccvcc structures arise if they are allowed by the target language (e.g., lleó & prinz, 1997). a well documented linguistic period of children is when they pass from monosyllabic productions to disyllabic ones creating this way binary feet, which constitute minimal prosodic words (see, demuth, 1995, p. 14; broselow, 2008, p. 122, among others). however, not enough discussions after the stabilization of words composed of binary feet are traced, that is, researches dealing with polysyllabic words in child speech, the handling of which seems to be a difficult task for children to overcome. this is the reason why in such kind of words several phonological processes emerge, such as the deletion or addition of syllables, the alternation of rhythm pattern, the substitution of segments. while these processes have been reported in studies by researchers, there is disagreement on the cause of their appearance. some researchers argue that they take place in specific positions of words, which are considered perceptually prominent due to 1 anastasios poulidakis is a ph.d. candidate student at the university of crete. his research interests include first and second language acquisition, language development and language learning mostly from a phonological perspective. contact: philp0824@philology.uoc.gr received : 06.01.2023 accepted : 24.02.2023 published : 18.03.2023 doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7748230 mailto:philp0824@philology.uoc.gr https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7748230 faithfulness vs truncation in greek children poulidakis 681 properties they bear, as pitch, amplitude, while others point out that they arise due to characteristics of the ambient language, such as its rhythm pattern (e.g., demuth & fee, 1995; pater, 1997; smith, 2002). the present study addresses truncation in children’s polysyllabic words from a prosodic point of view based on properties of its emergence as well as cases with faithfulness. we focus, in particular, on the following questions: 1. regarding the number of syllables, which words are systematically uttered faithfully and which ones are usually deleted? 2. in which degree are these processes affected by the position of stress or type of rhythm? 3. in truncations, how many syllables are omitted and what type of syllables regarding their strength and position survive? 4. how many strategies are observed in children’s omissions and how frequent are they? further, do they present variation in their speech, namely, production of multiple outputs that correspond to one input. 5. how do the children of the present study construct polysyllabic words during their linguistic development? the structure of the paper is divided as follows: next, literature review of polysyllabic words is presented. section 2 includes the research methodology. section 3 includes the findings of our study and discussion of data. further, the analysis of the children’s productions based on optimality theory (prince & smolensky, 1993) is shown. for the different patterns traced in children’s tokens and for their variation, we adopt the multiple parallel grammars model (revithiadou & tzakosta, 2004). in the last section, we conclude the paper with the main findings of this study and suggestions for future research. 1.1. literature review most studies focus on the process of truncation in children’s multisyllabic words. in some of them, children’s utterances contain only one syllable (examples 1a c). adult’s output  child’s output child: age (1) a. [pɪˈænəʊ]  [pʊ] (piano) kyle: 1;2 (english, johnson et al., 1997, p. 336) b. [ótobus]  [bú] (bus) or: 1;4 1;5 (hebrew, adam, 2002, p. 65) c. [ˈγa.ta]  [ˈγa] (cat) b2: 1;10 (greek, revithiadou & tzakosta, 2004, p. 380) in (1a), the segments surviving deletion are the first and last. this is in accordance with slobin’s (1973) proposal, who mentions that crosslinguistically children tend to pay more attention to elements located at edgemost syllables. in (1b), the final syllable is retained, while in (1c) the initial syllable, which is the stressed. stressed syllables and those located in initial or final position in words are considered psycholinguistically journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 680-705, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 682 prominent (e.g., slobin, 1973; nooteboom, 1981; hawkins & cutler, 1988; pater, 1997; beckman, 1997, 1998; barnes, 2002; smith, 2002; zoll, 2004; petrova et al., 2006; tzakosta, 2007; jurgec, 2010). in language acquisition, prominent positions block or resist phonological processes and, generally, present both positional and segmental faithfulness (see, beckman, 1997; zoll, 2004; bat-el, 2014; ben-david & bat-el, 2017, among others). stressed syllables’ strength lies in their higher pitch, duration and loudness, while final syllables are also loud as well as more memorable and marked, especially, in sentence boundaries (e.g., lehiste, 1970; laver, 1994; echols, 2001). further, the latter undergo lengthening, which is exaggerated in infants’ directed speech (echols, 2001). so, in several studies the children omit weak syllables, such as unstressed and non-final, rather than stressed and final (e.g., echols & newport, 1992; kehoe & stoel-gammon, 1997; echols, 2001; ben-david, 2012; ben-david & bat-el, 2017), as illustrated in the next examples (2a d). adult’s output  child’s output child: age (2) a. [iraisǝr]  [raisǝ] (eraser) (english, echols & newport, 1992, p. 206) b. [dáinosar]  [dáisar] (dinosaur) female: 1;10 (english, kehoe & stoel-gammon, 1997, p. 535) c. [agalá]  [alá] (stroller) da: 1;1 d. [télefon]  [téfo] (telephone) da: 1;1 (hebrew, ben-david, 2012, p. 65) in some languages, as hebrew, when children begin to produce more and more syllables in multisyllabic words, these do not surface immediately with faithfulness but with consonant harmony (bat-el, 2009), in which nonadjacent consonants agree to some or all distinctive features (cf., pater & werle, 2001, p. 119). this cost of faithfulness for the expansion of a word is viewed as a trade off (cf., bat-el, 2009, p. 121). since stress is mostly located in ultimate or penultimate in hebrew, the first syllables uttered by children are the stressed and final resulting in the expansion of the prosodic word from right to left (bat-el, 2009; ben-david, 2012), as shown from example (3). adult’s form  child’s form (3) [tarneˈgolet]  [ˈgoget] > [ˈgolet] > [gaˈgolet] > [taˈgolet] (hen) (hebrew, bat-el, 2009, p. 121) in hungarian however, where primary stress is located in initial syllable, the opposite can happen as final syllables are omitted. in addition, they usually undergo deletion when an unstressed syllable precedes, while retained when they follow a stressed syllable (macwhinney, 1985). this difference is possibly attributed to the fact that stress acts as signal, which facilitates children’s attention to the next syllables (du preez, 1974). in early stages of prosodic development, children’s utterances are observed to conform to a specific size, such as binary foot (e.g., fikkert, faithfulness vs truncation in greek children poulidakis 683 1994; demuth, 1995). truncation at these periods serves as a strategy to fit productions of children to templates via the deletion of syllables located outside the aforementioned structure (kappa, 2002; taelman & gillis, 2002; ota, 2006). indicative examples are provided next (4a c). adult’s form  child’s form child: age (4) a. [xriˈsula]  [ˈsula] (xrisoula, name) sofia: 2;9.15 (greek, kappa, 2002, p. 20) b. [kaˈbɑutǝr]  [ˈbɑutǝ] (gnome) maa: 1;10.14 (dutch, taelman & gillis, 2002, p. 1) c. [omoi]  [moi] (heavy) ryo: 2;0.15 (japanese, ota, 2006, p. 276) tokens such as (4a c) represent the rhythm pattern of each language, as in trochaic a pretonic syllable has more chances to be deleted, while in iambic a posttonic one (ota, 2006). however, exceptions are traced, where children’s preferences are not affected by language-specific properties. in hebrew, for instance, disyllabic words with iambic stress are uttered as monosyllabic for longer period than the corresponding with trochaic stress (examples 5a b), despite iambic foot being more frequent in this language (adam & bat-el, 2008, 2009). in addition, at later stages when disyllabic words with trochaic stress are produced with faithfulness regarding the number of syllables (example 5c), the corresponding with iambic stress continue to be produced as monosyllabic (example 5d). adult’s form  child’s form child: age (5) a. [sáfta]  [ta] (grandma) child: 1;2 1;3.5 b. [todá]  [dá] (thanks) child: 1;2 1;3.5 c. [túci]  [kúci] (parrot) child: 1;3.14 1;4.24 d. [kapít]  [tík] (spoon) child: 1;3.14 1;4.24 (hebrew, adam & bat-el, 2008, p. 13) this contrast lies in markedness. in other words, hebrew-speaking children in initial developmental phases prefer trochaic feet, which are universally unmarked and gradually they change their preference to the systematic foot presented in the ambient language, namely, iambic (adam & bat-el, 2008, 2009). in truncations, intra child and intra word variation is additionally found. in a survey examining a dutch-speaking child (taelman & gillis, 2002), inconsistency in words with specific prosodic pattern is observed, as for instance, in trisyllabic words with ultimate stress (examples 6a c). adult’s form  child’s form child: age (6) a. [pɑpǝˈγɑj]  [pɑpǝˈγɑj] (parrot) maa: 1;10.10 b. [ʃɔkoˈlɑt]  [lεˈlɑt] (chocolate) maa: 1;10.10 c. [telǝˈfon]  [ˈfon] (telephone) maa: 1;10.10 (dutch, taelman & gillis, 2002, p. 2) journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 680-705, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 684 from the tokens (6a c), it can be ascertained that trisyllabic words are truncated to monosyllabic, disyllabic or remain faithful to their syllable size. further, the same word can be uttered in multiple different ways even in the same recording (examples 7a c). adult’s form  child’s form child: age (7) a. [ʃɔkoˈlɑt]  [ǝtǝˈlat] (chocolate) maa: 1;10.10 b. [ʃɔkoˈlɑt]  [lεˈlɑt] (chocolate) maa: 1;10.10 c. [ʃɔkoˈlɑt]  [ˈlɑt] (chocolate) maa: 1;10.10 (dutch, taelman & gillis, 2002, p. 2) generally, the emergence of variation in the process of truncation is proposed to be either free or affected by the properties of the target language (ota, 2006). finally, input frequency is also suggested to play a decisive role in the degree of variation in truncations, as it may determine the size and shape of the words that will appear more frequently than others (demuth & johnson, 2003). 2. methodology 2.1. information of children’s and way of their data collection the process used for the data collection of all children is the same. before its prosecution, all parents provided verbal and written consent. children came in contact with the researcher before recordings in order for both sides to be familiarized with each other. the meetings usually took place between researcher and children in colorful and rooms full of toys or in the yard of kindergartens in order for them to feel comfortable and their productions to not come from haste or lack of concentration. basic tool for the research is the professional tape recorder marantz pmd661mkii, while the data were longitudinal and gathered via spontaneous speech and naming of pictures that were shown to children via a laptop. these pictures were drawn from another study in greek child speech (kappa & paracheraki, 2014) with some modifications for the needs of the present one, which included everyday words, such as foods, plants, animals, professions, vehicles, buildings, household utensils. they were created in a way to give children the chance to utter all types of consonants, consonantal clusters and vowels in every position within a word (initial, medial, final stressed or unstressed syllable). the children’s speech was recorded on a weekly basis. the duration of research lasted 15 months, while each recording ranged from 15 to 30 minutes for every child. we base our findings on four monolingual children with typical linguistic development and standard modern greek as their mother tongue. their age varies from 1;6.26 to 2;10.9 years old. in total, 35.677 tokens were gathered, from which 14.554 are included in the present study. audacity software was used for the reproduction, processing and conversion of audio material into phonetic tokens, while microsoft office word for the organization of the tokens. the transcription was done perceptually. for this reason, we include data with high certainty of children’s utterances. for the phonetic rendering of words, the international phonetic alphabet is used. faithfulness vs truncation in greek children poulidakis 685 2.2. data included and processing as far as children’s linguistic development is concerned, it is divided in two developmental stages. in the initial stage, that is, till 2;0 years old children’s productions are mostly unmarked and the majority of words contain two cvcv syllables. in the intermediate phase, namely, after 2;0 years old, more marked structures arise, such as consonantal clusters, consonants in coda position, consonants specified as fricative and liquid, trisyllabic and longer words, which have been proposed to mark the transition of the initial to the intermediate phase (see for greek, kappa, 2000, 2009; tzakosta, 2003; tzakosta & kappa, 2008, among others). it should be clarified at this point the type of data included in this study. the children’s tokens are examined from a prosodic point of view. so, only those presenting segmental faithfulness between input and output form have been taken into consideration. in addition, following the methodology of some researchers (e.g., echols & newport, 1992; johnson et al., 1997; ota, 2006), an output form is considered faithful if the number of its syllables matches the corresponding of adult’s on a phoneme by phoneme basis and truncated if it contains fewer. indicative examples are provided next (8a f). adult’s form  child’s form child: age (8) a. [ˈtu.to]  [ˈtu.to] (this) c12: 1;8.15 b. [ˈba.la]  [ˈba] (ball) c1: 1;8.16 c. [a.ˈfto]  [ˈfto] (this) c1: 1;10.10 d. [a.ˈfto]  [ˈto] (this) c1: 1;8.15 e. [ˈpar.to]  [ˈpa.to] ((you) take (it)) c1: 1;10.5 f. [ˈval.to]  [ˈbal.to] ((you) put (it)) c1: 2;6.24 instances such as (8a c) have been included, while (8d f) have been excluded although they can be classified as truncated token (8d) and faithful ones (8e f) regarding the number of syllables. however, in this study we want the tokens to preserve additionally the number of their segments along with their distinctive features and, generally, to take into account as simple as possible cases of faithfulness and truncation. 3. findings and discussion in both stages we proceed from general observations to specific ones. first, the data of the initial developmental stage are presented. all the children produce 1,808 tokens, which are classified as follows (table 1). table 1 initial stage words child 2σ3 3σ 4σ 5σ p d p d d d c1 464 (96.7%) 16 (3.3%) 15 (4%) 363 (96%) 2 (100%) c2 128 (92.8%) 10 (7.2%) 3 (6.5%) 43 (93.5%) 2 c: child. 3 2σ: disyllabic words, 3σ: trisyllabic words and so on. p: preservation. d: deletion. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 680-705, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 686 c3 703 (97.5%) 18 (2.5%) 1 (4%) 24 (96%) 1 (100%) 3 (100%) c4 12 (100%) 1 (50%) 1 (50%) sum 1,307 (96.7%) 44 (3.3%) 20 (4.4%) 431 (95.6%) 3 (100%) 3 (100%) to begin with, in all the children most words contain two syllables at this stage. trisyllabic and longer words are rare with exception of c1 trisyllabic words. however, only disyllabic words remain almost always faithful, while trisyllabic and longer ones are systematically truncated. in the next table (2), they are divided based on the position of stress to see the degree of its effect in children utterances. table 2 initial stage words based on position of stress child 2σ s14 2σ s2 3σ s1 3σ s2 3σ s3 4σ s3 5σ s3 p d p d p d p d p d d c1 142 (92.2%) 12 (7.8%) 322 (98.8%) 4 (1.2%) 11 (100%) 14 (3.8%) 352 (96.2%) 1 (100%) 2 (100%) c2 100 (95.2%) 5 (4.8%) 28 (84.8%) 5 (15.2%) 3 (60%) 2 (40%) 41 (100%) c3 449 (97.4%) 12 (2.6%) 254 (97.7%) 6 (2.3%) 1 (4%) 24 (96%) 1 (100%) 3 (100%) c4 10 (100%) 2 (100%) 1 (50%) 1 (50%) sum 701 (96%) 29 (4%) 606 (97.6%) 15 (2.4%) 3 (18.8%) 13 (81.2%) 16 (3.7%) 418 (96.3%) 1 (100%) 3 (100%) 3 (100%) according to table (2), the rhythm does not seem to play any role. more specifically, disyllabic words with trochaic or iambic stress are equally preserved (examples 9a h). adult’s form  child’s form child: age (9) a. [ˈba.la]  [ˈba.la] (ball) c1: 1;8.15 b. [ˈba.ɲo]  [ˈba.ɲo] (bathroom) c2: 1;10.24 c. [ˈci.ta]  [ˈci.ta] ((you) look) c3: 1;7.8 d. [ˈpa.li]  [ˈpa.li] (again) c4: 1;9.6 e. [e.ˈðo]  [e.ˈðo] (here) c1: 1;9.14 f. [ma.ˈma]  [ma.ˈma] (mother) c2: 1;10.5 g. [pa.ˈpu]  [pa.ˈpu] (grandfather) c3: 1;7.23 h. [ba.ˈba]  [ba.ˈba] (father) c4: 1;9.8 from the trisyllabic words, those with stress in second position are discussed, since we have enough data from three children (c1 c3). they tend to leave one syllable unuttered in quite high degree (examples 10a c). adult’s form  child’s form child: age (10) a. [pa.ˈpa.ci]  [pa.ˈpa] (duck, diminutive) c1: 1;8.15 b. [pa.ˈpa.ci]  [pa.ˈpa] (duck, diminutive) c2: 1;9.5 4 s: stress. for example, 2σ s1 means a disyllabic word with stress in initial syllable as [ˈpa.li] (again). we count the position of syllables from left to right. faithfulness vs truncation in greek children poulidakis 687 c. [pa.ˈpa.ci]  [pa.ˈpa] (duck, diminutive) c3: 1;7.14 so far, from the treatment of disyllabic and trisyllabic words, it is concluded that the children have established in their linguistic system the cvcv structure and they seem to be at the stage in which their tokens are considered minimal words composed of binary feet (demuth, 1995; broselow, 2008). quadrisyllabic and pentasyllabic words are not discussed, since the data at this stage are few to deduce any generalizations. in the below table (3), truncated disyllabic and trisyllabic words are classified. table 3 initial stage truncated words child 2σ s1 2σ s2 3σ s1 3σ s2 p1 p2 ?5 p1 p2 ? p1,2 ? p1,2 p2,3 p3 ? c1 11 (91.7%) 1 (8.3%) 1 (25%) 3 (75%) 7 (63.6%) 4 (36.4%) 339 (96.3%) 13 (3.7%) c2 5 (100%) 4 (80%) 1 (20%) 2 (100%) 30 (73.2%) 1 (2.4%) 2 (4.9%) 8 (19.5%) c3 11 (91.7%) 1 (8.3%) 3 (50%) 2 (33.3%) 1 (16.7%) 20 (83.3%) 4 (16.7%) c4 1 (100%) sum 27 (93.1%) 1 (3.4%) 1 (3.4%) 3 (20%) 7 (46.7%) 5 (33.3%) 7 (53.8%) 6 (46.2%) 389 (93.1%) 1 (0.2%) 2 (0.5%) 26 (6.2%) we do not have a sufficient number of tokens in many categories of children in table (3). in disyllabic words with trochaic stress of c1 and c3, where a fair amount of tokens is observed, the stressed syllable is preserved in almost all truncations (examples 11a d). adult’s form  child’s form child: age (11) a. [ˈo.çi]  [ˈo] (no) c1: 1;8.15 b. [ˈtu.to]  [ˈtu] (this) c1: 1;10.22 c. [ˈba.la]  [ˈba] (ball) c3: 1;7.7 d. [ˈi.ne]  [ˈi] ((he / she / it) is) c3: 1;9.3 the stressed syllable is preferred over the unstressed one, as it is considered strong and psycholinguistically prominent position for the reasons mentioned in previous section (e.g., pater, 1997; smith, 2002; tzakosta, 2007). in addition, these few monosyllabic utterances are assumed to be relics from a previous stage of the children, which in the literature is called sub-minimal stage and includes only unmarked cv syllables (demuth, 1995, p. 16). most truncations in three children (c1 c3) are ascertained in trisyllabic words with stress in second position (examples 12a c). adult’s form  child’s form child: age (12) a. [pa.{ˈpa.ci}6]  [pa.ˈpa] (duck, diminutive) c1: 1;10.5 5 ?: denotes cases, in which the position of produced syllables cannot be easily distinguished, as in tokens with two consecutive identical syllables (for example, [ma.ˈma]  [ma] (mother), [ˈko.ko.ɾas]  [ko] (rooster)). journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 680-705, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 688 b. [pa.{ˈpa.ci}]  [pa.ˈpa] (duck, diminutive) c2: 1;10.22 c. [pa.{ˈpa.ci}]  [pa.ˈpa] (duck, diminutive) c3: 1;9.16 in (12a c), the stability of stress and deletion of the final syllable changes the trochaic foot into iambic. this is unexpected given that greek is a trochaic language that builds its trochees from right to left (tzakosta, 2002), while the trochaic rhythm constitutes the unmarked pattern of stress (tzakosta, 1999). however, all the cases (389) traced at this stage constitute utterances of one word, namely, [pa.ˈpa.ci]. this word is proposed to have been stored in children’s mental lexicon in a specific way so as to conform with their current grammar, in which three syllable words have not yet been established resulting in its regular emergence as [pa.ˈpa]. thus, the rhythm is not clear if it affects truncations in the initial stage of the children, as we cannot reach to safe conclusions based on one word. moving on to the intermediate developmental phase, 12,746 tokens are listed, as illustrated in table (4). table 4 intermediate stage words child 2σ 3σ 4σ 5σ p d p d p d p d c1 1,973 (95.3%) 97 (4.7%) 453 (78.4%) 125 (21.6%) 70 (83.3%) 14 (16.7%) 12 (31.6%) 26 (68.4%) c2 2,064 (92.8%) 161 (7.2%) 243 (66.6%) 122 (33.4%) 3 (16.7%) 15 (83.3%) 3 (100%) c3 3,789 (95.4%) 183 (4.6%) 902 (94.8%) 49 (5.2%) 299 (89.5%) 35 (10.5%) 35 (46.7%) 40 (53.3%) c4 1,531 (82.2%) 332 (17.8%) 135 (84.9%) 24 (15.1%) 4 (36.4%) 7 (63.6%) sum 9,357 (92.4%) 773 (7.6%) 1,733 (84.4%) 320 (15.6%) 376 (84.1%) 71 (15.9%) 47 (40.5%) 69 (59.5%) at first glance, all the children utter more words containing two to four syllables. moreover, disyllabic words continue to remain faithful regarding their number of syllables in high rate. on the other hand, the handling of trisyllabic words changes here, as the children keep them intact most of the times. two children (c1, c3) manage to preserve in the majority of cases even quadrisyllabic words. concerning pentasyllabic words, almost all of them come from the same two children (c1, c3), who seem to need more time in order for structures of such length to be acquired. next table (5a) provides in detail the treatment of disyllabic and trisyllabic words in relation to stress. table 5a intermediate stage disyllabic and trisyllabic words based on position of stress child 2σ s1 2σ s2 3σ s1 3σ s2 3σ s3 p d p d p d p d p d c1 1,258 (95.7%) 57 (4.3%) 715 (94.7%) 40 (5.3%) 172 (93.5%) 12 (6.5%) 264 (72.5%) 100 (27.5%) 17 (56.7%) 13 (43.3%) c2 1,526 (96.6%) 53 (3.4%) 538 (83.3%) 108 (16.7%) 164 (87.2%) 24 (12.8%) 76 (44.2%) 96 (55.8%) 3 (60%) 2 (40%) 6 {...}: indicates the boundaries of binary foot. what we consider foot is explained in the truncations of trisyllabic and longer words in the intermediate phase. faithfulness vs truncation in greek children poulidakis 689 c3 2,688 (96.4%) 99 (3.6%) 1,101 (92.9%) 84 (7.1%) 326 (96.7%) 11 (3.3%) 530 (94%) 34 (6%) 46 (92%) 4 (8%) c4 1,022 (78%) 289 (22%) 509 (92.2%) 43 (7.8%) 68 (91.9%) 6 (8.1%) 67 (78.8%) 18 (21.2%) sum 6,494 (92.9%) 498 (7.1%) 2,863 (91.2%) 275 (8.8%) 730 (93.2%) 53 (6.8%) 937 (79.1%) 248 (20.9%) 66 (77.6%) 19 (22.4%) the position of stress and, generally, rhythm does not play any role, as disyllabic words with trochaic or iambic foot are equally preserved. furthermore, when trisyllabic words begin to emerge more often in children’s speech, then all their syllables are maintained irrespective of tonic pattern (examples 13a l). trisyllabic words with stressed syllable located in second position of c2 constitute the only exception (only 44.2% preservation), but they cannot override the generalizations deduced for two and three syllable words. adult’s form  child’s form child: age (13) a. [ˈspi.ti]  [ˈspi.ti] (house) c1: 2;4.8 b. [ˈte.se.ɾa]  [ˈte.se.ɾa] (four) c1: 2;7.7 c. [vi.ˈvli.a]  [vi.ˈvli.a] (books) c1: 2;8 d. [bu.ˈfan]  [bu.ˈfan] (jacket) c2: 2;7.7 e. [ˈme.li.sa]  [ˈme.li.sa] (bee) c2: 2;7.7 f. [ka.na.ˈpes]  [ka.na.ˈpes] (couch) c2: 2;4.17 g. [ˈma.tҫa]  [ˈma.tҫa] (eyes) c3: 2;3 h. [ka.ˈɾo.tsҫa]  [ka.ˈɾo.tsҫa] (buggies) c3: 2;3.9 i. [ma.kri.ˈa]  [ma.kri.ˈa] (far) c3: 2;7.4 j. [e.ˈðo]  [e.ˈðo] (here) c4: 2;3.15 k. [ˈe.pe.se]  [ˈe.pe.se] ((he / she / it) fell) c4: 2;5.8 l. [pa.ˈta.tes]  [pa.ˈta.tes] (potatoes) c4: 2;9.12 quadrisyllabic and pentasyllabic words are represented below (table 5b). table 5b intermediate stage quadrisyllabic and pentasyllabic words based on position of stress child 4σ s2 4σ s3 4σ s4 5σ s3 5σ s4 p d p d d p d p d c1 20 (87%) 3 (13%) 50 (82%) 11 (18%) 9 (50%) 9 (50%) 3 (15%) 17 (85%) c2 2 (28.6%) 5 (71.4%) 1 (10%) 9 (90%) 1 (100%) 2 (100%) 1 (100%) c3 79 (91.9%) 7 (8.1%) 220 (88.7%) 28 (11.3%) 30 (52.6%) 27 (47.4%) 5 (27.8%) 13 (72.2%) c4 4 (40%) 6 (60%) 1 (100%) sum 101 (87.1%) 15 (12.9%) 275 (83.6%) 54 (16.4%) 2 (100%) 39 (50.6%) 38 (49.4%) 8 (20.5%) 31 (79.5%) journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 680-705, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 690 according to table (5b), if the children produce quadrisyllabic words faithfully (c1, c3), then they do so regardless of stress being in second or third position. the same applies to the children who systematically omit syllables in quadrisyllabic words (c2). pentasyllabic words do not differ, as they have not been established yet in the linguistic system of all the children, resulting in the omission of one or more syllables. representative examples are provided below (14a l). adult’s form  child’s form child: age (14) a. [ti.ˈle.fo.no]  [ti.ˈle.fo.no] (telephone) c1: 2;10.2 b. [ar.ku.ˈða.ci]  [ar.ku.ˈða.ci] (bear, diminutive) c1: 2;10.9 c. [a.fto.ˈci.ni.to]  [a.fto.ˈci.ni.to] (car) c1: 2;9.25 d. [ko.ˈto.pu.lo]  [ko.ˈto.pu] (chicken) c2: 2;6.12 e. [ar.ku.ˈða.ci]  [ku.ˈða.ci] (bear, diminutive) c2: 2;8.7 f. [a.e.ɾo.ˈpla.no]  [ˈpla.no] (airplane) c2: 2;8.7 g. [ma.ˈze.vu.me]  [ma.ˈze.vu.me] ((we) clear up) c3: 2;3.9 h. [a.fto.ˈko.li.ta]  [a.fto.ˈko.li.ta] (stickers) c3: 2;5.30 i. [a.e.ɾo.ˈpla.no]  [ɾo.ˈpla.no] (airplane) c3: 2;6.27 j. [por.to.ˈka.li]  [ˈka.li] (orange) c4: 2;2.16 k. [γu.ɾu.ˈna.ca]  [ˈna.ca] (pigs, diminutive) c4: 2;6.13 l. [ar.ku.ˈða.ci]  [ku.ˈða.ci] (bear, diminutive) c4: 2;6.20 at this point, the properties of truncations in the children’s data are discussed beginning from disyllabic words (table 6a). table 6a intermediate stage truncated disyllabic words child 2σ s1 2σ s2 p1 p2 p1 p2 ? c1 41 (71.9%) 16 (28.1%) 40 (100%) c2 44 (83%) 9 (17%) 108 (100%) c3 52 (52.5%) 47 (47.5%) 6 (7.1%) 77 (91.7%) 1 (1.2%) c4 276 (95.5%) 13 (4.5%) 1 (2.3%) 37 (86.1%) 5 (11.6%) sum 413 (82.9%) 85 (17.1%) 7 (2.5%) 262 (95.3%) 6 (2.2%) in truncated disyllabic words, the children keep mostly the stressed syllable in both trochees and iambs, which is expected, since it is considered as strong and prominent position (e.g., pater, 1997; smith, 2002; tzakosta, 2007). so, tokens as (15a d) are more frequent than others, in which the unstressed syllable is preserved (15e h). adult’s form  child’s form child: age (15) a. [ˈspi.ti]  [ˈspi] (house) c1: 2;7.7 b. [ˈtri.a]  [ˈtri] (three) c2: 2;7.7 c. [a.ˈftos]  [ˈftos] (him) c3: 2;3.21 d. [e.ˈsi]  [ˈsi] (you) c4: 2;4.28 e. [ˈe.çi]  [çi] ((he / she / it) has) c1: 2;5.1 f. [ˈi.ða]  [ða] ((i) saw) c2: 2;8.21 faithfulness vs truncation in greek children poulidakis 691 g. [kli.ˈði]  [kli] (key) c3: 2;6.13 h. [mo.ˈɾo]  [mo] (baby) c4: 2;4.28 the omissions of one or more syllables in trisyllabic words are represented next (table 6b). table 6b intermediate stage truncated trisyllabic words child 3σ s1 3σ s2 3σ s3 p1,2 p2,3 p1,3 p1 p3 ? p1,2 p2,3 p1,3 p1 p2 ? p1,2 p2,3 p1,3 p3 c1 8 (66.7%) 1 (8.3%) 2 (16.7%) 1 (8.3%) 82 (82%) 15 (15%) 1 (1%) 2 (2%) 12 (92.3%) 1 (7.7%) c2 14 (58.3%) 2 (8.3%) 7 (29.2%) 1 (4.2%) 30 (31.3%) 49 (51%) 12 (12.5%) 1 (1%) 3 (3.1%) 1 (1%) 2 (100%) c3 4 (36.4%) 6 (54.5%) 1 (9.1%) 12 (35.3%) 13 (38.2%) 8 (23.5%) 1 (3%) 2 (50%) 2 (50%) c4 3 (50%) 1 (16.7%) 2 (33.3%) 6 (33.3%) 10 (55.5%) 1 (5.6%) 1 (5.6%) sum 29 (54.7%) 3 (5.6%) 8 (15.1%) 10 (18.9%) 2 (3.8%) 1 (1.9%) 130 (52.4%) 87 (35.1%) 14 (5.7%) 10 (4%) 3 (1.2%) 4 (1.6%) 2 (10.5%) 2 (10.5%) 14 (73.7%) 1 (5.3%) first, in each category of trisyllabic words the stressed syllable in the majority of cases is included in the truncated outputs. another observation is that the children omit usually one syllable rather than two, thereby creating a binary foot (examples 16a j). adult’s form  child’s form child: age (16) a. [{ˈpro.va.}to]  [ˈpro.va] (sheep) c1: 2;9.18 b. [{ˈci.tri.}ni]  [ˈci.tri] (yellow, feminine) c2: 2;4.29 c. [{ˈe.fi.}ʝe]  [ˈe.fi] ((he / she / it) left) c3: 2;2.26 d. [{ˈa.lo.}γo]  [ˈa.lo] (horse) c4: 2;7.6 e. [ʎo.{ˈda.ɾi}]  [ˈda.ɾi] (lion) c1: 2;5.6 f. [vi.{ˈvli.o}]  [ˈvli.o] (book) c2: 2;7.7 g. [fi.{ˈsa.i}]  [ˈsa.i] ((he / she / it) blows) c3: 2;7.11 h. [tra.{ˈpe.zi}]  [ˈpe.zi] (table) c4: 2;9.12 i. [ma.{la.ˈko}]  [la.ˈko] (soft, neutral) c3: 2;2.3 j. [a.{pa.ˈlo}]  [pa.ˈlo] (soft, neutral) c3: 2;2.3 according to hayes (1982), the foot can contain up to two syllables, while selkirk (1981) claims that it contains up to three. in the present study, we adopt the former view assuming that if the foot includes three syllables, then children’s trisyllabic words should bear higher percentages of preservation, especially in early stage, since they have the tendency to use strategies in order for feet to be created rather than to alter them. further, the foot that contains only one syllable is called degenerate (kappa, to appear, p. 166). returning to children’s trisyllabic words, they do not always delete the unstressed syllable located outside of the strong foot. however, what is most important for them is the preservation of the rhythm pattern. this position is observed in tokens where a syllable traced inside the strong foot is omitted (examples 17a h). it should be noted though that cases with deletion of a syllable within the strong foot are few. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 680-705, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 692 adult’s form  child’s form child: age (17) a. [{ˈko.ci.}no]  [ˈko.no] (red, neutral) c2: 2;7.7 b. [{ˈa.lo.}γο]  [ˈa.γο] (horse) c4: 2;3.20 c. [{ˈe.xu.}me]  [ˈxu.me] ((we) have) c1: 2;10.2 d. [{ˈxa.la.}se]  [ˈla.se] ((it) broke) c2: 2;9.18 e. [ko.{ˈli.so}]  [ˈko.so] ((i to) stick (it)) c1: 2;9.25 f. [vi.{ˈvli.o}]  [ˈvi.o] (book) c4: 2;3.20 g. [ko.{pe.ˈʎa}]  [ko.ˈpe] (lass) c3: 2;5.30 h. [a.{le.ˈpu}]  [a.ˈle] (fox) c3: 2;7.18 the rhythm remains the same either from the stability of stress (examples 17a b) or from its movement to a nearby syllable that will not change it (examples 17c h). the only exception to this generalization is observed in trisyllabic words with stress in second position of c1, where its stability turns trochees into iambs (examples 18a c). despite these cases being the majority in this specific child (82 tokens, 82%), they cannot override the general pattern ascertained in the handling of trisyllabic words in the intermediate developmental phase of all the children. adult’s form  child’s form child: age (18) a. [ɾo.{ˈlo.i}]  [ɾo.ˈlo] (clock) c1: 2;5.1 b. [a.{ˈma.ksi}]  [a.ˈma] (car) c1: 2;8.14 c. [vi.{ˈvli.o}]  [vi.ˈvli] (book) c1: 2;9.25 finally, a few monosyllabic tokens continue to appear, which is a reminder that they count as relics of a previous stage, where the children’s utterances contain only cv syllables (examples 19a d). adult’s form  child’s form child: age (19) a. [ˈʝi.γa.das]  [ˈʝi] (giant) c1: 2;8.28 b. [a.ˈxla.ði]  [ˈxla] (pear) c2: 2;7.23 c. [ˈbe.nu.ne]  [ˈbe] ((they) go in) c3: 2;4.28 d. [ˈko.ci.no]  [ˈkο] (red, neutral) c4: 2;7.13 another category of truncated words examined in children’s speech is quadrisyllabic. those with stress in fourth position are not included in the discussion, since we have only two tokens (table 6c). table 6c intermediate stage truncated quadrisyllabic words child 4σ s2 4σ s3 p1,2,3 p1,2,4 p1,3,4 p2,3,4 p1,2 p2,3 p3,4 p2 p1,2,3 p1,3,4 p2,3,4 p1,2 p1,4 p3,4 p1 ? c1 2 (66.7%) 1 (33.3%) 9 (81.8%) 1 (9.1%) 1 (9.1%) c2 2 (40%) 1 (20%) 2 (40%) 1 (11.1%) 1 (11.1%) 1 (11.1%) 1 (11.1%) 5 (55.6%) c3 2 (28.5%) 1 (14.3%) 1 (14.3%) 1 (14.3%) 1 (14.3%) 1 (14.3%) 7 (25%) 12 (42.9%) 3 (10.7%) 1 (3.6%) 2 (7.1%) 3 (10.7%) c4 1 (16.6%) 1 (16.6%) 1 (16.6%) 3 (50%) faithfulness vs truncation in greek children poulidakis 693 sum 6 (40%) 2 (13.3%) 1 (6.6%) 1 (6.6%) 1 (6.6%) 2 (13.3%) 1 (6.6%) 1 (6.6%) 18 (33.3%) 2 (3.7%) 14 (25.9%) 4 (7.4%) 1 (1.9%) 10 (18.5%) 2 (3.7%) 3 (5.6%) before the examination of the relevant tokens, it should be mentioned here how feet in quadrisyllabic words with stress in antepenultimate are constructed. for this reason, we adopt the proposal of extrametricality (hayes, 1981, p. 118), which is used for the preservation of binary foot as basic structure and the handling of stress in antepenultimate words. based on extrametricality, the edgemost syllables of such words are not visible in the metrical rules of language and as a result they do not count in the building of foot. as far as truncated quadrisyllabic words are concerned, their properties are similar to those of trisyllabic words. in particular, the syllables occupying the strong foot are uttered most of the times, while an extrametrical syllable is usually deleted (examples 20a c). adult’s form  child’s form child: age (20) a. [te.{ˈli.o.}san]  [te.{ˈli.o}] ((they) were finished) c1: 2;8.14 b. [ti.{ˈle.fo.}no]  [ˈle.fo] (telephone) c2: 2;10.9 c. [a.{ˈni.γu.}ne]  [{ˈni.γu.}ne] ((they) are opening) c3: 2;5.30 the same holds for quadrisyllabic words with penultimate stress where extrametricality is not applied. so, strong foot is preserved and syllables within the weak foot or the entire weak foot are usually omitted (examples 21a c). adult’s form  child’s form child: age (21) a. [{i.o.}{ˈa.na}]  [i.{ˈa.na}] (ioanna, name) c1: 2;6.12 b. [{pe.ta.}{ˈlu.ða}]  [ˈlu.ða] (butterfly) c2: 2;9.25 c. [{pi.θi.}{ˈka.ci}]  [θi.{ˈka.ci}] (ape, diminutive) c3: 2;2.3 the rhythm constitutes one more common feature between three and four syllable words, which remains stable in tokens where the unuttered syllable is located inside the strong foot (examples 22a g). adult’s form  child’s form child: age (22) a. [e.{ˈle.fa.}das]  [e.{ˈle.das}] (elephant) c1: 2;5.6 b. [e.{ˈle.fa.}das]  [e.{ˈle.das}] (elephant) c2: 2;9.25 c. [{la.γu.}{ˈða.ci}]  [ˈla.ci] (hare, diminutive) c2: 2;5.1 d. [e.{ˈle.fa.}das]  [{ˈe.fa.}das] (elephant) c3: 2;3 e. [kro.{ˈko.ði.}los]  [ˈði.los] (crocodile) c3: 2;7.4 f. [{a.ne.}{ˈve.ni}]  [ˈa.ne] ((he / she / it) goes up) c4: 2;3.16 g. [{xa.la.}{ˈsme.no}]  [ˈxa.la] (broken, neutral) c4: 2;7.11 once again this kind of instances appear less often, but they show the importance of keeping intact the rhythm even if in some cases the stress needs to be transferred at distance, namely, two syllables away so as to match with the corresponding adult’s tokens (examples 22c, f g). the last category of children’s polysyllabic words is illustrated in table (6d). journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 680-705, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 694 table 6d intermediate stage truncated pentasyllabic words child 5σ s3 5σ s4 p1,2,3,4 p1,2,3,5 p2,3,4,5 p1,2,3 p2,3,4 p3,4,5 p1,4 p2,3 p3,4 p1,2,4,5 p1,3,4,5 p2,3,4,5 p3,4,5 p4,5 c1 1 (11.1%) 6 (66.7%) 2 (22.2%) 9 (52.9%) 7 (41.2%) 1 (5.9%) c2 1 (50%) 1 (50%) 1 (100%) c3 1 (3.7%) 4 (14.8%) 1 (3.7%) 1 (3.7%) 18 (66.7%) 1 (3.7%) 1 (3.7%) 5 (38.4%) 3 (23.1%) 4 (30.8%) 1 (7.7%) sum 1 (2.6%) 2 (5.3%) 4 (10.6%) 1 (2.6%) 1 (2.6%) 24 (63.2%) 1 (2.6%) 3 (7.9%) 1 (2.6%) 9 (29%) 12 (38.7%) 3 (9.7%) 4 (12.9%) 3 (9.7%) pentasyllabic words appear only in three children’s tokens (c1 c3). the stressed syllable is always preserved except for one token, while the strong foot is usually produced accurately regardless of the number of omitted syllables (examples 23a e). adult’s form  child’s form child: age (23) a. [{a.fto.}{ˈci.ni.}to]  [{ˈci.ni.}to] (car) c1: 2;4.3 b. [a.{na.sta.}{ˈsi.a}]  [{a.sta.}{ˈsi.a}] (anastasia, name) c1: 2;6.24 c. [a.{e.ɾo.}{ˈpla.no}]  [ˈpla.no] (airplane) c2: 2;8.7 d. [a.{e.ɾo.}{ˈpla.no}]  [ɾo.{ˈpla.no}] (airplane) c3: 2;5.4 e. [a.{e.ɾo.}{ˈpla.no}]  [{e.ɾo.}{ˈpla.no}] (airplane) c3: 2;6.6 further, the rhythm is trochaic in all pentasyllabic words and it is maintained even if a syllable traced inside the strong foot is deleted. for its preservation the stress remains stable or moves to a specific position in order for a trochee to be created (examples 24a c). adult’s form  child’s form child: age (24) a. [{a.fto.}{ˈci.ni.}to]  [{a.fto.}{ˈci.to}] (car) c1: 2;9.25 b. [{a.fto.}{ˈko.li.}ta]  [{a.fto.}{ˈko.ta}] (stickers) c2: 2;9.25 c. [{ɾa.ði.}{ˈo.fo.}no]  [ˈɾa.fo] (radio) c2: 2;10.2 the construction of polysyllabic words is another issue that can be investigated based on children’s truncations. the direction of their words’ building differs from other languages, as for example in hebrew, where the construction is accomplished to one direction, in particular, from right to left. this happens due to the fact that hebrew-speaking children begin to utter the stressed or final syllable in words and since stress is usually located in ultimate or penultimate, the two rightmost syllables emerge first (bat-el, 2009; ben-david, 2012). all the children of the present study begin first with the production of the stressed syllable followed by the stabilization of the strong foot. after the establishment of the strong foot to a high degree, the remaining syllables of the word are acquired, which can be extrametrical or located in weak feet. as a result, the expansion of a prosodic word can be leftwards, rightwards or bidirectional if the stress is traced in the latter case faithfulness vs truncation in greek children poulidakis 695 in antepenultimate. indicative examples of the children’s most common path for the expansion of their words are cited below (25a f)7. adult’s form  child’s form (25) a. [{ˈʝi.γa.}das]  [ˈʝi] > [ˈʝi.γa] > [{ˈʝi.γa.}das] (giant) b. [a.{ˈxla.ði}]  [ˈxla] > [ˈxla.ði] > [a.{ˈxla.ði}] (pear) c. [{ar.ku.}{ˈða.ci}]  [ˈða.ci] > [ku.{ˈða.ci}] > [{ar.ku.}{ˈða.ci}] (bear, diminutive) d. [ti.{ˈle.fo.}no]  [ˈle.fo] > [ti.{ˈle.fo}] / [{ˈle.fo.}no] > [ti.{ˈle.fo.}no] (telephone) e. [{a.fto.}{ˈci.ni.}to]  [ˈci.ni] > [{ˈci.ni.}to] > [fto.{ˈci.ni.}to] / [a.{ˈci.ni.}to] > [{a.fto.}{ˈci.ni.}to] (car) f. [a.{e.ɾo.}{ˈpla.no}]  [ˈpla.no] > [ɾo.{ˈpla.no}] > [{a.ɾo.}{ˈpla.no}] / [{e.ɾo.}{ˈpla.no}] > [a.{e.ɾo.}{ˈpla.no}] (airplane) it should be noted at this point that these instances concern the development of prosodic words only from a prosodic perspective. the full path of acquisition of the word [a.{e.ɾo.}{ˈpla.no}], for example, is [ˈpa.no] > [ˈpla.no] > [lo.{ˈpla.no}] >[{a.lo.}{ˈpla.no}] / [{e.lo.}{ˈpla.no}] > [{a.ɾo.}{ˈpla.no}] / [{e.ɾo.}{ˈpla.no}] > [a.{e.ɾo.}{ˈpla.no}]. the paths of words’ construction including additionally segmental substitutions are not discussed further since they are beyond the scope of the present research. 3.1. analysis in optimality theory (prince & smolensky, 1993), universal grammar includes a set of constraints that are cross-linguistically universal and in conflict. however, their ranking for the selection of optimal output depends on the respective language. in language acquisition, this theory is viewed as constraint demotion. in the initial stages of children’s linguistic development, where their structures are simple and unmarked, markedness constraints dominate faithfulness constraints. in the intermediate phase, some markedness constraints dominate faithfulness ones, while in the final developmental stage, the faithfulness constraints dominate markedness, as in adult’s grammar (e.g., demuth, 1995; kappa, 2002; gnanadesikan, 2004). for the variation presented in children’s polysyllabic words, we adopt the multiple parallel grammars model (revithiadou & tzakosta, 2004), according to which the children in the intermediate phase employ parallel grammars next to the core, that is, different ranking of constraints, which assist them to reach the target grammar. parallel grammars are considered learning paths (levelt & vijver, 2004, p. 205), which help children in order for the transition of their early grammar to the final to be accomplished. they are weaker and not as stable as the core grammar. as a result, they disappear quicker than the dominant one. finally, the different rankings that arise after the conflict of markedness and faithfulness constraints 7 the full path of quadrisyllabic and pentasyllabic words’ building is based on two children (c1, c3), since we have a fair amount of data that present full faithfulness only from them (see table 4, p. 9). however, in pentasyllabic words of those children the path that leads to the full realization of adult’s form is observed in a limited number of words. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 680-705, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 696 constitute the paraller grammars that are integrated in the linguistic sytem of the child (revithiadou & tzakosta, 2004). in the early developmental stage, two strategies are employed by the children of the present study. in the most systematic, they utter disyllabic words faithfully, while in rare cases they are truncated with only the stressed syllable to emerge. the following constraints have been adopted to adequately analyze and interpret the aforementioned language acquisition patterns of greek children. markedness constraints (demuth, 1995, p. 16) prosodic word = σ: the prosodic word equals a syllable. prosodic word = foot binary: the prosodic word equals a binary foot. faithfulness constraints faith (stress): the stressed syllable is preserved (pater, 1997, p. 222 223). maximality-io: demands input segments to have output correspondents (mccarthy & prince, 1995, p. 264)8. in the below table (7a), the core grammar is represented, while in (7b) the hybrid one. table 7a disyllabic words with faithfulness [ˈba.ɲo]9 faith (str) max-io pw = ft-bin pw = σ ☞ [ˈba.ɲo] * [ˈba] *! * [ɲo] *! * * [pa.ˈpu] faith (str) max-io pw = ft-bin pw = σ ☞ [pa.ˈpu] * [ˈpu] *! * [pa] *! * * table 7b truncated monosyllabic words [ˈo.çi] faith (str) pw = σ pw = ft-bin max-io ☞ [ˈo] * * [ˈo.çi] *! [çi] *! * * [e.ˈðo] faith (str) pw = σ pw = ft-bin max-io ☞ [ˈðo] * * [e.ˈðo] *! [e] *! * * 8 following pater’s (1997, p. 209) suggestion, for simplicity, this constraint is violated here in terms of the number of deleted syllables and not segments. 9 as input, we consider the adult’s output, namely, the stimuli the child hears from its parents. faithfulness vs truncation in greek children poulidakis 697 since the children rarely omit the stressed syllables, faith (str) will always be the highest ranked. the hierarchy of the remaining constraints depends on the children’s preferences for disyllabic words. so, in (7a) the optimal outputs [ˈba.ɲo] and [pa.ˈpu] presenting full faithfulness satisfy all the faithfulness constraints, which are higher ranked and violate only the lower ranked markedness constraints. on the other hand, the outputs [ˈo] and [ˈðo] in (7b) are selected as optimal due to the preservation of the stressed syllable, which is ensured by faith (str) and due to the satisfaction of pw = σ, which is promoted for these cases. by the time the result has been decided by the second highest constraint, the ranking of the last two is irrelevant, something illustrated from the dashed lines, which indicate that they are equal. here, the core grammar (table 7a) reflects the grammar of adults. however, since the children have not fully acquired the target language, their grammar has not the stability that characterizes the corresponding of adults. so, new structures and constraints can constantly be added, while those already acquired can be modified. the four constraints used so far can also account for disyllabic words with faithfulness or truncation appearing in the intermediate phase. one additional feature observed in the treatment of trisyllabic and longer words of all the children is the maintenance of the rhythm. for this reason, faith (rhythm) is added, which for the needs of the present research has been modified to a faithfulness constraint from the markedness rhythmtypetrochee / iamb (alderete, 1999, p. 38, 40). next, the core grammar along with the hybrids are illustrated in tables. all the children most times produce all syllables in trisyllabic words and the same applies to quadrisyllabic words for two out of four children (table 8a). table 8a trisyllabic and quadrisyllabic words with faithfulness [ˈte.se.ɾa] faith (rhy) faith (str) max-io pw = ft-bin pw = σ ☞ [ˈte.se.ɾa] * ** [ˈte] *!* * [ˈse.ɾa] *! * * [se.ˈɾa] *! * * * [ma.kri.ˈa] faith (rhy) faith (str) max-io pw = ft-bin pw = σ ☞ [ma.kri.ˈa] * ** [ˈa] *!* * [ma.ˈkri] *! * * [ˈma.kri] *! * * * [te.ˈli.o.san] faith (rhy) faith (str) max-io pw = ft-bin pw = σ ☞ [te.ˈli.o.san] ** *** [ˈli.o] *!* * [ˈte.o.san] *! * * ** [te.ˈli] *! ** * [pe.ta.ˈlu.ða] faith (rhy) faith (str) max-io pw = ft-bin pw = σ ☞ [pe.ta.ˈlu.ða] ** *** journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 680-705, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 698 [ˈlu.ða] *!* * [ˈpe.ða] *! ** * [ta.ˈlu] *! ** * the optimal outputs ([ˈte.se.ɾa], [ma.kri.ˈa], [te.ˈli.o.san], [pe.ta.ˈlu.ða]) satisfy all the faithfulness constraints, the higher ranking of which ensures that outputs with alternation of rhythm ([se.ˈɾa], [ˈma.kri], [te.ˈli], [ta.ˈlu]), deletion of the stressed syllable ([ˈse.ɾa], [ma.ˈkri], [ˈte.o.san], [ˈpe.ða]) as well as deletion of one or more syllables ([ˈte], [ˈa], [ˈli.o], [ˈlu.ða]) are rejected. the importance of keeping the rhythm intact is also shown from truncated trisyllabic and quadrisyllabic words. the children seem first to try to preserve it at any cost in words and then to establish new positions so as to accommodate all the syllables that adult’s outputs contain. this preservation takes place with the promotion of pw = ft-bin over max-io and sometimes over faith (str). in addition, the truncated words of children at this point include usually two or three syllables, especially, in quadrisyllabic and longer words. so, we create the constraint pw = 3σ. the difference between truncated polysyllabic words containing the stressed syllable and those that omit it is illustrated in tables (8b c, d e). table 8b truncated disyllabic words including stressed syllable [ˈʝi.γa.das] faith (rhy) faith (str) pw = ft-bin pw = 3σ max-io pw = σ ☞ [ˈʝi.das] * * * [ˈʝi.γa.das] *! ** [ˈγa.das] *! * * * [γa.ˈdas] *! * * * * [ma.la.ˈko] faith (rhy) faith (str) pw = ft-bin pw = 3σ max-io pw = σ ☞ [la.ˈko] * * * [ma.la.ˈko] *! ** [ma.ˈla] *! * * * [ˈma.la] *! * * * * [pe.ta.ˈlu.ða] faith (rhy) faith (str) pw = ft-bin pw = 3σ max-io pw = σ ☞ [ˈlu.ða] * ** * [pe.ta.ˈlu.ða] *!* * *** [ˈpe.ða] *! * ** * [ta.ˈlu] *! * ** * [ti.ˈle.fo.no] faith (rhy) faith (str) pw = ft-bin pw = 3σ max-io pw = σ ☞ [ˈle.fo] * ** * [ti.ˈle.fo.no] *!* * *** [ˈti.fo] *! * ** * [ti.ˈle] *! * ** * faithfulness vs truncation in greek children poulidakis 699 table 8c truncated trisyllabic words including stressed syllable [e.ˈle.fa.das] faith (rhy) faith (str) pw = 3σ pw = ft-bin max-io pw = σ ☞ [ˈle.fa.das] * * ** [e.ˈle.fa.das] *! ** *** [ˈe.fa.das] *! * * ** [e.fa.ˈdas] *! * * * ** [a.fto.ˈci.ni.to] faith (rhy) faith (str) pw = 3σ pw = ft-bin max-io pw = σ ☞ [ˈci.ni.to] * ** ** [a.fto.ˈci.ni.to] *!* *** **** [fto.ˈni.to] *! * ** ** [a.fto.ˈci] *! * ** ** table 8d truncated disyllabic words with deletion of primary stressed syllable [pa.ˈta.tes] faith (rhy) pw = ft-bin faith (str) pw = 3σ max-io pw = σ ☞ [ˈpa.tes] * * * * [pa.ˈta.tes] *! ** [pa.ˈtes] *! * * * * [a.ne.ˈve.ni] faith (rhy) pw = ft-bin faith (str) pw = 3σ max-io pw = σ ☞ [ˈa.ne] * * ** * [a.ne.ˈve.ni] *!* * *** [a.ˈne] *! * * ** * table 8e truncated trisyllabic words with deletion of primary stressed syllable [e.ˈle.fa.das] faith (rhy) pw = 3σ faith (str) pw = ft-bin max-io pw = σ ☞ [ˈe.fa.das] * * * ** [e.ˈle.fa.das] *! ** *** [e.fa.ˈdas] *! * * * ** in the tables (8a e), we can see how the reranking of the same constraints can lead to each possible output uttered by the children. this is particularly shown from multiple utterances of the same word. for example, [pe.ta.ˈlu.ða] bears different ranking when it is produced with full faithfulness (table 8a) and when only the strong foot is uttered (table 8b). the same applies to tokens that are systematically truncated, as [e.