Jun 22, 2018 - Mimicry comes into play in the child's development of speech rhythm as well. ... Ella's final Nutella, ân::ut [nÊÊt] ella at 480, was elaborately.
6/22/18 David McNeill. For a book (not yet titled) on children’s first language. This is a section of the PART 2 Chapter 4 Speech-sound development on speech-rhythm to be added to page 14 and continuing. I repeat the “Nutella” examples right before and the references section that follows. 453 454 455 456 457 458 459 460 461 462 463 464 465 466 … 480
CHI:
CHI:
nut↑[nʌt] ella (0.9) daddy , yeah (0.5) nut[nut]ella and nut[nʌt] ella (.) ↑A::T would be silly , it would wouldn't it (0.2) the sound (0.5) nut[nut]ella and nut[nʌt] ella (0.6) yeah
CHI:
n::ut [nʌʌt] ella
CHI: FAT: CHI: FAT: CHI: FAT:
(spacing in 453, 458, 464 and 480 as in original) Pronunciation: ʌ = the “u” in “Strut” u = the vowel in “goose”
Speech rhythm, mimicry, and internalization Mimicry comes into play in the child’s development of speech rhythm as well. The infant-adult collaboration is rhythmical from birth on. At first, perhaps only the infant entrains the adult but by 2 months the adult entrains the infant as well (see Meltzoff). Rhythm is an aspect of speech-for-attachment and it undergoes changes through babbling, first-words and gesture-orchestrated speech in Acquisition 1, and gesture–speech unity in Acquisition 2. Much as Vygotsky described inner speech as internalizing social interaction part of this development of rhythm is the infant’s internalizing the two-person collaboration. The internalization shapes how the child achieves pulses of speech and thought. Rhythm, originally two-person, becomes one-person, itself a kind of mimicry of the Other on a permanent basis. We can understand internalization as a product of Acquisition 2’s self-response and the social presence it creates for one’s own gestures, but there are steps taken to reach this state. First, the quasi-ideophone provides rhythm from the action the speech-sound resembles. There presumably is no internalization. Next, the ideophone carries rhythm based on action in the same
way but with the addition of semantic relations; the first of pulses of meaning. In the "dark age", the rhythm from the ideophone declines and the self-response begins. We see internalization for the first time in the partial gestures of head nods. They particularly appear when something is difficult for the infant to say. Perhaps internalization itself is fostered to overcome difficulty. So from ideophone-rhythm, through had nods, to internalization with Acquisition 2 selfresponse. Here then is the theory I propose of the rhythm of speech – not only the intrinsic rhythmicity of human action, but of speech-for-attachment, a two-person affair gone internal, with mimicry, ideophones and self-response the tickets. "Charlotte’s" rhythm was from the start in the form of quasi-ideophones. The inherent rhythm of movement would have been the source. Iverson and Thelen (1999) found “a close temporal relationship between the onset of babbling and changes in patterns of rhythmic hand activity.” They speculate that rhythmical limb movements facilitate babbling. The last of her babbling is a clear example – “bop bop”, with her hand hitting the bathtub rim, the hits setting the rhythm. Whether to call it internalized in unclear. In any case, there is not yet meaning. Rhythmicity with meaning comes with the ideophones of Acquisition 1. They could be rhythmical actions, much as in babbling. Internalization has begun by age 2. Ella at 2 years, in high Acquisition 1 and starting the "dark age", made head-nods timing with speech (from Forrester on CHILDES, examples below, thanks to Elena Levy). Ella’s final Nutella, “n::ut [nʌʌt] ella at 480, was elaborately rhythmical and while it might have mimicked her father’s Nutella at 464, the delay means the two-person pulse was internalized. She was then 3 years old. The nods at 2 can be explained as steps toward internalization: E: (not looking at father; looking straight ahead) [buy it the shop] E: th at shop E: ooh ooh we taaa a caar wiv wiba* Daddy (*Ella’s pronunciation of Sarah)
nodding head in rhythm head nod nodding in rhythm
Ella nods her head in time with her speech much like beats (beats with hands do not appear until later). Here we see rhythm going inside, leaving traces on the outside. So, the “nod cases” are conditions where challenges and advancements are taking place. Perhaps reflecting this process, she was uncharacteristically selfabsorbed during these utterances, gazing into empty space, in contrast to her usual enthusiastic engagement and gaze at her father and others around her in the family. Also, the difficulty with speech that evoked nods could mean she was internalizing constructions as part of this process, perhaps buoying them on rhythmic nods. The path of internalization then may be more active than usually thought – the child
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walling off the outside world, entering a closeted, inner world of language and meaning. Such is the path of internalization. Elena Levy, who told me of Ella’s nods, has interesting insights in new work on the internalization of constructions. I end this section with a brief touch on the subject. Mimicry, or “quotations”, play a signal role. We have no information from the sources on gesture, action or ideophones and so cannot connect it to action, but we can see mimicry and the role it plays. Constructions are what the infant internalizes in these observations. Constructions can be considered templates for orchestrating speech by a meaning which is not itself a template. From internalizing constructions the child distills intuitions of well-formedness, a quality of the static dimension. And they may congeal around a rhythmic pulse, even from the start. The example here involves a causative construction built around a single word, “pretty”: “something pretty for someone”. New elements enter carried by mimicries of self and others (the subject is “K” from Moerk & Moerk 1979). It begins as the mimicry of something the infant’ mother says to her. This gives a template. The meaning is worked out over some 5 months through play with putting a variety of other words in it (which critically are not semantically inappropriate). Causative Template Age 1;9
Agent
1;9 2;1 2;4 2;4 2;4
|-------------Cause–Result--------------| |--Recipient--| have to make you pretty for Bob have
I’m I’m I’m (are you watching) me
to make
you
pretty for
making Johnny Lion pretty making it pretty for making all the things pretty for make
this castle
pretty for
brother brother Linda Linda Linda
Based on Levy, In progress
Levy writes of this history: K.’s utterance … originated in a construction that was routinely used by her mother as she combed her daughter’s hair, “I have to make you pretty for [name]”. … K. elaborated on this construction over the course of months, as she used and re-used the construction, making changes to every part of it except its core, “pretty.” [The table] shows such changes over a five-month period. At 1;9 and 2;1 “Bob,” “brother brother,” and “Johnny Lion” were substituted for “you,” the last two names from storybooks; and at 2;4 three different nonanimate nouns, 16
“it,” “all the things,” and “this castle,” appeared in the same slot, with “Linda” in the final one. The last utterance, “are you watching me make this castle pretty for Linda,” is formed by combining the now-analyzed construction with a second one, “are you watching me.”
