No quote or information derived from it may be published without full acknowledgment of the source. Numbers after an abbreviation represent the traditional numbering of the noun classes in isiXhosa (e.g. SC1 = subject concordance of Cl. 1; PM3 = possessive marker of Cl. 3).
Introduction
AmaXhosa and IsiXhosa: the people and the language
Sesoto and isiZulu are also Southern Bantu languages and fall into the S33 and S42 zones respectively (Gowlett, 2003). Any differences in the linguistic details of the Southern Bantu languages from which the data are drawn are acknowledged where relevant.
Background to assessment procedures
Culture and testing
They warn against the pitfalls of thinking that tests can simply be translated without reference to culture, citing the case of one particular instrument that, when translated into Arabic, resulted in normal Sudanese adults scoring equivalent to those of U.S. adults. Brain-damaged United States (Carter et al., 2005). As also acknowledged by Cockcroft et al. 2015), this approach can contribute to the perpetuation of racist beliefs and discrimination.
Biases in assessments
5 They dispute the empiricist conceptual frameworks that lay behind early assessment tools and argue that there can be no such thing as 'culture-free' assessments that operate in "context-free clinical settings" (Carter et al. Reliable research on child language acquisition is therefore critically needed in order to inform culturally and linguistically appropriate assessments that can lead to accurate diagnosis and treatment of communication disorders and ultimately improve children's early childhood developmental trajectories.
Objectives and research questions
Socio-demographic factors affecting variability in toddlers’ vocabulary production
In Chapter 4, the first results chapter, I statistically analyze a number of socio-demographic and environmental factors that may influence variability in young children's vocabulary production. Note that expressive vocabulary and productive vocabulary are used synonymously; expressive or productive vocabulary size thus refers to the number of lexical items a child can say.
Lexical acquisition in isiXhosa-speaking toddlers
As explained in Chapter 3, the independent variables in the model were adjusted based on the F-test of joint significance.
Grammatical acquisition in isiXhosa-speaking toddlers
Dissertation outline
9 of the isiXhosa CDI, together with the methodology of my analyses, are described in Chapter 3. In Chapter 4 I respond to research question 1.4.1 by statistically analyzing the role of environmental and demographic factors on productive vocabulary of toddlers, and in Chapter 5 I consider grammatical and lexical acquisition descriptively in the answer to research questions 1.4.2 and 1.4. 3 respectively.
Testing communicative development: communicative development inventories
There are more than 60 modifications of the instrument worldwide (Alcock et al., 2015), but it is beyond the capacity of this thesis to present the findings of all these modifications. As mentioned, the MacArthur-Bates CDI has been adapted for more than 60 languages worldwide (Alcock et al., 2015), but until the development of the .
Theories of child language acquisition
- Behaviourist theories
- The innateness hypothesis/nativism
- Social interactionism
- Theory of linguistic determinants
In the process of language acquisition, the theory of linguistic determinants gives weight to the influence of the language to be acquired (Idiata, 2005), that is, acquisition strategies are not independent of language. Idiata (2005) further shows that by comparing children's acquisition of NPx in Bantu languages, the early influence of the language to be acquired is important for the acquisition process.
Vocabulary acquisition and important considerations
- The role of SES and culture
- Measuring SES: maternal education
- The role of sibling and multiple secondary caregivers
- The role of gender
- The role of birth order
- Twins
- Ear problems
- The role of attending a crèche
- The role of multilingual abilities on language acquisition
- Implications for monolingual vocabulary assessments
Similar high levels of the negative voice are observed in rural Kenya (LeVine et al., 1996 in Vogt, Mastin and Aussems, 2015). These realities of suboptimal stimulation for South African children, regardless of the language they may be exposed to, must be taken into account.
Combining words and grammatical acquisition
Word combinations
Initially, however, these may be unproductive combinations (multi-word statements that are not single words from the child's perspective; Fenson et al., 1994) and speech will be "telegraphic"; this is speech that is free of inflectional, tense, plural and agreement markers, but contains the usual content words (O'Grady, Dobrovolsky and Katamba. From ages 2-2;6, however, grammatical acquisition becomes apparent and children begin to use basic inflections and function words17 in their sentences (Fenson et al also found a strong correlation between the size of the vocabulary and the grammatical development of children from 1;4-2;6 years, the correlation is confirmed by Simonsen et al.