ˈle.fa.das], where the hierarchy of constraints differs when the stressed syllable emerges in the child’s output (table 8c) and when it does not (8e). in trisyllabic and quadrisyllabic words, the grammar that leads to faithfulness is core for two out of four children (c1, c3, table 8a), while the grammar containing syllables’ truncation, especially, in quadrisyllabic words is considered core for the other two children (c2, c4, tables 8b c). the grammar that does not include the stressed syllable (tables 8d e) is quite rare for all the children. the same holds for the grammar, in which monosyllabic productions arise that correspond to disyllabic and longer journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 11 issue: 1 680-705, 2023 issn: 2148-1997 700 words (table 7b). the last two hybrid grammars become more and more infrequent with children’s linguistic progression and we assume that they will be the first to fade away. finally, the multiple parallel grammars model is mentioned to be problematic for variation due to the unlimited number of parallel grammars a subject can have (e.g., reynolds, 1994; guy, 1997). however, the parallel grammars in child speech are proposed to facilitate the linguistic development by providing many alternative paths for the acquisition of target language, which is children’s final aim (revithiadou & tzakosta, 2004). 4. conclusions a constraint-based account is used in order for the processes of faithfulness and truncation in children’s polysyllabic words with segmental faithfulness to be examined. based on their data, two stages of linguistic development are distinguished. in the early stage, only disyllabic words are produced with all their syllables, while trisyllabic and longer are truncated. in the intermediate stage, disyllabic and trisyllabic words are retained, while the same applies to quadrisyllabic words for two out of four children. as far as properties of these two processes are concerned, if the children utter some categories of words mostly faithfully, then they do so irrespective of rhythm and position of stress. the rhythm and stressed syllable are also preserved in truncations almost always. the maintenance of the former is additionally revealed from rare cases where the stressed syllable is deleted and stress moves only to nearby or non-adjacent syllables that will not change rhythm. the frequency of omitted syllables at specific positions provides indications for the building of polysyllabic words. the unuttered syllables are usually extrametrical or located in weak feet. so, when the children have stabilized the position of strong elements in prosodic words, such as the stressed syllable and stressed foot, then they focus on the production of the remaining part of prosodic words, such as extrametrical syllables or degenerate and weak feet. for the analysis of the children’s tokens, the optimality theory is used (prince & smolensky, 1993) and, more specifically, for their variation the multiple parallel grammar model is adopted (revithiadou & tzakosta, 2004). four patterns are observed based on the two acquisition stages of the children. in the core grammar, which constitutes the one presenting faithfulness and concerns disyllabic words in the early stage and disyllabic to even quadrisyllabic words for some children in the intermediate stage, all faithfulness constraints related to stress, rhythm and number of syllables dominate markedness (faith (rhy) >> faith (str) >> max-io >> pw = 3σ, pw = ft-bin, pw = σ). in two children in quadrisyllabic words and in all of them in pentasyllabic the grammar of faithfulness turns into hybrid, since they are systematically produced with two or three syllables. this way, some markedness constraints dominate faithfulness (faith (rhy) >> faith (str) >> pw = 3σ / pw = ft-bin >> max-io, pw = σ). it should be noted here that this specific grammar of truncation constitutes core till the children reach their final acquisition stage, where the grammar of faithfulness will be core again. further, two more hybrid grammars are ascertained in all the children that become more faithfulness vs truncation in greek children poulidakis 701 and more rare with the progression of their linguistic development. these two will be the first to fade entirely from their linguistic system. the first includes monosyllabic productions of cv form that are considered relics from a previous sub-minimal stage (demuth, 1995, p. 16) and their ranking bears the form faith (rhy) >> faith (str) >> pw = σ >> max-io, pw = 3σ / pw = ft-bin. the second includes cases with deletion of the stressed syllable, which however does not affect the type of rhythm (faith (rhy) >> pw = 3σ / pw = ft-bin >> faith (str), max-io, pw = σ). finally, the present study investigated multisyllabic words only from a prosodic point of view. for this reason, we suggest for future research the examination of polysyllabic words also from a segmental perspective so as to observe whether children exhibit the same strategies and whether their rates match or differ significantly when segmental faithfulness is additionally involved. furthermore, the generalizations related to prosody and building of polysyllabic words concern only the children of the present study. a research with more subjects is needed so as to show us whether these generalizations apply in greek-speaking children generally as well as cross-linguistically. acknowledgements the research project was supported by the hellenic foundation for research and innovation (h.f.r.i.) under the “2nd call for h.f.r.i. research projects to support faculty members & researchers” (project number: 3754.). i would like to express my gratitude to two anonymous jclad reviewers for their instructive and helpful feedback, which has been incorporated in the paper. any remaining errors constitute my sole responsibility. references adam, g. 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(2004). positional asymmetries and licensing. in j. j. mccarthy (ed.), optimality theory in phonology: a reader (pp. 365-378). oxford: blackwell. https://hdl.handle.net/10067/381550151162165141 http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/rg.2.1.4728.5605 https://doi.org/10.1075/jgl.8.04tza journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 4 627-652, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 627 the acquisition of hebrew differential object marking: between production and comprehension dana plaut1 bar ilan university aviya hacohen 2 ben-gurion university of the negev abstract this study experimentally investigates the acquisition of differential object marking (dom) among a group of 34 hebrew-speaking children aged 3;6-7;10. previous research on the development of dom crosslinguistically has largely reported early emergence, along with virtually errorless use, and adultlike performance approximately age 3;6. however, the data in these studies come almost exclusively from spontaneous speech analysis. using a gradable acceptability judgment task, our findings reveal a very different picture. specifically, we find that only the oldest children tested (7;0-7;10) begin to demonstrate sensitivity to the adult hebrew dom paradigm, but even their judgments are not yet fully adultlike. we discuss this striking mismatch between children's non-adultlike performance in comprehension and the early convergence demonstrated for production, as reported in the literature. hence, in addition to the novel empirical findings that enrich dom acquisition research, our study also highlights a fundamental methodological issue. it underscores the importance of assessing children's comprehension via their acceptability judgments, particularly gradable judgments, and demonstrates that relying solely on production data may lead to the wrong conclusions regarding children's true competence. keywords differential object marking; dom; language development; hebrew; gradable acceptability judgment 1. introduction differential object marking is a systematic, crosslinguistic phenomenon, whereby the direct object argument of a verb phrase is either marked or unmarked for case (e.g., bossong, 1985, 2021). whether an object is marked or not depends on whether it carries semantic properties such as definiteness, animacy, specificity, and/or referentially (e.g., aissen, 2003). it is generally observed that more prominent object dps (those that are animate, specific and/or definite) tend to trigger obligatory overt case marking, while less prominent ones are likely to be optionally marked or remain unmarked (e.g., aissen, 2003; grimm, 2005; krause & von heusinger, 2019 and references therein). the l1 acquisition of dom has been the center of several investigations in recent years, and available data to date represent a range of languages, 1 dana plaut is a research assistant at bar ilan university. she had her ma degree at bengurion university of the negev. currently, dana plaut is a ph.d. student at biu and her research interests are first language acquisition, psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics and her research focuses on semantics and language teaching. 2 dr. aviya hacohen is working currently at ben-gurion university of the negev. her research interests cover first language acquisition; experimental psycholinguistics; semantics/pragmatics in child and adult language; the acquisition of syntax, and language impairment. corresponding author: aviya@bgu.ac.il received : 16.10.2022 accepted : 20.12.2022 published : 30.12.2022 mailto:aviya@bgu.ac.il hebrew differential object marking hacohen, plaut 628 beginning with the pioneering work of rodríguez-mondoñedo (2008) on the acquisition of spanish dom, and including languages such as croatian and russian (hržica et al., 2015), estonian (argus, 2015), korean (chung, 2020), lithuanian (dabašinskienė, 2015), romanian (ticio & avram, 2015, avram & tomescu, 2020), and hebrew (uziel-karl, 2015). overall, the consensus in the acquisition literature is that dom generally emerges early in production (at approximately age 2), and that children crosslinguistically demonstrate early convergence on the target dom paradigm, with fully adultlike performance already in the third year of life. however, available research is almost exclusively limited to spontaneous speech analysis. to date, only two studies have explored children's comprehension of the dom paradigm: ketrez (2015) in turkish and guijarro-fuentes, pires & nediger, (2017) in spanish. these two studies uncover a striking mismatch between children's non-adultlike performance on comprehension tasks and the early convergence demonstrated for production, as reported in the literature. the aim of the current study is to test whether hebrew acquiring children (aged 3;6-7;10) have converged on the adult hebrew dom paradigm. our study is not only one of few available experimental works testing children's comprehension of dom, but also the first to use a gradable acceptability judgment task rather than the more commonly used binary judgments task to test the acquisition of dom. dating back to as early as chomsky (1965), it is a widely accepted view among linguists that acceptability judgments are inherently gradable (see, e.g., schütze, 2016:62, sprouse, 2007 and references therein), as opposed to grammaticality judgments, which are typically categorical – a sentence is either grammatical or not. it follows, then, that when asking speakers to make acceptability judgments it is better to allow for gradable response options, rather than using a binary acceptableunacceptable paradigm (see also e.g., jasbi, schuster & weiss, 2019; perek & hilpert, 2014: 270). a gradable paradigm, then, ensures that speakers' judgments are not artificially reduced to two binary response options and thus offers a more reliable measure of the speaker's linguistic knowledge (cf. jasbi, waldon & degen, 2019; katsos & bishop, 2011). the contribution of this study is, hence, twofold. first, by adding new findings from hebrew, a language that has not received much attention in the context of dom acquisition research, we contribute to the typology of dom acquisition crosslinguistically. secondly, and more broadly, our study highlights the limitation of production data in acquisition research. it underscores the importance of assessing children's comprehension via their acceptability judgments, particularly gradable judgments, and demonstrates that relying solely on production data may lead to the wrong conclusions regarding children's true competence. 1.1. hebrew dom in modern hebrew, the accusative marker et is sensitive to the definiteness of the direct object dp, such that in colloquial speech, it obligatorily marks definite objects, and is unacceptable with indefinite objects (e.g., avram & armon-lotem, 2005; berman, 1982;, 1985; danon 2001;, 2002;, 2008;, givón, 1978; siloni 1997; wintner 2000, among many others). this is illustrated in (1): journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 4 627-652, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 629 (1) a. gali axla et ha-tapuax. gali ate.3sg.f acc the-apple ‘gali ate the apple.’ b. *gali axla et tapuax. gali ate.3sg.f acc apple intended: ‘gali ate an apple.' in (1a), the direct object ha-tapuax ('the apple') is marked with the definite article ha-, indicating that it is a definite dp. such a dp, being definite, is then generally assumed to require overt et-marking. conversely, marking the indefinite object in (1b) with et results in ungrammaticality. in a slight deviation from this commonly assumed binary distinction, we acknowledge a third option, one in which the definite object is not preceded by et, as in (2) below. we maintain that such a construction is in fact grammatical in modern hebrew, although its availability is highly restricted by pragmatics (mostly confined to written text, and very high register). (2) ?gali axla ha-tapuax. gali ate.3sg.f the-apple ‘gali ate the apple.’ the commonly assumed view in the literature on modern hebrew is that definite objects not preceded by et are not genuinely part of present-day speakers' grammars. instead, the (admittedly marginal) availability of such construction is merely a residue of an archaic variety of hebrew (e.g., danon, 2001; 2008; meir & novogrodsky, 2021). however, we believe our view is justified for several reasons. first, there is some acknowledgement in the literature that unmarked definite objects are not strictly speaking ungrammatical, or at least, that they should be treated differently than et-marked indefiniteness. for example, danon (2001:1087) recognizes that speakers judge et-marked indefinites to be considerably worse than unmarked definite objects, and glinert (1989:13) observes that et may be "occasionally omitted". further support for this comes from in an informal web search, which yielded the naturally occurring examples in (3)-(8) below.3 (3) im lo yas'iru li brera, e'ezov ha-miflaga. if not leave.fut.pl to-me choice leave.1sg the-party 'if they leave me no choice, i will leave the party.'4 (4) ani xosev se-ani yaxol leharkiv memsala ve-leaxed ha-'am. i think.sg.m that-i can.sg.m assemble.inf government and-unite.inf the-folk 'i think that i can assemble a government and unite the nation.'5 3 examples (7) and (8) are existential constructions. according to hebrew prescriptive grammar, et is ungrammatical in such constructions, but in colloquial speech, they are et marked. we thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out. 4 https://www.inn.co.il/news/393486 accessed on 3/12/2021 5 https://news.walla.co.il/item/3325086 accessed on 3/12/2021 https://www.inn.co.il/news/393486 https://news.walla.co.il/item/3325086 hebrew differential object marking hacohen, plaut 630 (5) al-menat lezarez ha-halix. in-order-to facilitate.inf the-process 'to facilitate the process.'6 (6) ha'im muskam se-lata'agid yes ha-zxut? whether agreed that-the-corporation there-is the-right 'is it agreed upon that the corporation has the right?'7 (7) kedey lekabel ha-ptor […] in-order-to receive.inf the-exemption 'to receive the exception'8 (8) hayu la ha-xaverim […] ve-hayu la ha-nesiot ha-metorafot. were to-her the-friends and-were to-her the-travels the-crazy 'she had her friends from the kayaks, and she had the crazy travels.'9 these examples were found in insurance contracts, knesset protocols, and online articles, and they all demonstrate the availability of unmarked definite objects in present-day hebrew. finally, and likely the most convincing support for our view, comes from the findings of a formal preliminary questionnaire we conducted. using a graded acceptability task, we asked 14 hebrew speaking adults to rate the acceptability of precisely the three constructions of interest: et-marked definites, unmarked definites, and et-marked indefinites. the test items were simple sentences with two conjoined vps, with the direct object occurring in the second conjunct. both conjuncts were of daily conversation. such an environment establishes the context as belonging to informal daily conversation, thereby highlighting the contrast between the three objecttypes. particularly, the distinction between the marked indefinite objects, which are entirely ungrammatical, and the unmarked definite objects, which we take to be grammatical, but odd in everyday speech. there were ten experimental items in each condition and 16 filler items, for a total of 46 experimental items. an example from each condition is illustrated in table 1. 6https://www.shirbit.co.il/%d7%aa%d7%91%d7%99%d7%a2%d7%95%d7%aa/%d7%9 4%d7%9c%d7%99%d7%9a-%d7%99%d7%99%d7%a9%d7%95%d7%91%d7%aa%d7%91%d7%99%d7%a2%d7%95%d7%aa/%d7%94%d7%a0%d7%97%d7% 99%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%9c%d7%94%d7%92%d7%a9%d7%aa%d7%aa%d7%91%d7%99%d7%a2%d7%94/ accessed on 3/12/2021 7https://main.knesset.gov.il/activity/constitution/pages/constprotocol331.aspx accessed on 3/12/2021 8https://www.health.gov.il/subjects/medicalandhealthprofessions/generalmedicine/pages /usmle.aspx accessed on 3/12/2021 9 https://xnet.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,l-5796868,00.html accessed on 3/12/2021 https://www.shirbit.co.il/%d7%aa%d7%91%d7%99%d7%a2%d7%95%d7%aa/%d7%94%d7%9c%d7%99%d7%9a-%d7%99%d7%99%d7%a9%d7%95%d7%91-%d7%aa%d7%91%d7%99%d7%a2%d7%95%d7%aa/%d7%94%d7%a0%d7%97%d7%99%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%9c%d7%94%d7%92%d7%a9%d7%aa-%d7%aa%d7%91%d7%99%d7%a2%d7%94/ https://www.shirbit.co.il/%d7%aa%d7%91%d7%99%d7%a2%d7%95%d7%aa/%d7%94%d7%9c%d7%99%d7%9a-%d7%99%d7%99%d7%a9%d7%95%d7%91-%d7%aa%d7%91%d7%99%d7%a2%d7%95%d7%aa/%d7%94%d7%a0%d7%97%d7%99%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%9c%d7%94%d7%92%d7%a9%d7%aa-%d7%aa%d7%91%d7%99%d7%a2%d7%94/ https://www.shirbit.co.il/%d7%aa%d7%91%d7%99%d7%a2%d7%95%d7%aa/%d7%94%d7%9c%d7%99%d7%9a-%d7%99%d7%99%d7%a9%d7%95%d7%91-%d7%aa%d7%91%d7%99%d7%a2%d7%95%d7%aa/%d7%94%d7%a0%d7%97%d7%99%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%9c%d7%94%d7%92%d7%a9%d7%aa-%d7%aa%d7%91%d7%99%d7%a2%d7%94/ https://www.shirbit.co.il/%d7%aa%d7%91%d7%99%d7%a2%d7%95%d7%aa/%d7%94%d7%9c%d7%99%d7%9a-%d7%99%d7%99%d7%a9%d7%95%d7%91-%d7%aa%d7%91%d7%99%d7%a2%d7%95%d7%aa/%d7%94%d7%a0%d7%97%d7%99%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%9c%d7%94%d7%92%d7%a9%d7%aa-%d7%aa%d7%91%d7%99%d7%a2%d7%94/ https://www.shirbit.co.il/%d7%aa%d7%91%d7%99%d7%a2%d7%95%d7%aa/%d7%94%d7%9c%d7%99%d7%9a-%d7%99%d7%99%d7%a9%d7%95%d7%91-%d7%aa%d7%91%d7%99%d7%a2%d7%95%d7%aa/%d7%94%d7%a0%d7%97%d7%99%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%9c%d7%94%d7%92%d7%a9%d7%aa-%d7%aa%d7%91%d7%99%d7%a2%d7%94/ https://main.knesset.gov.il/activity/constitution/pages/constprotocol331.aspx https://www.health.gov.il/subjects/medicalandhealthprofessions/generalmedicine/pages/usmle.aspx https://www.health.gov.il/subjects/medicalandhealthprofessions/generalmedicine/pages/usmle.aspx https://xnet.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,l-5796868,00.html journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 4 627-652, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 631 table 1 design and material object-type example et-marked definite shira yats'a me-ha-xeder ve-patxa et ha-xalon. shira exited.3sg.f from-the-room and-opened.3sg.f acc the-window 'shira left the room and opened 'et' the window' unmarked definite ?mixael ala lamigras ve-xataf ha-kadur.' michael went-up.3sg.m to-the-pitch and-grabbed.3sg.m the-ball 'michael got into the field and grabbed the ball.' et-marked indefinite *shai yatsa lamesiba ve-lavas et me'il. shai went-out.3sg.m to-the-party and-wore.3sg.m acc coat 'shai went out to the party and wore a coat.' test items were pre-recorded by a native speaker to control for prosody effects and presented to the participants in a randomized order via the qualtrics online platform. participants were instructed to determine how likely it is for each sentence to be uttered by a native hebrew speaker in daily conversation. judgments were scored on a 5-point likert scale of acceptability, with only the extreme options explicitly stated: 1 (behexlet lo 'absolutely not') and 5 (behexlet ken 'absolutely yes'). the middle option (3) was excluded from the scale to control for a potential central tendency bias (cf. e.g., douven, 2018; stevens, 1971) and in order to create a forced-choice scale (cf. chyung, swanson, roberts & hankinson, 2018). the findings of the questionnaire are summarized in figure 1 below. figure 1. distribution of average acceptability ratings across object types as can be seen from the graph, et-marked definite objects were almost always judged to be acceptable, with only 3% 1-2 scores. this is virtually the mirror image of the judgments for et-marked definites, with only 8% 3-4 scores. the relatively low rates (75%) of full rejection (1 scores) in this condition is a rather surprising result for constructions that are taken to be entirely ungrammatical in the theoretical literature, as well as when informal judgments are elicited from native speakers. we will return to this in the discussion section. of particular interest are the data for the unmarked definite objects. here, the picture is very different from the acceptability pattern of the two other conditions, with almost equal distribution across response options. notably, 1% 23% 75% 2% 27% 17%16% 34% 3% 80% 16% 5% m e a n a c c e p ta b il it y s c o re 1 2 4 5 et-marked definites unmarked definites et-marked indefinites https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13423-017-1344-2#ref-cr45 hebrew differential object marking hacohen, plaut 632 exactly half of the data points were judged to be either fully acceptable (16%) or somewhat acceptable (34%), while the other half were judged as either entirely unacceptable (23%) or somewhat unacceptable (27%). taken together, both types of data (naturally occurring examples and experimental evidence) provide support for the view that unmarked definite objects are in fact part of adult hebrew grammar, although they are not entirely natural in everyday conversation. moreover, the essentially equal response distribution of the judgment data may point to pragmatic reasoning: the fact that this construction is neither unanimously acceptable nor unanimously unacceptable indicates that its acceptability is driven by pragmatic reasoning, rather than by grammatical knowledge (cf. paltielgedalyovich, 2011). it should be clearly noted here that the pragmatic reasoning involved in the hebrew dom paradigm – and particularly, in judging the appropriateness of unmarked definite objects – relates to the intricate relationship between the social context (specifically, register) and the distinct linguistic element it permits (see wagner et al., 2010). importantly, the current study is not concerned with and does not explore how context affects the meaning of certain linguistic elements (cf. ariel, 2010; huang, 2014; levinson, 1983; 2000; stalnaker, 1972, among many others). in sum, we take the dom paradigm in adult hebrew to be sensitive to the definiteness of the direct object in interaction with pragmatic considerations of register. such a three-way distinction presents a potential learnability challenge. particularly, the complex integration of (socio-)pragmatic and grammatical knowledge necessary for mastery of the target paradigm. 1.2. crosslinguistic acquisition of dom in l1: production versus comprehension for over a decade now, the crosslinguistic development of dom has been the focus of considerable attention in acquisition research. perhaps the earliest work on the acquisition of dom is rodríguez-mondoñedo (2008), who examined the production of dom in the spontaneous speech of four spanishspeaking children aged 0;9-3;01. out of a total of 990 occurrences of dom objects in the samples, only 16 errors were found. similar findings have since been obtained in several studies on l1 spanish (e.g., cole callen & miller 2021; ticio & avram, 2015). an important contribution to the study of l1 dom acquisition was made by larisa avram, who edited a 2015 special issue of revue roumaine de linguistique that compiled studies that examined the topic in a variety of languages (e.g., croatian and russian: hržica et al., 2015; estonian: argus 2015; lithuanian: dabašinskienė, 2015; romanian and spanish: ticio & avram, 2015). using essentially the same methods, namely analysis of spontaneous production samples, all these studies report similar results to the ones found in rodríguez-mondoñedo (2008) for spanish: children crosslinguistically begin to produce dom at an early stage of development, with early convergence and virtually error-free performance. in contrast to the spontaneous production data demonstrating early convergence, the rare existing experimental findings paint a very different picture. ketrez (2015) conducted a large-scale grammaticality judgment task with 147 turkish-speaking children aged 4-6. the contexts under journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 4 627-652, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 633 investigation were sentences in which case assignment interacted with negation in terms of scope assignment. specifically, in adult turkish, indefinite objects take wide scope over negation when they are overtly marked for accusative case; when such indefinites are not case marked, they are assigned narrow scope with respect to negation. the data revealed that the youngest children (4-year-olds) were oblivious to the distinction between case-marked and non-case-marked objects in terms of their scope-taking properties, generally assigning narrow scope readings, regardless of case marking. an increase in wide scope assignment – and thus also in a distinction between case-marked and non-case-marked objects – starts to emerge around age 5. however, even at age 6, the turkish-speaking children tested in the study did not yet demonstrate adult knowledge of dom, despite an increase in wide scope interpretations in the context of casemarked objects. an additional study using a judgment task is guijarro-fuentes, pires & nediger (2017). following torrego (1998, 2002), guijarro-fuentes et al. argue that the relevant features for dom in spanish are the animacy and specificity of the object; the agentivity (or at least [+human] feature) of the subject; and the semantics of the predicate. this analysis provides the theoretical background for a context-matching acceptability judgment task used in the study. the relevant results for the current study are the judgement data from the monolingual group (n=10), which indicated that even at age 10-15, these children have not yet acquired the full range of syntactic and semantic features involved in dom. a more detailed exploration of the data reveals an interesting distinction: while the children demonstrate high accuracy with respect to the role of animacy, the other features determining the distribution of spanish dom seem to pose a challenge, resulting in delayed acquisition. we will return to this in the discussion section. overall, then, findings from research on the acquisition of dom appear to reveal an interesting – and rather unexpected – asymmetry, whereby children's production of dom crosslinguistically greatly precedes their comprehension of the target dom paradigm. 1.3. acquisition of et-marking the development of the hebrew definiteness system, which constitutes the domain for et-marking, has received some attention in the literature of the past three decades (e.g., avram & armon-lotem, 2005; berman, 1985; zur, 1983). yet, for the most part, et-marking in child hebrew has not been investigated as an independent phenomenon, but rather as a mere by-product of research into the development of the hebrew definiteness system, or as part of more general investigations into the longitudinal development of modern hebrew (cf. e.g., berman, 2004; lustigman, 2016). the earliest large-scale investigation regarding hebrew-speaking children's knowledge of the definiteness system was done by zur (1983), who examined 123 typically developing (td) hebrew-speaking children between the ages of 1;10-12;0. results from two elicitation tasks and an analysis of spontaneous speech show that children begin to produce et-marking around age 2;9. zur further reports virtually error-free performance (only two hebrew differential object marking hacohen, plaut 634 occurrences of et-marked indefinite objects) from the onset, and full convergence on the adult paradigm by 3;6 (see also berman, 1985; 1993 for similar reports).10 very recent data on the acquisition of et-marking can be found in meir & novogrodsky (2021). this study is concerned with monolingual and bilingual children with and without autism spectrum disorder (asd), and they too report only et-marking data insofar as it relates to knowledge of the hebrew definite marker -ha. still, the results of their monolingual td controls are relevant to the current study. using a sentence repetition task, 28 td hebrew speaking children aged 5;3-8;4 (mean 6;9) were prompted to describe what was happening in static pictures. the experimental material consisted of definite and indefinite nps in both subject and object position. the results revealed ceiling performance: all definite objects were correctly marked by et, and indefinite objects were never preceded by et. an additional interesting finding of the study is that the accusative marker was never produced in subject position.11 given the age of the participants, and taken together with previous findings discussed above, these results are, of course, unsurprising. uziel-karl (2015) was the first to not only directly examine the acquisition of et as an independent phenomenon from definiteness; she was also the only acquisitionist to treat et-marking as an instance of dom. similarly to the majority of previous crosslinguistic research into the acquisition of dom, uziel-karl analyzed spontaneous speech data. the samples come from three monolingual hebrew-speaking girls aged 1;5-3;0, and similar to findings from other languages (see subsection 1.2. above), uziel-karl concludes that "dom in child hebrew is almost flawless" (pp. 349). notably, the 6% errors observed in the data include instances of both et-marked indefinite objects and unmarked definite objects. hence, uziel-karl takes the two constructions to constitute the same type of ungrammaticality. this issue notwithstanding, uziel-karl's findings indeed demonstrate very early, and virtually flawless, convergence for hebrew dom. of particular interest to the current study are the results of meir, parshina, & sekerina (2020). this study is uniquely relevant for two reasons. first, it directly probes et-marking (albeit not as an instance of dom). second, and more importantly, this study provides not only production but also comprehension data from the same participants. the children (n=10) were td hebrew-speaking monolinguals between the age of 4-7 (mean age 6;0).12 their production of et-marking was elicited using the same task as the one in meir & novogrodsky (2021). the comprehension data come from two visual world eye-tracking experiments. the results reported by meir et al. show that the 10 berman (1993) notes some non-adultlike occurrences in initial stages of production, but no quantitative data are provided. 11 we should clarify here, that while the accusative marker is not expected in the subject position, it may occur sentence initially with topicalized objects. so, for example, as in the sentence: (i) et ha-seret ha-ze raiti etmol. 'et' the-film the-this saw.1.sg yesterday 'this film, i saw (it) yesterday.' such examples in the input may cause the child to overgenerate the accusative marker to subject position. 12 the main focus of meir et al. (2020) is the performance of russian-hebrew bilinguals. we report only data from the monolingual controls. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 4 627-652, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 635 monolingual hebrew-speaking children were at ceiling in terms of their production of et-marking, systematically using the accusative marker with definite objects, and never producing et-marked indefinite objects. in contrast to their adultlike production of et, however, the same children did not show sensitivity to the accusative marker, as indicated by their inability to use the presence of et in the verbal stimuli to predict the upcoming referent. hence, this study provides an initial indication that the production-comprehension asymmetry observed for the acquisition of dom in turkish and in spanish may also be characteristic of the development of hebrew dom. the aim of the current study is to directly address this issue by experimentally probing children's knowledge of the hebrew dom paradigm. 1.4. current study similarly to the adult questionnaire, the task chosen for the experiment was a gradable acceptability task. such a task – rather than a binary judgment task, traditionally used in acquisition studies – allows for more nuanced judgments to be elicited (cf. jasbi, waldon & degen, 2019; sikos, kim & grodner, 2019). this is particularly pertinent when the linguistic phenomenon tested involves pragmatic knowledge (cf. katsos & bishop, 2011), which is inherently graded, and therefore involves more diffused, less categorical intuitions than purely grammatical phenomena (cf. e.g., ariel, 2010:42). since et-marking is taken to involve pragmatic awareness (as we have argued for in subsection 1.1.), eliciting gradable, rather than binary judgments from children ensures that the child's true knowledge is revealed. 2. methods 2.1. participants 34 typically developing monolingual hebrew-speaking children aged 3;6-7;10 were recruited from across israel. the children were all recruited by the authors through personal acquaintance with their families. the families were middle-class families, mostly from kibbutzim and moshavim in the north and south of israel. all children were strictly monolingual speakers of hebrew, raised in strictly monolingual families, with no evidence of language, social, or cognitive impairment. the information regarding the child participants is presented in table 2. table 2 child participants' information group n13 gender mean (months) 3;6-4;10 year-olds 10 f=5/m=5 52.60 5;3-6;3 year-olds 14 f=3/m=11 67.93 7;0-7;10 year-olds 10 f=6/m=4 89.40 13 three additional children (aged 3;9, 4;0, and 5;0) did not complete the task since it became clear that they were following a response strategy, rather than providing. acceptability judgments. as soon as the experimenter realized this, the experiment was cut short for these children, and their (partial) data were excluded from the analysis. hebrew differential object marking hacohen, plaut 636 a group of 14 hebrew-speaking adults (f=11/m=3) served as controls. adult participants provided their written informed consent. parental written informed consent was obtained for each child prior to participation. 2.2. design and material the experimental conditions consisted of sentences with three types of direct objects: et-marked definite objects, unmarked definite objects, and et-marked indefinite objects. following the discussion in subsection 1.1., conditions 1 and 3 are grammatical and ungrammatical, respectively, while condition 2 is formally grammatical, but highly restricted by register, and considered pragmatically odd in everyday, colloquial conversation. the experimental design is presented in table 3 below. table 3 example items from each condition condition example condition 1: et-marked definite object raz nixnas la-kita ve-axal et ha-karix. raz entered.3sg.m to-the-classroom and-ate.3sg.m acc the-sandwich 'raz entered the classroom and ate the sandwich.' condition 2: unmarked definite object ?dor halax la-sifriya ve-hexzir ha-sefer. dor went.3sg.m to-the-library and-returned.3sg.m the-book 'dor went to the library and returned the book.' condition 3: et-marked indefinite object *shai yatsa la-mesiba ve-lavas et me'il shai went-out.3sg.m to-the-party and-wore.3sg.m acc coat 'shai went out to the party and wore a coat' the items used in the experiment were a subset of the items used in the adult questionnaire (subsection 1.1.). out of a total of 10 items per condition in the adult questionnaire, we selected the 5 items that yielded the most clear-cut or prototypical response in each condition. so, in condition 1 it was the items that received the highest mean acceptability scores from the adults, while in condition 3 it was those that received the lowest average scores. finally, for condition 2, the items selected were those that generated the highest mean rate of mid-scores. to control for order effects, the items were randomized and arranged into three lists. each participant was then randomly assigned one of the three lists. 2.3. procedure to probe hebrew-speaking children's knowledge of the hebrew dom paradigm, we used an adaptation of the 3-point scalar acceptability procedure developed in katsos & bishop (2011). to supply an appropriate context for elicitation of acceptability judgments, participants were introduced to a puppet named shula. shula was presented by the experimenter as someone who knows hebrew, but sometimes speaks "a little weird". the participant was then asked to help shula learn to speak perfect hebrew, by rewarding her different-sized strawberries, depending on how well she spoke. if shula produces a perfect sentence, the participant will reward her with a large strawberry; if what she is saying is "a bit weird", she should be given a medium strawberry; if she is saying something "really strange", then she gets the small strawberry. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 4 627-652, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 637 the strawberries were paper-made and attached to a skewer, with the smallest strawberry on the left and the largest on the right. each strawberry was twice the size of the previous one (see figure 2 below), and each point in the scale was explicitly produced with its label, namely, "the small strawberry," "the medium strawberry," and "the large strawberry." figure 2. different-sized strawberries serving as rewards a second experimenter manipulated the puppet and played back the prerecorded sentences for each experimental item. we started each experimental session with a training session. the training included a total of nine sentences: three grammatical, three ungrammatical, and three grammatical but pragmatically odd. items in the ungrammatical category consisted of subject-verb agreement violations, and the pragmatic anomalies in the latter category were achieved via the use of a high-register word or phrase inside a sentence that was otherwise colloquial and described an ordinary, everyday scene. an example from each category is provided in (9)(11) below. (9) ha-klavlav ha-katan navax. grammatical the-puppy.sg.m the small.sg.m barked.3sg.m 'the little puppy barked.' (10) *ha-yalda nixnesu la-gan. ungrammatical the-girl entered.3.pl to-the-kindergarten 'the girl went into the kindergarten.' (11) ha-banot telexna habayta lifnei redet ha-xashexa. pragmatically the-girls go.fut.3pl.f home before set the-darkness inappropriate 'the girls will go home before sunset.' in colloquial speech14 the procedure in the training was identical to the experimental procedure, except that the target response (the relevant-sized strawberry) for each item was provided by the experimenter, along with a clear explanation as to why that response was chosen. so, for example, if the sentence produced by shula was pragmatically inappropriate, the experimenter would give her a mediumsized strawberry and explain (to both shula and the child) that what shula said was "a little weird", and therefore she gets a medium strawberry. after three items, the experimenter would begin to elicit judgments from the child before providing the target. children who seemed unable to understand the 14 the pragmatic anomaly is in terms of register. the verbal inflection used is archaic (a future form of the third person feminine plural that is essentially no longer in use in modern hebrew). in addition, the phrase redet ha-xashexa, which translates as 'sunset', is a literary phrase that would ordinarily not be used by a native speaker in everyday speech. hebrew differential object marking hacohen, plaut 638 task were excluded from the study (see footnote 9 in subsection 2.1.). the experimental procedure for the adult controls was the same as for the children. 3. results and analysis we wanted to see at what age hebrew-speaking children demonstrate adultlike performance with respect to the hebrew dom paradigm. before examining the child data, we first need to establish what the adult response pattern looks like. the three response options (small, medium, large strawberry) were coded as 1, 2, and 3, respectively. the average ratings of the adult controls for each object type are summarized and plotted in figure 3. figure 3. mean response distribution across conditions (adults) as figure 3 reveals, adult speakers behaved as expected, providing judgments that are very similar to the ones we found in the preliminary questionnaire. items with et-marked definite objects were rated as fully acceptable 97% of the time. in contrast, et-marked indefinite objects generated 66% 1-scores, 34% 2-scores, and no 3-scores. while most judgments in this condition consist of full rejection, it should be noted that 66% 1-scores is nonetheless rather low, and quite unexpected, given that et-marked indefinites are deemed to be entirely ungrammatical, both by informal native intuitions and throughout the literature. interestingly, as the reader may recall, these scores resemble the scores from the adult questionnaire (only 75% 1-scores on a 4point scale). the acceptability ratings of unmarked definite objects were much more dispersed, with full acceptance and full rejection at 16% and 29%, respectively, and the majority of datapoints (56%) rated as 2. if we look at a summary of the adults' average ratings in figure 4, the dom pattern that emerges is clear: items with et-marked definite objects are judged as fully acceptable, with mean scores at near-ceiling (2.96). this is in contrast to the mean ratings of items with et-marked indefinites, which only receive an average rating of 1.34. as expected, the mean acceptability ratings of sentences that consist of unmarked definite objects fall approximately in the middle of the other two object types (1.87), with a slight preference towards rejection. 97% 16% 0% 1% 56% 34% 1% 29% 66% 1 2 3 et-marked definites unmarked definites et-marked indefinites journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 4 627-652, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 639 figure 4. mean ratings across conditions (adults) having established the adult dom pattern, we can now examine the response distribution in the three child groups. these are presented in figure 5 below. figure 5. mean response distribution across conditions (children) as is immediately apparent from the graphs, the children's response patterns in all three groups are different from the ratings provided by the adults. in the youngest age group, judgments seem quite random, with little to no traceable pattern. the ratings provided by the 5;3-6;3 year-olds are quite evenly interspersed, with essentially the same response distribution regardless of object type. in contrast to the data of the 3;6-6;3 year-olds, the response pattern of the oldest children begins to resemble the target dom paradigm. while the distribution of judgments is itself not yet adultlike in any of the conditions, the data demonstrate a distinct response pattern for each condition, indicating that children at this age have developed some sensitivity to the differences between the three object types. most notable, though, are the unexpectedly low rate of 1-scores in condition 3 (18%) and the rather reduced rate of 3scores in condition 1 (only 80%, compared to the adults' 97%). this indicates that even the oldest children tested have not yet fully acquired the adult paradigm. 2,96 1,87 1,34 1 2 3 et-marked definites unmarked definites et-marked indefinites 46% 53% 39% 30% 23% 34% 24% 24% 27% 44% 56% 30% 16% 28% 42% 40% 16% 28% 1 2 3 80% 34% 12% 18% 60% 70% 2% 6% 18% 1 2 3 et-marked definites unmarked definites et-marked indefinites et-marked definites unmarked definites et-marked indefinites et-marked definites unmarked definites et-marked indefinites age 3;6-4;10 age 5;3-6;3 age 7;0-7;10 hebrew differential object marking hacohen, plaut 640 a summary of mean scores per condition for each age group (figure 6) clearly illustrates the differences. figure 6. summary of mean ratings across conditions for all participants the descriptive statistics are summarized in table 4. starting with the two younger age groups, we can see that indeed, on average, the children provided similar responses regardless of object type. at the same time, there is also considerable variance, as indicated by the relatively high standard deviation. systematic distinctions between object types are only observed for the oldest children. table 4 summary of descriptive statistics object type et-marked definites unmarked definites et-marked indefinites 3;06-4;10 mean response 2.04 2.40 2.02 std 0.92 0.76 0.77 5;03-6;03 mean response 2.21 2.29 2.11 std 0.81 0.84 0.81 7;0-7;10 mean response 2.78 2.28 1.94 std 0.46 0.57 0.55 adults mean response 2.96 1.87 1.34 std 0.27 0.66 0.48 an ordinal logistic regression with repeated measures, using a general mixed model, was used to analyze the results. we first wanted to test for subject (participant) effect and for item effect. to test for a subject effect, ordinal logistic regression of response vs. participant, age group and condition was used. in this model the participant effect was significant (p<0.001), which due 1 2 3 age 3;06-4;10 age 5;03-6;03 age 7;0;7;10 adults et-marked definite unmarked definite et-marked indefinite journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 4 627-652, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 641 to some participants consistently opting for higher scores across the board. to test for item effect, the same regression was used, with response vs. item and age group, separately for each condition was used. for condition 1 (etmarked definites), no significant item effect was observed (p=0.33). for condition 2 (unmarked definites), there was a significant item effect (p=0.007), and for condition 3 (et-marked indefinites) we observed a marginally significant effect (p=0.06). to examine these effects more closely, we also tested for item within each condition for each age group. no significant item effect was observed for any of the conditions, as can be seen in table 5. table 5 item effect by age group and condition condition 1: et-marked definites condition 2: unmarked definites condition 3: et-marked indefinites age group p-value age group p-value age group p-value 3;06-4;10 0.6918 3;06-4;10 0.5977 3;06-4;10 0.4136 5;03-6;03 0.0715 5;03-6;03 0.0702 5;03-6;03 0.4301 7;0-7;10 0.5975 7;0-7;10 0.1639 7;0-7;10 0.5745 adults 1.0000 adults 0.4860 adults 0.7701 for the main analysis, we first wanted to test the interaction effect of age group and condition. in this model, subject and item were treated as random effects, so the model was adjusted for noted subject and item effects. the analysis yielded a significant interaction of age group*condition (p<0.001). a significant main effect of age group was also found in each condition (p<0.001, p=0.011, and p<0.001 for conditions 1, 2, and 3, respectively). we also wanted to compare participants' responses in each condition within age group. the results of the analysis are presented in table 6. table 6 comparison of conditions in each age group age group conditions compared p-value 1-2 0.0402 3;06-4;10 1-3 0.8746 2-3 0.0165 1-2 0.5410 5;03-6;03 1-3 0.4544 2-3 0.1790 1-2 <.0001 7;0-7;10 1-3 <.0001 2-3 0.0041 hebrew differential object marking hacohen, plaut 642 1-2 <.0001 adults 1-3 <.0001 2-3 <.0001 for the youngest children, the analysis reveals that the response pattern for et-marked definites was significantly different from the judgments of unmarked definites. the difference between unmarked definites and etmarked indefinites was also significant. interestingly, the difference between the children's judgments of et-marked definites and their judgments of etmarked indefinites was not significant. for the 5;3-6;3 year-olds none of the comparisons were significant, confirming the observation of no systematic distinction between the three object types. in contrast to the two younger age groups, both the 7;0-7;10 year-olds and the adult controls provided significantly different judgments in each of the comparisons, indicating clear and systematic differentiation between the various object types. finally, and importantly, we wanted to see whether the performance of the oldest children was adultlike. to this end, we used the model again to compare the responses of the 7;0-7;10 year-olds to the adult responses. what we found was that the children's response patterns were significantly different from the adults' in all three conditions (p=0.015, p=0.034, and p<0.001 for conditions 1, 2, and 3, respectively), which indicates that even at age 7;10 hebrewspeaking children have not yet converged on the adult dom paradigm. 