Firstly, due to the way this project is nested within a larger project, I am limited in the extent to which I can extend my analysis. Thus many of the limitations in this section relate to the fact that I am working from data that has come from a pilot study as well as the fact that I am working within a larger project that is still being developed. Apart from this main limitation, I will now discuss nine other methodological limitations and challenges.
1. As alluded to above, the manner in which the initial data were captured on Microsoft Access does not account for which synonym a child knows, nor for additional synonyms provided by a caregiver, nor any mispronunciations and phonological information. As mentioned, a more qualitative analysis is provided for these where relevant, however, this does pose a problem for the CDI adaptation since it is imperative to be able to statistically quantify which lexical items amongst synonyms should be kept and which removed for future pilots and the final tool.
The inclusion of synonyms also provides slightly misguided information about productive vocabulary in the following two ways:
1.1. If there exist two nuanced words in isiXhosa for one English word, for example, -phunga
‘drink something hot’ vs. -sela ‘drink something cold’, (‘drink’ in English) and -hamba ‘go without direction’ vs. -ya ‘go with direction’ (‘go’ in English), these appear as separate lexical items. However, since the isiXhosa CDI is adapted from an initial translation of the American- English CDI and needs to correspond as closely as possible to the South African English CDI for cross-linguistic comparison purposes, two commonly used isiXhosa words for one English word most often appear as synonyms instead of separate lexical items, for example, -funa/-rhalela for ‘want’. The problem is that this means that a child who knows both -funa and -rhalela is captured as knowing the same as a child who knows only -funa or -rhalela, when clearly the vocabulary of the former is richer. This may lead to an underestimation of some children’s productive vocabulary.
66 1.2. Often, synonyms appear twice, for example, -funa appears as a synonym for ‘find’, in -fumana/-khangela/-funa, and it appears as a synonym for ‘want’, in -funa/-rhalela/-bawela/-nqwenela. This is problematic since often it is the case that the only option a child knows for both items ‘find’ and ‘want’ is -funa. This same issue is found with a number of other items such as idrink being the only word a child uses for items ‘juice’, ‘drink’, and ‘cooldrink’. This means it appears on captured data as if the child is able to produce two or more separate vocabulary items, when in fact they can only produce one. This is also extremely common with umama ‘mother’ in the family section since isiXhosa-speaking children refer to most older women as umama and not only their birth mother. Extensive evidence is also found of ‘boy’ being utata ‘dad’. Before data capture I thus scanned the forms for such items and removed them. There may, however, remain undetected cases which will cause productive vocabulary to be overstated, and ultimately this needs to be rectified for the future. At this stage of the adaptation, though, it thus makes it look like they know comparatively less (i.e. than an English-speaking child), however, it only points to the fact that in isiXhosa, at this particular age, separate lexical items for ‘boy’ or ‘woman’ (for example) are lacking.
These two points are expanded on in Section 5.1.3 when I problematise the assumption that Western linguistic constructs, ontologies and epistemologies are appropriate for the CDI exercise as applied to Bantu languages.
2. It appears as if the category distinctions were not always clear to the caregivers. By category distinctions, I mean that amanzi ‘water’, for example, is purposefully listed in both categories ‘Food and drinks’ and ‘Outside things’. This misperception on the part of the caregivers is evidenced by the manner in which they would respond to certain items listed in two or more categories. For example, the same synonym given for amanzi in ‘Food and drinks’, namely isela ‘something to drink’, is often listed again as the synonym for amanzi in ‘Outside things’. Thus if caregivers do not make the categorical distinction, possibly because they think the child does not, there may be an upward bias in children’s production caused by such instances. If fieldworkers are made aware of this then more care can be taken in explaining instructions to the caregivers. Although, if the end goal is to create a tool which can be left for a caregiver to fill out over a given period (for example over a week, as per the British CDI), without a fieldworker being present, then the efficiency and productiveness of asking words across categories under these circumstances need to be questioned. If these are to remain, then
67 it appears as if instructions at the outset will need to be more extensive, especially noting the importance of category distinctions.
