Language and Learning

1976

Does the child’s emerging understanding of other minds interact with his/her growing understanding of language? If so, in what ways? This paper focuses on the recent proposals of Daniel Hutto and colleagues regarding the role played by the child’s developing skills in narrative discourse in his/her acquisition of folk-psychological understanding. What must the child understand about the properties and powers of language in order to become a competent participant in narrative exchanges and so, according to the proponents of Hutto’s narrative-practice approach, acquire an understanding of other people’s thoughts, beliefs, desires, intentions, and reasons for acting? Highlights ► Children acquire folk psychological understanding by means of narrative practices. ► Children must develop metadiscursive skills to participate in narrative practices. ► Metadiscursive Practice Hypothesis complements Hutto’s Narrative Practice Hypothesis. Keywords: Language development; Folk psychology; Metadiscourse; The Narrative Practice Hypothesis; Daniel Hutto; Child language Article Outline 1. Language and folk-psychological understanding 2. The Narrative Practice Hypothesis 3. Metadiscursive understanding 4. Metadiscursive nativism 5. False-belief and the folk-psychological dilemma 6. The Metadiscursive Practice Hypothesis 7. Understanding language and understanding others Acknowledgements References How we learn, as initiates into a practice, is constitutive of what we learn. (Williams, 2010, p. 21)

2010

2017

The article undertakes the new emerging perspective of language as a dynamic form of activity between interacting human agents and redefines it as “an activity in which wordings play a part” (Cowley). Drawing on the views of Maturana, Bottineau, Harris, Thibault, Cowley and others, the author situates the concept of language in the vast field of ecology, agency and interactivity. Language thus conceived is not a code-like denotational structure but an aspect of sense-saturated communicative coordination and a result of human actions and co-actions. On this view we describe a conversation as an unfolding process of two or more interactants entering the cognitive dynamics which allows them to connect to each other and to their environments thus pursuing their individual and shared goals. This can be referred to as sense-making through dialogicality.

Jackie Jia Lou, 2009

Professor Scollon remarked once in a seminar I was taking that no one (at Georgetown at least) remembered that his early research had investigated child language acquisition. His dissertation work on the development of syntax was published as a book Conversations with a One Year Old and in a condensed form as a book chapter . In this review I will attempt in a small way to reclaim the memory of that work by examining its contribution to applied linguistics and, in keeping with the other reviews in this issue, discuss how it influenced and relates to my own research.