4. general discussion while the crosslinguistic acquisition of dom has received considerable attention over the past three decades, such research has mainly been limited to production data. our study is one of only a handful of previous studies to probe children's comprehension of dom. in contrast to what has been observed in production, namely early convergence and virtually flawless performance, results from our graded acceptability task reveal that hebrewspeaking children are not yet adultlike even at age 7;10. as such, our study provides further evidence that children's production of dom significantly outpaces their sensitivity to the adult paradigm. how can we account for this asymmetry? one plausible explanation is that the children's poor performance may simply be an artifact of the complex task demands. grammaticality or acceptability judgment tasks have been among the most widely-used tools in acquisition research of the past several decades. it has been clearly demonstrated that children as young as 2 understand these tasks and are capable of providing systematic acceptability judgments when prompted to do so in the appropriate experimental setting (becker 2007, crain & mckee 1985, mcdaniel, cairns & hsu 1990, rice, wexler & redmond 1999, theakston 2004, de villiers & de villiers 1972, 1974, and many more). however, in our study we used a gradable judgment task, rather than the more traditional binary judgment paradigm. it could be argued that a graded rather than a binary acceptability task is too cognitively demanding for young children. the findings of lingwall odio (2018) provide some support for such a claim. lingwall odio used a version of katsos & bishop's (2011) "strawberry task", as well as a binary forced-choice grammaticality judgment task (unsworth 2014), to investigate the grammatical acceptability of spanish journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 4 627-652, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 643 copular verbs among a group of 57 monolingual spanish speaking children aged 4;6-10;9.15 while all the children were able to provide reliable judgments in the binary forced-choice task, the youngest 14 participants (aged 4;6-5;11) were unable to complete the ternary judgment task reliably, which lingwall odio argues is "due to the more complicated nature and overall cognitive demands" of the task (p. 57). hence, the response patterns of the youngest age group in our study (3;6-4;10) may well be an artifact of the overall cognitive complexity of the task, rather than a true reflection of the children's knowledge regarding the dom paradigm. on the other hand, ambridge, pine, rowland & young (2008) have convincingly shown that children as young as 4;1 can in fact provide reliable graded acceptability judgements using the 5-point “smiley-face” scale shown in figure 7. figure 7. the five-point rating scale developed by ambridge et al. (2008) ambridge and colleagues have since successfully used this graded acceptability judgment paradigm to test various linguistic phenomena with children aged 4 and up (see ambridge & rowland 2013, bidgood et al. 2021 and references therein). so, while the performance of our youngest participants may have been confounded by task demands, it seems unlikely to assume that methodological concerns can also account for the data in the two older age groups (age 5;3-6;3 and 7;0-7;10). instead, we think that our findings accurately reflect the learning challenge posed by the intricacies of dom in adult language more broadly, as well as the language-specific factors involved in the adult hebrew dom paradigm. for adult language crosslinguistically, it has long been argued that dom presents a complex interaction between core-grammatical (syntacticsemantic) features and pragmatic-discourse constraints (e.g., aissen 2003, bossong 1991, cassarà & mürmann 2021, dalrymple & nikolaeva 2011, von heusinger 2008, wall & obrist 2021). given that dom is an interface phenomenon, and taken together with robust independent evidence that such phenomena are key loci of delayed acquisition (e.g., chien & wexler 1990, rothman & guijarro-fuentes 2012), it is not surprising that the acquisition of dom will present a challenge for children. in addition to the inherent complexity of interface phenomena more broadly, the learnability challenge may be further exacerbated by what bossong refers to as the general "squishiness" of dom (bossong 2021: 24); namely, the fact that "the boundary between the presence and absence of object marking is fluid" (ibid.) and that "in most languages there are 15 lingwal odio's study compares the monolingual group to a group of 34 spanish-english bilingual speakers of similar ages. hebrew differential object marking hacohen, plaut 644 transitional zones where marking and non-marking are both possible" (ibid.). this indeed seems to be characteristic of hebrew dom, assuming – as we have argued for in subsection 1.1. – that the hebrew et-marking paradigm does not consist simply of a clear-cut, binary, syntactic-semantic choice between obligatorily marked definite objects and obligatorily unmarked indefinite objects. it involves instead a three-way distinction that crucially requires additional discourse-pragmatic knowledge. such a complex paradigm would naturally be challenging for children to master. moreover, the fact that hebrew dom is closely tied to definiteness, itself a phenomenon involving the interface of grammar and pragmatics (e.g., givón 1978, heim 1982, 2011, kamp 1981, szabó 2000), may also help explain its particularly delayed acquisition. previous studies on the acquisition of hebrew have indeed shown a relatively prolonged trajectory. zur (1983) presents the first systematic investigation of the acquisition of the hebrew definiteness system. she argues that while hebrew-acquiring children begin to use the definite determiner already in the very early stages of syntactic development, even school-age children do not yet seem to correctly produce the definite determiner in all its possible environments (zur 1983:19). notably, zur's analysis of spontaneous speech reveals that even 5-6 year-olds still produce 15% erroneous definite marking. error-free performance was only achieved by the 7-8 year-olds. one other relevant study is avram & armon-lotem (2005), who tested 32 hebrew-speaking children aged 2-5 using an elicited production task. they report that up to age 4 mean 4;6), omission of the definite article was found in 13% of discourse-related definite contexts and 21% of non-discourserelated definite contexts. full convergence was attested only for the 5-yearolds. more recent data on the acquisition of the hebrew definite system can be found in work by meir, armon-lotem and colleagues (e.g., meir & novogrodsky 2021, meir, parshina & sekerina 2020, meir, walters & armonlotem 2017). while their main focus is on atypical and/or bilingual acquisition, the data from their td monolingual controls are very relevant for the present study. overall, it is observed that td monolingual hebrew speakers have not yet fully converged on the adult definiteness system before age 5;6. a comparison of our findings for hebrew with existing literature on the acquisition of dom in other languages reveals a similar discrepancy between production and comprehension. as mentioned above, to our knowledge, there are only two other existing studies that use acceptability judgment tasks to test knowledge of dom among td monolingual children: ketrez (2015) for turkish and guijarro-fuentes, pires & nediger (2017) for spanish. similar to the current study, both these studies report data that challenge the neat picture of seemingly early dom acquisition that emerges when only spontaneous speech is considered. ketrez finds that even at age 6, turkishspeaking children do not yet have full mastery of the various semantic and syntactic features involved in the adult turkish dom paradigm. one potential source for the difficulty is argued to be the complexity of the structures tested, namely, the interaction between accusative marking and scope assignment in the context of negation. ketrez contextualizes his findings with earlier crosslinguistic research that reports children's difficulties with https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-01014-4_14#cr12 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-01014-4_14#cr18 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 4 627-652, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 645 scope assignment, and particularly, wide scope interpretations of indefinites (see ketrez 2015 for references). the second – related – explanation offered by ketrez for children's nonadultlike performance is that wide scope interpretations of accusative-marked indefinite objects are rarely found in turkish child directed speech. such interpretations are more frequent in written language, so as children learn to read, they may begin to receive this type of input. with time and more frequent exposure to written language, children eventually master the target structure. the results of guijarro-fuentes et al. for spanish are even more remarkable, with non-adultlike performance even for 10-15 year-olds. moreover, the authors compare the results of their acceptability judgment task to data from guijarro-fuentes & marinis (2011). guijarro-fuentes & marinis tested 10 monolingual spanish speakers aged 12-15 using a completion task (elicited production). while participants did not perform at ceiling in either of the tasks, accuracy levels in the judgment task were significantly lower than those reported by guijarro-fuentes & marinis for elicitation. interestingly, guijarro-fuentes et al. (2017) discuss the delayed acquisition attested in their study in light of the claim that monolingual spanish speaking children master the spanish dom by around age 3 years (as made by rodríguez-mondoñedo 2008). they argue that the discrepancy can be the result of rodríguez-mondoñedo relying solely on spontaneous speech. recall, that the relevant features for spanish dom are the animacy and specificity of the object; the agentivity (or at least [+human] feature) of the subject; and the semantics of the predicate. guijarro-fuentes et al. propose that the animacy feature may be the primary feature for spanish dom, and that this primacy is what accounts for its early mastery, as attested in naturalistic data. hence, using only spontaneous speech, guijarro-fuentes et al. argue, does not target all the relevant dom features involved in spanish dom, and may consequently provide an inaccurate representation of the child's grammar. a similar argument can be made for the acquisition of hebrew dom. the primary feature responsible for the distribution of dom in adult hebrew is definiteness. this is the feature mastered early by hebrew acquiring children, as attested in spontaneous speech data such as the ones analyzed by uzielkarl (2015). the secondary feature of register, which regulates the optional marking of definite objects, is not easily targeted in spontaneous speech data. it is only when the full range of features is targeted, as may only be done using acceptability judgments, that children's true errors are revealed. such an asymmetry between poor performance on judgment or comprehension tasks, coupled with early adultlike production, particularly in spontaneous speech, has been observed for a variety of linguistic phenomena and has received considerable attention in the acquisition literature (for an overview, see grimm, müller, hamann & ruigendijk 2011, hendriks 2014, hendriks & koster 2010). previous accounts propose a number of sources for this unexpected mismatch. these include claims about the different methodological demands involved in production versus comprehension tasks (brandt-kobele & höhle 2010, hirsh-pasek & golinkoff 1996), as well as extralinguistic explanations such as limited processing capacities (grodzinsky hebrew differential object marking hacohen, plaut 646 & reinhart 1993, reinhart 2004, 2006), an immature pragmatic system (chien & wexler 1990, thornton & wexler 1999), or children's difficulty with explicit meta-linguistic reasoning (davies & katsos 2010, de villiers & johnson 2007, johnson et al. 2005). others have argued that the asymmetry reflects a genuine psycholinguistic phenomenon, in that production and comprehension are not two instantiations of one psycholinguistic process (hendriks 2014, hurewitz et al. 2000, ünal & papafragou 2016). with respect to research on the acquisition of dom, it is easy to see that methodology is a major – perhaps the major – contributing factor to the observed asymmetry. beyond purely methodological explanations, all previous accounts attempt to explain the production-comprehension asymmetry observed for phenomena that involve competing or alternative interpretations. it is therefore difficult to see how these accounts could be extended to linguistic phenomena such as the acquisition of hebrew dom, which, crucially, does not involve comparison operations of the relevant type. particularly, whether a dp is et-marked or not has no effect on interpretation per se; it therefore seems unlikely that the children's non-adultlike performance in judgments may be the result of the various interpretive operations argued to be the source of difficulty in the works cited above. in sum, the findings of the current study provide further support for the mismatch between children's early production of dom and their sensitivity to the paradigm, which was first observed for turkish and spanish. as such, it further highlights the importance of methodological choices in child language research. specifically, it underscores how relying solely on spontaneous production data may lead to fundamentally inaccurate conclusions about children's true competence with respect to a particular linguistic phenomenon. it remains to be seen whether other dom languages will reveal a similar production-acceptability asymmetry as we have found for hebrew, and as ketrez and guijarro-fuentes et al. have found for turkish and spanish, respectively. given the genealogical distance of the three languages already tested, we expect that this will indeed be revealed for the acquisition of dom crosslinguistically. further research is also needed in order to determine what may be the source of such a substantial discrepancy between production and acceptability judgments, as currently available accounts of the asymmetry are seemingly unable to provide an adequate explanation. references aissen, j. 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(2000). definiteness in the hebrew noun phrase. journal of linguistics 36(2), 319–363. http://doi.org/10.1017/s0022226700008173 zur, b. (1983). on the acquisition of definiteness by hebrew-speaking children [master's thesis]. tel aviv university. (hebrew). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2015.12.001 http://dspace.bcu-iasi.ro/handle/123456789/15866 https://doi.org/10.1515/probus.2008.001 http://doi.org/10.1017/s0022226700008173 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 4 601-626, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 601 the acquisition of evidential markers in l1 chinese: data from taiwan mandarin-speaking children1 wei-ling linda chen2 national taiwan university chun-yin doris chen3 national taiwan normal university abstract this study examines several issues concerning the acquisition of evidential markers in chinese with taiwan mandarin-speaking children, including evidential type, acquisition order, and age effect. a production task (i.e., picture-description task) and a comprehension task (i.e., multiple-choice task) were completed by forty children who were divided into two age groups, 3-year-olds and 5-year-olds. twenty adult native speakers of taiwan mandarin were recruited as controls. the results showed that direct evidential markers were comprehended and produced prior to indirect. for the order of acquisition, the child participants found visual markers and non-visual markers equally easy, while they understood reported markers better than inferring markers. finally, age was identified as a crucial factor in children’s acquisition of chinese evidential markers. the 3-yearolds had some success with the use of direct evidential markers, but they still had difficulties with indirect evidential markers. the 5-year-olds significantly outperformed the 3-year-olds but they did not reach an adult-like level. keywords: evidentiality, evidential type, acquisition order, taiwan mandarin, l1 1. introduction “how do you know this?” is a frequently used phrase in our daily life requiring the source of information being communicated. the linguistic indication of the source of information for a given statement can be generally understood as evidentiality (e.g., aikhenvald, 2004; dendale & tasmowski, 2001). originally recognized by boas (1947) in his work on kwakiutl, a north american indian language, the concept of evidentiality has been gradually developed in the theoretical domain and further applied to the experimental investigations. in the early reports, in which the primary focus is on non-european languages, the basic characteristics found to qualify evidentiality include the obligatory encoding of the source of information and the realization through 1 this work was financially supported by the ‘chinese language and technology center’ of national taiwan normal university (ntnu) within the framework of higher education sprout project by the ministry of education (moe) in taiwan. 2 wei-ling linda chen received her master’s degree from the linguistics program of the english department at national taiwan normal university. currently, she is working on her doctoral degree in the graduate institute of linguistics at national taiwan university. 3 chun-yin doris chen is a distinguished professor of the department of english at national taiwan normal university. her research interests cover first/second language acquisition, teaching chinese as a second language, syntax-semantics interface, and speech acts. she is the corresponding author for this paper. contact: chunyin@gapps.ntnu.edu.tw received : 26.09.2022 accepted : 20.11.2022 published : 30.12.2022 mailto:chunyin@gapps.ntnu.edu.tw evidential markers in l1 chinese chen & chen 602 the inflectional morphemes such as verbal affixes or particles (e.g., barnes, 1984). examples from tariana, an arawak language spoken in northwest amazonia, are shown in (1)4. (1) a. juse iɾida di-manika-ka. josé football 3sgnf-play-rec.p.vis ‘josé has played football (we saw it).’ b. juse iɾida di-manika-mahka. josé football 3sgnf-play-rec.p.nonvis ‘josé has played football (we heard it).’ c. juse iɾida di-manika-nihka. josé football 3sgnf-play-rec.p.infr ‘josé has played football (we infer it from visual evidence).’ (aikhenvald, 2004, p. 2) the above examples are canonical illustrations of a morphological evidential system. as can be seen, evidentiality is overtly and obligatorily expressed through distinct grammatical markers, i.e., verb suffixes, whether the speaker sees, hears, or infers about the proposition expressed (i.e., josé plays football). thus, evidentiality is assigned a grammatical category, and the closed set of morpho-syntactic markers indicating information sources are referred to as ‘evidentials,’ which are defined as labels “for the verbal category which takes into account […] the alleged source of information about the narrated event” (jakobson, 1957, p. 4). alternative views have been taken to interpret the notion of evidentiality in a broader sense, considering evidentiality as not only specifying sources of information but encoding the speaker’s epistemic justification towards an asserted proposition (chafe, 1986; mithun, 1986). in this perspective, evidentiality is not restricted to only cases of obligatory grammatical marking. rather, it can be expressed by “any linguistic expression of attitudes toward knowledge” (chafe, 1986, p. 271), through a variety of lexical forms and paraphrastic constructions. examples from english, a language regarded as lacking grammaticalized evidentiality (aikhenvald, 2004; lazard, 2001), are shown in (2), where different verbs as in (2a) and (2b) or an adverb as in (2c) are adopted by the speaker to indicate that the claimed fact (i.e., ali plays soccer). european languages have also been found to share a similar trait (cf. wiemer, 2010), resorting to “strategies along the lexico‐grammatical continuum” (marín arrese, haßler & carretero, 2017, p. 2) when expressing evidentiality. (2) a. i saw ali play soccer. b. i heard from john that ali played soccer. c. ali, apparently, played soccer. (ünal & papafragou, 2020, p. 118) likewise, in chinese, evidentiality has been claimed to be “mapped onto a heterogeneous set of lexical forms encompassing verbal and adverbial 4 abbreviations used in the examples: 3: third person; infr: inferred; nf: non-feminine; nonvis: non-visual; sg: singular; rec.p: recent past; vis: visual. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 4 601-626, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 603 markers” (hsieh, 2008, p. 208). in other words, evidential meanings in chinese are realized by lexical elements such as verbs and adverbs, as shown in (3). (3) a. ta kandao fenxishi hen jinzhang. 3sg see analyst very nervous ‘he saw the analyst was very nervous.’ b. gupiao sihu hui shangzhang. stock seem will rise ‘it seemed that the stock would rise.’ c. gupiao jushuo hui shangzhang. stock allegedly will rise ‘allegedly the stock would rise.’ (hsieh, 2008, pp. 209-210) as can be seen, chinese displays a rich lexical repertoire of evidentiality. in (3a), the verb kan ‘see’ marks the evidence as being acquired through sensory perception. in (3b), the use of sihu ‘seem’ suggests that the speaker might either draw an inference based on visual observations or on deductive reasoning. in (3c), the use of jushuo ‘allegedly’ indicates the source of information communicated is not originated from the speaker but from hearsay. in sum, previous studies all indicate that a secure understanding of evidentiality is a relatively late achievement for children. to see whether young learners of mandarin chinese follow the developmental patterns found in better-studied languages, and whether age is a dominant factor in the acquisition of chinese evidentiality, the present study examined the production and comprehension of evidential markers with l1 learners of mandarin chinese. 1.1. literature review 1.1.1. theory of cognitive development according to piaget’s (1952) theory of cognitive development, children’s intelligence changes as their age increases. they acquire their mother tongue and construct a mental model of the world. piaget is interested in the way where children acquire concepts such as time, quantity, causality, and so on. he believes that children develop knowledge through their own exploration, rather than by working with others. thus, he proposes that all children go through four stages: stage 1 (sensorimotor): birth to 2 years; stage 2 (preoperational): 2 to 7 years; stage 3 (concrete operational): 7 to 11 years; stage 4 (formal operational): ages 12 and up. the sequence of these stages is universal across cultures and follows the same invariant order, but not all at the same rate. at the first stage, “the infant moves from a neonatal, reflex level of complete self-world un-differentiation to a relatively coherent organization of sensory-motor actions vis-a-vis his immediate environment” (flavell, 1963, https://www.simplypsychology.org/formal-operational.html evidential markers in l1 chinese chen & chen 604 p.86). they know the world through movements and sensations, learn about the world through basic actions, and realize that their actions can cause things to happen in the world around them. at the second stage, “the individual makes his first relatively unorganized and fumbling attempts to come to grips with the new and strange world of symbols” (flavell, 1963, p. 86). they learn to use words and pictures to represent objects, struggle to see things from the perspective of others, and get better with language and thinking. at the third stage, “the child's conceptual organization of the surrounding environment slowly takes on stability and coherence by virtue of the formation of a series of cognitive structure called groupings” (flavell, 1963, p. 86). they begin to think logically about concrete events, and use inductive logic or reasoning from specific information to a general principle. at the final stage, the adolescents show “the structures within which adults operate when they are at their cognitive best, i.e., when they are thinking logically and abstractly” (flavell, 1963, p. 87). they begin to think abstractly and reason about hypothetical problems, and think more about moral, philosophical, ethical, social, and political issues that require theoretical and abstract reasoning. all in all, intelligence is demonstrated through motor activity without using symbols at the stage of infancy, where object concepts are acquired. language use becomes mature, memory and imagination gradually developed in early childhood, and egocentric thinking predominates. operational thinking develops through logical and systematic manipulation of concrete objects, and egocentric thinking reduces when children move on to the stage of elementary and early adolescence. finally, intelligence is shown through logical use of symbols related to abstract concepts at the formal operational stage. 1.1.2. empirical studies on evidentiality turning to the experimental investigations, developmental studies have also addressed the acquisition of evidentiality cross-linguistically (aksu-koç, 1988; koring & de mulder, 2015; ozturk & papafragou, 2016; u ̈nal & papafragou, 2016). since being able to produce and understand a language is the hallmark of language acquisition, children’s production and comprehension of evidentiality have been tested. specifically, researchers have examined how and when children begin producing knowledgequalifying expressions, i.e., evidential markers and constructions, and comprehending the semantics of different evidential devices. a primacy for evidential production over evidential comprehension has been well documented in the literature, where languages with obligatory grammatical evidential systems have been most widely studied (aksu-koç, 1988; ozturk & papafragou, 2016; ünal & papafragou, 2016). the production of evidentiality seems to be an early accomplishment for children. while children are able to successfully produce direct evidential morphemes at journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 4 601-626, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 605 around the ages of 2 and 3 (aksu-koç, 1988; papafragou, li, choi, & han, 2007), they have been found to consistently fail at tasks accessing their evidential comprehension (ozturk & papafragou, 2016; ünal & papafragou, 2016). another consistent result revealed across evidential languages is an asymmetry favoring direct over indirect evidential markers (aksu-koç, 1988; koring & de mulder, 2015; ozturk & papafragou, 2016; papafragou et al., 2007). a hierarchy seems to exist in the acquisition of evidentiality such that markers of direct evidence (i.e., directly perceived knowledge) are acquired prior to markers of indirect evidence (i.e., inferred or informed knowledge). production data suggest that it is not until age 6 or 7 that children start to reliably produce the appropriate markers in indirect contexts (aksu-koç, 1988; ozturk & papafragou, 2016). comprehension data otherwise reveal that children do not exhibit an adult-like knowledge of indirect evidential markers until after the age of 6 or 7, and may even have to wait until much later (ozturk & papafragou, 2016; koring & de mulder, 2015). in this section, four most widely cited empirical studies on children’s acquisition of evidentiality (i.e., koring & de mulder, 2015; ozturk & papafragou, 2016; papafragou et al., 2007; winans, hyams, rett, & kalin, 2014) are reviewed in chronological order. papafragou et al. (2007) investigated the acquisition of grammaticalized evidentiality5 and its relation to children’s source reasoning to address how linguistic expressions and conceptual representations make contact during language learning. focusing on the acquisition of evidential morphology in korean, they conducted a series of experiments with native speakers of korean aged 3 and 4 to examine their evidential production and evidential comprehension. meanwhile, their conceptual understanding of information sources was also tested. a semantic task was designed to test children’s comprehension of -e and -tay, in which the children were expected to attribute an utterance marked with either one of the two morphemes to the appropriate speaker. a pragmatic task was designed to test children’s understanding of discourse functions of -e and -tay, in which the children had to compare two 5 to better understand the test design, examples of declarative sentences in korean ending with the evidential suffixes -e (direct evidence) and -tay (hearsay evidence) are provided in (i) and (ii), taken from papafragou et al. (2007, p. 262): (i) toli-ka mantwu-lul mek-ess-e. toli-nom dumpling-acc eat-past-decl ‘toli ate dumplings.’ (ii) toli-ka mantwu-lul mek-ess-tay. toli-nom dumpling-acc eat-past-decl ‘(i heard that) toli ate dumplings.’ evidential markers in l1 chinese chen & chen 606 evidentially marked utterances and tell the experimenter which one they tended to believe. on the other hand, their source monitoring abilities were also tested with similar test scenarios provided (looking/telling) but without the engagement of evidential morphology. children were asked to report sources of their own findings and identify sources when monitoring of knowledge in others was involved. results showed that korean children ranging from 3 to 5 were able to explicitly report their sensory experiences using the direct evidential marker -e, but their ability to produce indirect evidential marker, the hearsay morpheme -tay in this case, had to wait until they were older to be more adult-like. by contrast, the comprehension of evidential morphemes seemed to pose more difficulties to the korean children, as they still failed at different comprehension tasks by the age of 4. papafragou et al. (2007) argued that the reason for the delay in comprehension may not be totally conceptual. since the children successfully engaged in nonlinguistic evidential reasoning, it was found that comprehension tasks may be more cognitively demanding and involve more use of metalinguistic knowledge. winans et al. (2014) conducted a felicity judgment task on english copyraising constructions (henceforth crcs)6 with 4to 6-year-old english native speakers and adult controls. a total of 42 children and 21 adult controls participated in the study. the adult results were consistent with the findings of rett and hyams (2014) in that raised sentences were much more frequently accepted with direct scenarios, while unraised sentences were acceptable in both direct and indirect contexts. by contrast, the results of the children’s performance showed that they were equally likely to accept raised and unraised sentences regardless of the type of test scenarios provided. most importantly, they were equally likely to consider a raised sentence with an indirect picture ‘good’ as with a direct picture. although slight differences were found across the age groups, those differences were not statistically significant. based on the findings, winans et al. (2014) refuted the view that the comprehension results reflected children’s actual knowledge of evidentiality. the children produced raised constructions and did so exclusively in direct situations, showing that they must be equipped with knowledge of evidential semantics and syntax. in addition, the children were able to explicitly reject raised sentences in indirect contexts with adult-like justifications when asked to provide explanations. thus, the delay in comprehension was most likely due to methodological artifacts. to sum up, winans et al. (2014) showed that 6 examples of copy-raising constructions (crcs) in english are provided in (i), taken from winans et al. (2014, p. 2): (i) a. ernie looks like he got sick. b. it looks like ernie got sick. in english, a raised sentence such as (ia) is acceptable only when the speaker has direct perceptual access to the event, while an unraised sentence such as (iib) can be interpreted as the speaker acquiring the information from both direct and indirect sources. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 4 601-626, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 607 english-speaking children by the age of 6 were still insensitive to the relation between crcs and the evidence types, and the developmental pattern observed in them was not so different from children acquiring languages with grammaticalized evidentiality. koring and de mulder (2015) focused on the acquisition of evidentiality in dutch, where evidential distinctions were not marked grammatically. in dutch, a specific group of lexical items encode evidential meanings, and they do not contain an additional semantic property such as tense, aspect, or speaker certainty. the participants were 120 dutch-speaking children aged 6 to 9 and 43 adult controls, who were asked to judge which of the two characters appearing in the picture would probably perform a certain action (the who-question) and provide reasons for their answers (the why-question). both tasks contained three conditions: direct visual, hearsay, and inferential. results showed that when answering the why-questions, the adults were more inclined to use inferential and hearsay evidence. by contrast, the children were more likely to rely on visual and hearsay evidence, and less likely to consult inferential access. though they demonstrated an explicit understanding of the direct evidential verb, this was not the case for the indirect hearsay and inferential verbs. this developmental pattern is thus similar to that of children acquiring languages with grammaticalized evidential systems: the direct evidential maker is acquired prior to the indirect markers. given that the dutch direct evidential verb does not encode speaker certainty, koring and de mulder (2015) argued that an earlier acquisition of the direct evidential term cannot be mistakenly attributed to children’s early understanding of speaker certainty. focusing on the acquisition of evidential morphology in turkish, a language with grammaticalized evidentiality, ozturk and papafragou (2016) conducted a series of experiments with native speakers of turkish7 aged 5 to 7 to investigate the relation between linguistic and cognitive development. results showed that the 5-year-olds were still unable to reliably differentiate the two evidential markers based on their discourse functions. by contrast, 7 turkish is a language with grammaticalized evidentiality, in which evidential meanings are encoded in its two past-tense morphemes -di (direct evidence) and -miş (indirect evidence). in addition, the indirect evidential morpheme -miş can be interpreted as the speaker acquiring information through either hearsay or inference. examples of declarative sentences in turkish ending with the two verb suffixes are provided in (i) and (ii), adapted from ozturk and papafragou (2016, p. 200): (i) çocuk oyun oyna-di. child game play.past.direct ‘the child played.’ (ii) çocuk oyun oyna-miş. child game play.past.indirect ‘the child played.’ evidential markers in l1 chinese chen & chen 608 the children began to make progress at linking evidential markers to speaker reliability at age 6, and their performance improved significantly at age 7 and became almost adult-like. in addition, reliability effects from the turkish source verbs were also acquired around the same age. these findings suggest that the children’s understanding of the pragmatic properties of evidential morphology was similarly delayed. to conclude, the turkish children by the age of 7 had not yet fully understood the turkish evidential system. together with the findings from the non-linguistics source monitoring tasks, ozturk and papafragou (2016) argued that the delay in the acquisition of evidentiality does not necessarily reflect children’s cognitive immaturity. instead, it might be the mapping between the existing source concepts and the corresponding linguistic forms that causes greater problems for the turkish learners. in sum, in these studies, children’s production and comprehension of the evidential devices (i.e., morphemes, lexical verbs and syntactic constructions) were examined. it has been observed that children generally acquired direct evidential markers prior to indirect ones (koring & de mulder, 2015; ozturk & papafragou, 2016; papafragou et al., 2007), indicating an earlier understanding of direct sources. in addition, together with the findings from papafragou et al. (2007), winans et al. (2014), and ozturk and papafragou (2016) showed that the production-comprehension asymmetry holds regardless of children’s exposure languages. what can be found from the cross-linguistic empirical data is that children’s acquisition of evidentiality is developed later in their childhood. previous studies dealing with the acquisition of evidentiality have been primarily, if not solely, concerned with languages whose sources of information are obligatorily and morphologically encoded (cf. aksu-koç 1988, papafragou et al., 2007; ozturk & papafragou, 2016; ünal & papafragou, 2016). however, discussions of chinese evidentiality seem to be somewhat vacant, not to mention the acquisition of evidentiality in chinese, which has not been examined systematically and thus lacked robust empirical evidence. to investigate whether the theoretical background and empirical findings can well account for mandarin-speaking children’s acquisition of evidentiality, we address the following research questions: 1) are direct evidential markers acquired prior to indirect evidential markers in comprehension and production? 2) within each type, what is the order of acquisition of subtypes, i.e., visual vs. non-visual within direct markers, and inferring vs. reported within indirect markers? 2. methodology 2.1. participants previous studies find that children spontaneously produce evidential morphemes (aksu-koç, 1988; choi, 1995) and evidential constructions (rett journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 4 601-626, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 609 & hyams, 2014) at around the age of 2. experimental studies otherwise show that children reach the same level of performance in their naturalistic speech about a year or two later (aksu-koç, 1988; papafragou et al., 2007; ünal & papafragou, 2016). however, at what exact age children develop a full understanding of evidential systems remains open to dispute. as mentioned earlier, the comprehension of evidentiality, especially indirect evidential markers, poses such persistent difficulties for children that they may have to wait until after age 6 or 7, or even later, to properly handle the full range of evidential meanings (koring & de mulder, 2015; ozturk & papafragou, 2016). studies on children’s conceptual understanding of sources of knowledge also present a similar age-of-development (cf. matsui & fitneva, 2009). thus, the present study recruited children ranging from 3 to 5 to see whether children at age 3 begin to develop the idea of evidentiality and whether age 5 is the breakthrough for evidential expressions in mandarin chinese. information about the participants is given in table 1. table 1 summary of the background information of the participant group age range (years; months) number child g1 3-year-olds 3;0-3;11(mean = 3;4) 20 g2 5-year-olds 5;0-5;11(mean = 5;6) 20 adult g3 25-year-olds 22;0-26;11(mean = 25;7) 20 each of the child group consisted of 20 participants recruited from preschools located in a northern city serving middleto upper-class families. all of them are native speakers of mandarin chinese and free of language disorders of any kind. additionally, 20 adult native speakers of mandarin chinese were recruited as controls. most of them were graduate students and undergraduate students from a public university. 2.2. materials and methods children’s acquisition of evidentiality has been examined through observational and experimental methods with different manifestations. observational studies generally investigate the emergence of evidential markers in children’s speech, adopting a longitudinal format in which a handful of children’s daily conversations are recorded over a period of time and analyzed: aksu-koç (1988) on turkish, choi (1995) on korean, and matsui, yamamoto and mccagg (2006) on japanese. despite providing researchers with invaluable opportunities to observe language behaviors in naturalistic settings, observational methods have important limitations. specifically, while the collection of spontaneous speech data requires a considerable amount of time, it is difficult to generalize the results to a larger population due to the small subject pool (blume & lust, 2017). since the evidential markers in l1 chinese chen & chen 610 present study aims to address the issues of evidentiality systematically, a longitudinally conducted study might not be able to serve the purpose. because of this inadequacy, experimental means were adopted to elicit production of the target linguistic materials and to test comprehension in a controlled environment cross-sectionally. previous experimental studies have used different approaches to elicit evidential production and evaluate evidential comprehension. for production, the event-description method requires the participants to describe the test scenarios using the appropriate evidential markers (aksu-koç, 1988; u ̈nal & papafragou, 2016). the correction and the re-telling methods involve the change of the evidential markers in the participants’ speech (papafragou et al., 2007). the fill-in-the-blank method is adopted when the evidential markers are expected at the end of the sentences in the target language (ozturk & papafragou, 2016). for comprehension, the most commonly adopted method is the sentence-to-speaker matching task, or its variation the sentence-tosituation matching task, in which the participants are expected to attribute the utterances marked with evidential markers to the appropriate speaker or situation (aksu-koç, 1988; ünal & papafragou, 2016). other comprehension tests involve speaker judgement, where the participants are asked to judge an evidentially encoded utterance as ‘good’ or ‘silly’ based on the presented test scenario (papafragou et al., 2007; winans et al., 2014). unlike languages with grammaticalized evidentiality, chinese generally lacks evidential suffixes or particles. instead, evidentiality is “mapped onto a heterogeneous set of lexical forms encompassing verbal and adverbial markers” (hsieh, 2008, p. 208). in other words, evidential meanings in chinese are manifested in a wide range of lexical forms. willett (1988) noted that “the primary evidential parameter expressed in natural language is that of direct evidence versus indirect evidence” (ibid.: 57). subsequent studies have also found that the distinction between direct and indirect evidence counts as the most basic and fundamental distinction (cf. davis, potts & speas, 2007; faller, 2002). thus, following previous work, we categorize evidence types into direct and indirect, and further divide them into subtypes. type 1. direct evidence direct evidence generally refers to information derived from a type of sensory observation (aikhenvald, 2004; willett, 1988). two types of evidence are included: visual and non-visual. type 1-1 visual visual evidence refers to knowledge acquired through seeing. it is necessary to single out visual sense in that visually perceived information is often ranked higher than information obtained through other sensory means journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 4 601-626, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 611 in language-specific and cross-linguistic hierarchies (cf. aikhenvald, 2004; barnes, 1984), which reflects its primary importance. in chinese, the most prominent verb of perception kan ‘see’ denotes visual perception, as shown in (4), where the speaker was physically present in the event to witness the whole process. (4) wo kandao ta ganggang jingguo na dong fangzi. 1sg see 3sg just walk past that cl house ‘i saw her just walk past that house.’ type 1-2 non-visual non-visual evidence refers to information acquired through hearing, the second most prominent sensory modality, but can be typically extended to other forms of sensory perception. in chinese, a language lacking grammatically-coded evidentiality, auditory perception is characterized by the verb ting ‘hear’, as shown in (5), which signifies the fact that the speaker arrived at the knowledge (i.e., the dog barked) through auditory perception in the case where the event took place in the vicinity of the speaker, within earshot. (5) wo tingdao gou zai jiao. i hear dog asp bark ‘i hear that the dog is barking.’ type 2. indirect evidence indirect evidence is further distinguished into two types: inferring and reported. inferring is marked when the result of an event is inferentially constructed but not directly perceived, while reported is marked when information about an event is acquired via verbal communication. type 2-1 inferring epistemic modal expressions, such as an auxiliary verb like yinggai ‘should’8 as in (6) or an adverb like yiding ‘must’ as in (7), display the value of inferential evidentiality. (6) [the light in the professor’s office is on] laoshi yinggai hai zai bangongshi. professor should still in office ‘the teacher should still be in the office.’ 8 since the deontic reading of yinggai ‘should’ is beyond the scope of the current study, it is not included in the discussion. here the focus is on the use of yinggai in the sense of ‘supposedly’. evidential markers in l1 chinese chen & chen 612 (7) [xiaoming did not come to work today] ta keneng shengbing le. 3sg might sick asp ‘he might be sick.’ in (6), the use of yinggai ‘should’ indicates that the speaker made an inference based on his or her observation of the available clues (i.e., the office light is on). by contrast, in (7), the use of keneng ‘might’ indicates that the speaker cannot be certain whether the individual in question was actually sick (e.g., the speaker did not receive any note or phone call from xiaoming). type 2-2 reported reported markers signal knowledge acquired from verbal reports. in chinese, reported speech is generally realized by the verb of saying shuo ‘say’. the most canonical use of shuo ‘say’ is shown in (8). (8) fenxishi shuo gupiao hui shangzhang. analyst say stock will rise ‘the analyst said that the stock would rise.’ (hsieh, 2008, p. 208) the verb shuo ‘say’ in (8) takes the preceding third-person subject (i.e., fenxishi ‘analyst’) as the source of information regarding the stock price. the information communicated is thus not originating from the current speaker. instead, it is provided by someone else who is overtly referred to in the context. in cases where the attribution of the reported information is unknown, shuo ‘say’ can extend its paradigm of usage by taking the perception verb ting ‘hear’ as its matrix verb to signal hearsay statements, as shown in (9), where shuo ‘say’ serves as a complementizer9. (9) wo ting shuo ta haoxiang yao qu du dianying le. 1sg hear say 3sg seem want go study films asp ‘i heard that he seemed to go to study films.’ (wang, katz & chen, 2003, p. 458) thus, two tasks were designed: one for production (i.e., a picturedescription task) and the other for comprehension (i.e., a multiple-choice task). the classification and distribution of the test items used in each task are shown in table 2. 9 some may consider ting shuo ‘hear-say’ a serial verb, in which shuo is a verb, rather than a complementizer. