Input in the early stages of language acquisition

Joost van de Weijer

Department of Linguistics and Phonetics
University of Lund, Sweden

Montag, 29.01.2001, 16 c.t. Uhr, Hörsaal 9
During the first year of life, infants acquire some remarkable perceptual skills which are relevant for later language development. In this period, especially in the second half, they become sensitive to characteristics of the language they hear. Nevertheless, relatively little is known about linguistic input to children at this early age, since most studies of language input focus on language addressed to children older than one year.

During my presentation, I will present the results of a project that was carried out to complement this lack in our knowledge. The topic of the project was the linguistic input to an infant when she was between six and nine months of age. In order to present a complete picture of the input, nearly all the language that this infant was exposed to was recorded.

I will explain how the data were collected and processed, and subsequently discuss some aspects that characterized the input. For instance: How much language did the input consist of, and, was the language addressed to the infant characterized by some typical modifications that have been reported in other studies?

sfb-logo Zur Startseite Erstellt von: Anke Weinberger (2001-01-17).
Wartung durch: Anke Weinberger (2001-01-17).