Grammatical acquisition
Despite the fact that Isangu and Chichewa are not Southern Bantu languages, due to the grammatical cognate and structural similarity between Bantu (Suzman, 1996), a. Locative positions (prepositions) Prepositions in isiXhosa are formed by attaching the locative position + kwa- to the noun.
Discussion of grammatical acquisition
- Manner of NPx acquisition
- Insights into potential semantic motivations
- Insights into potential morphological motivations
- Insights into potential phonetic, phonological, and prosodic motivations
- Insights into potential morphophonological motivations
- Morphological and phonological agreement overgeneralisations: insights into
- Subject markers
- Other agreement markers
- The ‘error-free’ concept
- Discussion conclusion
Suzman (1996) also suggests that the position of the noun in the sentence38 will be correlated with the use or non-use of NPx. 9-prefix (or pre-prefix, in accordance with Herbert's (1978) analysis, who reanalyzes the nasal of Cl. 9 as part of the stem).
Conclusion
I briefly provide some methodological background before describing the need for a pre-pilot and the methods that were used. I then explain the data collection and analysis procedures for Chapters 4 and 5 (the results chapters), and the chapter concludes with a consideration of methodological limitations.
Methodological background
49 In the use of instruments across different cultural groups, structural equivalence is "the extent to which item content is perceived in the same way and [the instruments'] underlying constructs are similarly structured across groups" (Byrne et al. Only if structural equivalence maintained across tests, valid comparisons can be made between languages and cultures.
Pre-pilot methodology
Data collection
In addition, in one of the rural focus groups, I consulted the mothers about the appropriateness of the words on the list. During my time in the countryside, my formal data collection was further supplemented by data collection through informal interactions with one of the girls (2;10 years old), whose spontaneous speech was recorded in step 2.1 above.
Data capture
Rural (Cata): two focus groups were groups with mothers/caregivers of children in the toddler age group. The transcriptions were further used to inform a table of grammar acquisition “errors” (see Appendix F), and caregiver responses from focus groups and interviews were documented alongside the translated American English version of the CDI to inform which words were commonly known.
Pilot-one
Development of the instrument (toddler CDI in isiXhosa)
- Words
- Sentences and Grammar
- Family history questionnaire
This section is also informed by Dr Alcock's findings from the grammar section of the Kenyan CDI. 44 See Demuth (1998) regarding Sesotho-speaking children's use of the appropriate in the 2- to 3-year-old age group.
Participants and location
This questionnaire was pre-piloted prior to pilot-1 fieldwork with two caregivers of different SES in Cape Town (aged 60 and 23), to ensure that the questions elicited the necessary responses and to avoid children's scores being negatively influenced on due to poorly translated questions. 58 Table 3-1 shows the age and gender distribution of the young children for whom a CDI was carried out.
Pilot data capturing, methods of analysis, and statistics
Pilot data capturing, method of analysis, and statistics for Chapter 4
- Dependent variable
- Independent variables
The presence of a sibling's caregiver is recorded if a secondary caregiver under the age of 18 is listed in the family history questionnaire. The variables tested were 'Ear problems', 'Number of adults in the home', 'Number of children in the home', and.
Method of analysis and data handling for Chapter 5
Methodological limitations
Furthermore, these initial results of the pilot study will contribute to the development of the South African CDI project as a whole. Unfortunately, in many cases this was discovered only after the survey was completed, which also suggests that the length of the CDI has a negative effect on the concentration of field workers.
Vocabulary production trends according to age
I statistically analyze a number of socio-demographic and environmental factors, as outlined in the methodology (see chapter 3), which may influence the variability in young children's vocabulary production (alternately referred to as 'production of words' or 'vocabulary size' due to the inability to statistically account for produced synonyms). As an introduction to the analysis, I present scatterplots indicating the trends in vocabulary production by age.
Regression analysis: results and discussion
On average, having a sibling as a secondary caregiver is associated with a relatively large decrease in expressive vocabulary of 18.6 percentage points, all else constant (p<0.01). All else being equal, attending daycare is associated with an average increase in vocabulary of 36.8 percentage points.
Conclusion
Therefore, based on the two research questions, the discussion is divided into a lexical analysis of the CDI and data (Section 5.1) and then a subsequent analysis of the grammar items (Section 5.2). In Section 5.1.3 I discuss how movement is lexicalized in isiXhosa verbs, but the way in which this is achieved is intrinsic through grammatical constructs.