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 4 601-626, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 613 table 2 the structure of the task design type example the picture-description task the multiple-choice task t1 direct evidence t1-1 visual kan ‘see’ q3, q7, q11, q15 q3, q7, q11, q15 t1-2 non-visual ting ‘heard’ q1, q5, q9, q13 q1, q5, q9, q13 t2 indirect evidence t2-1 inferring yinggai ‘should,’ keneng ‘might’ q4, q8, q12, q16 q4, q8, q12, q16 t2-1 reported shou ‘say’ q2, q6, q10, q14 q2, q6, q10, q14 total 16 16 as shown in table 2, a total of sixteen items were included in each task. sixteen different test scenarios were made with one test item included in each scenario. 2.3. picture-description task in the task, the participants are provided with visual stimuli such as a single picture depicting an event, such as “cookie theft” by goodglass, kaplan and weintraub (2001) or a set of pictures narrating one story (e.g., “frog story”)(mayer,1969), and they are asked to report what they see. the semistructured contexts guiding the participants to use a given form allow the researchers to collect relevant linguistic data in a fairly natural setting (blume & lust, 2017). since picture-descripting does not involve cognitively more complex processes such as reading or writing, it is appropriate for testing young children. in the current study, four kinds of conditions were designed: direct visual, direct non-visual, indirect inferring, and indirect reported. in the direct visual condition, the participants first saw a picture describing the test scenario, and later saw a picture containing the key object (e.g., a kite). in the direct non-visual condition, the participants first saw a picture depicting the test scenario, and later heard the key object (e.g., the sound of cattle mooing, instead of an image of cattle, was presented to them) and saw the character’s reaction to the sound in the second picture. in the indirect inferring condition, two pictures were presented: one showing the beginning of an event, the other the end state of the event. finally, in the indirect reported condition, two pictures were also presented in which two characters were having a discussion about something. all the conversations were pre-recorded and played during evidential markers in l1 chinese chen & chen 614 the test. table 3 presents an example of the scenario for the direct visual condition. table 3 an example of the picture-description task10 the participants saw: the participants heard: scene 1 xiaonuhai de mama yao ta qu paotui. ‘the little girl was asked to run some errands for her mom.’ scene 2 qu xuexiao de lushang, fazhan le yijian shi. ta yao he mama fenxiang zhejian shi! ‘on her way to school, something happened. she wanted to share this event with her mom!’ ni jiaode, xiaonuhai hui he mama shuo sheme ne? ‘what do you think the little girl might say to her mother?’ 2.4. multiple-choice task previous studies on the acquisition of evidentiality have typically employed matching tasks, where the participants are expected to attribute the sentences marked with evidentials to the speaker possessing the appropriate access to the information (ozturk & papafragou, 2016; papafragou et al., 2007) or to the appropriate situation (ünal & papafragou, 2016). the matching between sentences and pictures (or videos, characters, etc.) is especially common amongst acquisition studies investigating later-acquired constructions, for its simplicity allows researchers to collect unambiguous responses with few missing data (ambridge & rowland, 2013). in the current study, the comprehension test was presented in the form of a multiple-choice task, where the participants were required to choose one description appropriate for the test scenarios. all the test items were adopted from the picture-description task and presented with two options, as shown in table 4, which follows the same storyline as the previous example of the picture-description task (i.e., the little girl saw a kite). 10 all pictures used in the experiment were retrieved from https://www.freepik.com with licenses as a subscribed (paid) user. https://www.freepik.com/ journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 4 601-626, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 615 table 4 an example of the multiple-choice task the participants saw: the participants heard: scene 1 houlai, xiaonuhai he mama shuo, “wo kandao you yige fengzheng diaozai shushang!” ‘later, the little girl said to her mom, “i saw a kite falling on the tree!”’ scene 2 xiaonuhai zheju hua shi sheme yisi? ‘what does the little girl’s utterance mean?' (1) ta ziji faxian zai shushang you fengzheng. ‘she found a kite on the tree by herself.’ (2) ta ting bieren shuo shushang you fengzheng. ‘she was told that there was a kite on the tree.’ 2.5. procedure since the participants were mainly young children, a consent form was given to their parents prior to the study. after the consent forms were collected, the participating children were asked to do the tasks individually in an unoccupied classroom. in each trial, they went through the production task (i.e., the picture-description task) followed by the comprehension task (i.e., the multiple-choice task). test scenarios were randomized and presented to them on a laptop computer screen. all of their responses were audio-recorded during the 20-minute experiment section, later transcribed and analyzed statistically. 2.6. scoring in the picture-description task, the participants’ responses were evaluated according to whether or not their responses contained key lexical items appropriate for the test conditions. in direct contexts (i.e., direct visual and direct non-visual), the participants’ responses should contain keywords indicating the involvement of visual or auditory perception (e.g., kan ‘see’, ting ‘heard’). as for indirect contexts, in the indirect inferring condition, the participants’ responses should include keywords showing the process of inferential reasoning (e.g., keneng ‘might’, yinggai ‘should’). in the indirect reported condition, the participants’ responses should contain keywords or phrases indicating the source of information (e.g., x shuo ‘x say’). if the evidential markers in l1 chinese chen & chen 616 participants had fulfilled the above mentioned criteria, they were given one point. irrelevant responses or no response at all were not given any point. in terms of the multiple-choice task, since the participants were presented with only two alternative answers, once the participants had chosen the correct answer, they were given one point. all the collected data were processed by r11 for statistical computing as soon as the tasks were completed. 3. results the first research question addressed in the study concerns mandarinspeaking children’s difficulties in acquiring direct and indirect evidential markers. specifically, the present study investigates whether direct evidential markers are acquired earlier than indirect evidential markers. as shown in table 5, a two-way anova with the participants’ overall correct responses as the dependent variable and evidence type (direct, indirect) and age group (g1, g2, g3) as factors revealed a main effect of evidence type (f(1, 1914) = 432.04, p < .001), a main effect of age group (f(2, 1914) = 282.25, p < .001), and a significant interaction between the two factors (f(2, 1914) = 81.76, p < .001). table 5 two-way anova on evidence type and age group df ss ms f p evidence type 1 49.09 49.09 432.04 <.001 age group 2 64.14 32.07 282.25 <.001 evidence type*age group 2 18.58 9.29 81.76 <.001 residuals 1914 217.47 0.11 the participants’ overall performance in direct and indirect contexts is shown in figure 1, which shows the results obtained from both the production or the comprehension tasks, with error bars depicting standard errors. as we can see, all age groups performed better on direct evidential markers than on indirect evidential markers (g1: m = 0.78 > 0.28, g2: m = 0.98 > 0.57, g3: m = 1.00 > 0.95), and the differences were apparent in g1 and g2. figure 1. overall performance on direct and indirect evidential markers 11 r is a free, open source software program for statistical analysis. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 4 601-626, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 617 results of multiple one-way anovas showed that the differences between direct and indirect evidential markers were statistically significant in each of the age groups, g1 (f(1, 638) = 217.3, p < .001), g2 (f(1, 638) = 203.1, p < .001) and g3 (f(1, 638) = 15.69, p < .001). regarding the between-group comparisons, a one-way anova comparing the correct responses of direct evidential markers among the three age groups revealed a significant difference (f(2, 957) = 74.32, p < .001). results of post hoc comparisons using the tukey’s test showed that both g2 (p < .001) and g3 (p < .001) performed significantly better than g1. however, the performance of g2 was not significantly different from that of g3 (p = 0.613). another one-way anova was conducted to examine the effect of indirect evidence on the participants’ performance. a significant difference was found among the three age groups’ correct responses of indirect evidential markers (f(2, 957) = 223.6, p < .001). post hoc comparisons using tukey’s test revealed that g3 (p < .001) and g2 (p < .001) significantly outperformed g1. in addition, g3 performed significantly better than g2 (p < .001). that is, there was a developmental pattern in which the adults obtained the highest mean score, followed by the 5-year-olds and the 3-year-olds. as shown in figure 1, the data revealed an asymmetry between direct and indirect evidential markers in each of the three age groups, with direct evidential markers being acquired earlier than indirect markers as a whole. between-group comparisons revealed the children’s earlier success with direct evidential markers, as the 3-year-olds performed differently from chance, and the 5-year-olds demonstrated an almost adult-like competence. however, the children apparently had difficulties handling indirect evidential markers. their performance on indirect items was significantly lower than on direct items. in addition, the children’s correct responses in indirect contexts increased with their age, indicating a developmental pattern in which children became better at producing and comprehending indirect evidential markers as they grew older. yet even for the 5-year-olds, their performance was still far from adultlike. the present study further examines the acquisition of the subtypes of direct evidential markers and indirect evidential markers. the second research question concerns the order of acquisition within each of the evidential classes. as shown in table 6, under the condition of direct evidence, a two-way anova with the participants’ correct responses as the dependent variable, and direct subtype (visual, non-visual) as well as age group (g1, g2, g3) as factors revealed no main effect of direct subtype (f(1, 954) = 2.372, p = 0.124 ), a main effect of age group (f(2, 954) = 74.393, p < .001), and a non-significant interaction between direct subtype and age group (f(2, 954) = 0.791, p = 0.454). evidential markers in l1 chinese chen & chen 618 table 6 two-way anova on direct subtype and age group df ss ms f p direct subtype 1 0.15 0.15 2.372 0.124 age group 2 9.41 4.704 74.393 <.001 direct subtype*age group 2 0.10 0.050 0.791 0.454 residuals 954 60.32 0.063 the participants’ overall performance in visual and non-visual contexts is shown in figure 2, with error bars depicting standard errors. as depicted in the figure, except for g3, whose performance was already at ceiling, both g1 and g2 performed slightly better on visual markers than non-visual markers (g1: m = 0.81 > 0.76, g2: m = 0.99 > 0.97). however, this difference was not statistically significant. figure 2. overall performance on visual and non-visual markers for the subtypes of indirect evidential markers, a two-way anova with the participants’ correct responses as the dependent variable and indirect subtype (inferring, reported) as well as age group (g1, g2, g3) as factors was conducted. as shown in table 7, the analysis revealed a significant main effect of indirect subtype (f(1, 954) = 24.443, p < .001), a significant main effect of age group (f(2, 954) = 231.146, p < .001), and a significant interaction between indirect subtype and age group (f(2, 954) = 5.465, p < .01). table 7 two-way anova on indirect subtype and age group df ss ms f p indirect subtype 1 3.88 3.88 24.443 <.001 age group 2 73.31 36.65 231.146 <.001 indirect subtype*age group 2 1.73 0.87 5.465 <.01 residuals 954 151.28 0.16 the participants’ overall performance in inferring contexts and reported contexts is shown in figure 3, with error bars depicting standard errors. as shown in figure 3, all the age groups performed better on reported markers journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 4 601-626, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 619 as opposed to inferring markers (g1: m = 0.33 > 0.23, g2: m = 0.69 > 0.45, g3: m = 0.98 > 0.93), and the differences were particularly apparent in g2. figure 3. overall performance on inferring and reported markers results of multiple one-way anovas showed that the differences between inferring and reported markers were found to be statistically significant in g2 (f(1, 318) = 20.54, p < .001), but not in g1 (p = 0.0616) and g3 (p = 0.0645). thus, for our 5-year-olds, inferring markers were more difficult than reported markers, while for our 3-year-olds, the subtypes of indirect evidential markers were equally challenging. regarding the between-group comparisons, a one-way anova revealed that there was a significant difference in the correct responses for inferring markers among the three age groups (f(2, 477) = 125, p < .001). tukey’s test for multiple comparisons showed that g3 performed significantly better than g2 (p < .001) and g1 (p < .001) and that g2 scored significantly higher than g1 (p < .001). another one-way anova was conducted for the reported condition and revealed a significant difference among the three age groups’ correct responses of reported markers (f(2, 477) = 111.1, p < .001). tukey’s test for multiple comparisons found a similar pattern where g3 significantly exceeded g2 (p < .001) and g1 (p < .001), and g2 significantly outperformed g1 (p < .001). 4. discussion 4.1. acquisition of direct and indirect evidential markers such findings are consistent with previous empirical studies, which have identified a developmental primacy for direct over indirect evidential markers (aksu-koç, 1988; ozturk & papafragou, 2016; papafragou et al., 2007). the pattern found for children acquiring mandarin is thus similar to that of children acquiring languages with grammaticalized evidential systems. in addition, some of the previous work testing children’s source monitoring abilities also revealed a direct-indirect asymmetry between information sources (ozturk & papafragou, 2016; papafragou et al., 2007). for instance, ozturk and papafragou (2016) found that turkish-speaking children aged 5 to 7 produced and comprehended the direct evidential morpheme better, and at the same time achieved much higher accuracy in identifying perception as evidential markers in l1 chinese chen & chen 620 a source of knowledge in source monitoring tasks where evidential morphology was not involved. the direct-indirect asymmetry observed in the current study and in previous work appears to suggest that children’s difficulties with evidential markers stem from, at least in part, the difficulty of mastering the relevant concepts. in other words, conceptual development of the underlying source concepts may be a limiting factor in children’s acquisition of linguistic evidentiality. specifically, children’s failures in acquiring indirect evidential markers are likely due to the conceptual complexity of indirect sources. it has been previously argued that children are more attentive to “concrete, referential and objective characteristics of situations” than to “subjectively relevant distinctions such as the speaker’s attitude to the proposition asserted” (aksu-koç, 1988, p. 195). thus, it appears that children’s lack of sensitivity to evidential distinctions poses problems for the acquisition of evidential markers. in the current study, the children’s earlier understanding of direct evidential markers suggests that perception may well be the most salient type of information source that the children begin to gain awareness of. conversely, children’s inability to handle indirect evidential markers suggests that it is cognitively more demanding to identify and reason about indirect sources such as verbal reports or inferences. the findings of developmental studies seem to support this explanation: while children as young as 3 realized seeing leads to knowledge (pillow, 1989; pratt & bryant, 1990), their understanding of how knowledge can be obtained by inference and verbal communication develops relatively late (sodian & wimmer, 1987; wimmer, hogrefe & perner, 1988). as the children grew older, their performance on indirect items improved, suggesting that the children may not only gain better attentional and memory resources, but become cognitively more mature and ready to deal with different types of information sources. this shows that the participants were at the third stage of piaget’s theory, where children use reasoning from specific information to a general principle. alternatively, even if the underlying source concepts become available to children, it is still possible that mapping the linguistic forms onto the conceptual representations already in mind poses challenges to children (cf. clark, 1993). this hypothesis has been confirmed in data from turkish and korean samples, as children who had difficulties with evidential morphology performed better at the corresponding source monitoring tasks (ozturk & papafragou, 2016; papafragou et al., 2007). as previous studies show, evidential relations are subtle and do not necessarily have observable referents in the world. moreover, this language-to-concept mapping might be further complicated by the fact that evidential markers in chinese sometimes encode additional semantic properties, such as the speaker’s commitment to the asserted proposition. as such, the complexity of evidential concepts may not by itself account for the delay in the acquisition of evidential markers. taken together, mandarin-speaking children by the age of 5 have not yet equipped with the knowledge to deal with the full aspects of evidentiality. both conceptual and mapping factors might contribute to the children’s acquisition of evidential markers; nonetheless, whether and how the acquisition of evidential markers in chinese is constrained by cognitive prerequisites or journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 4 601-626, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 621 delayed by mapping complexities require further research. 4.2. acquisition order of the subtypes the second question to be tackled concerns the acquisition order of the subtypes of direct evidential markers. direct evidence refers to information derived from the speaker’s perceptual experiences, which, in the current study, has been further distinguished into two types: visual and non-visual. in the case of chinese, perception verbs denoting sight and sound, such as kan ‘see’ and ting ‘hear’, are what the speakers have at their disposal for signaling evidential meanings of direct perception. it has been found that typologically, sight-related perception verbs were ranked above all the other verbs of sense modalities in terms of frequency of usage (viberg, 1983). moreover, visual evidence is often ranked the highest in the evidential scale (faller, 2002). since these findings suggest that vision enjoys greater prominence, the current study assumed that visual markers would be acquired prior to non-visual markers. developmental studies on children’s conceptual development of information sources seem to support this assertion: it has been found that children began to grasp the connection between seeing and knowing at around the ages of 3 and 4 (pillow, 1989; pratt & bryant, 1990). by contrast, children do not come to the realization that other perceptual modalities, such as hearing or touching, also lead to knowledge of the world until the age of 4 (o’neill & chong, 2001). with visual access being understood early as an information source, it is reasonable to assume that when being evaluated their abilities of producing and comprehending evidential items, mandarinspeaking children will perform better in contexts involving visual perception. however, as discussed previously, neither child group scored significantly higher on the visual condition than on the non-visual condition, unlike our prediction. despite this result, it was observed that young learners of mandarin, especially the 3-year-olds, sometimes overextended the direct marker kan ‘see’ to cases of auditorily acquired information, or falsely believed that they saw something that they only heard. cases where children overestimated knowledge gained from seeing have also been found in previous research (robinson et al., 1997). the distinction between visual evidence and non-visual evidence was not a factor affecting mandarin-speaking children’s acquisition of direct evidential markers. however, the errors the children made suggest that vision might be the type of perceptual access that the children most frequently resort to while making linguistic judgments. turning to indirect evidential markers, we further examined the acquisition order of the two indirect subtypes: inferring and reported. the results showed that for the 3-year-olds, inferring markers and reported markers were just as challenging. no significant difference was found between the performance of the two types. for the 5-year-olds, reported markers were more easily acquired than inferring markers, as much higher accuracy was elicited in reported contexts than in inferring contexts. it was also observed that the 5-year-olds tended to mistakenly attribute inferentially acquired knowledge to direct perception. between-group comparisons revealed that although the 5-year-olds significantly outperformed the 3-year-olds in both of evidential markers in l1 chinese chen & chen 622 the indirect conditions, their performance was still far from adult-like. such results are in accordance with the previous research on the acquisition of evidentiality, where turkish-speaking children aged 6 and 7 were able to produce the indirect evidential marker reliably for its hearsay interpretation but not for its inference interpretation (ozturk & papafragou, 2016). moreover, studies on children’s conceptual development of information sources provide evidence for the crucial role of conceptual limitations: while children understood verbal report leads to knowledge at around the age of 4 or 5, they failed to successfully identify inference as a source of knowledge until the age of 6 (sodian & wimmer, 1987; wimmer, hogrefe & perner, 1988). the realization of subtle distinctions among a variety of inferences, such as differences between deduction and mere guessing, came even much later in the childhood (pillow et al., 2000). alternatively, the delay in the acquisition of evidentiality might not be purely conceptual: discovering the correspondence between the underlying source concepts and evidential markers may cause problems for children (ozturk & papafragou, 2016). specifically, while reported makers in chinese largely consisted of lexical items related to the act of saying, markers used to communicate inferential evidentiality are semantically and functionally complex in the sense that they carry different degrees of speaker commitment. moreover, the fact that there was no transparent cue in the world guiding young learners of mandarin towards the meanings of inferring markers, such as yiding ‘must’, yinggai ‘should’ or keneng ‘might’, further contributes to the children’s mapping difficulties. additionally, since the children always saw pictures presented on the computer screen, an element of seeing was thus always present. just as in many real-life instances, it is rare that one acquires knowledge without a certain degree of perception involved. however, this might pose further challenges, especially in the indirect inferring condition, where inferences were perceptual-based and the children were expected to infer what had happened based on observable cues. it has been found that children have difficulty discriminating between different sources of knowledge when the sources are highly similar (lindsay, johnson, & kwon, 1991), which may also account for the children’s constant misattributions of inferentially acquired information. on the whole, mandarin-speaking children’s performance on both of the subtypes of indirect evidential markers was still nonadult-like by the age of 5, especially for inferring markers. 5. conclusion previous studies dealing with the acquisition of evidentiality have been primarily, if not solely, concerned with languages whose sources of information are obligatorily and morphologically encoded (cf. aksu-koç, 1988; ozturk & papafragou, 2016, papafragou et al., 2007; ünal & papafragou, 2016). however, discussions of chinese evidentiality seem to be somewhat vacant, not to mention the acquisition of evidentiality in chinese, which has not been examined systematically and thus lacked robust empirical evidence. although aikhenvald (2004, p. 6) finds that “studies of lexical strategies referring to information source [are] premature and journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 4 601-626, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 623 tangential for the analysis of grammatical expression of information source,” the present study argues against this view and believes that our understanding of evidentiality is incomplete without considering evidential meanings being manifested lexically. thus, the present study aims to dive into mandarin-speaking children’s understanding of evidential markers in chinese in order to contribute empirical findings along with analytical insights which have implications not just for chinese, but for the nature of the developmental trajectory in the domain of evidentiality. the present study examined the acquisition of evidentiality in mandarin chinese under a variety of issues, including different evidential types, the order of acquisition, and age effect. it was aimed to see whether patterns found for children acquiring languages with grammaticalized evidential systems, such as direct evidential markers being acquired earlier than indirect ones and evidential comprehension taking precedence over evidential production, could also be observed in mandarin-speaking children’s course of acquiring evidentiality. the major findings are presented as follows. first, it was found that the acquisition of evidential markers in chinese was indeed characterized by an asymmetry between direct and indirect evidential markers, with direct ones being acquired earlier than indirect ones. second, concerning the acquisition order within each of the evidential class, no difference between the visual and non-visual markers appears to exist. reported markers were found to be more easily processed compared to inferring ones, especially for the 5-year-olds. finally, age was identified as a crucial factor contributing to the children’s acquisition of evidentiality, as the children’s ability to handle different aspects of evidential markers, especially indirect ones, improved with age. mandarinspeaking children by the age of 5 have not yet fully acquired evidential markers in chinese, and these results add to a growing literature demonstrating children’s successes and failures in the acquisition of evidentiality across different languages. each study has its limitations and the present research is no exception. first, we found that even the oldest children recruited in the current study (i.e., the 5-year-olds) still exhibited nonadult-like knowledge regarding production and comprehension of indirect evidential markers. thus, future research may recruit participants above the age of 5 to draw more detailed comparisons and trace the full developmental trajectory of evidentiality. second, the main source of difficulty in the acquisition of evidentiality, i.e., whether and how the acquisition of chinese evidential markers is constrained by cognitive prerequisites or delayed by mapping complexities, has not been examined thoroughly and systematically. hence, experiments should be conducted to better evaluate the role of conceptual and mapping factors in evidential markers in l1 chinese chen & chen 624 this domain. finally, cross-linguistic comparisons between mandarin, where evidentiality is expressed through lexical means, and other languages that mark evidential distinctions grammatically, may be further investigated to determine whether there are similar developmental patterns and to search for language-specific effects. references aikhenvald, a. y. 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(2014). children’s comprehension of syntactically encoded evidentiality. paper presented at the 45th annual meeting of the north east linguistic society, cambridge, ma. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 3 572-600, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 572 children’s humour development: a linguistic perspective giulia baker1 freelance researcher & teacher michelle aldridge2 cardiff university abstract by applying findings from an investigation into english-speaking children’s ability to comprehend verbal riddles, this paper advances an established model of children’s humour development by expanding stage 5 to include four substages: (a) lexical and phonological ambiguities; (b) morphological ambiguities; (c) syntactic ambiguities and (d) idiomatic ambiguities. sixty children equally divided from three british school year groups: year 2 (aged 6-7), year 4 (8-9) and year 6 (10-11) participated. their understanding of riddles was measured (a) receptively through a multiple-choice task in which they were required to identify an ambiguous punchline and (b) productively through a verbal explanation task in which they were required to explain their understanding of a riddle containing an ambiguous word/phrase. responses were analyzed using a linguistically based classification system and explanations are offered as to why some ambiguity types are easier/harder for young children to comprehend. keywords: child humour, verbal riddles, ambiguities, children’s cognitive and social development, literacy development 1. introduction studies on children’s humour development, especially within the field of linguistics, have been sparse in recent decades despite the body of evidence to suggest that humour is effective in developing creativity and divergent thinking (ziv, 1976, 1983, 1988), developing higher order reading skills (yuill, 1998; zipke, 2007; 2009), raising reading levels (yuill, 1998; zipke, 2008) and developing confidence in social communication and interactions (graham, papa & brooks 1992, nezlek & derks 2001). humour is also known to be a motivational factor in literacy development, especially in the riddle form as it is perceived as fun, enjoyable and the joking format most favoured and recognised by young children (wolfstein, 1954; zipke, 2007, 2008). the shortage of recent research on children’s verbal humour development from within the field of linguistics is somewhat paradoxical given that verbal humour is intrinsically based within the language through which it is 1 giulia baker is a researcher, teacher and former literacy coordinator who has taught across all school year groups in the uk, as well as at undergraduate level. her interests lie in the ways different types of ambiguity-based humour can be used in the classroom to motivate pupils and facilitate learning. 2 michelle aldridge is a reader at cardiff university, she lectures in psycholinguistics & forensic linguistics. her research focusses on the communicative experiences of vulnerable people including children and adults with a communication disorder. she writes widely in journals such as cognitive linguistics, forensic linguistics, health and communication and language awareness. corresponding author: aldridgem@cardiff.ac.uk received : 20.08.2022 accepted : 12.11.2022 published : 30.11.2022 mailto:aldridgem@cardiff.ac.uk children’s humour development baker & aldridge 573 communicated and arises from the manipulation of different linguistic structures. here, we investigate the gap in both the literature and our understanding about the way in which different linguistic phenomena affect children’s humour comprehension through a robust linguistically based classification system (baker and aldridge 2021) and, in so doing, the originality of this paper lies in advancing our theoretical understanding of children’s humour development, together with progressing the final stage of a recognized model of humour development (mcgee 1979/2002). given our linguistic focus, we acknowledge the work achieved through raskin’s (1985) semantic script theory of humour (ssth), later developed with attardo (1991) as the general theory of verbal humour (gtvh) to facilitate categorization of all verbally expressed jokes. the jokes (riddles) we employ in this study are verbally expressed but are also specific in that they rely upon the manipulation of linguistic phenomena for their humour. this type of verbal joke must be ‘understood’ or made sense of in order that any humorous response be activated. we therefore adopt the incongruity resolution (ir) theory of humour (suls 1972, 1983) as our framework because it is based upon understanding, ‘the intellectual part of the humour reaction which is an indispensable basis for amusement’ (bariaud 1989, p. 20). within this framework, we adopt mcghee’s humour model which, although formulated in 1979 and revised in 2002, still comprises the established framework for children’s humour development. we focus upon mcghee’s final stage which typically represents humour development around seven years of age as we are interested in capturing children’s understanding of verbal incongruities, multiple meanings, and ambiguities necessary for processing verbal riddles (bariaud, 1989; mcghee,1977, 1979, 2002; shultz, 1974; shultz & horibe, 1974). to contextualize this stage, we outline, in table 1, mcghee’s model of humour development which comprises all five stages through which children sequentially progress. table1 summary of mcghee’s revised stages of humour development (2002) stage 0: laughter without humour (0 to 6 months) stage 1: laughter at the attachment figure (6 to 12-15 months) stage 2: incongruous actions towards objects (12-15 months to 3-5 years) stage 3: incongruous labelling of objects or actions (2 to 3-4/5 years) stage 4: conceptual incongruity (3 to 5 years) pre riddle stage: transition period (5 to 6 -7 years) stage 5: riddles and jokes (double meanings): 6-7 to 10-11 years • multiple meanings: ambiguity (in puns); first signs of logic (in riddles) journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 3 572-600, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 574 “understanding” humour during the final stage (five) of this model requires complex processing as the listener must think about the linguistic components of the riddle and be aware of their impact on the listener. the development of metalinguistic skills (cf. tunmer, pratt & herriman 1984) indicates that the child is not only using language to communicate but must also know what they are using and to what end (e.g., hoppe & kess 1982). more specifically then, in these riddles participants must identify that some linguistic unit has two (or more) meanings; that is, they must locate an incongruity (i.e., an ambiguous word or phrase) and be able to go back and forth between these meanings to determine how they both make sense within a single context (i.e., they ‘resolve’ or make sense of the incongruity). dissecting a humorous text in this way, requires the listener to work harder in terms of cognitive and linguistic processing than does a nonambiguous text and it is argued (e.g. bariaud, 1989; fowles & glanz, 1977; mcghee, 1971a, 1972, 1977, 1979, 2002) that children are typically seven years of age before they start to develop the requisite cognitive skills to process such ambiguities and thus transition from stage four to stage five (mcghee, 1979, 2002). associated with this ability is, of course, the development of pragmatics and social cognition (hyter, 2017), that is, at very least, the listener must have a theory of mind to appreciate that the speaker is engaging in humour, deviating from the fundamental principle that speakers are cooperative in communication (grice, 1989) and able to engage in fantasy assimilation (mcghee, 1979). in addition to evolving cognitive, social cognition and metalinguistic skills, children’s general language development also influences humour advancement. specifically, in order to progress to the final humour stage, children must understand the ways in which sounds, words, morphology and syntax operate together to communicate meaning, knowledge which is acquired during the pre-school years (berger, 2011; hoff, 2015; kaplan, 1998) and continues throughout the primary years as they acquire later aspects of linguistic proficiency, such as idiomatic language, (ackerman, 1982; cain, towse & knight, 2009; gibbs, 1987; levorato & cacciari, 1995; prinz, 1983). although acquisition of the above skills is rapid during pre and early school years, verbal humour is not fully understood during this period (mcghee 1979, 2002; bariaud 1989). whilst children may be able to understand jokes expressed through the medium of language (‘verbally expressed’ humour), they are not yet able to understand jokes reliant upon the manipulation of linguistic properties (‘verbal humour’) which rely upon punning, double entendres and ambiguities (e.g., ‘why can’t a car play football?’ ‘because it’s only got one boot.’). this type of understanding only starts to develop as they mature cognitively and linguistically and enter the final humour stage (mcghee 1979, 2002). even then, not all ambiguity-based humour is understood with the same facility since ambiguity is manifested at varying levels of language and requires different types of linguistic proficiency to be understood. some ambiguity types are reported to be easier to comprehend than others (shultz & pilon, 1973; shultz, 1974; shultz & horibe, 1974; hirsh-pasek, gleitman & gleitman, 1978; yuill, 1998) but earlier research findings on humour comprehension are inconclusive, resulting in little children’s humour development baker & aldridge 575 consensus as to which types of ambiguities are most readily understood by young children. part of the prevailing lack of consensus may be because previous research has often been carried out in the field of psychology (as opposed to linguistics) where different types of language-specific ambiguities were included with emphasis centered upon developing a framework to account for children’s humour development, rather than upon the properties of language being tested. earlier studies frequently lack ambiguity definitions, which leads us to question which language phenomena they embody. even when included, definitions, as described below, are often broad and generic and typically not interpreted or applied in the same way. this has resulted in ‘the same linguistic phenomena being tested under different ambiguity classifications and different linguistic phenomena being tested under the same ambiguity classification’ (baker & aldridge 2021, p.239). taking, for example, lexical ambiguity, this ambiguity has often been used in studies on children’s humour/ambiguity comprehension but historically interpreted in different ways both within and across studies: shultz and pilon (1973, p.728) describe it as occurring ‘when a given lexical item has more than one semantic interpretation’, classifying ‘bank/ bank’ (river or financial) as lexical ambiguity but place ‘pears/pairs’ in the category of phonological ambiguity (despite their containing no sound modification when orally represented). similarly, shultz and horibe (1974) detail phonological ambiguity as occurring ‘when a given phonological sequence can be interpreted in more than one way’ (shultz & horibe, 1974, p.14) when only one of their examples relies upon sound modification (line/lion), the other two relying instead upon homophony (pear/pair) and mis-parsing (eighty cups/eight teacups). such inconsistencies have resulted in different linguistic phenomena being tested within the same category of ambiguity which means reported findings do not necessarily reflect outcomes for the linguistic phenomena they purport to test e.g., shultz and pilon (1973) report that children find phonological ambiguities easiest to detect even though some of their stimuli rely upon homonymy and the shifting of word boundaries rather than upon sound distortion and the manipulation of phonemes. this in turn casts doubt upon the validity of findings, especially as ambiguities manifested through manipulation of different linguistic phenomena require different processing skills and pose differing levels of challenge. to overcome these limitations our data are classified according to our linguistic classification system (baker and aldridge 2021). of particular note is the tight link between the lexicon and syntax and the categorization of riddles such as ‘why do leopards make rubbish thieves? because they’re always spotted.’ understanding this riddle requires identification of a lexical ambiguity located in the homonym ‘spotted’ but this is not enough per se. although the two homophones have identical surface representations, spotted (‘covered with spots’) and spotted (‘was seen’), they nonetheless have two different syntactical representations (an adjective/past tense verb form) which means this ambiguity requires grammatical processing at a deeper level. to make sense of the ambiguity the listener must identify not only the homophone ‘spotted’ but differences in word class too. zipke (2007, p.382) acknowledges this difference by restricting lexical journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 3 572-600, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 576 ambiguity to cases where ‘a word has more than one meaning without a class violation,’ but others do not yuill (1998), for example, classifies the ‘spotted riddle’ as comprising lexical ambiguity – rather than syntactic – and does not accommodate the fact this ambiguity requires additional processing skills in order it be understood. other higher order processing skills, such as the decoding of figurative language, have also been overlooked in earlier studies, despite ambiguities based upon this linguistic phenomenon having been included. researchers do not always accommodate the fact that idiomatic ambiguities require a specific type of processing skill that of figurative language and instead include stimuli based upon this ambiguity type in different types of categories altogether, fowles and glanz (1997, p.446) categorise, ‘why didn’t the skeleton cross the road? it didn’t have the guts’ as lexical ambiguity and shultz and pilon (1973, p.30) treat ‘he stepped over the line/lion’ as being phonologically ambiguous. neither address the fact that idiomatic ambiguity requires linguistic knowledge which cannot be gleaned from the sum of its individual lexical items. this is a matter which we accommodate within the present study. differences in the interpretation and application of discrete ambiguity types as outlined above, has meant that findings regarding children’s humour comprehension are often inconsistent (shultz & pilon, 1973; shultz and horibe, 1974; hirsh-pasek et al., 1978; yuill 1998) and this has consequently contributed to stagnation in our theoretical understanding of the final stage of humour development. as stated, our study addresses this matter by using baker and aldridge’s (2021) robust linguistically based classification system (see appendix a), to develop both the humour model and our understanding of the way in which children’s humour develops. we use these definitions because they were specifically established to improve classification of ambiguity types for practical investigation. they accommodate the fact that verbal humour is intrinsically embedded within the form in which it is delivered (i.e., the language through which it is communicated) and identify the specific linguistic phenomena through which discrete ambiguity types are manifested. using these definitions allows us to be sure of the specific linguistic phenomena being tested at any given time – and of the processing skills required in order that any ambiguity be understood. the three aims of this investigation were: (a) to establish how children’s comprehension of orally delivered verbal riddles differs across the ages of six to eleven years; (b) to determine whether ambiguity type affects the facility with which verbal riddles are understood by these children and (c) to establish whether our data can be explained within mcghee’s model of humour development. to this end we use verbal riddles, each reliant upon one of five ambiguity types (lexical, phonological, morphological, syntactic, and idiomatic) to test children’s comprehension of humour. we hypothesis: (1) comprehension of ambiguity types will improve across ascending year groups, (2) the different ways in which linguistic properties are manipulated to create humour will affect participants’ understanding, and (3) ambiguities requiring more complex language processing skills will be less readily understood. children’s humour development baker & aldridge 577 2. methodology 2.1. participants participants comprised sixty children from a mainstream english medium primary school with twenty children taking part from school year 2 (aged six to seven years), year 4 (aged eight to nine years) and year 6 (aged ten to eleven years). these participants were selected because they spanned the transition period between stage four and five of mcghee’s (2002) humour model when verbal ambiguities are said to be first comprehended. thirty-five of the participants were male and twenty-five were female. gender distribution was evenly spread across year groups. participants were all l1 english monolingual speakers and had no known sensory, learning, or behavioural disability. 2.2. ethics consent was granted by the headteacher of the participating school and by parents/guardians of every participant (each of whom was provided with a letter detailing the nature and purpose of study and how data were to be collected, stored, and used). all data were anonymized. the university’s ethics committee also approved the research. throughout the study the utmost care was taken to ensure that the participants did not experience discomfort or find the activities stressful either physically or psychologically. irrespective of consent, if the researcher felt that a child was feeling upset or uncomfortable at any stage, the study was stopped immediately, and the child’s participation terminated in a sensitive manner (this happened on a single occasion during the pilot study). most participants appeared to find the activity enjoyable and they frequently expressed regret about it ending. 2.3. data collection and processing a single researcher collected the data. this allowed for consistency in the oral delivery of the stimuli and numbers and types of prompts. the researcher was not known to the participants. although a class teacher might have provided a more familiar face for administration of the study, this was not feasible since the process was considerably time-consuming and the teacher was occupied within the classroom. the researcher was an experienced practicing primary teacher, used to teaching and engaging with children across all participating year groups. two additional coders were employed to rate the participants’ responses (explanation scores) independently after the data had been collected. the study took place during the school day and within the school building, a familiar environment for participants. participants were withdrawn from their classrooms and taken to an alternative room where they were able to provide individual responses without being influenced by their peers and could be recorded without interruption. it took an average of fifteen minutes per child to complete the activity. verbal riddles (short question-answer jokes) (see appendix b) were used to test participants’ ability to identify and explain different ambiguity types. each riddle contained a single verbal ambiguity (a word or phrase that could journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 3 572-600, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 578 be interpreted in more than one way) in its punchline3 aimed at eliciting a humorous response. ambiguities were all either reliant upon words and meanings, being phonetically similar to some other string not present in the utterance or else relied upon two identically sounding utterances being lexically analyzable in two different ways. pre-rating of ambiguities was piloted through classification by undergraduate linguistics students and only riddles that met with full consensus were included. each riddle contained more than a single word punchline answer, was of a similar length and was age appropriate (non-offensive and conceptually familiar to participants). three riddles were used for each ambiguity type to reduce the possibility of participants selecting a correct punchline by chance. processing demands and attentional abilities contributed to a limit of 15 riddles, three per ambiguity type for each participant. all riddles were trialled in a pilot study with participants of the same age to ensure that language/concepts were familiar to participants across year groups so that these factors would not impact upon processing skills. 