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Conceptual and Prosodic Cues in Child-directed Speech can Help Children Learn the Meaning of Disjunction
At first glance, children’s word learning appears to be mostly
a problem of learning words like dog and run. However, it
is small words like and and or that enable the construction of
complex combinatorial language. How do children learn the
meaning of these function words? Using transcripts of parent-
child interactions, we investigate the cues in child-directed
speech that can inform the interpretation and acquisition of the
connective or which has a particularly challenging semantics.
Study 1 finds that, despite its low overall frequency, children
can use or close to parents’ rate by age 4, in some speech acts.
Study 2 uses annotations of a subset of parent-child interac-
tions to show that disjunctions in child-directed speech are ac-
companied by reliable cues to the correct interpretation (ex-
clusive vs. inclusive). We present a decision-tree model that
learns from a handful of annotated examples to correctly pre-
dict the interpretation of a disjunction. These studies suggest
that conceptual and prosodic cues in child-directed speech can
provide information for the acquisition of functional categories
like disjunction
Symbolic Play and Language Acquisition: The Dynamics of Infant-Caretaker Communication during Symbolic Play
Infant symbolic play and language acquisition have long been linked. While both activities are inherently social and their acquisition is typically scaffolded by a competent other (Vygotsky, 1978), most studies investigating the symbolic play-language link have considered it in contexts of solitary play. This thesis examines the dynamic nature of the relationship in a semi-naturalistic setting. Fifty-two infant-caretaker dyads engaged in a 20-minute play session that manipulated play type through the use of different toy sets (symbolic versus non-symbolic). Study 1 showed that play contexts influenced language: in symbolic play, infants spoke more and their language and interactions were more complex. CDS was more interactionally demanding (more questions and mimetics) in symbolic play, while in non-symbolic play it was more directive (imperatives and naming). Study 2 established that conversational turn dynamics patterns differed: there were more conversational turns in symbolic play, turn transitions were longer, and infants were more likely to control entire turn sequences. Study 3 demonstrated that symbolic play allowed for greater and richer content alignment: there were more semantic repetitions and infants were more likely to choose the topic of conversation than their parents. Study 4 revealed more complex and demanding epistemic exchanges of information in symbolic play: infants were more likely to inform, assert, and build on previous information when they spoke. Parents were more likely to actively engage the infants in symbolic play by seeking or requesting information, but the ambiguity of symbolic play also meant that it was more difficult for participants to understand each other. When combined, the results of these four studies suggest that symbolic play is a challenging but communicatively rich environment for infants' language development, constituting a zone of proximal development deriving from the need to establish shared intentionality during interaction