Lexical acquisition in isiXhosa-speaking toddlers
- Order of category of words produced
- Lexical shifts and other phenomena
- Ndibhala inkomo ‘I’m writing a cow’
- Uyangxola bhabha ‘the baby is noisy’
- Esikolweni, endlini, and other words known only in the locative
- Linguistic and ontological considerations
- What is a word in Bantu?
- Polysemic words
- Synecdoche and category extension
- Semantic overextension
- Incompatibility across lexical items
- Offbeat considerations
- Section conclusion
This could not be captured on this version of the CDI, but nevertheless points to the frequency of sounds in this age group's speech. The boy producing zoba in the CDI data ages towards the upper end of the cohort at 2;3.
Grammatical acquisition in isiXhosa-speaking toddlers
Noun Prefixes
- Class 1
- Class 2
- Class 3
- Class 4
- Class 5
- Class 6
- Class 7
- Class 9
- Class 10
Production by age shows that both the oldest (2;6) and youngest (1;5) children can produce the full form of the Cl. 9 NPx (see e.g. Section 5.2.1.8 on Cl. 9 NPx acquisition), which if asked in this way would not necessarily provide any interesting or comparable results on Cls 5 and 9 NPx acquisition.
Identificative copulative prefixes
With regard to the first question (1), nine of the children caught by the CDI produce it copulatively and 11 do not. 9 nouns as she did with others, which may indicate that the Cl.
Subject Markers
113 In the spontaneous speech data, there are eight cases of missing subject markers in the present tense. Consistent with the existing literature, errors of incorrect subject-marker agreement are rare in the spontaneous speech data.
Object markers
So both present tense is disjunctive and subject is absent in the less complex option (a). The second question (2) tests whether the child produces object markers - so present tense disjunctive marker is present, but the object marker is missing in the less complex example (a).
Adjective markers
117 Other inaccuracies from spontaneous speech include a missing object marker for "you" in a construction that also lacks the future tense. Itshaje instead of yitshaje 'charge it' (missing the consonant 'y' of the object marker, -yi-).
Possessive markers
However, there are no cases of agreement errors for possessions in the spontaneous speech data (ie ya- used with a Cl. 5 noun), so this seems less likely for this grammatical element. Given the older age of the children recorded in the spontaneous speech data, the lack of the possessive marker for Cl.
Possessive pronouns
- Possessive pronouns with identificative copulatives
A closer look at the frequency of the words shows that this is probably the case. His/her (eyakhe only) is used by all six children after 2;1 years, with the exception of one of the children aged 2;4.
Locative positions (prepositions)
No children are able to use the full adult form of the preposition with the subject marker present. The use of the form with the missing subject marker varies throughout the age group.
Demonstratives
Of the eight children who produce the partial form, the youngest is 1.9 and the oldest 2.6. Five of the seven children producing the second position demonstrative also produced the third position.
Presentative demonstratives
This error is consistent with the findings that the two oldest children in the CDI cohort are also not yet able to produce ezi. Thus, despite the relatively earlier emergence of second and third position presentatives, it appears that children in this age cohort are very much still acquiring this subject matter.
Verb forms
- Negation
- Tense
- Mood
There are six instances in the spontaneous speech data (all from the 2-year-old boy who made the perfect tense errors in the previous section) of the future tense being used without a subject marker, for example, zobethwa instead of uzobethwa' you will be hit' . It is modeled on the form in which most spontaneous speech errors occur, namely: the subject marker is present but the subjunctive is absent.
Section summary
Grammatical item Age of acquisition (existing literature) Age of acquisition (this study) Noun classes Cl. Time: The use of different time markers begins around 2 years of age, and expansion occurs around 2;6.
Section conclusion
A cognitive and corpus linguistic reanalysis of the learning of the Zulu noun class system. I want to get in the car. %sit: Mother repeats for clarity.. sit: Mother repeats for clarity.. sit: Researcher repeats for clarity.. afr: I messed up in the house.. gls: ayivuleki. %afr: it doesn't want to open.. sit: Repeat after child 3. Nayi is the isiZulu presentative for Cl. 9, see Doke, Malcolm, Sikakana, Vilakazi English-Zulu/Zulu-English Dictionary Witwatersrand University Press.