2.4. data analysis comprehension was the focus of the investigation, and one of the challenging issues to address was how best to determine whether participants had understood a riddle based on ambiguous use of language. it was important that opportunities be maximised for participants to communicate their understanding to the researcher. previous studies have addressed this issue through a variety of ways including using multiple choice exercises (yalisove, 1978; mcghee & panoutsopoulou, 1990; yuill, 1998; zipke, 2007), participants’ recall (yalisove, 1978; fowles & glanz, 1977; yuill, 1998), participants’ explanations (mcghee, 1971b; shultz, 1974; shultz & horibe, 1974; prentice & fathom, 1975; fowles & glanz, 1977; hirsh-pasek et al, 1978) and graded comprehension scores (mcghee, 1971b; prentice & fathom, 1975; fowles & glanz, 1977; hirsh-pasek et al., 1978). each of these methods was considered. recall was eliminated as a comprehension measure on the basis that many young children can recall and recite short texts verbatim (in this instance riddle punchlines consisting of three to nine words) in so called “parrot fashion”, often without any real processing of the understanding of their underlying meanings (allington & strange, 1979). this left two other main options, multiple choice exercises and eliciting verbal explanations (which here incorporated graded comprehension scores). both these methods were trialled in a pilot study to determine their efficacy as summarized in the next section. 2.5. pilot study the multiple-choice task involved nine participants aged six to eleven years listening to a verbal riddle and then selecting one of three potential punchlines, only one of which was the correct (original) punchline. the verbal explanation task involved the same nine participants aged six to eleven years listening to a verbal riddle and then explaining how this 3 ambiguities in questions are reported as being more difficult to identify (yalisove, 1978). children’s humour development baker & aldridge 579 coupling made sense to them within a humorous context. these nine participants did not participate in the main study. analyses of results from the pilot study showed that comprehension of ambiguities was measured in both tasks but in distinct ways. the multiplechoice task tested comprehension in terms of being able to identify an ambiguity while the verbal explanation task tested comprehension in terms of being able to explain an ambiguity. both required metalinguistic application but placed different demands on participants depending upon whether comprehension was being measured receptively (identification of an ambiguity) or productively (explanation of an ambiguity). the multiple-choice task alleviated language production demands relating to justification of punchline selections but did not give any insight into reasons behind punchline selections. the verbal explanation task, on the other hand, afforded an insight into reasons behind punchline selections, but was potentially more difficult for participants. it was therefore decided to combine the two tasks in the main study. each provided a counterbalance to potential weakness in the other and by combining the two tasks, a richer set of data could be obtained than had only one of the tasks been carried out. both ambiguity identification and explanation scores were treated as being indicative of comprehension of ambiguities in punchlines, but differences between the two tasks, the cognitive demands they placed upon participants, and their respective strengths and limitations were acknowledged. 2.6. main study procedure participants were tested individually by the researcher. those who had a joke to share with the researcher (as suggested in the initial letter requesting consent for participation) related their joke as an initial icebreaker. the researcher then discussed what constitutes a riddle and explained that she was interested in finding out which types of riddles were understood by children in different school year groups. it was emphasized that participants were not taking part to give a “right” or “wrong” response but rather were sharing their ideas and understanding about individual riddles as a representative of their particular year group. a warm-up activity was carried out during which the researcher played the role of participant and chose a punchline from a selection of three and explained how the punchline made sense to her by identifying an ambiguous word and then explaining the two possible interpretations. each participant was then given a practice try themselves before the task began. the researcher discussed the fact that she might well use the phrase “and anything else?” as a prompt in the context of reminding participants that there might be an additional meaning to be explained but stressed that participants were not to feel pressurised if they had nothing further to add. she reassured the children that lots of people had nothing to say when given this prompt and that was acceptable. participants were able to ask questions before the study began and throughout its duration. whilst a few participants asked for clarification regarding procedures, most questions asked related to the technology used to record participants’ explanations. when the researcher was sure that each participant understood the activity through appropriately responding to the practice riddles, she read out fifteen journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 3 572-600, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 580 riddles, one by one, each with three potential punchlines (see appendix b). of the three potential punchlines, one was the riddle’s correct (original) punchline containing an ambiguity upon which the riddle depended, one was a “plausible” punchline, and one was an “irrelevant” punchline. the “plausible” punchline treated the riddle question as if it were a bona fide request for information rather than one intended to elicit a humorous response and contained a logical answer to the riddle question (e.g., ‘how did the banana know he was ill’ plausible punchline = ‘he had a high temperature’). the “irrelevant” punchline was one which neither treated the question as a bona fide request for information, nor as a rejoinder intended to elicit humour (e.g., ‘how did the banana know he was ill’ irrelevant punchline = ‘he looked out of the window’.) both original punchline positions and ambiguity types were presented in random order although the order was identical for each participant within each riddle multiple choice selection. participants were able to hear the riddle question and any of the punchlines as many times as desired. participants then chose the punchlines which, when coupled with the riddles’ interrogatives, they felt completed the riddle. distribution of ambiguity types was spread across the activity to address any potential fatigue effect for riddles presented later (although subsequent analysis indicated no significant fatigue effect). participants were asked to indicate if they had heard any of the riddles before. in such instances, an alternative riddle was supplied (again with a choice of three punchlines) based on the same ambiguity type and which met all the other criteria for inclusion4. after choosing a punchline, participants were recorded explaining the reason for each punchline selection. when applicable, non-leading prompts were used e.g. “and anything else?”, “can you explain what you mean by . . .?” to obtain as full a response as possible. upon completion of the two tasks participants were thanked for their help and participation. 2.7. scoring identification scores were totalled for each type of punchline selection and for each ambiguity type correctly identified. chi square tests and analyses of variance were run to determine whether differences in punchline selections by year group and/or ambiguity type were statistically significant. only explanations relating to correct punchline selections were scored since these directly related to the three main research aims although, explanations for non-target (i.e., plausible, and irrelevant) selections were also analyzed qualitatively to determine reasons why participants chose answers that were non-target non-original punchlines. three independent raters used comprehension criteria (cf. comprehension criteria) to score transcribed explanations. homophones were transcribed phonetically so as not to influence raters. morphologically ambiguous words 4 the highest number of substitute riddles were for lexical ambiguity (22). this did not negatively impact upon comprehension since lexical ambiguities were identified most frequently overall in the multiple-choice and scored second highest in the verbal explanation test (cf. results) – which corresponds with findings from studies in which this type of ambiguity has been interpreted in a similar way. children’s humour development baker & aldridge 581 were transcribed as either one or two words according to the juncture used by participants. words that were notably stressed were underscored. gestures that were made in support of, or instead of, participants’ explanations were annotated in transcriptions. scores ranged from 0-2 depending on whether 1, 2 or 0 interpretations of the linguistic word/string were judged to have been communicated. when raters could not reach a consensus, scores were awarded according to the most frequently provided score (on no occasion did raters award three different scores). scores were totalled for year groups and for ambiguity types. analyses of variance were run to determine whether differences between year groups and/or ambiguity types were statistically significant. comprehension criteria accommodated all strategies employed by participants to communicate understanding. it did not matter which strategy participants used as long as it showed understanding. meanings of words and phrases were judged to have been understood and communicated if a participant: 1 provided a definition/explanation of a meaning e.g. “because um when they say seven /eɪt/ nine its um seven starts eating other numbers but /eɪt/ is also the number after seven, so they said seven /eɪt/ nine.” 2 used context to illustrate understanding e.g. “because /ʧiːtəz/ cheat . . . because it means if i had snakes and ladders, i already had a go i would roll it. i would probably just say ‘can i have the dice for a sec?’ turn around, get it to number six and go ‘yay, i got a six.’” 3 manipulated juncture to highlight differences in sound(s) e.g. “because it’s a milkshake you shake it and then the um oh watchum the blender and it makes like um the milk the milk shake and the jelly usually wobbles and he saw the milk shake so he wobbled.” 4 made contrastive reference to substituted phonemes e.g., “it’s ‘ch’ instead of ‘sh’” 5 manipulated a root word, either inflectionally or derivationally, to exemplify meaning e.g., used “cheat”, “cheats”, “cheating”, “cheated” to illustrate meaning of the word “cheater”: “in card games you have /ʧiːtəz/ cheating. somebody cheats.” 6 deliberately articulated individual words so that they varied notably from conventional stress patterns i.e., used word stress to draw attention to meanings: “because it was meant to be feeling well it’s a banana peeling.” 7 identified word clusters as containing meanings not readily analysable from the sum of individual parts e.g., referred to idioms as ‘sayings’, ‘terms’ and ‘phrases’: “because flying off the handle is a phrase and the witch flies on a broom and she flies off the handle.” 8 used a deictic or iconic gesture e.g., either pointed to something or made a movement typically associated with a word’s meaning. 9 gave an answer that indirectly showed comprehension of one or more meanings of an ambiguous word/phrase e.g. “i chose that one because chickens can go like /ʧiːp ʧiːp/and a /ʧiːp/ chicken would be quite good for christmas dinner . . . because you don’t, cos then you have more money to spend on presents.” journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 3 572-600, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 582 once these criteria had been applied to score explanations, results were analysed as summarised below. 3. findings 3.1. findings according to year group as shown in table 2, none of the year groups correctly selected the target (i.e., original) punchline for all fifteen riddles. more specifically, no participant in year 2 selected all fifteen original punchlines correctly and only two participants in year 4 (10%) and four participants in year 6 (20%) chose all fifteen correct (original) punchlines. using the binomial distribution (p=1/3, n=300, x=147) with original punchlines as markers of success, the probability of year 2 choosing 147 original punchlines by chance is <0.0001%. for years 4 and 6, whose original punchline choices were greater, the probability is even less. we can therefore be confident that original punchline selections were not attributable to chance. table 2 punchline selections made by year groups in the multiple-choice task year 2 year 4 year 6 total number of punchlines chosen per category across all year groups original punchline selected 147 (49%) 241 (80%) 265 (88%) 653 plausible punchline selected 118 (39%) 34 (11%) 18 (6%) 170 irrelevant punchline selected 33 (11%) 10 (3%) 10 (3%) 53 no punchline selected 2 (1%) 15 (6%) 7 (3%) 24 a chi square test run was run on all multiple-choice selections to determine whether there was a statistically significant difference in selection choices made by individual year groups. the chi square test showed there to be a statistically significant (increased) difference as year groups ascended: (x2 (4) =155.4, p < 0.01). this increase was expected given participants’ general cognitive stages of development. there was, however, a marked difference in the way in which this increase evolved between years 2 (aged six to seven) and 4 (aged eight to nine) and years 4 (aged eight to nine) and 6 (aged ten to eleven) as illustrated in figure 1. children’s humour development baker & aldridge 583 figure 1. punchline selections made by ındividual year groups in the multiple-choice task although a significant difference in the ability to identify correct (original) punchlines existed across the three year groups, this difference was not equally spread. there was a greater increase in correct punchline choices between years 2 and 4 than between years 4 and 6 (the differences were 94 and 24 respectively). two separate post-hoc chi square tests were performed, one on the difference between multiple choice selections for years 2 and 4 (x2(2) = 81.2, p < 0.01) and one on the difference between years 4 and 6 (x2(2) = 6.0, p > 0.05). the difference between correct punchline selections was statistically significant for years 2 (aged six to seven) and 4 (aged eight to nine) (147 correct choices as opposed to 241) but not for years 4 (8-9) and 6 (10-11) (241 correct choices as opposed to 265). the difference in correct (original) punchline selections was statistically significant only between the two youngest year groups. this would therefore suggest a period of accelerated development in the ability to identify ambiguity-based punchlines to occur somewhere between the ages of six to nine years and we will return to this point in the discussion. only explanations relating to correct punchline selections were scored, although explanations for non-target (i.e., plausible, and irrelevant) explanations were also analysed qualitatively to determine reasons why participants had chosen non-target punchlines. using the comprehension criteria as detailed above, but scoring individually, three independent raters agreed with 90.6% of the explanations scored. following discussion, they agreed on 98.6% of scores. for the nine explanations upon which raters did not all agree, there was always consensus between two of the three raters – in such instances, the most frequently awarded score was recorded. these ratings have a fleiss’ kappa score of 0.98 which indicates inter-rater reliability was exceedingly strong. since the number of participants being scored varied from year group to year group (depending upon how many had correctly identified the target 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% year 2 year 4 year 6 original plausible irrelevant none chosen journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 3 572-600, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 584 punchline), a mean score was calculated for each year group’s verbal explanations. ‘2’ was the highest possible score that could be obtained in the verbal explanation task. mean explanation scores are illustrated in figure 2. figure 2. mean explanation scores by year group as figure 2 shows, the overall mean scores for verbal explanations increased as the year groups ascended: 0.92 (year 2), 1.49 (year 4), 1.63 (year 6). an analysis of variance was run to determine whether significant differences existed between overall mean scores. this proved to be the case: (f (2, 57 = 14.16, p<0.01). the difference between years 2 and 4 (0.57) was greater than that between years 4 and 6 (0.14), however. hence analyses of variance were run on year 2 and 4 explanation scores, and year 4 and 6 explanation scores, to determine whether differences between consecutive year groups were statistically significant. the difference (here an ascending increase) was statistically significant between years 2 and 4 (f (1, 57) = 26.86 p<0.01) but not between years 4 and 6 (f (1, 57) = 1.45, p>0.05). this mirrored the finding from the multiple-choice task in which an accelerated rate of development in the ability to identify ambiguity-based punchlines was established as occurring between years 2 and 4. as shown in table 3, each ambiguity type was more frequently correctly identified as year groups ascended except for lexical ambiguity. year 4 identified this type of ambiguity more frequently than year 2 (as was the overall trend) but also more than year 6 (which was out of keeping with the trend). the difference in the number of times lexical ambiguity was correctly identified by year 4 over year 6 was small (not significant), however, in relation to overall totals (55 times as opposed to 51) and did not affect the overall order in which ambiguity types were most frequently identified correctly. children’s humour development baker & aldridge 585 table 3 correct punchline selections by ambiguity type in the multiple-choice task lexical phonological morphological syntactic idiomatic standard deviation per year group year 2 37 (62%) 24 (40%) 28 (47%) 22 (37%) 36 (60%) 6.12 year 4 55 (92%) 53 (88%) 46 (77%) 38 (63%) 49 (82%) 5.98 year 6 51 (85%) 54 (90%) 53 (88%) 49 (82%) 58 (97%) 3.03 totals 143 (79%) 131 (73%) 127 (71%) 109 (61%) 143 (79%) 12.55 lexical and idiomatic ambiguities were identified most frequently overall (although see later discussion on misleading identification rates for idiomatic ambiguity), followed by phonological, morphological, and syntactic ambiguities, respectively. a two-way analysis of variance was run on year groups and ambiguity types to determine whether ambiguity type had a significant effect on correctly identified original punchlines. although the analysis of variance showed there to be no statistically significant effect for ambiguity type upon correct identification rates across the three year groups (f (4,8) = 3.52, p>0.05) the raw data nonetheless suggested some type of interaction. an analysis of variance was therefore run on each participating year group: year 2 (f (4, 76) = 26.03, p<0.01), year 4 (f (4, 76) = 6.05, p<0.01), year 6 (f (4, 76) = 2.21, p>0.05). there was a statistically significant relationship between scores and ambiguity type for years 2 and 4, but not for year 6. ambiguity type thus affected comprehension significantly (in terms of identification rates) for the two youngest year groups only. these two year groups both identified lexical ambiguity correctly most frequently and syntactic ambiguity least frequently. there was variation in identification rates for the three remaining ambiguity types, but when scores were combined for years 2 and 4, lexical ambiguities were identified most frequently (92 times), followed by idiomatic (85), phonological (77) morphological (74) and syntactic (60) ambiguities, respectively. this mirrored the overall findings for the multiple-choice task in that lexical and idiomatic ambiguities were identified jointly most frequently overall, and first and second most frequently respectively when scores for years 2 and 4 were combined. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 3 572-600, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 586 explanations were scored 0, 1 or 2 depending on whether raters judged one, two (or no) parts of the ambiguity to have been explained. the maximum potential score for an explanation was 2. mean scores (table 4) were calculated for each year group’s scored explanations for each ambiguity type tested and accommodated the fact that only correct selections were scored by raters. table 4 mean scores by ambiguity type in the verbal explanation task ambiguity type l e x ic a l a m b ig u it y p h o n o lo g ic a l a m b ig u it y m o r p h o lo g ic a l a m b ig u it y s y n t a c t ic a m b ig u it y id io m a t ic a m b ig u it y a ll a m b ig u it y t y p e s c o m b in e d year 2 1.00 1.04 0.84 0.78 0.89 0.92 (sd = 0.097) year 4 1.65 1.60 1.35 1.49 1.31 1.49 (sd = 0.134) year 6 1.70 1.75 1.62 1.53 1.54 1.63 (sd = 0.087) as with overall explanation scores, mean scores for each ambiguity type increased with ascending year group and therefore age. the largest jump in mean scores for each ambiguity type occurred between year 2 and year 4. a two-way analysis of variance was run to determine whether differences in mean scores between year groups and between ambiguity types were significant. the analysis of variance showed differences to be statistically significant between both year groups (f (4,638) = 3.78, p<0.05) and ambiguity types (f (4,638) = 3.78, p<0.05). of the five types of ambiguity tested, phonological ambiguities were found to score highest overall, followed by lexical, morphological, syntactic, and idiomatic ambiguities, respectively. that phonological and lexical ambiguities were comprehended more than morphological and syntactic ambiguities paralleled findings from the multiple-choice task. there was, however, a notable discrepancy in findings for the two tasks which related solely to the comprehension of idiomatic ambiguity. data from the multiple-choice task showed that a high number of participants could correctly identify original punchlines based on idiomatic ambiguity but the subsequent analysis of scored explanations from the verbal explanation task contradicted this finding. more specifically, analysis of the transcriptions revealed that participants gave almost twice as many literal meanings of idiomatic phrases as figurative meanings (105 compared children’s humour development baker & aldridge 587 to 56). this suggests that many of the correctly identified idiomatic punchlines had been chosen based on literal meanings only and not for the intended wordplay contained within punchlines. (it is worth noting that when original punchlines were rejected, participants tended to opt instead for a plausible punchline, as often accommodated in the literal interpretation of idiomatic words or phrases). using multiple choice together with verbal explanations afforded a wider insight into idiomatic ambiguity comprehension than a single method would have achieved. using mixed methods in this way meant that potential limitations regarding idiomatic ambiguity comprehension were addressed whilst improving upon previous modes of data collection for this ambiguity type. accommodating the above findings into the final analysis, results from both the multiple choice and verbal explanation task corresponded as to the types of ambiguity types comprehended most readily by participants. lexical and phonological ambiguities were comprehended with most facility (although in opposing order in the two tasks) followed by morphological, syntactic, and idiomatic ambiguities, respectively. notably, ambiguity types that required additional levels of processing (morphological, syntactic, and idiomatic) were comprehended less successfully than those that did not (lexical and phonological ambiguities). 4. discussion the current study aimed (a) to establish how children’s comprehension of orally delivered verbal riddles differs across the ages of six to eleven years; (b) to determine whether ambiguity type affects the facility with which verbal riddles are understood by these children and (c) to establish whether our data can be explained within mcghee’s 2002 model of humour development, or whether modification can be suggested. these points are now discussed in turn. 4.1. development of comprehension of verbal riddles according to school year results from both the multiple choice and verbal explanation tasks showed that the ability to identify and explain ambiguities increased with age but that this increase was not equally spread across year groups. differences in ambiguity identification and explanation scores were far greater between years 2 (aged six to seven) and 4 (aged eight to nine) than between years 4 (aged eight to nine) and 6 (aged ten to eleven) and statistically significant only between years 2 and 4. thus, whilst there is an incremental increase in the ability to identify and explain ambiguities across all participating year groups, it was statistically significant only for those aged six to nine years. the results therefore support our first hypothesis that comprehension of ambiguity types will improve across ascending year groups. results additionally showed an accelerated rate of improvement to occur between years 2 (6-7) and years 4 (8-9) that does not occur between years 4 (8-9) and year 6 (10-11). journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 3 572-600, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 588 4.2. development of comprehension of verbal riddles according to ambiguity type not all ambiguities were comprehended with the same facility and the facility with which they were comprehended varied according to the different ways in which linguistic properties were manipulated. this finding supports our second hypothesis that the different ways in which linguistic properties are manipulated to create humour will affect participants’ understanding, as we now evaluate. lexical ambiguities were identified most frequently overall in the multiplechoice task and syntactic ambiguities the least frequently (although see earlier discussion regarding misleading identification scores for idiomatic ambiguity). the finding that lexical ambiguities were identified most frequently overall and syntactic ambiguities least frequently was duplicated when scores were combined for year groups 2 and 4, both of whom had the greatest range in scores across ambiguity types and for whom findings were significant. lexical ambiguity, in the current context, lay within individual lexical items and contained no grammatical class violations. this finding corresponds with those of shultz (1974) and hirsh-pasek et al. (1978) both of whom, by virtue of the examples they provide, interpret it in the same way as the current study and report it as scoring highest in explanation tasks. consistency in interpretation and application of what constitutes a lexical ambiguity therefore shows a similar trend in findings when compared across these studies. after lexical ambiguity, the next highest scoring ambiguity in the verbal explanation task was phonological ambiguity – and this ambiguity type also comprised the second most identified type of ambiguity. this corresponds with the findings of shultz and pilon (1973) and shultz and horibe (1974) who also report phonological and lexical ambiguities as scoring more highly than other types of ambiguities – it must be borne in mind, however, that they include in the category of phonological ambiguity both homophones and confusion about word boundaries (shultz & pilon 1973, p.728, shultz & horibe 1974, p.14). such linguistic phenomena are treated in the present investigation as comprising lexical and morphological ambiguities respectively. ambiguities which required processing above lexical (lexeme) and phonological (phoneme substitution) levels – i.e., morphological, syntactic, and idiomatic ambiguities all required additional levels of processing and were all more difficult for participants to identify. morphological ambiguities requiring the (re)processing of word structure(s) and boundaries in addition to semantic knowledge relating to individual lexemes and the processing of sounds, were more difficult than lexical and phonological ambiguities for participants to identify. this parallels the findings of hirsh-pasek et al. (1978) who interpret ‘morpheme boundary ambiguity’ in a similar fashion and who also report it as being more difficult to explain than phonological or lexical ambiguities. in ambiguities where grammatical class violations also occurred (e.g., a noun became a verb) participants were required to focus on the grammatical relationships between words at phrase level as well as at lexeme level to children’s humour development baker & aldridge 589 understand the humour, resulting in this type of ambiguity being one of the hardest to process. it was least frequently identified and scored second lowest in the explanation task. this parallels the findings of shultz and pilon (1973) and shultz and horibe (1974), both of whom report ‘deep structure’ ambiguities as being difficult for young participant to explain. it also duplicates the findings of yuill (1998), who reports syntactic ambiguities as being more difficult for children to identify5. it should be noted, however that not all yuill’s syntactic ambiguities are included in the class of syntactic ambiguity; she classifies ‘why do leopards make rubbish thieves? because they’re always spotted’ as lexical ambiguity rather than syntactical (see earlier discussion), which means she tests this type of linguistic phenomena in more than one category within her study. that syntactic ambiguity was least frequently identified (other than idiomatic ambiguity) and hardest to explain, does not correspond with hirsh pasek et al.’s (1978) findings for ‘case-labelling’6 ambiguities which they report as being easiest for children to explain (after lexical ambiguities). the examples they provide of this ambiguity type, however, show that some of their ‘underlying structure’ ambiguities are those which would be classified as either lexical or idiomatic ambiguities in the current study. they do not involve a change in word class and include fixed phrases which rely upon both figurative and literal interpretation to elicit humour. idiomatic ambiguity, which involved the processing of figurative meanings in addition to literal ones, was the most difficult ambiguity type for participants to comprehend, although this finding was not always reflected in the multiple-choice scores. we note that the reason for this is that the punchlines for this ambiguity type were often wrongly chosen based on their literal meanings only. the bias towards literal meanings of idiomatic expressions supports findings from previous studies on children’s idiom comprehension ackerman (1982), prinz (1983), gibbs (1987), levorato & cacciari (1995), le sourn-bissaoui et al. (2012) all report that children have a bias towards literal interpretations of figurative language when processing idioms. this bias is influenced by immature cognitive and language skills (levorato & cacciari, 1995) which weaken around seven years of age when children start to acquire new skills in decoding figurative expressions. given the late and protracted development of non-literal processing skill, it is unsurprising that idiomatically ambiguous original punchline selections were made solely based on their literal meanings by so many of the younger children in the current study who were not cognitively advanced enough to be able to fully process figurative language. of note is the fact that each of the idiomatic ambiguities contained within riddles was low in transparency. this meant that it was harder for participants to decompose the idioms when trying to make sense of them. the meanings of the idioms ‘a piece of cake’, 5 of the seven types of riddle punchlines yuill opts to test, not all specifically rely on verbal ambiguities, however. she also tests ‘pragmatic riddles’, ‘absurdity riddles’ and ‘metalinguistic riddles’. only three of yuill’s classifications match those used in the current study and some labels differ (yuill’s word-compound’ ambiguity corresponds to our ‘morphological’ ambiguity). 6 hirsh-pasek’s ‘case-labelling and underlying structure’ relates to differences in word class as incorporated by our syntactic ambiguity category. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 3 572-600, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 590 ‘going up the wall’ and ‘having a screw loose’ could not be determined from their constituent parts alone and required previous exposure in order they be understood. it is possible that low transparency may have contributed to them being harder for participants to process than those higher in transparency. this would correspond with the findings of gibbs (1987), nippold and rudzinski (1993), levorato and cacciari (1999), nippold and taylor (2002) and cain, oakhill and lemmon (2005). all the idiomatic ambiguities included in the study had been trialled in the pilot study, however, to ensure that participants of this age were familiar with their meanings – which they were. that they were low in transparency is therefore less likely to have been a factor in our findings than the fact that idiomatic ambiguities (of any type) involve more complex processing skills than those required to process other ambiguity types and as such are a later language skill to be acquired by children, which is reflected in the outcomes. comparing our findings for idiomatic ambiguity with earlier studies is difficult since this ambiguity type is not reported as having been overtly tested. lack of reported findings do not mean that this type of ambiguity has not been tested previously, however. it has, although researchers have failed to address the fact that it requires a specific type of competence and have instead included idiomatic ambiguities in differing categories (fowles & glanz in lexical ambiguity and shultz & pilon in phonological ambiguity). we have, in our study, ensured this specific linguistic phenomenon – and requisite processing skills – has been robustly accommodated within a category of its own and this has allowed us to determine the impact that this type of linguistic manipulation has on children’s developing ambiguity and humour comprehension. as our discussion shows, there are both parallels and discrepancies to be drawn between current outcomes and reported findings from previous studies on children’s humour and ambiguity comprehension. ambiguity types have not always been interpreted in the same way, however, which means that whilst parallels may be drawn, they do not always correspond to the type of linguistic phenomena tested. discrepancies also occur where parallels might otherwise have been drawn had ambiguities been interpreted in the same way. this highlights the need for consistency in ambiguity classifications to facilitate comparative analysis across studies which would then enrich our understanding of the way(s) in which different language phenomena affect children’s developing ability to comprehend ambiguities. this issue was addressed here by using definitions which focused specially upon inherent language phenomena embedded within the form(s) of verbal riddles. outcomes from the two tasks show that the decoding of various ambiguity types requires different processing strategies, and that these, in turn, depend upon the type of language phenomena exploited to elicit humour. some ambiguity types are more complex to understand because they require additional levels of processing. current findings show that the less complex the processing demand, the more readily the ambiguity is understood (phonological and lexical ambiguities). the more complex the processing demand, the less readily it is understood (morphological, syntactic, and idiomatic ambiguities respectively). this supports our third hypothesis: that children’s humour development baker & aldridge 591 ambiguities requiring more complex language processing skills will be less readily understood. our findings will now be assessed against mcghee’s current model of humour development and revisions will be made accordingly. 4.3. mcghee’s model of humour development although comprehension results for year 2 were lower than for years 4 and 6, there were, nonetheless, a considerable number of year 2 children (aged 6-7) who could identify and explain the ambiguity in some of the riddles. this finding therefore corresponds with mcghee’s current framework of humour development in which children, typically around seven years of age are said to make the transition from stage four to stage five humour and to begin to develop the ability to comprehend ambiguity-based jokes. whilst our findings support mcghee’s model of humour development as just described, it nonetheless highlights a specific aspect of the current framework now open to challenge. participants in year 2, despite having lower identification rates than the two older year groups, were shown to be capable of identifying almost half of the original punchlines correctly (147 times out of a potential 300 = 49%). even when potentially misleading identification rates for idiomatic ambiguity (see table 2) were removed, participants in year 2 were still able to correctly identify 111 punchlines. participants in this year group ranged from six to seven years. given that they were able to correctly identify almost half the punchlines containing ambiguous words/phrases, these participants are well on their way to being able to identify ambiguity-based punchlines as opposed to simply “begin[ning]” (mcghee, 1979, p.76) to develop understanding. even allowing for individual variation, this proficiency is earlier than mcghee’s model would suggest. therefore, whilst the current data confirms the biggest developmental leap in understanding verbal ambiguities to occur between the ages of six and nine years, it also suggests that children might start consolidating their understanding of ambiguity-based humour at an earlier age than previously purported. whether this was because the participants were cognitively advanced, linguistically advanced, or because the link between cognitive and humour development is not as closely bound as previously reported is not ascertainable from the current study but certainly merits further investigation. future studies, for example, might build on this finding by testing participants younger than those that participated here to determine whether the age at which young children start to comprehend ambiguities is earlier than presently accounted for in mcghee’s five-stage framework of humour development. should this be the case, then mcghee’s model (first formulated some forty years ago) might be modified accordingly. 4.4. developing the humour model in addition to both supporting and challenging the humour model, outcomes from the multiple choice and verbal explanation tasks provided an insight into trends in verbal ambiguity comprehension not currently accommodated or communicated by the model in its present form. as participants made the transition to stage five humour, they found some types of ambiguities easier/more difficult to comprehend. all ambiguity types required journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 3 572-600, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 592 participants to assign two different meanings to a single word/string of words in order that they be understood, but the processes involved in retrieving and assigning the two meanings varied according to the linguistic phenomena upon which ambiguity types were based. this, in turn, had a bearing on the types of ambiguity that were identified and explained most successfully. given this finding, it is therefore proposed (table 5) that a set of sequential sub-stages are added to mcghee’s stage five humour model. each proposed sub-stage (5a: lexical & phonological ambiguities; 5b. morphological ambiguities; 5c. syntactic ambiguities & 5d. idiomatic ambiguities) interrelates with both the language phenomena embedded within the wording of verbal riddle (i.e., the form in which it is presented) and the different processing demands it makes of the listener. table 5 revised stages of humour development stage 0 (laughter without humour: 0 to 6 months) – stage 4 (conceptual incongruity: 3 to 5 years) stage 5: riddles and jokes (double meanings/ambiguities: 6-7 to 10-11 years) stage 5a: lexical and phonological ambiguities stage 5b: morphological ambiguities stage 5c: syntactic ambiguities stage 5d: idiomatic ambiguities it is noted that of these four sub-stages (5a-5d), the final three stages comprise one type of ambiguity only, whilst the first stage comprises two: lexical and phonological ambiguities. both were understood more than the three other types (morphological, syntactic, and idiomatic) in the multiple choice and explanation tasks but in an opposing order. it therefore remains to be determined as to whether one type is more readily understood than the other as children first start to comprehend ambiguity-based humour. this might thus prove an area for future focused investigation to refine the humour model further. 5. conclusion our study leads us to conclude that the facility with which verbal ambiguities are comprehended by young children varies according to the different ways in which linguistic phenomena have been manipulated to elicit humour. we have accordingly applied our findings to stage 5 of mcghee’s humour model within which verbal ambiguities first start to be comprehended, to accommodate children’s developmental progress within this specific stage. acknowledgement this work was supported by the economic and social research council (grant number es/j500197/1) children’s humour development baker & 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(1988). using humor to develop creative thinking. journal of children in contemporary society, 1-2, 99-116. https://doi.org/10.1300/j274v20n01_07 https://doi.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0022-0663.68.3.318 https://doi.org/10.1300/j274v20n01_07 children’s humour development baker & aldridge 597 appendices appendix a: ambiguity definitions lexical ambiguity lexical ambiguity occurs solely within the alternative meaning of an individual lexical item and does not rely upon grammatical analysis at phrase, clause or sentence level. it occurs when an individual word has more than one meaning without any class violation. this type of ambiguity encompasses both homonyms and polysemes since when relayed orally, both carry the same sound but different meanings e.g. “why are babies good at football?” “because they can dribble.” phonological ambiguity phonological ambiguity occurs when the ambiguous fragment of riddle text has two non-identical phonetic forms for the two alternative interpretations. the modification of the phonetic form can comprise the addition, deletion, or substitution of a phoneme. it does not involve modification of phonetic form across word boundaries and is contained within a single lexical item e.g. “what do whales eat for dinner?” “fish and ships.” morphological ambiguity morphological ambiguity occurs when there are changes in morpheme boundaries for the two readings of the text. other than variation in stress or juncture, the ambiguous fragment of the riddle has identical phonetic forms for the two alternative interpretations e.g. “why did the jelly wobble?” “because it saw the milkshake/milk shake.” syntactic ambiguity syntactic ambiguity occurs when two different underlying syntactic structures are mapped onto a single surface structure. the two different syntactic representations reflect different underlying grammatical relations between lexical items. syntactic ambiguity relies upon grammatical analysis at whole phrase, clause, or sentence level e.g. “how was the blind carpenter able to see?” “he picked up his hammer and saw.” idiomatic ambiguity idiomatic ambiguity occurs when the figurative meaning of an idiom is blended with the literal meanings of its individual lexical components e.g. “what does spiderman do when he’s angry?” “he goes up the wall.” journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 3 572-600, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 598 key original punchline plausible punchline irrelevant punchline appendix b: riddle questions with multiple choice punchline selections riddle 1 (idiomatic ambiguity) why did the robot act silly? because he was in a daft mood because he had a screw loose because he liked apples riddle 2 (syntactic ambiguity) why is six afraid of seven because seven eats fish because seven ate/eight nine because seven is bigger riddle 3 (morphological ambiguity) why couldn’t the skeleton go to the ball? he had no body/nobody to go with he was too cold it was past his bedtime riddle 4 (lexical ambiguity) why are babies good at football? because they can dribble because they kick their legs because they like music riddle 5 (phonological ambiguity) how did the banana know he was ill? he wasn’t peeling well he had a high temperature he looked out of the window riddle 6 (idiomatic ambiguity) what does spiderman do when he’s angry? he turns on the radio he goes up the wall he stamps his feet children’s humour development baker & aldridge 599 riddle 7 (morphological ambiguity) why did the jelly wobble? because someone shook the plate because it saw the milk shake/milkshake because it was midnight riddle 8 (syntactic ambiguity) how was the blind carpenter able to see? he went to the circus he picked up his hammer and saw he put on his glasses riddle 9 (lexical ambiguity) when is the best time to buy chickens? when the tide is out when they are fresh when they’re going cheap/cheep riddle 10 (phonological ambiguity) what do whales eat for dinner? fish and ships tasty sea creatures big earrings riddle 11 (syntactic ambiguity) why do leopards make rubbish thieves? because they smell of roses because they always get caught because they’re always spotted riddle 12 (idiomatic ambiguity) why did the schoolboy eat his homework?’ his friend said it tasted nice his teacher said it was a piece of cake his mum liked singing in the bath riddle 13 (lexical ambiguity) why can’t you ever win at cards in the jungle? because there are so many wild animals competing because it snows on the mountains because there are too many cheetahs/cheaters riddle 14 (morphological ambiguity) when are roads angry? when the birds are singing when they are cross roads/crossroads when you annoy them journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 10 issue: 3 572-600, 2022 issn: 2148-1997 600 riddle 15 (phonological ambiguity) what’s a mouse’s favourite game? hide and squeak time for bed hunt the cheese journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 219-255, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 219 the acquisition of tense, modal and aspect markers in jamaican creole tamirand nnena de lisser1 university of guyana stephanie durrleman2 university of geneva ur shlonsky3 university of geneva luigi rizzi4 university of geneva, university of siena abstract this work offers an analysis of the development of tense, modal and aspect (tma) markers as observed in the spontaneous speech of 6 children acquiring jamaican creole (jc). in jc, tma markers overtly show a rich functional hierarchy, which is generally found across creole languages, and is arguably universal. the analyses detail how this functional structure is acquired, revealing that children are knowledgeable of the rules governing tma combinations and do not entertain target-inconsistent orders. this suggests that children are aware of the articulate cartographic hierarchy as attested in the target language. additionally, we note that the distribution of the markers in child production is skewed in the same direction as in the input data; however, differences between children’s productions as compared to their linguistic environment provide evidence that input alone cannot account for the development of tma markers in child production. keywords jamaican creole, tense, modal, aspect, cartography, full competence, generative grammar. 1 bio: tamirand nnena de lisser, lecturer of linguistics, university of guyana. main research topic: l1 acquisition of jamaican creole syntactic systems. research interests: language acquisition, creole linguistics, and applied linguistics. corresponding author: tamira_de_lissa@yahoo.com. 2 bio: stephanie durrleman, senior researcher, faculty of psychology and educational sciences, university of geneva. main research topics: syntactic cartography, syntactic locality, language acquisition, the grammar-cognition interface and the phenotype of language disorders. 3 bio: ur shlonsky, professor of linguistics, university of geneva. research interests: syntactic theory, comparative syntax with particular reference to semitic and romance languages. 4 bio: luigi rizzi, professor of linguistics, university of geneva, university of siena. main research topics: syntactic theory and comparative syntax, with special reference to the cartography of syntactic structures; the theory of locality; the theory-conscious study of the acquisition of morpho-syntax. rizzi's research has been supported in part by the erc grant n. 340297 syncart. received : 14.11.2017 accepted : 12.12.2017 published : 26.12.2017 doi: 10.5281/zenodo.7697250 the acquisition of tma markers in jc de lisser, durrleman, shlonsky & rizzi 220 1. introduction 1.1. continuity or maturational approach this work focuses on the production of tense, modal and aspect (tma) markers in jamaican creole (jc). in keeping with the ideas of durrleman (2000, 2008), inflectional markers in jc are overt manifestations of clausal functional heads, in line with cinque’s (1999) functional hierarchy, as presented in (1): 1) modepistemic: shuda, wuda, maita, mosa, kuda > t(past): did > t(future): wi > modnecessity: mos > modobligation: hafi / modability/permission: kyan > aredi t(anterior) don1 > aspcontinuative: stil > aspretrospective: jos > aspgeneric/progressive: a > aspprospective: go > aspcompletive: don2 > aspfrequentative: reduplicated verb how is such a complex functional structure acquired? under the generative framework, two main models may account for this: continuity and maturation. according to the continuity model, grammatical principles are available at all stages from birth and do not change (pinker 1984, poeppel & wexler 1993, paradis & genesee 1997, borer & rohrbacher 2002; and more recently maintained by gómez soler 2012, among others). early grammar has all the same properties of the adult language, and the gap between child and adult systems is accounted for by the assumption that children must learn language-specific properties, and that development results in growth in other domains such as the lexicon, pragmatic competence and processing abilities. radical versions of the continuity hypothesis, generally referred to as the full competence hypothesis, allow for the least degree of freedom for the child’s grammar to diverge from the adult’s, and as such relies on external factors to account for changes in development (as discussed by rasetti, 2003). in the maturation model (postulated by radford, 1990, 1995, 1996; vainikka, 1993/4; borer & wexler, 1987; wexler, 1998; clahsen, 1996; among others; and gaining more recent support from ryan, 2017) the basic assumption is that there is a genetically determined maturation of grammatical categories and principles initially absent from child grammars. the gap between early and adult systems is accounted for by the immature state of universal grammar (ug). according to this view, not all aspects of ug are readily available and developmental timing for their emergence may be extensive (borer & wexler, 1987). in sum, maturation-based approaches postulate that children systems contain only the basic structure of ug, which is modified over time by eventual changes and additions of more specific properties of ug. the transparently analytical morphological realization of the tma system in creole languages makes jc an ideal case to investigate the development of the inflectional layer in language acquisition. does this development follow the maturation or the ‘full competence’ model? the maturation model would lead us to expect that the tma zone should emerge incrementally in a bottom-up manner, i.e. in an ‘incremental structure building’ way: initially, only the lower layers should be attested in natural productions, then higher journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 219-255, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 221 layers should appear, in an order respecting the universal hierarchy. in contrast the full competence model, would predict that tma markers should be available once syntactically significant production starts, although they may be subject to grammatical options such as truncation (rizzi 1992, 2000), which would yield omissions that although not necessarily targetconsistent remain nevertheless ug-consistent. with the current study, we aim to determine the approach which can best account for inflectional development in child language. 1.2. an overview of tense, modal and aspect in jc jamaican creole does not have bound verbal inflections but there are various free morphemes that accompany the verb to express tense, modality and aspect. in jc, these tma markers, when used, must intervene between the subject and the verb, as exemplified in (2) – (4): 2) mi ben go pan mai chrakta. (kem 3;00) 1sg past go on poss.1sg tractor ‘i went on my tractor.’ 3) i shuda fit momi. (ala 2;07) 3sg mod fit mommy ‘it should’ve fit mommy.’ 4) mi a_go5 shuo jia. (col 2;09) 1sg asp show jia ‘i am going to show jia.’ the preverbal marker for past in jc is did or ben (with variants behn, wehn, ehn, wen and en). according to patrick (2007), these markers occur more rarely than the classic creole pattern predicts. an unmarked non-stative verb tends to yield a default past reference, while unmarked stative verbs tend to yield a non-past interpretation; however this is not absolute as other factors may impact the temporal reading, including context, a time-adverbial or the nature of the direct object (durrleman-tame, 2008). when the discourse context is already focused on a time in the past, the overt use of the past tense marker with non-stative verbs can unambiguously signal a pluperfect (past-before-past) reading (patrick, 2007). an unmarked verb alone cannot express progressive aspect, though it can express habitual aspect. the preverbal progressive aspect marker a, da or de, must be used to indicate progressive action. the past markers may combine with the progressive markers to give bena/bende, dida, and wena with a meaning corresponding to english past progressive (bailey, 1966; durrleman tame, 2008). completive aspect is signaled by don in jc. it can appear either before or after the verb phrase, but is restricted to non-statives. where don occurs 5 durrleman-tame (2008) proposed that progressive a must be used in combination with the prospective go (which may become ao in rapid speech) in order to yield a prospective aspectual meaning. for simplicity purposes, throughout this paper, we will treat a+go as a single marker of prospective aspect represented as a_go. the acquisition of tma markers in jc de lisser, durrleman, shlonsky & rizzi 222 pre-verbally, without the stativity restriction, it gives an anterior reading (durrleman-tame, 2008). the marker jos is used to designate retrospective aspect, along the lines of standard english ‘just’ (see also cinque 1999). futurity may be expressed by a_go and wi in jc. a_go (with variants aa, goo, gaa(hn), gwain) is employed to express prospective aspect or proximal future. wi has been analyzed as future tense (durrleman-tame, 2008) and as a modal (bailey, 1966). jc has an extensive group of modals which occurs in various combinations with each other. bailey (1966:45, 141) divides them into two groups by order of occurrence: mod 1: kuda ‘could’, shuda ‘should’, wuda ‘would’, maita ‘may, might’ and wi ‘will’ mod 2: hafi ‘have to’, mos(a), ‘must’, kyan ‘can’ and fi ‘ought’ bailey’s mod 1 (with the exception of wi) are epistemic modals and mod 2 are root modals. epistemic modals are situated high in the clausal hierarchy, while root modals are situated in the lower domain (see cinque, 1999). following durrleman-tame (2008) root modals are further divided into 3 classes: ability/permission modals, obligation modals and necessity modals. the inventory of modals for the current work is therefore as follows: epistemic: shuda~shudn, wuda~wudn, kuda~kudn, mosa/mosi, maita, wi6 root: ability/permission: kyan~kyahn, necessity: mos, obligation: afi 1.3. acquisition of tense modal and aspect analyses of the development of tma are well documented in the literature (papafragou, 1998; shirai & andersen, 1995; bloom et al., 1980 on english; bar-shalom, 2002 on russian; lorusso, 2007 on italian; panitsa, 2010 on modern greek; lee, 2009 on korean; green & roeper, 2007 on african american english, etc.). research has revealed that modality is generally produced rather late, emerging between 1;10 and 2;06 in english (radford, 1990; brown, 1973; kuczaj & maratsos, 1975; among others reviewed in papafragou, 1998). bloom et al. (1980) put forward the ‘aspect before tense hypothesis’, showing where aspectual readings emerge before tense. weist et al. (1984) however provided counter examples in the acquisition of polish, claiming that children mark both tense and aspect at early stages. the variance in methods and procedures employed in different studies can 6 in jc, as a marker of modality, wi ranges from root modal (expressing volition/intention as in (1)) to epistemic modal (expressing prediction as in (2)). however, for the purposes of this analysis, wi will be analyzed as a single category ‘modal wi’ distinct from epistemic modals. 1) mi wi fiks it. (shu 2,11) 1sg mod fix 3sg ‘i will (am willing to/intend to) fix it.’ 2) i wi muuv ahn slak op. (kem 3,01) 3sg mod move and slack up ‘it will move and become slack.’ journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 219-255, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 223 however create differences in interpretation, and thereby generate problems for comparative analysis. moreover, there are varying accounts in studies of children’s acquisition of aspect in terms of the age of acquisition of the aspectual zone, the order of the acquisition of different aspectual expressions, the frequency of production and the interaction between aspect and tense (see andersen and shirai, 1996 for discussion). boland (2006) however outlined that frequency in the use of tma markers does not show how productive they are. for example if a child uses a tma marker with only one verb, though the child may produce multiple utterances of the same construction, it is conceivable that the child is not conscious of the tma + v structure. when the child uses the tma marker with different verbs, it is more likely that the child has analyzed the form and understands how it is used in different contexts. qualitative analyses, such as variation in the cooccurrence of tma markers with different predicates, may be indicative of such productive use of the tma + v structure. a tma marker is not held to be acquired until a child is able to produce it spontaneously with different verbs. 1.4. purpose of study this study details the trajectories of 6 monolingual jc children, in the development of inflectional markers. it focuses on their productions of tense, modal and aspectual markers, in order to explain how the complex functional hierarchy of morphosyntactic structures is acquired. as there has been limited focus on the development of creole languages (adone, 1994, 2012; adone & vainikka, 1999; pratas & hyams, 2009; de lisser et al. 2014, 2016), work in this domain is still necessary. jc, being an analytic language, is particularly suited to reveal the moment at which functional markers first appear, their order of acquisition, and the frequency and productivity of their use in children’s spontaneous production, thereby providing concrete evidence for language acquisition theories. 1.5. theoretical framework this study is couched within the framework of universal grammar (chomsky, 1981a). the theory of universal grammar proposes that there are common properties that all natural human languages share, which are manifested innately without any formal training. despite the varying circumstances and the relatively limited amount of input data to which children are exposed, linguistic milestones are achieved in a parallel fashion across languages. cartographic research conducted within the ug approach (see overviews in cinque & rizzi 2010, shlonsky 2010, rizzi & cinque 2016) has worked out detailed hypotheses on the functional hierarchy of the clause. the cartographic approach presents a fine-grained structural mapping of morphosyntactic categories, respecting a highly articulate, uniformed functional hierarchy, the core of which is held to be universal. of central importance for this approach is the hypothesis that all morphemes project their own phrasal category and each is indicative of a part of the clausal architecture (durrleman-tame, 2008). as such the ip space is rigidly ordered in line with cinque’s functional hierarchy as detailed in section 1.1. the acquisition of tma markers in jc de lisser, durrleman, shlonsky & rizzi 224 according to shlonsky (2010;8) the universality of the functional hierarchy of the ip space “allowed for a syntactic articulation of verbal aspect and event semantics and studies of the inflectional space made it possible to better ‘syntacticize’ aspect, tense and mood”. this framework therefore offers a natural benchmark for acquisition studies of the tma system. 1.6. organization of paper the paper is organized as follows: first we outline the methodology on which the study is based then present the results detailing the production of modal, tense and aspect markers in the corpus. after, we present a general overview of the entire tma zone examining the co-occurrence of tense, modal and aspect in the child production then making comparisons with their distribution in the input. the paper ends with a discussion of the main findings with proposed answers to the research questions, followed by a brief conclusion. 2. methodology the data of this study is based on longitudinal recordings of six jamaican creole monolingual children, located at the most basilectal end of the continuum7. over a period of 18 months, 60-minute recordings were conducted every 10 days for the first five months and every 15 days thereafter. at the start of the research, the children were within an age range of 1;6 to 1;11 months. the age range and time frame of the research corresponds to the period in which syntax emerges in most children and where target-inconsistencies are most notable. this work is limited to spontaneous, naturalistic tape-recorded conversations between/among child, parent(s), siblings, friends and/or investigator(s). the children were recorded in the comfort of their homes. all recordings were transcribed and morphologically coded along the childes guidelines (macwhinney, 1995). 2.1 . research questions the data collected from this study will answer the following questions: i. what is the sequence of the development of tense, modal and aspectual markers? ii. do children respect the functional hierarchical cartography of the inflectional zone? iii. can input be responsible for developments in child language acquisition? iv. which approach, maturational or continuity, best accounts for language development in line with the theory of universal grammar? 7 given the existence of the creole continuum, various factors were considered in identifying and selecting the participants for inclusion in the study. primary consideration was given to the area of residence and the level of education of the primary care-giver. more specifically, speakers from rural communities with less education were ranked closer to the basilectal end of the continuum (meade, 2001). in light of this observation, in our search for children to be included in our study, we targeted the ‘basilectal’ community of southfield, located in st. elizabeth. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 219-255, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 225 2.2. criteria for inclusion of data for analysis it should be noted that only utterances containing at least one predicate have been taken into account for the present analysis of the development of the inflectional phrase (ip). some utterances containing predicates were however excluded from the data analysis. these include utterances in which any unintelligible portions could be critical for the analysis; utterances where the meaning was unclear based on the context of the discourse; the child’s stuttering or self-repetitions without the production of contentful utterances in-between; repetitions of memorized materials, e.g. songs and nursery rhymes; and immediate repetitions of adult’s exact utterances. all verbal items were coded for stativity, the presence or absence of tense, modals and aspectual markers and the location of the markers with respect to the verb. native speakers’ intuitions were employed in distinguishing between contexts of utterances that could possibly yield multiple temporal interpretations. additionally, data produced within the first two months were not included, as this period included finalizing the selection of children for inclusion in the study and familiarization of the researchers with the children. 3. findings 3.1. acquisition of modality in jc the data presented below details the total production of modals by the 6 children throughout the duration of the study. figure 1. total production of modals 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 2 ;0 .0 2 ;0 .5 2 ;1 .0 2 ;1 .5 2 ;2 .0 2 ;2 .5 2 ;3 .0 2 ;3 .5 2 ;4 .0 2 ;4 .5 2 ;5 .0 2 ;5 .5 2 ;6 .0 2 ;6 .5 2 ;7 .0 2 ;7 .5 2 ;8 .0 2 ;8 .5 2 ;9 .0 2 ;9 .5 2 ;1 0 .0 2 ;1 0 .5 2 ;1 1 .0 2 ;1 1 .5 3 ;0 .0 3 ;0 .5 3 ;1 .0 3 ;1 .5 3 ;2 .0 3 ;2 .5 3 ;3 .0 3 ;3 .5 3 ;4 .0 3 ;4 .5 ability modal obligation modal necessity modal epistemic modal modal wi the acquisition of tma markers in jc de lisser, durrleman, shlonsky & rizzi 226 figure 1 shows the sequence of modals as they emerge in the data. based on the data presented in figure 1 (see tables (1) – (6) in appendix 1 for details), the ability modal kyan and its negative variant kyaahn, are the first modals to be produced by all the children in the corpus, with the exception of ala, who seems to have had a single sporadic production of modal wi at 2;2. these ability modals all emerged between 2;00 and 2;3, with the exception of tya whose first production was much later at 2;10. figure 1 (see table 7 in appendix 1) also illustrates that the ability/permission modal is the most frequently produced, accounting for 80% (757 of 950) of the utterances expressing modality. the root obligation modal accounts for 8% (75 utterances) and the modal wi accounts for 6% (61 utterances). the necessity and epistemic modals each accounts for roughly 3% of the data set. from a holistic analysis, the following sequence is their first attestation in the corpus: modability (2;0) > modwi (2;2.5) > modepistemic (2;4) > modobligation (2;4.5) > modnecessity (2;5.5). however, we note there are huge individual variations with the order and frequency of production of the modals (detailed in tables (1) – (6) in appendix 1). with regards to the production of epistemic modals, the data does not lend itself to a cross-sectional examination of the phenomenon as 87% (29 of 33 utterances) was produced by one informant, ala. we present examples of each utterance type produced. ability/permission modal 5) ø kyan brok dis pliiz? (ala 2;03) (2sg) modabl break dem please ‘can you break this please?’ obligation modal 6) mi afi muuv di baisikl rait yaso. (rju 3;01) 1sg modobl move det bicycle right loc ‘i have to move the bicycle right here.’ necessity modal 7) a mos skid i oot. (col 2;08) 1sg modnec skid 3sg out ‘i must skid it out.’ modal wi 8) di naïf wi kot yo. (kem 3;00) det knife modwi cut 2sg ‘the knife will cut you.’ epistemic modal 9) i mosi niem sirop. (ala 2;11) 3sg modepis name syrup ‘maybe it is named syrup.’ in keeping with boland (2006) frequency in use of tma markers does not show how productive they are, and as such qualitative analyses are needed. one such analysis is their variation with predicates. there is no general agreement however regarding the number of different predicates a marker must be used with to be considered productive. a criterion of two different journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 219-255, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 227 predicates is used in some research (pizzuto & caselli, 1994); however boland (2006) posits that to be a very low standard and thereby sets his criterion to five different predicates. since the criteria are quite arbitrary, we present two separate analyses, first assuming 2 predicates and then 5 predicates as a standard threshold. tables 1 and 2 show the age at which the markers are used productively with 2 and 5 different predicates respectively. table 1 use of modals with 2 different predicates modal col ala rju tya kem shu abi/per 2;3,30 2;3,8 2;0,30 2;11,0 2;7,5 2;5,18 obl 2;6,12 3;0,25 3;1,15 3;0,28 nec 2;7,18 3;0,25 3;0,0 epis 2;6,5 wi 2;4,15 2;5,23 2;6,18 2;8,19 2;11,3 table 2 use of modals with 5 different predicates modal col ala rju tya kem shu abi/per 2;5,14 2;5,7 2;2,0 2;11,28 2;7,20 2;6,4 obl 2;7,18 3;1,28 3;1,26 nec 2;9,14 3;1,12 epis 2;9,0 wi 2;6,10 2;9,28 2;7,28 3;0,10 based on the individual variation and the sporadic occurrences of the modal elements in the corpus, the order in which the forms are productively used cannot be firmly established. it is clear that the ability/permission modal is the first to be produced and used productively by all the children acquiring jc, whether we assume the 2 or 5 predicates criterion. on the other hand, with the exception of ala, the epistemic modal was never used productively regardless of the criterion adopted. a likely explanation put forward is the role of input: most modal expressions produced by parents to children are those related to permission and ability. our data seems in line with this view: while there are 3922 (65%) child directed utterances using the ability/permission modals, the other categories are minimally attested, as demonstrated in figure 2. there are only 714 (12%) cases of the obligation modal, 403 (7%) of the necessity modal, 340 (6%) of the epistemic modal and 679 (11%) modal wi. the data reveals a strong correlation coefficient of 0.9987 between the children’s productions and the input. this minimal occurrence in the linguistic environment of certain modals may thus help to account for their sporadic production in acquisition. the acquisition of tma markers in jc de lisser, durrleman, shlonsky & rizzi 228 figure 2. distribution of modality in child production and input the data in figure 2 shows a striking correspondence between the distribution of the modals in the input and in the children’s productions. with the exception of the ability/permission modal, the relative difference between the input data and the children’s utterances ranges merely between 3% and 5%. the distribution of the ability/permission modal in the children’s utterances is higher than that attested in the input, while all other modality markers are smaller8. this suggests that the ability/permission modal is indeed easier to acquire than the other modals, and hence is the first to emerge and to be productively used. we return to the role of input in the cumulative discussion of the entire tma zone. we will now turn our attention to the development of tense. 3.2. acquisition of tense in jc the data reveals 5765 occurrences of unmarked verbs with a past time interpretation as exemplified in (10), and 4404 unmarked verbs with a present interpretation as exemplified in (11). 10) moesha du dem. (tya 2;06) moesha do 3pl ‘moesha did them.’ 11) ii av ii baik. (kem 2;09) 3sg have 3sg bike ‘he has his bike.’ based on the option of using the unmarked verb to express a past or present reading, the current data does not allow us to determine at what exact point children acquire the concept of tense. as the stativity of verbs is a major 8 in keeping with the ideas of boland (2006), we speculate that the production of the ability/permission modal is higher than the input because it is communicatively more relevant to the child. 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% abl obl nec epis wi child input journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 219-255, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 229 indicator of time referent9, the occurrence of the overt past marker will be checked in correlation with the stativity of the predicate. we see however that children rarely select the option of using the overt past tense markers, as of the 5836 utterances with a past time interpretation only 71 overtly marked past tense markers were found in the entire corpus as detailed in table 3. the minimal use of the overt markers is expected, as these markers also occur rarely in the speech of adults (in line with patrick, 2007). table 3 production of overt past tense marker age (y;m) col ala rju tya kem shu 2;1.0 1 0 0 0 0 0 2;1.5 0 0 0 0 0 0 2;2.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2;2.5 1 0 0 0 0 0 2;3.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2;3.5 0 0 0 0 0 0 2;4.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2;4.5 1 0 1 0 0 0 2;5.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2;5.5 0 0 0 0 0 0 2;6.0 0 1 0 0 0 0 2;6.5 0 0 0 0 0 1 2;7.0 0 7 0 0 0 0 2;7.5 0 3 2 0 0 0 2;8.0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2;8.5 1 2 4 0 0 0 2;9.0 0 2 0 0 0 1 2;9.5 0 0 0 0 0 0 2;10.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2;10.5 0 0 0 0 0 1 2;11.0 0 1 0 0 1 1 2;11.5 0 2 0 0 0 0 3;0.0 0 2 0 0 1 0 3;0.5 0 0 0 0 0 2 3;1.0 0 0 0 0 10 0 3;1.5 0 0 0 0 3 2 3;2.0 0 0 0 0 1 4 3;2.5 0 0 0 0 1 0 3;3.0 0 0 0 0 0 3 3;3.5 0 0 0 0 3 0 3;4.0 0 0 0 0 0 1 3;4.5 0 0 0 0 0 2 total 4 20 7 0 20 20 9 note that stativity alone does not allow one to freely interpret the verb as being past or present; such reading is dependent on various factors and constraints as was indicated in section 1.2. the acquisition of tma markers in jc de lisser, durrleman, shlonsky & rizzi 230 the data reveals much individual variation with regards to the use of the overt markers: while there are 20 utterances by ala, shu, and kem respectively, it is never attested in the production of tya and virtually unattested in col’s and rju’s production. there are also variations in the age of the children regarding their first production of the overt past tense forms. closer examination of the data reveals that of the 71 overt past tense markers, 38 expressed past-progressive, as in (12) as compared to 33 which yielded a simple past/pluperfect interpretation, as in (13): 12) mi ben a kaal yo. (kem 3;00) 1sg past prog call 2sg ‘i was calling you.’ 13) a dis did kom an mi an. (ala 3;00) foc dem past come on 1sg hand ‘it is this that came/had come on my hand.’ since it is only with stative verbs that the marker is obligatory to express past, we checked the correlation between the occurrence of the marker and the stativity of the main predicate. the findings revealed that, in line with the target language, the children acquiring jc did not overextend the use of the past tense marker to stative verbs in contexts requiring a non-past interpretation. neither did children use the past tense marker inappropriately with non-stative verbs. presented in tables 4 and 5 is the age where the past tense marker is used productively with 2 and 5 predicates respectively, both with a past progressive interpretation and in its bare form. it is shown that ala is the first child to use the past-progressive marker productively in keeping with both the 2 and 5 predicate criterion, while it never gained productive use in col’s and tya’s productions. col was the first informant to use the bare past productively based on the 2 predicate criterion, but except for kem, its productive use is unattested with the 5 predicate threshold. we will return to a discussion of the combination of the overt past marker and the progressive aspect marker in section 3.4.1. table 4 use of past tense with 2 different predicates tense col ala rju tya kem shu pastprog 2;7,5 2;8,12 3;0,24 2;11,3 past 2;5,0 2;11,1 2;8,12 3;0,24 2;9,5 table 5 use of overt past tense with 5 different predicates tense col ala rju tya kem shu pastprog 2;7,18 3;3,11 3;2,30 past 3;0,24 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 219-255, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 231 the huge individual variation and the limited production of the overt past tense markers do not allow an in-depth comparative analysis of the acquisition of the phenomenon in the present corpus. we will now examine aspects, the zone following tense in the functional hierarchy. 3.3. acquisition of aspect in jc presented below are examples of target-consistent use of aspectual markers in the corpus: completive: 14) manski don iit fi ar aredi. (rju 2;11) manski comp eat poss 3sg already ‘manski already finished eating hers (completely).’ progressive 15) mi a wash mi fut gud. (tya 2;08) 1sg prog wash 1sg foot good ‘i am washing my foot properly.’ prospective: 16) mi a_go sliip now. (kem 2;06) 1sg pros sleep now ‘i am going to sleep now.’ retrospective: 17) shi jos kaal mi. (shu 2;11) 3sg retro call 1sg ‘she just called me.’ detailed in figure 3 is the total production of overt aspect markers unfolding the development of the aspectual zone in the corpus (individual production of aspectual markers is presented in appendix 1, tables 8 – 13). the data reveals that the progressive aspect marker a is the first to be produced, followed closely by the prospective a_go. we see a steady increase of overt markings of both the progressive and prospective aspectual markers as the age of the children increases. the production of the completive and retrospective markers appears to be more sporadic and individual variation is significant. the acquisition of tma markers in jc de lisser, durrleman, shlonsky & rizzi 232 figure 3. total production of aspect markers examining figure 3 (the cumulative data presented in appendix 1, table 14), we see the following sequence in the order of first attestation in the corpus: aspprogressive (1;9.5) > aspprospective (1;10.5) > aspcompletive and aspretrospective (2;0.5). the study revealed that the progressive, prospective, completive and retrospective aspect were all attested in the corpus before 2;1, the point where the first overt past tense morpheme was attested. using this as a benchmark, the data would seemingly support the ‘aspect before tense hypothesis’ in keeping with bloom et al. (1980). however given that we are unable to provide conclusive evidence as to when past tense is mastered (due to the past interpretation associated with bare non-stative verbs), it would be safer to conclude that aspect is overtly expressed before tense in children acquiring jc. the data shows that the progressive aspect represents 63% (3462 of 5453 utterances) of the total number of overt aspectual markers produced followed by 35% (1901) prospective utterances. the production of the completive and retrospective markers (43 and 47 utterances respectively) together represents only 2% of the aspectual expressions in the corpus. again in order not to rely solely on the frequency of use of the markers, we conducted a qualitative analysis of the variation in use of the markers. in table 6 and 7 we present the age at which the markers are used productively with 2 and 5 different predicates respectively. using both thresholds, the data reveals that the progressive aspect is the first marker to be used productively by all participants, followed by the prospective. 0 50 100 150 200 250 comp prog pros retro journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 219-255, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 233 table 6 use of aspectual markers with 2 different predicates aspect col ala rju tya kem shu retro 2;9,11 2;6,22 2;7,5 2;10,6 prog 1;11,1 1;10,25 1;11,4 2;6,24 2;0,21 2;1,23 pros 2;0,12 2;2,6 1;11,26 2;7,23 2;6,4 2;2,2 comp 2;8,6 2;5,23 2;9,10 3;1,15 3;0,10 2;9,5 table 7 use of aspectual markers with 5 different predicates aspect col ala rju tya kem shu retro 2;8,1 3;1,12 prog 1;11,12 2;1,5 2;0,19 2;8,8 2;1,21 2;2,2 pros 2;0,28 2;3,24 2;1,15 2;10,2 2;6,20 2;2,11 comp 2;11,11 3;0,0 examining the data where the criterion for productive use is 2 predicates, we see that all the children, except for rju, used the completive aspectual marker productively before the retrospective marker. this however does not hold for the 5 predicates criterion as only kem and shu demonstrated productive use of the completive aspect with 5 different verbs. on the other hand, the data reveals that ala used the retrospective aspect productively in the 5 predicate criterion without demonstrating productive use of the completive aspectual marker. regardless of the criterion employed, the retrospective aspects are yet to be used productively by tya and kem. 3.4. cumulative development of the tma zone although there is significant individual variation with the age of attestation of the various markers as demonstrated in the previous sections, the children show many similarities in the qualitative development of the tma zone. to capture this developmental pattern we divided the corpus into phases on the basis of mlu10. for this analysis, we grouped the single word stage (mlu <1.49) and the two word combination stage (mlu 1.5 – 2.49) to form phase 1 which corresponds to mlu under 2.5. for phase 2, we presented utterances produced at mlu 2.5 3.49, and phase 3 includes more complex combinations where mlu is 3.5 and over. table 8 details phase 111. 10 the mlu is word based: both lexical and functional items are treated as individual words. the mlu for jc therefore differs from languages with morphologically complex words. 11 no data is included for shu at this phase as at the start of the recordings her mlu was already over 2.5. the acquisition of tma markers in jc de lisser, durrleman, shlonsky & rizzi 234 table 8 tma phase 1 phase 1 informant col ala rju tya kem shu total age range 1;8,17 1;11,28 1;9,25 2;1,20 1;10,4 2;0,30 1;11,2 2;7,23 2;0,21 2;4,16 1;8,17 2;7,23 asp comp 0 0 0 1 0 1 asp pros 1 0 5 2 0 8 asp prog 25 24 10 4 20 83 asp retro 0 0 0 0 0 0 mod abl 0 0 2 0 1 3 mod obl 0 0 0 0 0 0 mod nec 0 0 0 0 0 0 mod epis 0 0 0 0 0 0 mod wi 0 0 0 0 0 0 past tense 0 0 0 0 0 0 total 26 24 17 7 21 0 95 in phase 1 the main tma marker used is the progressive (also attested in english, as demonstrated by boland 2006). it is already used rather frequently, with the exception of tya, who used it only 4 times (4.8% of the progressive aspectual marker in the corpus at this stage). the prospective aspect and ability modal is also used very sporadically. only tya has a single occurrence of the completive marker in phase 1. the children however show a sharp increase in the number of tma markers in phase 2 as detailed in table 9 below. rju’s development is most extreme, showing an increase from 17 to 354 tma expressions. kem’s development is much slower, moving from a total of 21 tma expressions to only 38. closer analysis of kem’s files reveals however that he did not remain at the second phase for very long, as after 4 recordings at this stage he has quickly advanced to an mlu over 3.5. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 219-255, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 235 table 9 tma phase 2 phase 2 informant col ala rju tya kem shu total age range 2;0,12 2;6,25 2;2,6 2;5,7 2;1,15 2;6,18 2;8,8 2;10,16 2;5,2 2;6,20 2;1,23 2;6,20 2;0,12 2;10,16 asp comp 1 1 1 1 1 8 13 asp pros 42 14 117 8 9 46 236 asp prog 198 93 205 63 26 126 711 asp retro 2 0 1 0 0 0 3 mod abl 12 14 24 1 2 14 67 mod obl 1 1 0 0 0 1 3 mod nec 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 mod epis 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 mod wi 6 1 4 0 0 1 12 past tense 2 0 1 0 0 0 3 total 264 124 354 73 38 196 1049 in phase 2, we note a significant increase in the use of the progressive markers, moving from 83 occurrences to 711. all children are now using the prospective markers; rju being exceptionally advanced. the completive aspect is attested once in all the children’s data, with the exception of shu who produced it 8 times. closer analysis of the 8 occurrences of the completive aspect marker in shu’s data reveals that it was not being used productively as it was restricted to a single verb in only one file. also we see where the ability modal is used frequently by all children, with the exception of tya and kem who produced it only once and twice respectively. a new marker that is produced in this stage is the modal wi. it is sporadically produced by all children with the exception of tya and kem. the retrospective aspect, obligation modal, epistemic modal and past tense markers were sporadically produced while the necessity modal remained unattested. in phase 3, (table 10), mlu is now over 3.5 and there is a considerable increase in the use of tma expressions, moving from a total of 1049 in phase 2 to 5292. the progressive aspect is still the marker that is predominately used, followed by the prospective aspect and the ability modal. we see a small increase in use of the other tma markers however with much the acquisition of tma markers in jc de lisser, durrleman, shlonsky & rizzi 236 individual variation. while all markers are produced at least once in each child’s production, tya is yet to produce a single retrospective aspect, epistemic modal or a past tense marker. table 10 tma phase 3 phase 3 informant col ala rju tya kem shu total age range 2;7,8 2;11,7 2;5,23 3;0,15 2;7,5 3;0,25 2;11,0 3;2,15 2;7,5 3;3,11 2;7,16 3;4,13 2;5,233;4,13 asp comp 1 3 5 4 3 13 29 asp pros 90 221 381 181 694 237 1804 asp prog 172 631 234 141 935 408 2521 asp retro 1 26 5 0 1 11 44 mod abl 109 187 98 56 124 113 687 mod obl 0 42 2 2 11 15 72 mod nec 1 5 3 2 1 12 24 mod epis 0 29 0 0 2 1 32 mod wi 1 8 10 1 27 2 49 past tense 1 6 3 0 14 6 30 total 376 1158 741 387 1812 818 5292 3.4.1. co-occurrence of tma markers in examining the cumulative development of the tma zone in jc we note that there are combinations of markers in the same utterance. it is our aim to study the sequence of the co-occurrence of the markers in order to account for the cartographic development12 of the ip. we have already observed that the progressive marker is seen to co-occur with the overt past tense marker yielding a past progressive interpretation as exemplified in (18): 18) yo ben a jraiv i van? (kem 2;11) 2sg past prog drive det van ‘were you driving the van?’ the data reveals much individual variation with regards to the age of production and the frequency of this combination. however it should be noted that the production of this combination is 100% consistent with the cartographic hierarchy of the target system, in that the tense marker is 12 see cinque & rizzi (2010), shlonsky (2010), rizzi & cinque (2016) for overviews of cartography within syntactic theory. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 219-255, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 237 always realized before the progressive marker. at no time did the children produce a combination where the progressive marker was situated above the tense marker. further analysis of the data reveals that other combinations of tma markers were evident in the children’s production. past tense was seen to co-occur with the ability modal (19); the necessity modal co-occurred with progressive aspect (20); retrospective aspect co-occurred with completive aspect (21) and progressive aspect (22); and epistemic modal co-occurred with the obligation modal (23) and the prospective aspect (24). 19) im did kyaahn waak. (rju 2;08) 3sg past abl~neg walk ‘he couldn’t walk.’ 20) ø mos a riid. (rju 2;08) ø nec prog read ‘she must be reading.’ 21) ø jos don bied. (col 2;00) ø retro comp bathe ‘i just finished having a bath.’ 22) ø jos a kum bak. (rju 2;04) ø retro prog come back ‘he is just coming back.’ 23) a wuda afi get som jakit. (ala, 2;10) 1sg epis obl get some jacket ‘i would have to get some jacket.’ 24) mosi im a_go jraiv di kyar. (ala 3;00) epis 2sg pros drive det car ‘maybe he is going to drive the car.’ due to the scarcity of co-occurrence of markers in the same phrase within the tma zone, the data does not lend itself to a discussion on the relative sequence in which the combinations were produced. apart from the cooccurrence of the past and progressive markers, other combinations are only sporadically attested. nonetheless, in examining the combinations we note that they were all target-consistent. recall the tma zone in the target is as follows: epistemic modal > past tense; future tense > necessity modal > obligation modal > ability/permission modal > retrospective aspect > progressive aspect > prospective aspect > completive aspect. the children’s production reveals that the combined markers all followed the order of the clausal hierarchy attested in the target language. at no time was a marker which is situated lower in the tma zone seen to occur before a higher element. the following hierarchical development was demonstrated: the acquisition of tma markers in jc de lisser, durrleman, shlonsky & rizzi 238 25) i. past tense > progressive aspect ii. past tense > ability/permission modal iii. necessity modal > progressive aspect iv. retrospective aspect > completive aspect v. retrospective aspect > progressive aspect vi. epistemic modal > obligatory modal vii. epistemic modal > prospective aspect the attested sequences outlined in (25) above confirm that children acquiring jc do not entertain the possibility of target-inconsistent orders in their development of tma. structures that are high in the clause are correctly combined with structures located in a lower domain. this targetconsistent hierarchical development provides evidence that the child is knowledgeable of the rules governing combinations from an early age. we now examine the distribution of the markers in comparison to their distribution in the adult language. 3.5. correlation of children’s utterance with input data in examining the data, we see that the markers in the input are basically stable across the three phases. this suggests that there is no ‘fine tuning’ by the adults to match properties of the child systems. the data also reveals that the use of the markers in the target language is skewed in the same direction as in the children’s production. the proportion of progressive and prospective markers is much higher than other aspectual markers; likewise the ability/permission modal is used with much greater frequency than the other categories of modals. the following proportions, as demonstrated in figure 4 (and detailed in appendix 1, tables 15 – 17), represent the distribution of tma in the input throughout the 3 phases: progressive aspect13 ~60%; prospective aspect ~16%; ability/permission modal ~12% and all others grouped together ~12%. 13 the total proportion of progressive and prospective aspects is estimated based on actual calculations of a section of the dataset. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 219-255, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 239 figure 4. tma in the input and in child production although there are high correlations across phases 1, 2 and 3 (0.9808, 0.9891 and 0.9121 respectively) between the distribution of the tma markers in the input and in the child production, there are differences. in phase 1 the proportion of progressive aspects is larger than in the input while the prospective and ability/permission markers are lower. in phase 2 the proportion of both the progressive and prospective markers is larger than in the input. in stage 3 there is a great increase in the use of the prospective, a decrease in the use of the progressive and the proportion of ability/permission modal is equal to that in the input. what immediately sticks out from this figure is the clear decreasing and increasing trends in the child utterance as compared to the stable proportions in the input data as shown in figure 5 below. at stage 1 the progressive aspect was at 87% which was reduced to less than 68% at stage 2 and continued to lessen to 47% at stage 3. on the other hand, both the prospective aspect and ability/permission modal increased, the prospective from 8% to 22% and then to 34% and the ability/permission modal from 3% to 6% to 14%. 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% child utterance input data phasphase 1 phase 2 phase 3 the acquisition of tma markers in jc de lisser, durrleman, shlonsky & rizzi 240 figure 5. differences of tma in the input and in child production the sharp contrast in the patterns attested in the child production and the input data gives strong support to the view that children are not merely copying the distribution of the input. the input may therefore have some influence on the distribution but, based on its relative uniformity across the three phases and the attested differences in the children’s utterance, a parallel production of child directed speech and child speech does not seem to be supported. the input therefore, in and of itself, cannot account for the development of tma markers in the child production. the main findings will be summarized and a supplementary analysis accounting for the data will be discussed in the next section. 4. discussion 4.1. sequence of development this section answers the following research question: i. what is the sequence of development of tense, modal and aspectual markers? the overall sequence for which the various overt morphemes were first attested in the ip zone and the order of productive use are presented in (26) and (27) respectively14: 26) aspprogressive (1;09) > aspprospective (1;10) > modability/permission (2;00) > aspcompletive & aspretrospective (2;01) > tense (2;01) > modwi (2;02) > modepistemic (2;04) > modobligation (2;04) > modnecessity (2;06) 14 the > sign reflects differences in days for markers which appear to be produced in the same month. 