For speech-rhythm, the sequence of the Acquisition 3 development seems to be: o first, mimicry of motion qua motion in quasi-ideophones (babbling); o then motion with meaning in ideophones (first words); o next nodding as the meaning pulse internalizes (high Acquisition 1 and "dark age"); o and lastly self-response, the internal model of two-person rhythm (Acquisition 2). Throughout, rhythm moves from the outside with full mimicry, inward with nods, and inside with internalization of the mimicked two-person rhythm.
References Carter, Anne L. 1979. The disappearance schema: Case study of a second-year communication behavior. In E. Ochs & B.B. Schieffelin (eds.), Developmental Pragmatics, pp. 131-165. Academic Press. Clark, Eve. 2016. First Language Acquisition. Cambridge University Press. Elbers, Lockie &Ton, Josi. 1985. Play pen monologues: The interplay of words and babbles in the first words period. Journal of Child Language 12: 551-565. Everett, Daniel L. 2017. How Language Began: The story of humanity’s greatest invention. Norton. Flax, J., Lahey, M., Harris, K. & Boothroyd, A. 1991. Relations between prosodic variables and communicative functions. Journal of Child Language 18(1): 3-19. Fowler, C. A. & Rosenblum, L. D. 1990. Duplex perception: A comparison of monosyllables and slamming doors. Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance. 16 (4): 742–754. Furuyama, Nobuhiro. 2000. Gestural interaction between the instructor and the learner in origami instruction, in D. McNeill (ed.), Language and Gesture, pp. 99–117. Cambridge University Press. Gentilucci, Maurizio & Dalla Volta, Riccardo. 2007. The motor system and the relationship between speech and gesture. Gesture 7:159-177. Greenfield, Patricia M. & Smith, Joshua H. 1976. The Structure of Communication in Early Language Development. Academic Press. Haiman, John. 2018. Ideophones and the evolution of language. Cambridge University Press. Huttenlocher, Janellen, Haight, Wendy, Bryk, Anthony, Seltzer, Michael and Lyons, Thomas. 1991. Early Vocabulary Growth: Relation to Language Input and Gender. Developmental Psychology 27(2): 236-248. Kendon, Adam. 1991. Some considerations for a theory of language origins. Man 26: 199-221.
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Kita, S. 1993. Language and thought interface: A study of spontaneous gestures and Japanese mimetics. PhD Dissertation, Departments of Linguistics and Psychology, The University of Chicago Regenstein Library. Jakobson, Roman. 1968. Child language, aphasia, and phonological universals. Mouton (German version published in 1941). Leopold, Werner F. 1947. Speech Development of a Bilingual Child. A Linguist's Record. Vol. II. Sound-learning in the first two years. Northwestern University Press. Levy Elena. In progress. The early development of discourse: Linguistic feedback and metalinguistic change (tentative title). Lock, John L. & Pearson, Dawn M. 1990. Linguistic significance of babbling: Evidence from a tracheostomized infant. Journal of Child Language 17(1): 1-16. Mampe, Birgit, Friederici, Angela D., Christophe, Anne and Wermke, Kathleen. 2009. Newborns’ cry melody is shaped by their native language. Current Biology 19:1-4. Meltzoff, A. N. & Moore, M. K. 1983. Newborn infants imitate adult facial gestures. Child Development. 54(3): 702-709. Miles, Kelly, Yuen, Ivan, Cox, Felicity & Demuth, Katherine. 2016. The prosodic licensing of coda consonants in early speech: interactions with vowel length. Journal of Child Language 43: 265-282. Moerk, E. L. & Moerk, C. 1979. Quotations, imitations, and generalizations: Factual and methodological analyses. International Journal of Behavioral Development. 2: 43-72.s Oller, D. Kimbrough, Wieman, Leslie A. Doyle, William J. & Ross, Carol. 1976. Infant babbling and speech. Journal of Child Language. 3: 1-11. Pika, Simone & Bugnyar, Thomas. 2011. “The use of referential gestures in ravens (Corvus corax) in the wild.” Nature Communications 29 November 2011. Smit, A. B. 1993. Phonologic error distributions in the Iowa-Nebraska Articulation Norms Project: word-initial consonant clusters. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 36(5): 931-47. Tomasello, Michael. 1999. The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. Harvard University Press. Williams, H. & Nottebohm, F. 1985. Auditory responses in avian vocal motor neurons: A motor theory for song perception in birds. Science. 229 (4710): 279–282.
New points Quasi-ideophones distinguished from ideophones, and both distinguished from gesture–speech unity. I came to appreciate ideophones as central to Acquisition 1 in discussions with John Haiman about his new book, cited above. Also, speech-rhythm links to internalizaion.
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