2007

her mother, it is enough that, when together, she responds to the effects of parental alertness (1995: 198). Chimpanzees play similar proto-language games when, for example, they present a bodily area to be groomed. This constitutes a generalizable request akin to a child's special wiggle that shows she wants to get out of her chair (1993: 174). Although humans and chimps invent similar 'projects', their lives soon diverge. For Canfield, humans alone rely on stylization (1995: 202) as a basis for conventional or prelinguistic gestures (e.g. pointing). Later, drawing on animal nature, they extend these actions to verbal signs. With verbalization, a child becomes a cultural creature. Without leaving a framework of interaction and gesture, she employs words "from a common vocabulary" (1993: 177). "One fine day", Wittgenstein (RPP II: 171) notes, she steps into language. Around their first birthday, children use words to make requests. For Canfield, it is 'brute fact' that we make, comply with, and describe wants (1993: 178). Resembling as it does the gestural expression of pre-linguistic games, there is no deep puzzle about this new word-language. The indeterminacy of translation is a non-issue because, in time, one way of acting replaces another. Looking across cultures, Canfield (1993) provides a tentative classification of language games into types: 1a) making requests; 1b) responding to requests; 2a) making intention-utterances; 2b) responding to intention utterances; 3a) uttering prohibitions; 3b) responding to prohibitions; 4) greeting; and 5) mere naming. By the end of the second year, though, cultures and groups diverge. For example, in one setting a child proceeds by saying things like 'Climbing chair' or 'Duck, frog downstairs'. Early intention-utterances begin to morph into announcements of plans and, then, branch around words like 'then' (e.g. 'Jump first, then shirt'). In later months, verbal fillings allow forward projection of action (e.g. 'eat later'), decision making ('I'll be there at 3 o'clock') and, eventually, promising ('I will be there at 3 o'clock'). An anthropological perspective brings much of value to conceptualizing how language influences development. By stressing that talk is fundamental in shaping how they act, Canfield shows that, early on, infants do not learn language. Accepting Wittgenstein's view that language is an extension of action (1976: 740), he takes the view that children-not brains-learn to participate in talk. In this way, he avoids many discussions that bedevil linguistics. His approach sidesteps debates between rationalists and empiricists as well as arguments about which aspects of wordlanguage are 'learned' outside-in and which grow inside-out. Emphasis on how children find a way into talk makes it necessary to posit neither that brains are general learning-mechanisms nor that they run language-ready programs. 2 What matters, then, is how a baby comes to use utterances to act, understand and mean. Anthropological distance makes the model simple. Above all, it distinguishes the 'natural processes' of the first months from the natural-cultural events that are made possible by conventions. With the rise of hybrid processes at the end of first year, the infant's activity meshes with word-language. So far, so good. Not only does this fit current views of human development but it provides rich description of how children use 'universal language customs'. However, given his reliance on diary records of Z's doings, Canfield is bound to emphasize speech and the speaker. Developmental effects are conflated with evolved biases and, given his method, understanding falls out of the picture. In emphasizing that children share adult perspectives, he underplays both the non-conventional ('Everything has a shadow except ants') and the particularity of dialogue. This happens, above all, because examining how speech can be described requires him to emphasise what is universal. The diary method also requires Canfield to play down the adult's role and, by

Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 2014

We argue that conversational exchanges are a special case of input where converge unique properties that have a great potential for language acquisition, such as the motivation to communicate, the information about language meanings and structures, and the construction of new ways of expression. Results from the literature and from new data analyses, show that conversational exchanges have both immediate and long-term effects. Two properties are considered here to have a particularly great potential for learning. One is the facilitated access to unities of meaning underlying the successive transformations in utterance shapes, cognitively analogous to the discovery of physical and logico-mathematical invariances under the transformations of shape and configuration. The other is the co-construction of sequences that foreshadow behaviors still beyond the individual child's present capacities. Conversation provides the primary setting for language acquisition, and it is in conversational settings that children display their emerging knowledge together with their skill in using a language Eve V. Clark (2009, p. 41) (1) Camille (1;10.12) and her mother Mother 1 : c'est quoi ces oiseaux là? [pointing at image of swans on book] 'what are these birds there?' Child 1 : les oiseaux ils volent 'the birds they fly' Mother 2 : comment ils s'appellent ces oiseaux là? 'how are they called these birds there?' Child 2 : regarde les oiseaux ils volent 'look the birds they fly' Mother 3 : oui les oiseaux ils volent mais ceux-là ils volent pas ils nagent là [pointing at image of swans on book] 'yes the birds they fly, but these do not fly, they swim there' Child 3 : hein? Mother 4 : ils nagent ceux-là, ils volent pas # hein? ## ils sont dans l'eau [CHI looks at image and MOT alternatively]## c'est des cygnes? 'those swim, they don't fly # hein? ##they are in the water, they are swans?' Child 4 : nh [confirmation] [%act: looking at image on the book] Mother 5 : t'en a déjà vu toi des cygnes #1.6 où c'est que t'as vu des cygnes toi? 'you have seen already swans you #1.6 where have you seen swans you?' Child 5 : dans l'eau 'in the water' Mother 6 : oui ils nagent dans l'eau les cygnes ## on en a vu au bord du lac nous? ## on avait donné du pain 'yes they swim in the water ## we have seen them on the lake?## we had given them bread?' Child 6 : oui %tra: yes Mother 7 : nh? tu te rappelles? 'nh? do you remember?' Child 7 : edonné pain cygnes [turning towards OBS]