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% child utterance phase 1 phase 2 phase 3 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% input data phase 1 phase 2 phase 3 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 219-255, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 241 27) aspprogressive (1;10) > aspprospective (1;11) > modability/permission (2;0) > modwi (2;04) > tensepast (2;05) > aspcompletive (2;05) > modepestemic (2;06) > modobligation (2;06) > aspretrospective (2;06) > modnecessity (2;07) in the target system only epistemic modals scope above tense, thus giving the rise to the possible sequence ‘shuda did +v’, while all root modals and aspectual categories scope below it, as in ‘did afi a + v’. the difference in distribution between the modal types with regard to tense is linked to the difference in semantic interpretation: modals above tense are concerned with the speaker’s deductions or opinions while those below tense are strictly subject-oriented properties (cinque 1999). examining the data, we see that the order of attestation and productive use of all the tma markers in the inflectional zone is not directly predicted by the universal hierarchy. for example, since root modals scope over aspects in the hierarchy, it would be plausible to expect the children to produce and productively use all the aspectual markers (i.e. completive, progressive, prospective, retrospective) before producing root modals. this was however not borne out, as only the progressive and prospective markers were productively used before the productive use of the permission/ability modal. in terms of production however, both completive and retrospective aspects were attested at the same time as the permission/ability modal. similarly, with regard to tense, we would expect that all aspect and root modal markers would be produced and used productively before the productive use of tense, since tense scopes over these categories in the hierarchy. in line with our expectations, all aspect markers were produced before tense, thereby supporting the ‘aspect before tense hypothesis’. contrarily however, only the ability/permission modal was produced before tense was overtly realized. in terms of the productive use of the makers within these categories, only the progressive and prospective aspects and the ability/permission modal was used productively before the productive use of tense. with regard to the modal wi we see that it was also used productively before the productive use of tense. additionally, the data reveal that once children acquiring jc have tma systems that contain epistemic modals (the highest element in the clausal hierarchy) they would also have aspectual elements (the lowest elements, located closest to the verb), thus supporting the literature that modality (or epistemic modality) is generally produced rather late (radford, 1990; brown, 1973; kuczaj & maratsos, 1975; among others reviewed in papafragou, 1998). 4.2. cartography of the inflectional zone this section answers the following research question: ii. do children respect the functional hierarchal cartography of the inflectional zone? with regards to the combination of the markers, despite the scarcity in the data, one major finding was revealed. children acquiring jc are always target-consistent with respect to the sequence of utterance. in line with the rigid ordering of the cartographic analysis discussed earlier in section 1.5, the acquisition of tma markers in jc de lisser, durrleman, shlonsky & rizzi 242 tma elements which are located in higher clausal layers were never realized below elements which are lower in the clausal domain. this shows that children from an early age respect the rules governing the cartographic sequencing of the entire tma zone. 4.3. role of input the following research question is addressed in this section: iii. can input be responsible for developments in child language acquisition? it appears that the acquisition order may be influenced by the input as the distributions of both are skewed in a similar direction. the categories of progressive aspects, prospective aspects and ability/permission modals are proportionally larger than all other tma categories. however the fact that children initially produce more progressive aspectual markers and less prospective aspectual markers and ability/permission modals than in the input shows that children do not exactly copy the distribution of the input, and as such the input alone cannot account for the attested order. clearly, the decreasing proportion of progressive aspect from phase 1 to phase 3, and the increasing proportion of prospective aspect and ability/permission modals, must follow some internal pressure in the child system, rather than being caused by an input which remains constant. 4.4. maturation or continuity this section addresses the last research question: iv. which approach, maturational or continuity, best accounts for language development in line with the theory of universal grammar? the data shows that all the children start building the aspectual zone with the following structure: aspprogressive > aspprospective > modability/permission, but individual variation is evidenced thereafter. on the basis of sequence of productive development of tma markers, the hypothesis that structure emerges overtime incrementally in a bottom-up manner may be too absolute and cannot account for the current findings. if children were building the functional hierarchy according to a strict bottom-up approach, we would expect all the root modals and the aspectual markers to be attested and used productively before the productive use of tense. the data therefore does not lend support to the ‘incremental structure building approach’ to language development. additionally, the study reveals that children from an early age are aware of the rules governing the cartographic sequencing of the entire tma zone. the target-consistent combination of structures attested at different clausal levels argues in favour of a full competence approach to the development of the cartographic sequence. in accounting for the relative order attested in the children’s development of the tma zone, we propose that all the structure is available from the start of production in line with the full competence hypothesis. an obvious question is why some markers are more productively used than others, since all the structure is available to the child? we propose that children are apparently aware that not all markers are obligatory and hence their low attestation, in line with the input data. but why is the progressive marker the first to be acquired and used productively? this, we argue, is due journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 219-255, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 243 to semantic reasons. according to brown & bellugi (1964) children primarily communicate about the ‘here-and-now’, and as such initially acquire only the forms they need to do so. progressives refer to here-and-now and are used in describing ongoing activities. in keeping with boland (2006), operators that are communicatively more relevant and are cognitively less complex are easier to acquire. the analysis of the input shows where the progressive aspect is the most dominant tma element in the communication of young children and as such is most relevant in their early development, hence acquired first. 5. conclusion the analysis of the spontaneous speech of children acquiring the tma system in jc showed that the ability/permission modal was the first modal to be produced and used productively. the other modals were very sparse in the dataset and individual variation was significant. we saw that children rarely explored the option of overtly marking the verb for past tense and as such conclusive evidence could not be established regarding the development of the overt past tense marker. the progressive and prospective aspect markers were the first and most robust aspectual markers produced and used productively. the data shows that the bottom-up structure building approach cannot account for the fine-grained development of the tma zone in jc as children do not acquire all aspectual markers before root modals and tense, nor do they acquire all root modals before epistemic modals. the empirical finding that children never produce targetinconsistent tma combinations provides evidence that children acquiring jc are consistent with the cartographic structure of the entire tma domain from an early age, thus leaning towards a ‘full competence approach’ to development. additionally, the striking correlation between the distribution of the tma markers and the input data, in and of itself, cannot account for the attested development patterns as there are also significant differences and clear developmental patterns which are not matched by changes in the input data. references adone, d. 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(1998). very early parameter settings and the unique checking constraint: a new explanation of the optimal infinitive stage. lingua 106. 23 – 79. the acquisition of tma markers in jc de lisser, durrleman, shlonsky & rizzi 246 appendices appendix 1: tables table 1 table 2 col modal production ala modal production col age(y;m,d) abl obl nec epis wi 1;8,17 0 0 0 0 0 1;8,27 0 0 0 0 0 1;9,17 0 0 0 0 0 1;9,28 0 0 0 0 0 1;10,8 0 0 0 0 0 1;11,1 0 0 0 0 0 1;11,12 0 0 0 0 0 1;11,28 0 0 0 0 0 2;0,12 0 0 0 0 0 2;0,28 0 0 0 0 0 2;1,14 0 0 0 0 0 2;2,0 0 0 0 0 0 2;2,16 0 0 0 0 0 2;3,1 0 0 0 0 0 2;3,16 1 0 0 0 0 2;3,30 1 0 0 0 1 2;4,15 0 0 0 0 1 2;5,0 0 0 0 0 0 2;5,14 8 1 0 0 1 2;5,27 1 0 0 0 0 2;6,10 0 0 0 0 3 2;6,25 1 0 0 0 0 2;7,8 5 0 0 0 0 2;7,22 1 0 0 0 1 2;8,6 2 0 1 0 0 2;8,20 31 0 0 0 0 2;9,11 2 0 0 0 0 2;9,24 7 0 0 0 0 2;10,10 13 0 0 0 0 2;10,21 18 0 0 0 0 2;11,7 30 0 0 0 0 total 121 1 1 0 7 ala age(y;m,d) abl obl nec epis wi 1;9,25 0 0 0 0 0 1;10,4 0 0 0 0 0 1;10,25 0 0 0 0 0 1;11,5 0 0 0 0 0 1;11,16 0 0 0 0 0 2;0,9 0 0 0 0 0 2;0,20 0 0 0 0 0 2;1,5 0 0 0 0 0 2;1,20 0 0 0 0 0 2;2,6 0 0 0 0 0 2;2,22 0 0 0 0 1 2;3,8 3 0 0 0 0 2;3,24 1 0 0 0 0 2;4,9 1 0 0 0 0 2;4,24 0 1 0 0 0 2;5,7 9 0 0 0 0 2;5,23 7 0 0 1 1 2;6,12 2 1 0 0 0 2;6,22 1 1 1 0 0 2;7,5 9 0 0 1 0 2;7,18 7 3 3 3 0 2;8,2 11 5 0 0 0 2;8,16 22 0 0 2 1 2;9,0 7 5 0 2 1 2;9,14 30 0 1 0 1 2;9,28 19 5 0 1 1 2;10,25 18 4 0 1 1 2;11,1 22 0 0 1 0 2;11,18 10 4 0 6 0 3;0,1 5 3 0 5 2 3;0,15 17 11 0 6 0 total 201 43 5 29 9 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 219-255, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 247 table 3 table 4 rju modal production tya modal production tya age(y;m,d) abl obl nec epis wi 1;11,25 0 0 0 0 0 2;0,4 0 0 0 0 0 2;0,25 0 0 0 0 0 2;1,5 0 0 0 0 0 2;1,16 0 0 0 0 0 2;2,9 0 0 0 0 0 2;2,20 0 0 0 0 0 2;3,5 0 0 0 0 0 2;3,20 0 0 0 0 0 2;4,6 0 0 0 0 0 2;4,22 0 0 0 0 0 2;5,8 0 0 0 0 0 2;5,24 0 0 0 0 0 2;6,9 0 0 0 0 0 2;6,24 0 0 0 0 0 2;7,7 0 0 0 0 0 2;7,23 0 0 0 0 0 2;8,8 0 0 0 0 0 2;8,22 0 0 0 0 0 2;9,5 0 0 0 0 0 2;9,18 0 0 0 0 0 2;10,2 1 0 0 0 0 2;10,16 0 0 0 0 0 2;11,0 4 0 0 0 0 2;11,14 0 0 2 0 0 2;11,28 7 0 0 0 0 3;0,19 0 0 0 0 0 3;1,1 10 0 0 0 1 3;1,15 11 1 0 0 0 3;2,1 8 0 0 0 0 3;2,15 16 1 0 0 0 total 57 2 2 0 1 rju age(y;m,d) abl ob l ne c epi s w i 1;10,4 0 0 0 0 0 1;10,14 0 0 0 0 0 1;11,4 0 0 0 0 0 1;11,15 0 0 0 0 0 1;11,26 1 0 0 0 0 2;0,19 0 0 0 0 0 2;0,30 1 0 0 0 0 2;1,15 3 0 0 0 0 2;2,0 2 0 0 0 0 2;2,16 0 0 0 0 0 2;3,1 1 0 0 0 2 2;3,18 5 0 0 0 1 2;4,4 0 0 0 1 0 2;4,19 1 0 0 0 0 2;5,3 1 0 0 0 0 2;5,17 1 0 0 0 0 2;6,2 5 0 0 0 0 2;6,18 5 0 0 0 1 2;7,5 12 0 0 0 1 2;7,15 10 0 0 0 1 2;7,28 6 0 0 0 3 2;8,12 16 0 0 0 1 2;8,26 10 0 1 0 0 2;9,10 7 0 0 0 0 2;9,24 4 0 0 0 0 2;10,7 2 0 0 0 0 2;10,29 5 0 0 0 0 2;11,11 1 0 0 0 0 2;11,25 7 1 0 0 2 3;0,11 6 0 0 0 0 3;0,25 12 1 2 0 2 total 124 2 3 1 1 4 the acquisition of tma markers in jc de lisser, durrleman, shlonsky & rizzi 248 table 5 table 6 kem modal production shu modal production kem age(y;m,d) abl obl nec epis wi 2;0,21 0 0 0 0 0 2;1,0 0 0 0 0 0 2;1,21 1 0 0 0 0 2;2,1 0 0 0 0 0 2;2,12 0 0 0 0 0 2;3,5 0 0 0 0 0 2;3,16 0 0 0 0 0 2;4,1 0 0 0 0 0 2;4,16 0 0 0 0 0 2;5,2 0 0 0 0 0 2;5,18 0 0 0 0 0 2;6,4 0 0 0 0 0 2;6,20 2 0 0 0 0 2;7,5 21 0 0 0 0 2;7,20 5 0 0 0 0 2;8,3 0 0 0 0 1 2;8,19 0 0 0 0 1 2;9,4 0 0 0 1 0 2;9,18 4 1 0 0 2 2;10,1 4 0 0 0 0 2;10,14 9 0 0 1 0 2;10,29 7 0 0 0 2 2;11,12 4 0 0 0 0 2;11,26 17 0 0 0 1 3;0,10 2 0 1 0 1 3;0,24 3 1 0 0 3 3;1,15 11 2 0 0 3 3;1,28 22 4 0 0 5 3;2,11 10 2 0 0 4 3;2,25 5 1 0 0 4 3;3,11 0 0 0 0 0 total 127 11 1 2 27 shu age(y;m,d) abl obl nec epis wi 2;1,23 0 0 0 0 0 2;2,2 0 0 0 0 0 2;2,11 0 0 0 0 0 2;3,3 0 0 0 0 0 2;3,14 1 0 0 0 0 2;4,7 0 0 0 0 0 2;4,18 0 0 0 0 0 2;5,3 0 0 0 0 0 2;5,18 8 0 0 0 0 2;6,4 4 1 0 0 0 2;6,20 1 0 0 0 1 2;7,16 5 0 0 0 1 2;7,22 4 0 0 0 0 2;8,7 7 0 0 0 0 2;8,22 3 0 0 0 0 2;9,5 2 0 0 0 0 2;9,21 4 0 0 0 0 2;10,6 1 0 0 0 0 2;10,20 1 0 0 0 0 2;11,3 1 0 0 0 1 2;11,16 4 0 1 0 0 3;0,0 7 0 1 1 0 3;0,19 6 0 1 0 0 3;0,28 4 2 1 0 0 3;1,12 1 1 1 0 0 3;1,26 18 2 3 0 0 3;2,17 7 0 0 0 0 3;2,30 19 2 2 0 0 3;3,16 1 2 1 0 0 3;3,27 11 2 0 0 0 3;4,13 7 4 1 0 0 total 127 16 12 1 3 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 219-255, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 249 table 7 total production of modality total modals age(y;m) abl obl nec epis wi 1;8.0 0 0 0 0 0 1;8.5 0 0 0 0 0 1;9.0 0 0 0 0 0 1;9.5 0 0 0 0 0 1;10.0 0 0 0 0 0 1;10.5 0 0 0 0 0 1;11.0 0 0 0 0 0 1;11.5 0 0 0 0 0 2;0.0 1 0 0 0 0 2;0.5 0 0 0 0 0 2;1.0 1 0 0 0 0 2;1.5 4 0 0 0 0 2;2.0 2 0 0 0 0 2;2.5 0 0 0 0 1 2;3.0 5 0 0 0 2 2;3.5 8 0 0 0 2 2;4.0 1 0 0 1 1 2;4.5 1 1 0 0 0 2;5.0 18 1 0 0 1 2;5.5 17 0 0 1 1 2;6.0 11 2 0 0 3 2;6.5 10 1 1 0 2 2;7.0 52 0 0 1 2 2;7.5 27 3 3 3 2 2;8.0 26 5 1 0 4 2;8.5 72 0 0 2 3 2;9.0 21 5 1 3 1 2;9.5 52 1 1 0 3 2;10.0 42 5 0 1 1 2;10.5 48 4 0 2 1 2;11.0 69 0 0 1 3 2;11.5 19 4 3 6 0 3;0.0 43 4 1 6 5 3;0.5 31 11 2 6 1 3;1.0 29 4 3 0 6 3;1.5 23 4 1 0 3 3;2.0 48 6 3 0 5 3;2.5 33 3 0 0 4 3;3.0 24 3 2 0 4 3;3.5 1 2 1 0 0 3;4.0 11 2 0 0 0 3;4.5 7 4 1 0 0 total 757 75 24 33 61 the acquisition of tma markers in jc de lisser, durrleman, shlonsky & rizzi 250 table 8 table 9 col’s aspectual production ala’s aspectual production col age(y;m,d) ccomp prog pros retro 1;8,17 0 0 0 0 1;8,27 0 0 0 0 1;9,17 0 0 0 0 1;9,28 0 2 0 0 1;10,8 0 3 0 0 1;11,1 0 6 1 0 1;11,12 0 4 0 0 1;11,28 0 10 0 0 2;0,12 0 8 2 0 2;0,28 1 10 4 2 2;1,14 0 7 0 0 2;2,0 0 3 0 0 2;2,16 0 16 3 0 2;3,1 0 13 1 0 2;3,16 0 6 4 0 2;3,30 0 15 1 0 2;4,15 0 22 10 0 2;5,0 0 25 5 0 2;5,14 0 9 0 0 2;5,27 0 9 3 0 2;6,10 0 5 3 0 2;6,25 0 50 6 0 2;7,8 0 27 10 0 2;7,22 0 12 3 0 2;8,6 1 18 4 0 2;8,20 0 40 17 0 2;9,11 0 11 9 1 2;9,24 0 6 2 0 2;10,10 0 21 29 0 2;10,21 0 18 7 0 2;11,7 0 19 9 0 total 2 395 133 3 ala age(y;m,d) comp prog pros retro 1;9,25 0 0 0 0 1;10,4 0 1 0 0 1;10,25 0 1 0 0 1;11,5 0 6 0 0 1;11,16 0 1 0 0 2;0,9 0 4 0 0 2;0,20 0 3 0 0 2;1,5 0 3 0 0 2;1,20 0 5 0 0 2;2,6 0 3 3 0 2;2,22 0 9 3 0 2;3,8 0 5 0 0 2;3,24 0 20 2 0 2;4,9 0 11 0 0 2;4,24 1 33 5 0 2;5,7 0 12 1 0 2;5,23 2 62 6 0 2;6,12 0 17 4 1 2;6,22 0 13 7 2 2;7,5 0 50 2 5 2;7,18 0 47 17 0 2;8,2 0 81 27 7 2;8,16 0 62 26 1 2;9,0 0 37 15 6 2;9,14 0 43 7 3 2;9,28 0 47 10 0 2;10,25 0 51 14 1 2;11,1 0 20 11 0 2;11,18 0 25 12 0 3;0,1 0 25 23 0 3;0,15 1 51 40 0 total 4 748 235 26 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 219-255, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 251 table 10 table 11 rj’s aspectual production tya’s aspectual production rju age(y;m,d) comp prog pros retro 1;10,4 0 0 0 0 1;10,14 0 0 0 0 1;11,4 0 3 0 0 1;11,15 0 0 1 0 1;11,26 0 1 1 0 2;0,19 0 3 0 0 2;0,30 0 3 3 0 2;1,15 0 18 2 0 2;2,0 0 11 31 0 2;2,16 0 11 8 0 2;3,1 0 29 21 0 2;3,18 0 14 2 0 2;4,4 0 25 4 0 2;4,19 0 14 11 1 2;5,3 1 18 7 0 2;5,17 0 17 15 0 2;6,2 0 36 5 0 2;6,18 0 12 11 0 2;7,5 0 84 26 1 2;7,15 0 26 29 2 2;7,28 0 19 14 0 2;8,12 0 38 18 2 2;8,26 0 33 8 0 2;9,10 1 24 18 0 2;9,24 1 17 14 0 2;10,7 0 21 21 0 2;10,29 1 11 7 0 2;11,11 1 19 9 0 2;11,25 1 23 50 0 3;0,11 0 35 15 0 3;0,25 0 31 5 0 total 6 596 356 6 tya age(y;m,d) comp prog pros retro 1;11,25 0 0 0 0 2;0,4 0 0 0 0 2;0,25 0 0 0 0 2;1,5 0 1 0 0 2;1,16 0 0 0 0 2;2,9 0 0 0 0 2;2,20 0 0 0 0 2;3,5 0 0 0 0 2;3,20 0 0 0 0 2;4,6 0 0 0 0 2;4,22 0 0 0 0 2;5,8 0 0 0 0 2;5,24 0 0 1 0 2;6,9 0 0 0 0 2;6,24 0 2 0 0 2;7,7 0 0 0 0 2;7,23 1 1 1 0 2;8,8 1 21 0 0 2;8,22 0 7 2 0 2;9,5 0 8 0 0 2;9,18 0 1 0 0 2;10,2 0 14 3 0 2;10,16 0 12 3 0 2;11,0 0 18 5 0 2;11,14 0 16 7 0 2;11,28 0 25 3 0 3;0,19 0 1 0 0 3;1,1 0 16 65 0 3;1,15 4 11 69 0 3;2,1 0 36 12 0 3;2,15 0 18 20 0 total 6 208 191 0 the acquisition of tma markers in jc de lisser, durrleman, shlonsky & rizzi 252 table 12 table 13 kem’s aspectual production shu’s aspectual production shu age(y;m,d) comp prog pros retro 2;1,23 0 7 1 0 2;2,2 0 13 7 0 2;2,11 0 10 7 0 2;3,3 0 18 1 0 2;3,14 0 18 5 0 2;4,7 0 3 1 0 2;4,18 0 4 3 0 2;5,3 0 2 0 0 2;5,18 0 18 2 0 2;6,4 8 21 13 0 2;6,20 0 12 6 0 2;7,16 0 11 3 0 2;7,22 0 11 6 0 2;8,7 1 12 8 0 2;8,22 1 16 6 0 2;9,5 1 9 5 0 2;9,21 0 19 26 1 2;10,6 1 13 9 1 2;10,20 0 3 1 0 2;11,3 1 24 8 1 2;11,16 0 16 8 0 3;0,0 5 36 12 0 3;0,19 2 38 12 2 3;0,28 0 23 37 0 3;1,12 0 24 11 1 3;1,26 0 55 13 2 3;2,17 0 16 13 0 3;2,30 1 20 10 0 3;3,16 0 11 2 1 3;3,27 0 31 28 2 3;4,13 0 20 19 0 total 21 534 283 11 kem age(y;m,d) comp prog pros retro 2;0,21 0 6 0 0 2;1,0 0 1 0 0 2;1,21 0 1 0 0 2;2,1 0 2 0 0 2;2,12 0 0 0 0 2;3,5 0 0 0 0 2;3,16 0 1 0 0 2;4,1 0 6 0 0 2;4,16 0 3 0 0 2;5,2 0 1 0 0 2;5,18 0 3 1 0 2;6,4 0 3 3 0 2;6,20 1 19 5 0 2;7,5 0 27 35 0 2;7,20 0 41 29 0 2;8,3 0 42 18 0 2;8,19 0 41 27 0 2;9,4 0 40 50 0 2;9,18 0 41 22 0 2;10,1 0 15 9 0 2;10,14 0 38 25 0 2;10,29 0 61 47 0 2;11,12 0 35 24 0 2;11,26 0 69 37 0 3;0,10 1 62 19 0 3;0,24 0 60 61 0 3;1,15 0 69 67 1 3;1,28 0 76 56 0 3;2,11 1 80 69 0 3;2,25 1 79 68 0 3;3,11 0 59 31 0 total 4 981 703 1 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 219-255, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 253 table 14 total production of aspect total aspect age (y;m) comp prog pros retro 1;8.0 0 0 0 0 1;8.5 0 0 0 0 1;9.0 0 0 0 0 1;9.5 0 2 0 0 1;10.0 0 4 0 0 1;10.5 0 7 1 0 1;11.0 0 13 0 0 1;11.5 0 11 1 0 2;0.0 0 13 3 0 2;0.5 0 22 4 0 2;1.0 1 15 3 2 2;1.5 0 34 3 0 2;2.0 0 45 44 0 2;2.5 0 43 19 0 2;3.0 0 58 26 0 2;3.5 0 68 10 0 2;4.0 0 67 15 0 2;4.5 1 79 24 1 2;5.0 1 42 8 0 2;5.5 2 109 28 0 2;6.0 8 82 28 1 2;6.5 1 108 35 2 2;7.0 0 199 76 6 2;7.5 1 138 85 2 2;8.0 3 193 71 7 2;8.5 1 204 96 3 2;9.0 1 138 87 7 2;9.5 1 134 75 4 2;10.0 2 127 74 1 2;10.5 0 143 71 1 2;11.0 2 153 87 1 2;11.5 1 111 60 0 3;0.0 6 178 125 0 3;0.5 4 187 86 2 3;1.0 0 130 168 0 3;1.5 4 104 147 2 3;2.0 0 167 81 2 3;2.5 1 114 102 0 3;3.0 2 99 78 0 3;3.5 0 70 33 1 3;4.0 0 31 28 2 3;4.5 0 20 19 0 total 43 3462 1901 47 the acquisition of tma markers in jc de lisser, durrleman, shlonsky & rizzi 254 table 15 input to phase 1 input to phase 1 informant col ala rju tya kem shu total age range 1;8,17 1;11,28 1;9,25 2;1,20 1;10,4 2;0,30 1;11,25 2;7,23 2;0,21 2;4,16 1;8,17 2;7,23 asp comp 3 8 17 12 10 50 asp pros 200 276 207 597 272 1552 asp prog 964 970 850 1855 1048 5687 asp retro 9 19 18 31 14 91 mod abl 147 202 155 321 140 965 mod obl 15 28 22 33 34 132 mod nec 26 30 4 33 18 111 mod epis 18 5 5 24 14 66 mod wi 6 15 16 17 45 99 past tense 34 63 22 91 35 245 past prog 10 30 16 23 22 101 total 1432 1646 1332 3037 1652 0 9099 table 16 input to phase 2 input to phase 2 informant col ala rju tya kem shu total age range 2;0,12 2;6,25 2;2,6 2;5,7 2;1,15 2;6,18 2;8,8 2;10,16 2;5,2 2;6,20 2;1,23 2;6,20 2;0,12 2;10,16 asp comp 10 5 13 8 5 17 58 asp pros 351 215 326 211 121 318 1542 asp prog 1687 755 1336 655 466 1358 6257 asp retro 20 27 20 6 6 23 102 mod abl 239 229 335 106 66 236 1211 mod obl 44 41 37 17 10 55 204 mod nec 22 22 14 5 12 37 112 mod epis 22 26 28 9 6 15 106 mod wi 46 28 88 10 13 23 208 past tense 109 81 106 37 12 80 425 past prog 27 34 43 13 20 24 161 total 2577 1463 2346 1077 737 2186 10386 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 5 issue: 4 219-255, 2017, december issn: 2148-1997 255 table 17 input to phase 3 input to phase 3 informant col ala rju tya kem shu total age range 2;7,8 2;11,7 2;5,23 3;0,15 2;7,5 3;0,25 2;11,0 3;2,15 2;7,5 3;3,11 2;7,16 3;4,13 2;5,233;4,13 asp comp 9 24 24 14 29 36 136 asp pros 225 460 385 281 544 578 2473 asp prog 1084 1617 1578 873 2097 2469 9718 asp retro 9 53 16 14 23 47 162 mod abl 217 421 330 197 487 475 2127 mod obl 40 89 38 27 62 122 378 mod nec 10 42 13 15 41 59 180 mod epis 16 43 23 20 27 39 168 mod wi 29 71 87 6 110 69 372 past tense 58 156 99 23 132 113 581 past prog 18 58 83 7 42 44 252 total 1715 3034 2676 1477 3594 4051 16547 journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 2 249-283, 2021, june issn: 2148-1997 249 integrated approach on the acquisition of phonological targets in 4-to-6-year-old children lauren kawasaki-knight1 blue dove rehabilitation, inc. keith s. h. wolgemuth2 loma linda university benjamin j. becerra3 california state university abstract the purpose of this study was to examine the effects of an integrated approach on the acquisition of phonological targets in 4-to-6-year-old children enrolled in maximum oppositional therapy (mot). mot is an alternative approach to traditional phonological intervention designed to promote systemic changes to untreated phonemes from the same or different manner class. two groups of children 4 to 6 years of age underwent mot treatment, with one of the groups also receiving concurrent training in the use of self-cueing strategies (using tactile gestures phonemic cues) to promote self-generated feedback. mot targeted phonemes with maximal contrasts in placement, manner and voicing in two groups of children. one group also received instruction in the use of two tactile cues to self-monitor production of phonological targets. a comparison of therapy duration required to meet target acquisition criteria was made between the two groups. mot and tactile self-cues demonstrated larger gains in phonological target acquisition over a 10-week period. the tactile self-cueing mot group achieved target accuracy in less time across three phonemic contexts. the integrated approach using mot resulted in an increase in phonological accuracy, including untreated phonemes across manner of classes. this study offers preliminary support and extends prior research of a novel integrated phonological intervention approach in clinical practice. the results suggest potential increases in phonological self-awareness and accuracy, reduced duration of intervention, and an increase in phonological target acquisition. further research in this area is merited. key words: cues, self-cueing, integrated intervention, maximal opposition treatment approach, phonological processes 1 bio: dr. lauren kawasaki-knight is a multilingual speech-language pathologist and owner of a private practice in metropolitan los angeles, california. she has also lectured and supervised clinics at long beach state university and is an advisory board member for the slpa program at cerritos college. her practice is dedicated to serving children and adult populations with a wide range of communication disorders. her research interests are in cognitive communication impairments, language, and phonological disorders. contact: bluedoverehab@sbcglobal.net 2 bio: dr. keith s. h. wolgemuth is a pediatric and rehabilitative audiologist who is a professor, researcher, clinical supervisor, and speech-language pathology doctoral program director at loma linda university in southern california. he has published in the areas of child language, hearing conservation, and mild traumatic brain injury. contact: kwolgemuth@llu.edu 3 bio: dr. benjamin j. becerra is an assistant professor in the department of information & decision sciences at california state university, san bernardino. he is also the co-director for the center for health equity on campus and uses data analytics, research methods, and statistics to perform research in health-related areas. contact: bbecerra@csusb.edu received : 29.04.2021 accepted : 12.06.2021 published : 30.06.2021 mailto:bluedoverehab@sbcglobal.net mailto:kwolgemuth@llu.edu mailto:bbecerra@csusb.edu the acquisition of phonology kawasaki-knight,wolgemuth, becerra 250 1. introduction service delivery considerations widely impact clinical decisions for intervention practices (tyler, 2006). as clinicians design phonological treatment programs, use of methods and strategies that are both efficacious and efficient in promoting behavior change is essential to an impactful treatment program (amato‐zech et al., 2006; gierut, 2001; kamhi, 2006; g. rogers, 2013). at present, we have limited empirical evidence regarding which phonological intervention approach is most efficient for children with phonological errors in comparison to others due in part, to individual, environmental or “within-in” child factors (kamhi & pollock, 2005; preston et al., 2013). considering the body of research, less is known on those intervention programs that may potentially shorten the duration of treatment. however, researchers suggest that a complexity approach is potentially among the most efficient; though less frequently the treatment program of choice by clinicians (byun & hitchcock, 2012a; gierut, 2001; gierut & morrisette, 2005; kamhi, 2006). until recently, traditional approaches used in the treatment of speech sound disorders have been primarily clinician-directed instruction targeting phonological accuracy with less emphasis on child-driven strategies (baker & mcleod, 2011b; ertmer & ertmer, 1998; king et al., 2013; xi et al., 2020). across allied health professions (i.e., occupational therapy, speech-language pathology, physical therapy, aba therapy), self-monitoring has been synonymous with self-cueing. different therapeutic professions have incorporated the use of an integrated, multimodal approach as an effective behavior changing strategy (bialas & boon, 2010; levendoski & cartledge, 2000; mcdougall et al., 2012; menzies et al., 2009; nelson et al., 2009; rafferty, 2010). for example, some clinicians integrate self-monitoring strategies to teach children to “talk” themselves through daily routines such as packing a bag for school (bialas & boon, 2010). other professions may use self-monitoring to increase compliance in the classroom or use it to encourage ontask behaviors (amato‐zech et al., 2006; bialas & boon, 2010; levendoski & cartledge, 2000; mcdougall et al., 2012; rafferty, 2010). in speech speechlanguage pathology, self-monitoring, also known as self-cueing, has been used as part of an integrated approach to potentially lead to less therapist driven instruction. given the support for integrated approaches in other fields, it seems appropriate to examine the benefits of this approach in speech sound disorders research. within the past decade, investigators have proposed the use of an integrated multimodal approach for acquiring phonological targets (tyler, 2016; xi et al., 2020). available literature exists in speech pathology on integrated, multimodal approaches that use external feedback such as speech tools (i.e., speech buddy, tongue depressors, etc.), charts, visual picture stimuli, gestures and augmentative and alternative communication (aac) systems designed for children to acquire phonological targets (amato‐zech et al., 2006; byun & hitchcock, 2012b; mcdougall et al., 2012; preston et al., 2014; rogers, 2012; ruscello, 1995; rusiewicz & rivera, 2017; xi et al., 2020). however, less is known on the effects of using self-generated cueing strategies that may promote phonological target accuracy. based on limited available research in phonological studies (king et al., 2013), this study provides support for journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 2 249-283, 2021, june issn: 2148-1997 251 phonological intervention approaches that are both integrated and multimodal. the integrated techniques may enhance a phonological treatment approach to be used and multimodal by incorporating self-generated strategies throughout intervention activities so that children may independently manage meaningful productions of phonological targets in words. a method used by speech pathologists has been to incorporate studentdriven activities into therapy that teach the client to independently, selfmonitor their own target behaviors and use that feedback to self-correct phonological errors (byun & hitchcock, 2012b; byun et al., 2016; koegel et al., 1986; landin, 1994; rogers, 2012). in addition, gierut (1989) posited that children often creatively find unique solutions to acquire the consistent use of phonological targets on their own; thus, teaching methods that facilitate target acquisition are critically important. dr. van riper believed it was important for slp’s to focus on functional skills with prioritization of those skills that are most critical (ertmer & ertmer, 1998; koegel, 1990; koegel et al., 1986). the use of client-driven strategies with gradually less emphasis on therapistdirected support and more emphasis on client self-monitoring would potentially teach independence, promote learning, and perhaps encourage generalization of phonological intervention targets across children’s phonemic inventory (bialas & boon, 2010; dunlap et al., 1991; koegel et al., 1986). children who are provided with self-cueing strategies they can use functionally in real world environments could potentially further develop speech and language skills outside of the therapy environment (bialas & boon, 2010). researchers agree that skills can be incorporated into familiar everyday tasks that are practical since they serve to keep the child engaged in more communication opportunities (king et al., 2013). the emphasis of therapy is for children to achieve optimal performance of speech and language skills and extend these new, learned skills beyond the clinical setting into the real-world experiences (kamhi, 2006; kamhi & pollock, 2005; miccio & powell, 2010). intervention strategies should be easily accessible, requiring very few steps to perform as not to create cognitive overload for the child, and practical for use with other communication partners in every-day situations (dunlap et al., 1991; koegel et al., 1988). ideally, providing a system for children to use self cueing and self-monitoring so they can take a more engaged and independent role in acquiring speech sounds would be of immense benefit to clinicians. researchers posit though a variety of different integrated approaches may be equally effective in producing positive treatment outcomes on speech sound target accuracy, there is still need for further examination of such approaches that may support phonological target acquisition in speech pathology (tyler, 2016). the potential benefit of the effects of integrated, multimodal phonological treatment programming is of great interest to clinical practice. incorporating integrated activities and tasks using familiar and functional words and expressions may further allow children to potentially transfer skills across other phonological processes (i.e., different word positions or untrained phonemes and sound classes) within treatment conditions (cole, 2013; taps, 2007) and later may benefit from utilizing newly trained skills spontaneously the acquisition of phonology kawasaki-knight,wolgemuth, becerra 252 in novel settings at home and in the classroom (mcdougall et al., 2012; rivers & lombardino, 1998) 1.1. overview of phonological treatment approaches all phonological treatment approaches use behavior modification as the basis for remediation of phonological disorders (shriberg & kwiatkowski, 1987). treatment of articulation disorders began in the early 1900’s and by the 1950’s generalization had begun to receive significant attention in the field. the sensory motor approach developed by mcdonald in the 1960’s focused on teaching sounds at the syllable level and in facilitative contexts where target sounds are correctly produced (mcdonald, 1964). subsequently, the multiple phoneme and paired stimuli methods were developed, and these approaches targeted working with multiple sound contrasts that differed across sound class (gierut, 1989; gierut, 2001; gierut, 2007; gierut & hulse, 2010). in contrast, the distinctive feature approach grouped sounds within specific distinctive features and worked to achieve generalization using sounds with similar and shared characteristics (e.g., voiceless labial obstruent as in /p, /f/) (barlow & gierut, 2002; williams, 2003). later, the phonological approach was developed, which included the use of minimal pairs, maximal opposition pairs, multiple oppositions, cycles, and complexity approaches to phonological treatment (gierut, 2001; peña-brooks & hegde, 2007; saben & ingham, 1991). considerations in service delivery widely affect clinical decisions. selecting targets in phonological therapy are typically based on stimulability, intelligibility, visibility of the speech movements, degree of deviance, and severity of the phonological process disorder (powell et al., 1991; tyler, 2006). the first steps in selecting targets involve determining which approach to use that would result in the greatest phonological change within the child’s unique sound system (gierut, 2001). researchers agree that there are two broad classification approaches from which to choose, either a developmental targetselection approach or complexity-based approach (kamhi & pollock, 2005; tyler, 2006). it remains uncertain as to the duration needed to acquire phonological targets based on which approach one chooses. however, the selection of a phonological target may lead to potential gains in either withinclass generalization or across-class generalization (gierut, 2001; gierut & hulse, 2010; kamhi & pollock, 2005; tyler, 2006) . within-class generalization refers to changes that occur in untreated phonemes from the same manner class or to a target’s cognate pair. across-class generalization refers to acquisition of untreated sounds from a different manner class group of sounds or class from treatment of a targeted phoneme (gierut, 2001; kamhi & pollock, 2005; tyler, 2006). researchers suggest that selecting a developmental target approach facilitates across-class generalization, while a complex target selection approach promotes both across-class as well as within-class generalization (gierut, 2001; tyler, 2006). vertical strategies require that the child achieve mastery of specific therapy targets before progressing to the next set of target goals. horizontal strategies are broader and target multiple processes. for example, cyclical strategies incorporate portions of both vertical and horizontal strategies, with practice on targets for a specific amount of time prior to progressing to the next goals or levels, and then rotating or cycling back through the multiple targets (e.g., three different sets of phonological journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 2 249-283, 2021, june issn: 2148-1997 253 targets) across therapy sessions (hodson, 1998). various phonemes can be targeted in one cycle and mastery of the sound is not required in order to rotate to work on sounds in the next cycle (lancaster et al., 2010). traditional phonological approaches focus on selecting distinctive treatment targets that are highly stimulable (potential to be trained) and pairing the target with a phoneme that already exists within the child’s phonemic inventory to encourage system-wide changes (barlow & gierut, 2002; miccio & powell, 2010; smit et al., 2015). such approaches consider the number and types of feature differences that are being presented for treatment (barlow & gierut, 2002). 1.2. alternative to traditional approaches unlike minimal pairs or distinctive features approaches, the maximal opposition treatment approach (mot) is an alternative to the traditional phonological approach. the mot approach is based on principles of complexity (baker & mcleod, 2011b; gierut, 1989; hodson & paden, 1983; saben & ingham, 1991), which researchers argue has the potential to facilitate across-class generalization as well as within-class generalization (gierut, 1989; gierut, 2001; gierut, 2007; tyler, 2006). this approach should be considered when speech sound errors persist beyond typical age range (gierut, 1989, 2007; king et al., 2013). mot approach involves using broad contrasts of maximally distinct phonemes that vary in voice, place, and manner (e.g., bilabial sonorant /m/ vs. voiceless velar /k/ or voiceless affricate /ʃ/ vs. nasal sonorant /n/) (gierut, 1989). the maximal opposition treatment approach is designed to use paired words consisting of two maximally opposing phonemic feature contrasts to encourage system-wide phonological changes within the child’s phonemic inventory (gierut, 2001). the goal of mot approach is to increase target acquisition and provide a basis for generalization. however, mot is less frequently chosen as the phonological approach by slp’s (storkel, 2018). donicht, pagliarin, mota, & keske-soares (2011) state that mot does not contrast the phonemic error with the target, instead it contrasts the unknown phonemic target with a phoneme that the child correctly produces. once the maximally opposing contrast sounds are mastered by the child, it is assumed that they will independently acquire sounds with minimally opposing features, as they are easier to produce (gierut, 1989). using this approach appears to have a positive impact on the child’s phonological system by improving overall intelligibility with evidence that complexity-based approaches can potentially lead to generalization (tyler, 2016). this approach involves treatment of lateracquired, difficult to train or non-stimulable sounds and has the potential to lead to greater system-wide changes, with some generalization occurring to untreated sounds (gierut, 2007; gierut et al., 1987; storkel, 2018). 1.3. phonology and attentional control gray and shelton (1992) state that attention, holding and retaining information long enough to be process it, is an important factor in therapy for increasing correct articulatory productions. the brain mechanisms underlying attentional control are also associated with self-regulation, which is vital for the acquisition of phonology kawasaki-knight,wolgemuth, becerra 254 effortful control; thus, attention may be potentially improved with the use of self-cueing training (rueda et al., 2005). ertmer and ertmer (1998) reported that phonological treatment coupled with self-regulation training can transfer or generalize to independent, novel phonological skills. shohamy and wagner (2008) found that hippocampal and midbrain-dopamine region activity are highly correlated in that the two appear to work in tandem, overlapping and integrating with each other resulting in memories being encoded for retention of skills learned. memory involves three key processes: 1) encoding, 2) storing, and 3) recalling information (bear et al., 2007). additionally, consolidation is an associative part involved in the encoding and storage process. researchers believe that consolidations re-access information from an engram (memory trace) of past experiences; therefore, it is a reconstructing of information from the past (roozendaal, 2000). encoding is the process of forming new memories and consolidation is the process of creating permanent representations of memories through physiological changes in the strength of connectivity between neurons (bear et al., 2016). storage involves holding information in the hippocampus until it is ready to be distributed to cortical areas. the cell bodies in the hippocampus store information, reinforcing learning and allowing new memories to be encoded, consolidated, formed, stored, and retrieved (bear et al., 2016; shohamy & wagner, 2008). the final process involves recall of memories formed by accessing previously stored information and repeating the same pattern of neural activity formed when it was originally encoded (shohamy & wagner, 2008). memory, then, is a type of perception linked to an experience-dependent event that is developed within the brain’s neurophysiological system (bear et al., 2016; ullman, 2004). the brain possesses the ability to adapt to its environment, re-learn, re-associate, rewire and reorganize when presented with new incoming information (bear et al., 2016). thus, memory and memory serving systems are important as they apply ingrained, long-term changes within the neuropsychological network (demarin & morović, 2014; draganski et al., 2004; ullman, 2004). new synaptic growth occurs that strengthens the connections between certain neural tracts making transmission easier over time, leading to neurological plasticity (bear et al., 2016). researchers examined that self-generated cues are encoded, leaving behind a memory trace (engram) of the cue that is associated with a newly learned target or skill for retrieval (roozendaal, 2000; shohamy & wagner, 2008; ullman, 2004; wheeler & gabbert, 2017) (fivush, 2008; harris et al., 2014; pansky et al., 2005). the unique relationship linking the cue to the target distinguishes it from other cues based on how each cue was originally matched to the target. this allows a person to remember to use self-generated cues across new experiences, making those experiences habitual (wheeler & gabbert, 2017). 1.4. cueing strategies investigators have proposed the use of different types of cueing strategies (e.g., written data collection, electronic vibrating beeper devices, tactile cues, auditory cues, visual cues, gesture cues) (amato‐zech et al., 2006; landin, 1994; levendoski & cartledge, 2000; menzies et al., 2009) and have reported journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 2 249-283, 2021, june issn: 2148-1997 255 positive effects on the accuracy and generalization of correct phonological productions (gray & shelton, 1992; hedrick, 1997; koegel et al., 1986; landin, 1994; preston et al., 2014; rogers, 2013; rogers & chesin, 2013; xi et al., 2020). rafferty (2010) stated that self-monitoring is an effective behavior changing strategy initiated by external cues (therapist driven instruction) with the child being an active participant in the intervention process using their own internal cues (self-initiated behaviors). amato‐zech et al., (2006) examined the effectiveness of an electric tactile selfmonitoring device called the motivaider 2000. each time the device signals through vibration, it cues the student to document their on-task attention in a special education classroom. results indicated that tactile self-monitoring treatment increased on-task attention from a mean of fifty-five percent to greater than ninety percent in the data intervals observed, and both teachers and students found this method of self-monitoring acceptable for use. koegel et al., (1986) examined self-monitoring to improve correct production of /s, z/ in the clinical setting and to generalize productions to the natural environment. the subjects produced correct and incorrect target sounds and were trained to self-record correct phonemic productions in conversation. the subjects were required to complete take home data sheets and only earned points for recording correct responses in reading and conversation with another individual. trained within therapy sessions, the subjects demonstrated immediate and rapid improvements outside of the clinic setting (koegel et al., 1988; rhode et al., 1983). rogers (2013) developed speech buddies, which are hand-held, tactile (sensory), biofeedback devices placed intra-orally in the mouth to provide a direct tactile cue for remediation of the target phonemes /r. l. s, sh, ch/. utilizing the r speech buddy device in a case study, rogers (2013) suggested that biofeedback also promotes increased physiological awareness of speech productions, thus increasing the subject’s awareness of errored phoneme productions. by utilizing the speech buddy device, the subject was capable of correctly shaping and strengthening the tongue through external stimulation using his commercially sold device. three independent evaluators examined the accuracy of /r/ production to determine whether the speech buddy device would effectively remediate the errored phoneme. ten weeks post-treatment, the subjects’ accuracy of /r/ production increased from 23 percent to 75 percent accuracy at the word level and, at the sentence level, increased from 10 percent to 60 percent post-treatment. in a comparison study by rogers and chesin (2013), the speech buddy device was also used to remediate the targeted /s/ phoneme. the authors used a randomized, controlled, single blind research design to test two groups of subjects, those with and without the use of the speech buddy device, to see which group would more efficiently remediate the misarticulated phoneme /s/. the authors analyzed speech production accuracy at six data points, across and within-subject conditions. the investigators reported continual increases in speech production accuracy by the experimental group using the speech buddies device (e.g., 73.8%, 74.0%, and 74.0%) for the final three measurable data points while the control group experienced no significant changes in percent of accuracy across the same measured data points (e.g., 44.3%, 45.4%, and 43.7%). within group the acquisition of phonology kawasaki-knight,wolgemuth, becerra 256 differences showed that measured treatment responses in seven out of eight of the experimental subjects increased to 87.5% while only three of the seven control subjects experienced increases of only 42.8% in measurable treatment responses. results in this study reported greater increases exhibited across and within the experimental group from baseline to the final data point measured. simply teaching correct production of a sound in the treatment environment is not consistent with best practice as generalization activities are recommended as an integral part of the intervention process (byun & hitchcock, 2012b; koegel et al., 1986). practice is important both within the treatment environment and in additional contextual environments (baker & mcleod, 2011b; kamhi & pollock, 2005; mcleod & baker, 2014). crafting treatment programs that promote child-driven, self-cueing techniques instead of relying heavily on slp-directed cueing or an external feedback device should be further investigated to determine if they can be effective and efficient in remediating phonological process disorders as an integral part of treatment approaches. 1.5 purpose of this research mot is an alternative phonological treatment approach to traditional phonological intervention designed to promote systemic changes to untreated phonemes from the same or different manner class. although highly recommended for persistent speech errors, this approach is not widely used among therapists. in addition, less is known about the effects of mot when coupled with self-generated cueing strategies. the purpose of this study was to examine the effects of an integrated approach on the acquisition of phonological targets in 4-to-6-year-old children enrolled in maximum oppositional therapy (mot). this study addressed the following research questions: 1) what is the effect of using mot accompanied by the use of tactile self-cueing on overall phonological accuracy (%) as compared to the performance of a control group using mot without the use of tactile self-cueing? 2) what is the effect of using tactile self-cues on the duration of mot treatment required to meet criteria for acquisition of phonological targets (80% accuracy across 3 consecutive sessions in initial, medial, and final phonemic contexts)? 3) what are the parents’ perceptions of the child’s speech accuracy when comparing preand post-treatment surveys? 2. methodology 2.1. participants this study was approved by the loma linda university institutional review board and parents of participants read and signed informed consent forms explaining the benefits and limitations of participating in this study. on-site recruitment as well as letters and flyers were given to school administrators to recruit participants for this study. of the 37 participants assessed, 32 qualified however, 20 continued to the end of the study. in addition, 15 potential participants declined from the study after they were screened. the journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 2 249-283, 2021, june issn: 2148-1997 257 twenty study participants consisted of typically developing monolingual english-speaking children, ages 4 to 6 years, who were identified by their parents or teachers as exhibiting one or more speech sound errors in conversational speech. they comprised a heterogeneous sample from a centerbased early childhood development program, a private clinical setting, public schools, private schools, and a virtual academy. the recruited convenience sample was age stratified (4, 5 and 6-years) and randomly divided into two groups. one group received tactile self-cueing training with mot and the other group received mot approach only. inclusionary criteria were age-appropriate receptive language skills, oral motor abilities, and normal peripheral hearing sensitivity in both ears. participants were required to have an email address and electronic device to receive and access a zoom link throughout the study. participant exclusion criteria consisted of attention deficits (e.g., adhd, add), developmental delay (asd), chronic behavior challenges affecting ability to learn (e.g., tantrums, self-injury, biting, hitting), presence of neurological deficits, legally blind, and hearing impairment. throughout the study, participants were required to attend maximal opposition therapy (mot) sessions, either with or without the use of accompanying self-cueing strategies, or prompts, twice weekly for 10 weeks. there were some expectations required of parents or caregivers. parents who expressed an interest in the study and whose children met the criteria were scheduled for a pre-study interview. during the interview, parents who chose to participate in the study read and signed the informed consent form. the children were given a start date and parents completed an initial parent survey regarding their child’s phonological development (e.g., i understand what my child says; other people have trouble understanding what he/she says, i correct my child’s speech) by giving a response of always, sometimes, or never. a parent or a caregiver was required to agree to serve as a reading partner for their child, outside of therapy sessions. they also had to consent to be videotaped engaging in story retell tasks a minimum of 3 times throughout the study. these videos were used to code for either phonological accuracy or phonological inaccuracy, and the use/non-use of accompanying tactile selfcueing strategies outside of the therapy environment. the parent/caregivers were also required to have an electronic device (e.g., smartphone, ipad, tablet) or equivalent computer capability with a web camera to perform and record live, on-screen interactions and follow-up sessions outside of treatment setting, using the zoom videoconferencing software. while not required to purchase the zoom software, parental access to an internet connection via a hyperlink to join the live, zoom sessions was a requirement. 