3. Many of the sounds effects and animal sounds were not understood as written, but when appropriately ‘acted/sounded out’ then caregivers would understand. This points to the need to further develop this category, potentially with the aid of pictures, or again, via improved instructions about the importance of categories. There was additionally misunderstanding regarding igama lalo mntwana ‘the name of this child’, which is asking whether the child can say their own name. It appears, however, that caregivers may have interpreted this as whether the child can say the phrase igama lalo mntwana, mistakenly reporting their answer as negative. This is the same for ‘pet’s name’. Towards the end of the pilot phase it also became apparent to the research team that iphepha ‘paper’ was being used as the isiXhosa lexical item for ‘toilet paper’, which has a separate item on the CDI: itissue/
itoyileth-paper. This may also cause an upward bias in the results.
4. The demarcations of the ‘Household income’ variable are problematic, because 1) income is expressed annually instead of monthly (the latter we found was easier for the participants to recall) and 2) the income brackets do not give useful information about relative socio-economic status within this group. The majority of participants fall into the lowest category, and it is likely that the two that fall into the next category are at the lower end of that category, but, once again, the brackets as they currently stand do not allow us to capture this fact. My feedback on this to the larger team is resulting in the editing of the South-African English family history questionnaire for their first pilot. This also thus further informs the initial and subsequent pilots for other languages in the Southern African CDI adaptation too.
5. The question about when the child was born is a problem as many caregivers do not know in what week of pregnancy the birth occurred. The research team often had to reword this question to ask whether the pregnancy lasted the full nine-months or not, or whether the child was born early or on time. Despite the fact that this variable is not included in my analysis due to perfect collinearity with the ‘Twin’ variable, it may be that there is misreporting due to this problem described.
6. There is a question about the mother’s education level, but no question is asked about the education of the primary caregiver, that is, the individual completing the CDI. This may have interesting consequences and should be explored (e.g. Lindelow, 2008).
68 7. In the grammar section, caregivers expressed difficulty in answering Section B “please tell us what sounds most like how your child speaks now”. Although we use vocabulary based on that on the pre- pilot data, this nonetheless seemed problematic since caregivers did not know how to answer the question. They merely stated that their child could not use the word off which the example was based.
For example, they would respond “but my child does not say umfazi” when we asked “please tell us what sounds most like how your child speaks now: fazi,. mfazi or umfazi”. We managed to explain to them that umfazi was only an example and they should imagine if their child were to say other words like that, or if they did know that word, how they would say it. After this explanation caregivers seemed to understand with ease what it was that we were wanting, and thus this problem should cause relatively few issues for our data. It does, however, point to the need for clearer instructions if the tool is to be completed without a fieldworker present.
8. Due to time and financial constraints, this study’s sample group is small. Nonetheless, due to the relatively larger sample size from which to draw results as compared to similar Bantu language acquisition studies, especially regarding acquisition of certain grammatical structures, this study is nonetheless well placed to contribute to existing scholarship on child language acquisition.
Furthermore, these initial pilot study results will contribute to the development of the Southern African CDI project as a whole.
9. Lastly, the length of the CDI (specifically this pilot), as well as the long time it takes to complete, leads to participant and researcher fatigue. This potentially led to misreporting evidenced in the data.
For example, a caregiver would report that a child did not produce phi? ‘where?’ but when reporting the child’s three longest sentences they would offer Uphi umama? ‘Where is mom?’, clearly using phi.
Unfortunately, in many cases this was only discovered after the research was complete, which also points to the length of the CDI negatively impacting on the fieldworkers’ concentration levels. In cases such as this we do not fill in the production of phi? ourselves since it is not clear whether the misreporting is on the lack of production of phi? or in the three longest sentences the child could produce.
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4 Socio-demographic factors and variability in toddlers’ vocabulary production
The data analysis and discussion provided in this chapter is based upon data from the first isiXhosa CDI pilot. I statistically analyse a number of socio-demographic and environmental factors, as outlined in the methodology (see Chapter 3), which can affect variability in toddlers’ vocabulary production (interchangeably referred to as ‘production of words’ or ‘vocabulary size’ due to the inability to statistically account for synonyms produced). As an introduction to the analysis, I present scatter plots indicating the trends in vocabulary production according to age. Thereafter, I present and discuss the regression analysis and results.