2.2. personnel and equipment the first author and two research assistants who provided intervention and collected data during story retell visits consisted of licensed and practicing speech-language pathologists and a speech-language pathology assistant. the first author (slp) and research assistants used either a desktop or laptop computer with dual-core processors and access to high-speed internet consisting at a minimum of at least the asha recommended bandwidth of 3.0 mbs per second. computers were equipped with either an internal or external the acquisition of phonology kawasaki-knight,wolgemuth, becerra 258 webcam and a built-in or external microphone. although face-to-face intervention did not require the use of headsets while participants were seated in a private, controlled treatment room, the use of ear buds or headsets were required for all computer-based, data collection. throughout the study, each session was recorded via zoom video-conferencing platform. however, the pandemic surge of 2020 forced an unexpected shift in the study from clinicbased interaction to the computer-based, zoom platform only for the health and safety of the community. 2.3. data collection and processing several preand post-therapy assessments were given as part of this study. the goldman-fristoe test of articulation-third edition (gfta-3) (goldman & fristoe, 2015) and the khan-lewis phonological assessment-third edition (klpa-3) (khan & lewis, 2015) were used to diagnose the presence of phonological disorders for potential participants. the gfta-3 is a normreferenced and standardized assessment tool used to examine phonemic inventory in standard american english. it provides information concerning spontaneous and imitated sound productions in single words and connected speech and provides stimulability information. it is frequently used in combination with the klpa-3, a norm-referenced instrument which was used to determine the presence of phonological processes. gfta-3 and klpa-3 scores were measured using standard scores, percentile ranks, confidence intervals, by gender and age. the oral and written language scales-second edition (owls-ii) (carrow-woolfolk 2011) is a comprehensive assessment of language comprehension that includes lexical, semantic, syntactic, supralinguistic and pragmatic language abilities. it is a standardized, norm referenced assessment tool which is measured using standard scores, confidence intervals, percentile ranks, descriptive range and test age equivalence. a pre-and post-treatment parent survey was collected using a 3-point ordinal likert scale (i.e., always, sometimes or never). the survey consisted of 12questions used to assess the participant’s accuracy of speech productions, overall speech intelligibility, how others (i.e., family members, friends and people in the community) rate the participant’s speech productions, and the child’s independent, spontaneous use of tactile self-cues outside of study treatment while producing target sounds trained during the therapy sessions (see appendix a). throughout the study, a data collection form and coding rubric developed by the first author (see appendix b). data was collected during video recorded treatment sessions and story retelling tasks to code for phonological accuracy, the presence of using tactile self-cues (c) or whether a prompt facilitated a response during intervention. the information data form was comprised of a numerical identifier, participants age, session date, and the phonemic target and finally a notes section. the purpose of the notes section was to document qualitative information such as observed, untreated sound changes during a session or parent and child subjective reporting and feedback (see appendix b). similar to other investigations, we adopted/incorporated a criterion-based intervention requirement to determine the accuracy of target sounds and the journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 2 249-283, 2021, june issn: 2148-1997 259 duration to target acquisition (smit et al., 2015; williams, 2003). participants were to reach 80% accuracy or greater, across three consecutive sessions in any phonemic word position (initial, medial, and final). a coding rubric was used by both slp’s and the slp-a to code for the data collection on 1) the percentage of correct phonological targets produced by each participant; 2) whether or not participants simultaneously used cueing strategies during story retell visits ; and 3) to code for the number of prompts (i.e., did you use your strategy?, let’s try that again) that were provided in treatment to remind participants to use a trained strategy (either a finger cue on tubercle or hand cue on larynx) or to offer a second attempt to correct the phonemic production 2.3.1. zoom platform the zoom video-conferencing platform was used in this study to collect and record data and monitor participants progress, through live camera interaction, across treatment sessions and story retell visits throughout this study. this web-based video-conferencing tool is hipaa compliant as governed by the 2003 rules and standards published health insurance portability and accountability act (hipaa) security rule in the federal register (45 cfr parts 160, 162, and 164 health insurance reform: security standards; final rule). zoom can also be accessed through a mobile application. through this online platform, users have the ability to meet live, with or without the use of a video camera, record sessions, share documents and annotate on shared screens with communication partners. the online video-conferencing program utilized in this study was the zoom pro which offers the benefit of unlimited meeting time as opposed to the cost-free version which limits meetings to 40 minutes. 2.3.2. picture word pairs from the maximum opposition approach to treatment, activity sheets were generated with pictured word pairs embedded with maximal feature differences (bowen & rippon, 2013; gierut, 1989; gierut, 2001; gierut, 2007). a minimum of 10-word pairs on double-sided sheets were chosen from a combination of commercially available mot worksheets and online pictures (see appendix c). participants were included in the selection process of online pictures for targeted word pairs by incorporating their unique interest in a familiar theme, character or athlete (e.g., cookies, koby bryant, om nom, princess elsa). 2.3.3. story booklets commercially available and printed story booklets were created with words inclusive of each participants’ targeted phoneme. the booklets were short in length (10-25 words per page, 4-8 pages). black and white or colorful picture illustrations accompanied the printed text. the purpose of the illustrations was to support early or non-readers as they describe the story, irrespective of printed words they may not recognize. story booklets provided to subjects were at low cost, reproducible, foldable, and easy to print or color. the acquisition of phonology kawasaki-knight,wolgemuth, becerra 260 2.3.4. tactile self-cues tactile hand cues were chosen to accompany the production of phonological targets as self-generated feedback for children to self-correct phonological errors and to further distinguish a target sound from other phonemes using the maximal opposition treatment approach. participants were provided one of two tactile self-cues examined in this study; placement of a finger on the tubercle of the upper lip when producing a targeted phoneme or placement of the hand over the larynx to cue production of velar phonemes /k, g/. the development of selfgenerated cues is considered to be an active process which may ultimately allow children to become increasingly aware of phonemic productions (wheeler & gabbert, 2017). 2.3.5. tokens and incentives throughout the study, participants received fun stickers, stamps, small toys, online games and movie clip choices as incentives. upon completion of the study, a gift bag of small toys and treats were provided either in person or by mail for their valued participation. 2.3.6. interrater reliability measures prior to identifying study participants, three pilot non-participants were recruited and videotaped while using mot with and without the use of selfcueing strategies to establish interrater reliability among the first author (slp), second slp and licensed speech and language pathology assistant (slpa). the first author (slp) conducted a 1-hour training session with the second slp and the slpa. both were given explicit instructions to identify the mot approach and code for phonological accuracy of target phonemes. first, both slp’s independently applied codes using a coding rubric to the middle segment (20 seconds into the recorded session) of 3-prerecorded story telling sessions among 3-non-participants. the two slp’s compared and discussed findings to resolve any discrepancies in coding regarding the use of tactile selfcues or phonological accuracy. the two slp’s then re-applied the codes to the segments using the coding rubric for the three non-participants a second time and confirmed interrater reliability at greater than 80% accuracy. the same process was used between the first author (slp) and the licensed slp-a. the first author and the slp-a achieved interrater reliability of greater than 80% accuracy on phonological target identification and the use of verbal prompts when re-applying coding on a second attempt to the middle segment of 3 pre-recorded training participant videos. next, the second slp was trained to identify the two types of self-cueing strategies (i.e., finger cue vs. hand to larynx cue) participants may use to accompany mot approach. both slps identified self-cue strategies, applying code to the middle segment of the 3 prerecorded sessions. interrater reliability was achieved with no discrepancies found on observed use of tactile self-cues when reapplying the coding. the second slp was given the two written parent-sentence prompts to monitor whether parents used them or used more than two prompts to encourage child participation during story retell for generalization data. the slp-a used specific written instructions to administer treatment or prompts across all participants (see appendix d). journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 2 249-283, 2021, june issn: 2148-1997 261 2.3.7. phonological assessment at either the participant’s respective school site, or via tele-practice using zoom software, the first author administered the gfta-3 and the kpla-3, pretreatment, to assess articulation and for the presence of phonological processes (e.g., phonemic substitutions, omissions, distortions, and additions). data from pre-treatment assessment measures were used to identify the presence of speech sound errors and to identify specific, individual phonological processes for the participants and establish target selections for therapy. the listening comprehension subtest of the owls-ii was administered to participants to document that receptive language abilities are age-appropriate. to balance age groups of children (4, 5 and 6-years old), the participants were selected by consecutive sampling once they met inclusion and exclusionary criteria, and the parents and child agreed to participate in the study. during the assessment process, the parents received a one-hour story retelling training session and were provided the story retell materials, including two-written story retell prompts (i.e., one statement prompt and one open ended question) to use with their child during the story retell task (see appendix e). during this training, the parents participated in mock storyretelling interaction with the first author and the slp-a using the two-written story retell prompts. in addition, the first author also explained and demonstrated for parents how to access and open a zoom link so one of the slps could then record parent-child storytelling interactions through the study. from the phonemic inventory of the gfta, participants targeted phonemes for intervention were chosen. participants were randomly assigned a numerical identifier which was pulled from a list and then placed in either an experimental or control group. the first author (slp), and a trained research assistant who is a licensed speech-language pathology assistant (slpa), performed mot intervention using a list of word pairs containing each child’s targeted phoneme (one known phoneme in the child’s phonemic inventory and one unknown phoneme with at least two distinctive features that were maximally different from each other (gierut, 1989; gierut, 2001; gierut, 2007). the slp provided mot treatment along with training of the accompanying tactile self-cue (to the experimental group) while the slpa provided treatment without the use of tactile cue training to the control group of participants. mot was performed twice weekly for 30 minutes across both groups of participants over 10 weeks. the slp and slp-a also performed all coding during intervention. coding was used to determine 1) correct and incorrect treatment responses and 2) if children used or did not use either of the 2-types of tactile self-cues or required prompts as reminders to use their trained strategy. the second speech-language pathologist (slp) observed and coded phonological accuracy and participant-driven cueing to record generalization during story retell three to five times across the 10 weeks of intervention. the acquisition of phonology kawasaki-knight,wolgemuth, becerra 262 2.3.8. story retelling to examine generalization of targeted phonological productions, subjects in both experimental and control groups received an articulation story booklet at the end of each week embedded with their targeted phoneme. each parent or caregiver was instructed to read a story booklet with their child for at least 20 minutes a day, four times per week. after being read to by a parent or caregiver, children in both groups were instructed to practice retelling the same story to their parent or caregiver outside of the intervention environment. every two weeks, each parent from both groups received an email from the second slp instructing them to open the zoom hyperlink and complete an slp monitored story retell session online. the second slp used zoom to then record and collect data during story retell tasks to capture whether or not each child used self-cueing strategies to correct phonological errors outside of the treatment setting. the second slp also collected data on the percentage of correct phonemes produced out of the total number attempted. 2.3.9. post-therapy assessment after participants continued demonstration of correct target production at 80% accuracy or greater, the first author (slp) re-administered the gfta-3 and applied that data to the klpa-3. changes in phonological target acquisition from both groups were then analyzed. each participant received an incentive reward that did not exceed more than a $5.00 value for participation in this study. the parents of the participants in both groups completed a post-treatment parent survey used to represent their perception of their child’s independent, spontaneous use of tactile selfcues and phonological gains observed (e.g., i understand what my child says; other people have trouble understanding what he/she says, i correct my child’s speech). parents provided feedback by giving a response using a 3point likert scale of always, sometimes, or never (see appendix b). 2.4. data analysis differences in the overall phonological accuracy (%) on the gfta-3 and klpa3 pre-treatment and posttreatment while using mot approach and pretest/posttest parent survey were analyzed using a non-parametric related samples sign test. analyses were stratified between the groups (tactile selfcue group vs. non-tactile self-cue group). time-to-event analyses with kaplanmeier curve and a log rank test in statistical package for social sciences (spss) were used to analyze the duration of mot intervention to reach phonemic target accuracy criteria of 80% accuracy or greater between the two groups of participants. klpa phonological processes before and after treatment were assessed using a mcnemar’s test after stratification between treatment and posttreatment groups, with percent improvement reported (a participant going from not being able to produce a sound, to being able to produce a sound). two-tailed pvalues were used for all analyses, with the exception of mcnemar’s test (onetailed directional hypothesis). p<0.05 was used to determine statistical significance for all statistical tests in the study. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 2 249-283, 2021, june issn: 2148-1997 263 3. findings 3.1 the impact of mot and tactile self-cueing on phonological accuracy table 1 presents the median scores from gfta-3 pre-test and post-testing raw scores (rs), standard scores (ss) and percentile scores (%). a nonparametric related-samles sign test was performed for male and female participants in a tactile self-cueing (tactile sc) treatment group and non-tactile self-cueing (non-sc) treatment group. differences were found in 6 out of 9 assessment measures investigated (table 1). as seen in table 1, results were statistically significant in median raw scores on the gfta-3 phonemes within words, gfta-3 standard scores (ss), percentiles in words only, and klpa raw scores and percentiles. no statistically significant differences were found in the gfta-3 percentiles in sentences, gfta-3 standard scores in sentences, or klpa-3 standard scores. table 1 related-samples sign test on mot no cue – mot self-cue group median comparisons from gfta and klpa-3 raw scores, standard scores and percentile measures, p values assessment mot non-tactile sc mot tactile sc pre p value pre p value gfta3 word raw score (rs) 9.5 (1.8,17.3) .125 13.0 (11.0,15.0) .001** gfta3 sentences raw score (rs) 9.0 (3.5,27.8) .070 7.0 (3.0,12.0) .021* gfta3 words (ss) -6.5 (-28.3,0.0) .219 -10.0 (-18.0,-4.0) .001** gfta3 words (%ile) -9.0 (-22.7,0.0) .062 -13.0 (-25.0,-2.0) .002** gfta3 sentences (ss) -9.5 (-16.5,-1.3) .070 -4.0 (-13.0,4.0) .754 gfta3 sentences (%ile) -12.0 (-40.8,0.1) .070 -2.0 (-21.0,9.0) .754 klpa3 raw score (rs) 21.5 (9.5,27.0) .070 11.0 (10.0,19.0) .001** klpa3 (ss) -11.0 (-23.5,0.0) .062 -11.0 (-16.0,-3.0) .065 klpa3 (%ile) -11.0 (-39.8,0.0) .062 -14.0 (-27.0,-2.0) .004** values expressed as median difference and interquartile range. significance for treatment *p<0.05, **p<0.01 for related-samples sign test goldman-fristoe test of articulationthird edition (gfta-3) khan-lewis phonological analysis third edition (klpa-3) *p <0.05, ** p <0.01 in table 1, raw scores on the gfta-3 represent the total number of misarticulated phonemes for each group of participants based on their phonemic inventory. although the median raw score decreased (median difference and iqr: 9.5 (1.8,17.3)) from pretest to posttest performance for participants without tactile sc training, results were not statistically the acquisition of phonology kawasaki-knight,wolgemuth, becerra 264 significant (p=.125) (see table 1) between the experimental and control groups. the median raw score of errored phonemes from pre-test to posttest in the treatment group while using tactile sc also decreased (30 to 11). differences in raw scores in the treatment group from pretest to posttest after tactile selfcue training were statistically significant (median difference and iqr: 13.0 (11.0,15.0), p = .001, 2-tailed), however, a statistically significant difference was not found for the control group. when examining results for raw scores of sounds in sentences, the non-tsc group median difference decreased (median difference and iqr: 9.0 (3.5,27.8)) from pretest to posttest, however results were not statistically significant (p = .070, 2-tailed) (see table 1). the gfta-3 pretest to posttest median difference in the treatment group with tactile sc decreased (median difference and iqr: 7.0 (3.0,12.0)), indicating statistical significance (p =.021, 2-tailed). the non-parametric related-samples sign test was also used to evaluate differences for gfta-3 standard scores in words preand posttreatment. although scores for participants without tactile sc yielded a 6.5-point median difference increase, the result was not statistically significant, p=0.219, 2tailed). the tactile sc treatment group median standard scores from pretest to posttest yielded a 10-point median difference increase and was statistically significant (p =.001, 2-tailed). additional median differences and p values are reported in table 1. statistically significant differences were found between pretest to posttest percentile scores for the treatment group receiving mot and tactile self-cueing training (p =.002, 2-tailed). table 1 also displays klpa median raw score differences in pre-and posttest performance for both treatment groups. a decrease in median difference and iqr (21.5 (9.5,27.0)) for the non-tactile sc group was found to be nonsignificant (p = .070, 2-tailed), however findings from the decrease in median difference of the tactile sc treatment group revealed statistical significance (median difference and iqr: 11.0 (10.0,19.0), p = .001). median percentile increases of klpa-3 pretest to posttest to the 11th percentile for the non-tactile sc treatment group (median difference and iqr: -11.0 (-39.8,0.0)) were compared to the tactile sc treatment group median increase to the 14th percentile (median difference and iqr: -14.0 (-27.0, -2.0)). findings from the increase in klpa-3 median percentile scores in the nontactile sc treatment group were non-significant (p = 0.062, 2-tailed) compared to the statistically significant gains seen in the tactile sc group (p = 0.004, 2 tailed). the klpa-3 pretest scores were analyzed using the percentiles to classify both groups of participants into four quartile groups to confirm that comparisons were equivalent across participants. results indicated that all participants fell within the same comparison group (with the exception of one participant in the tactile sc treatment group) and no significant differences among participants in the study (data not shown). in further analysis of the klpa-3 from pretest to posttest, all participants in the treatment group did not show any significant difference in improving in phonological processes in either the non-tactile sc group or tactile sc group (table 1, related-samples sign test, p>0.05). journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 2 249-283, 2021, june issn: 2148-1997 265 3.2. the effect of using tactile self-cues on the duration of mot treatment. the second research question in this descriptive investigation examined the impact of using a tactile self-cueing strategy on the duration of mot treatment required to reach target accuracy across all phonemic contexts within words. figure 1 displays a between-group analysis in the initial phonemic context of words on the duration to meet the percent accuracy criteria, across 3 consecutive sessions. the vertical axis presents the median percentage of participants in the study who met the treatment criteria. the horizontal axis represents the number of sessions across the 10-week study. session requirement met in initial phonemic context >80% accuracy figure 1. duration to meet target requirement % accuracy for initial phonemic context within words (goal of meeting greater than 80% accuracy, across 3 consecutive sessions). observations were considered censored if the participant did not reach the threshold by the end of the 20th session. in the initial phonemic context, results revealed that by the 7th session, half of the participants using tactile self-cues met the requirement of 80% accuracy or better across three consecutive sessions (see figure 1). results also revealed that by the 15th session, 100% of the participants taught the tactile self-cue met the requirement of 80% or better accuracy across three consecutive sessions. in comparison, participants without tactile self-cues (non-tsc) continued until session 20, with only 44.4% of the participants meeting accuracy criteria. findings were statistically significant. results show a positive trend on the duration of teaching young children to self-cue as they acquire phonological targets. participants in the treatment group without 20.00 15.00 10.00 5.00 .00 1.0 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0.0 self-cue-censored no cue-censored self-cue no cue self cue treatment m e d ia n % p a rt ic ip a n ts r e m a in in g u n ti l r e q u ir e m e n t m e t > 8 0 % the acquisition of phonology kawasaki-knight,wolgemuth, becerra 266 20.00 15.00 10.00 5.00 .00 1.0 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0.0 self-cue-censored no cue-censored self-cue no cue self cue treatment tactile sc (non-tsc) may require an extended duration beyond the number of sessions to reach 100% accuracy in the initial phonemic context (figure 1). to meet the second requirement in the final phonemic context, figure 2 displays a comparison between the percentage that each group of participants reached with 80% accuracy or better by a given session. the vertical axis presents the median percentage of participants in the study who met the treatment criteria. the horizontal axis represents the number of sessions across the 10-week study. findings here were also statistically significant. in the word final phonemic context, results revealed that by the 10th session, 50% of the tactile sc group met the requirement with 80% accuracy or greater across three consecutive sessions. by the 20th session 81.8% of the tactile sc group met the requirement. in comparison, only 33.3% of non-tactile sc participants reached the requirement of 80% accuracy or greater in three consecutive sessions by the 20th session. session requirement met in final phonemic context >80% accuracy figure 2. duration to meet target requirement % accuracy for final phonemic context in words (goal of meeting greater than 80% accuracy, across 3 consecutive sessions). observations were considered censored if the participant did not reach the threshold by the end of the 20th session. in figure 3, a kaplan-meier analysis was used to measure treatment group differences on duration until participants acquired targeted phonemes in medial phonemic context. as seen in the previous figures 1 and 2, the vertical axis presents the median percentage of participants in the study who met the treatment criteria. the horizontal axis represents the number of sessions across the 10-week study. findings were statistically significant. by the 15th session, 50% of the tactile sc group met the requirement of 80% accuracy or better across three consecutive sessions for the medial phonemic context. by the 20th session, 63.3% of the tactile sc group met the requirement while journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 2 249-283, 2021, june issn: 2148-1997 267 20.00 15.00 10.00 5.00 .00 1.0 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0.0 self-cue-censored no cue-censored self-cue no cue self cue treatment 11.1% of the non-tactile sc treatment group met the requirement by the 20th session. of the three phonemic word positions, results displayed the largest differences between the two groups of participants in the medial phonemic context within words. session requirement met in medial phonemic context >80% figure 3. duration to meet target requirement % accuracy for medial phonemic context in words (goal of meeting greater than 80% accuracy, across 3 consecutive sessions). observations were considered censored if the participant did not reach the threshold by the end of the 20th session. 3.3. parents’ perceptions of speech sound accuracy table 2 represents the parent survey results obtained from both groups of participants’ parents before and after 20 treatment sessions. of 12 survey questions on parents’ perceptions of speech accuracy, responses were statistically significant for the participants in the tactile self-cue group on question number 7 (see table 2). parents of this group reported that strategies trained were simple or easy to use (p = 0.016). parents’ survey responses to question number 7 from pre-treatment to posttreatment among the group learning the tactile cueing strategy consistently increased from sometimes to always. no other responses to the parent survey were significantly different. table 2 parent survey questions and results between pre and post therapy (20 sessions twice weekly across 10 weeks) for control and treatment groups control no cue treatment self cue parent survey items pre post p pre post p m e d ia n % p a rt ic ip a n ts r e m a in in g u n ti l r e q u ir e m e n t m e t > 8 0 % the acquisition of phonology kawasaki-knight,wolgemuth, becerra 268 1. difficult for family to understand 1.00 (0.00) 1.00 (0.00) 1.000 1.00 (0.00) 1.00 (1.00) 0.688 2. difficult to understand by strangers 1.00 (0.00) 1.00 (0.00) 1.000 1.00 (0.00) 1.00 (1.00) 0.625 3. parent feedback/cues helps correct speech 1.00 (2.00) 1.00 (0.75) 1.000 1.00 (0.00) 1.00 (1.00) 0.500 4. effect participation with family or friends 0.00 (1.00) 0.50 (1.00) 1.000 0.00 (1.00) 0.00 (1.00) 1.000 5. i understand my child’s speech 1.00 (1.00) 2.00 (0.00) 0.125 2.00 (1.00) 2.00 (0.00) 0.500 6. child is aware of speech errors 1.00 (1.50) 1.00 (1.75) 0.500 1.00 (0.00) 1.00 (0.00) 1.000 7. speech cueing strategies are simple/easy to use 1.00 (1.50) 2.00 (1.75) 0.250 1.00 (0.00) 2.00 (1.00) 0.016* 8. read to child at home at least 4x weekly 2.00 (1.00) 2.00 (1.00) 1.000 1.00 (1.00) 1.00 (1.00) 1.000 9. child frustrated when speech is not understood 1.00 (0.00) 1.00 (0.75) 1.000 1.00 (1.00) 1.00 (0.00) 0.453 10. parent corrects child’s speech errors 1.00 (1.00) 1.00 (1.75) 1.000 2.00 (1.00) 2.00 (1.00) 1.000 11. child self-corrects speech errors 1.00 (1.00) 1.00 (0.75) 1.000 1.00 (0.00) 1.00 (0.00) 0.500 12. child uses cueing strategies to correct errors 0.00 (1.00) 1.00 (1.50) 0.500 1.00 (0.00) 1.00 (1.00) 0.062 values expressed as median (iqr) significance for treatment *<0.05 for related-samples sign test 4. discussion and conclusions the purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of an integrated approach to the acquisition of phonological targets in two groups of 4-to-6year-old children who exhibited evidence of phonological processes. one group of participants were taught to use a self-cueing strategy to accompany the maximum opposition treatment approach (mot) across 10 weeks of intervention. the second group received mot without tactile self-cueing training. in addition, whether or not the learning effects from tactile self-cue training could influence within-class and/or across class generalization was also examined. previous investigations regarding the efficacy of the maximum oppositions approach have found that, in comparison to other contrastive approaches, results support phonological generalization to untreated phonemes and/or sound classes. consistent with previous research, we targeted phonemes to which participants had the least phonological knowledge and paired the targeted sound with a known phoneme within the journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 2 249-283, 2021, june issn: 2148-1997 269 child’s unique phonological inventory (gierut, 1989; gierut, 2001; storkel, 2018; tyler, 2006). we then integrated this approach with a tactile, selfgenerated modality that was not previously incorporated into prior phonological studies. this study extends prior research that demonstrates positive effects of selfmonitoring and the use of tactile cues in training young children to improve phonological accuracy (bialas & boon, 2010; rogers, 2012; rogers & chesin, 2013). similar to earlier studies using self-cues, the participants in this study demonstrated increased gains over the control participants when using tactile self-cues to enhance maximum opposition treatment approach as they acquired new phonological targets. therefore, it is important to consider whether mot alone is enough to correct speech sound errors. while a large body of research exists on phonologically based treatment methods, researchers have discovered that pairing maximally opposed sounds can generalize to untreated targets that children may not have been expected to acquire on their own (brumbaugh & smit, 2013; gierut & hulse, 2010; hodson, 1998; tyler, 2006). however, there is limited research using randomized control trials (rct) examining the effects of using tactile, selfgenerated cues to self-monitor and self-correct phonological errors as they acquire and generalize phonological targets. of the 134 efficacy studies examined by baker & mcleod (2008, 2011), they found that phonological intervention studies were primarily comprised of quasi-experimental designs (e.g., single subject designs), small sample or case studies. in their review, efficacy studies with larger samples using randomized control trials comprised 14.8% while meta-analyses represented 1.5% of the phonological treatment studies. clinicians want to know whether incorporating elicitation techniques as an integrated, multi-modal approach (e.g., audio-visual gesture training, electrograph biofeedback and tactile biofeedback, etc.) to train young preschool-aged children could be a fundamental tool to facilitate phonological target acquisition. the combination of self-cueing strategies associated with phonological treatment approaches may perhaps lend insight into a useful and functional, multi-modal approach that has positive learning benefits for this young population. examining new ways to approach phonological target acquisition is an area of great interest to clinicians. 4.1 tactile self-cue effects on phonological accuracy training participants to use tactile self-cues to increase phonological accuracy while using a maximum opposition approach to phonological treatment resulted in significant between-group differences in preand post-testing scores for standardized instruments. the treatment group using tactile selfcueing strategies exhibited larger gains in the majority (6 out of 9) of the assessment measures investigated. it may be that, incorporating the integrated approach of tactile self-cueing for the treatment group and mot may have led to increased encoding and retention of novel skills. while both groups experienced changes in phonological accuracy using the mot approach, this was likely facilitated by the focus of a meaningful, language rich environment (bernthal et al. 2000; (hodson & paden, 1983). these the acquisition of phonology kawasaki-knight,wolgemuth, becerra 270 findings are similar to the speech buddy tactile biofeedback randomized controlled studies for /r/ that found that participants in the experimental group had greater phonological accuracy when supported by the use of a tactile cue, in comparison to a control group across multiple data points (rogers, 2012). training young children to use self-generated tactile cues serves as an endogenous strategy to promote both target speech productions in meaningful contexts and retention of novel skills for phonological target generalization. mot alone may not be enough to promote rapid change in the phonological system of young preschool children (hodson & paden, 1983; williams, 2000a, williams 2000b, williams, 2009). we found it interesting that no statistically significant differences were found in gfta-3 percentile scores or standard scores in sentences, as well as klpa-3 standard scores between the groups. this may be related to the low number of participants in this study, characteristics of the assessment tools, and the 10 weeks of intervention used in this project. from a descriptive analysis, there were 11 participants in the mot group receiving tactile self-cueing training that exhibited some across-class and within-class generalization and only four participants in the control group that showed this pattern (data not shown). the statistically significant results in some groups indicated a trend, where tactile sc treatment median differences were consistently and statistically greater than the median difference for the non-tactile sc treatment group. this may merit investigation for future study. 4.2 effects of self-cues on duration while phonological treatment programs have been reported to be successful in the remediation of speech sound disorders (baker et al., 2018; hodson & paden, 1983; kamhi, 2006; williams, 2000; williams, 2009; williams et al., 2010), little research has focused on comparisons of efficiency and efficacy among different phonological intervention programs (allen, 2013; baker & mcleod, 2011a, 2011b). regarding duration to phonological accuracy, both groups of participants benefited from the use of mot. by integrating a tactile self-cueing strategy with mot during intervention, it is possible that retention of the strategy may have contributed to differences in intervention duration between the two groups. in addition, running the study beyond 10 weeks duration may have provided closer examination to accurately determine the median time point where at least half of the control group not using tactile self-cues might have achieved 80% accuracy to make a qualitative comparison. from the findings, it seems promising that tactile self-cueing training may have potentially contributed to a reduction in treatment duration to acquire phonological targets with 80% accuracy or more for the children in the tsc group. given the small number of participants (11 in the experimental or tsc group, 9 in the control or non-tsc group) additional data is needed on a larger scale to verify this finding beyond the scope of this study as these results represent a pilot study. when examining the duration to reach phonological acquisition criteria in final word position, results might have been influenced by within-child factors in rate it took participants to identify regularities associated with contrastive word pairs or perhaps some targets are more sensitive than others to mot approach. incorporating the use of self-cues to elicit target acquisition may journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 2 249-283, 2021, june issn: 2148-1997 271 offer multi-modal benefits that assist young children to better reorganize their knowledge about their own phonological sound system, potentially leading to more efficient acquisition of speech sounds. considering phonemic contexts, the medial position appeared to be the most challenging for all participants to acquire, particularly the participants who did not use tactile, self-cues. the tactile self-cue group overall did perform better in terms of meeting phonological acquisition criteria and did so over a shorter period of time. these pilot results suggest that the gains made by the self-cueing participants may be partially due to development of self-monitoring skills t used in conjunction with mot. overall, considerations should be made to address the possibility that younger children may need additional support to efficiently achieve phonological accuracy and to generalize these skills outside of the therapy environment. perhaps the use of tactile self-cues integrated with mot is one approach to consider in this endeavor. 4.3 parents’ perceptions of speech accuracy from the parent survey (table 2), we wanted to determine whether parents found value and benefit from the use of tactile self-cues in addition to mot. it is encouraging that parents of participants who used tactile self-cues perceived them as easy to use. in review of the other 11 questions, the survey could have had robust results if there were more options in response choices for parents beyond ‘always’, ‘sometimes’ or ‘never’. parent survey questions may not have been specific enough to capture parent’s perception on whether their child uses tactile self-cues to correct his/her own speech productions to increase speech sound intelligibility. we were unable to ascertain whether parents focus during story retell shifted to word reading or content (e.g., child's ability to decode words, recognize letters, etc.) rather than observing their child’s speech sound productions during articulation stories. in addition, parents’ survey responses may have been affected by the small sample size examined as well as potential parent perceptions of the expectations on intervention outcomes as compared to slp’s perceptions. as discussed by other researchers, these differences may have resulted from parent’s predictions on participation benefits (e.g., gains in socialization, gains in communication, ability to answer questions in class) and concerns related to personal factors including temperament (e.g., shyness, frustration, reluctance to participate (baker & mcleod, 2011a, 2011b; mcleod et al., 2013). the use of tactile, self-cueing in conjunction with mot phonological intervention may have potential for greater gains in phonological accuracy and potentially reduce treatment duration in therapy. our findings provide preliminary support for the mot program paired with tactile, self-generated cues as an integrated approach to potentially remediate phonological targets in young children. participants using tactile self-cues in addition to mot also showed strong and positive trends of across and within-class generalization patterns as did some of the control participants. for those participants trained in the use of tactile, self-cues, the duration it took them to reach criteria was reduced substantially in comparison to the control group, once the strategy was learned. these results, though preliminary, may be of potential interest the acquisition of phonology kawasaki-knight,wolgemuth, becerra 272 to clinicians working with younger populations in phonology as well as those with larger caseloads. given the feedback received from parents, it is reassuring that these tactile self-cueing strategies also appeared to increase parent awareness of changes that occurred in their child’s speech sound intelligibility. participants also selfreported independence from having to use strategies. for emergent learners with developing phonological systems, the use of tactile self-cues could be a positive supplement to mot or other potential phonological intervention programs. while this study suggests positive results by supplementing the mot phonological treatment approach in this young population, there is limited research regarding the use of tactile, self-cueing techniques to supplement phonological intervention. given the limited number of participants in this study, further research in this area would benefit from larger samples and the use of a blind, randomized control design. additionally, limited research exists examining the use of an integrated, cross-modal, self-generated approaches such as the one used in this study in treating phonological disorders. of the available literature and systematic reviews on phonological intervention approaches, future clinical research would benefit from studies that compare phonological treatment approaches and cross-modal techniques or strategies used as an integrated approach to phonological target acquisition in young preschool populations (amato‐zech et al., 2006; baker & mcleod, 2011a, 2011b; kamhi, 2006; lancaster et al., 2010; mcdougall et al., 2012; rogers, 2013; wheeler & gabbert, 2017; xi et al., 2020). slp’s might then apply this evidence into clinical practice as they make informed decisions in planning intervention programs. the present study was also affected significantly by the 2020 pandemic, both in terms of participant enrollment and how preand post-testing and intervention was implemented. state and county health department policy necessitated that all methods and materials (i.e., testing and intervention) had to be implemented online. this change in study design included more digital, tele-practice interaction with the participants than was originally intended for some of the participants. in addition, the reduction in sample size was affected with 15 participants discontinuing participation in the study after screened, due to relocation, pandemic related issues, or unspecified reasons in completing the study. future studies would benefit from considering the potential influence of socio-demographic conditions (e.g., online learning, noise distractors) as well as influence of technology use (e.g., listener perception through electronic device, headphones, internet quality, wi-fi disruption) and parent participation on child performance. parents were given two written prompts to use, as children retold stories to them to examine generalization of targets trained during intervention. some parents who provided more than the two prompts to a participant may have influenced child responses (e.g., reduced use of strategy, reluctance to participate). research conditions tend to require study participants to continue to use the training modality (tactile self-cues) until the condition criteria is met. this could result in user fatigue, lack of motivation, or both. some participants in this study became disenchanted by the requirement of continuous use of a cue once the technique was self-managed/learned. since the use of cues is journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 2 249-283, 2021, june issn: 2148-1997 273 typically used to facilitate correct speech sound production during the elicitation stages of treatment, it may be beneficial for future research to examine when and how to fade and discontinue the use of cues, as there may be clinical implications for how self-cueing is managed during treatment (riley & heaton, 2000). the rationale behind this integrated, multimodal method is to supplement phonological treatment in young children with speech sound disorders with a method and the opportunity to become more independent learners; 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(subject attempts target sound on the picture card) h. let’s try another one, what is this? (second example) i. subject attempts to produce target sound in word; clinician can model 1x if needed then subject imitates second example. j. now, i am going to show you two pictures. the pictures should look different to you.” k. clinician models ...this is bun/sun ...and this is bun/sun… “do they sound the same?” (subject answers yes or no). l. begin data collection here: ok, now you try it …clinician prompts “this is… (subject says …bun) and this is …. (subject says… sun) m. ok, let’s try more... 2. to end session: a. provide stamps or stickers. b. offer a few mins of online video game or clip from a movie (e.g., paw patrol, minecraft, etc., bendy, om nom) c. offer short bathroom break and snack break (as needed) for researchers use to train tactile self-cueing: participant instructions for m.o.t and with tactile self-cues a. use same training steps from mot. b. add: sometimes we need strategies to help us say sounds correctly and clearly. for example, touch your…. (larynx) or (mouth) like this. c. now, try to say your sound… d. if participant does not use strategy, provide the following prompt: don’t forget to use your strategy. journal of child language acquisition and development – jclad vol: 9 issue: 2 249-283, 2021, june issn: 2148-1997 283 appendix e weekly reading task at home please read to your child for 20 minutes, 4x per week using the following steps step 1. read the story to your child. step 2. read the story to your child and explain unfamiliar words. step 3. have your child read the story to you and explain unfamiliar words step 4. ask your child questions about the story. page 1 of 2 instructions for story retell videoconference give yourself (participant) a disney character or a superhero name to use during the study. every two weeks, you and your child will be asked to participate in a short, parent-child story retell task on your electronic device (e.g., computer, cell phone, ipad, etc.). you will receive a link to a video conference with a research assistant. the interaction is going to be video recorded by a speech and language pathologist through your device. on this day, please say the following phrase(s) to your child. do not add any other words or questions. this is for study purposes. • “tell me what’s happening on this page.” • “tell me more.” page 2 of 2