Acquisition in the course of conversation

published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

Language acquisition: the child's spontaneous descriptions of events in time

There are many different ways of describing a series of events in time; for instance, (a) X happened and, (then) I happened, (b) X happened before Y happened, (c) Before Y happened. X happened, (d) After X happened. Y happened. and (e) Y happened after X happened. Three principles -- order of mention, derivational simplicity and choice of theme -- are proposed to account for how adults choose temporal descriptions in various contexts. The principles are all supported by psychological and linguistic data. These three principles serve as the basis for a developmental hypothesis which predicts the order of appearance of the syntactic constructions used by young children to describe events in temporal succession. It predicts that the main stages that will appear in the children's descriptions during an early period of language acquisition are, first, compound description as in (a) above, then complex descriptions with a subordinate clause in second position, as in (b) and (e), and lastly, complex descriptions with the subordinate clause in first place, as in (c) and (d).This hypothesis is confirmed by data collected over a six-months period from fifteen three-and-a-half year-old children, some of whom had just begun to use temporal subordinate clauses in their speech. The principal subordinate conjunctions that were used by the majority of the children in this study are when, if and because, A number of other temporal conjunctions also appeared but their use was not so widespread.Developmentally, the notion of time seems to start with the recognition that events happen at particular times (i.e. at lunchtime) and to progress successively to the relating of these events simultaneous with, preceding and following each other. Evidence that temporal subordinate clauses develop in this order is provided by the types of temporal adverb and conjunction used in the very early stage of language acquisition

Turn-taking: a case study of early gesture and word use in answering WHERE and WHICH questions

When young children answer questions, they do so more slowly than adults and appear to have difficulty finding the appropriate words. Because children leave gaps before they respond, it is possible that they could answer faster with gestures than with words. In this case study of one child from age 1;4 to 3;5, we compare gestural and verbal responses to adult Where and Which questions, which can be answered with gestures and/or words. After extracting all adult Where and Which questions and child answers from longitudinal videotaped sessions, we examined the timing from the end of each question to the start of the response, and compared the timing for gestures and words. Child responses could take the form of a gesture or word(s); the latter could be words repeated from the adult question or new words retrieved by the child. Or responses could be complex: a gesture + word repeat, gesture + new word, or word repeat + new word.Gestures were the fastest overall, followed successively by word-repeats, then new-word responses. This ordering, with gestures ahead of words, suggests that the child knows what to answer but needs more time to retrieve any relevant words. In short, word retrieval and articulation appear to be bottlenecks in the timing of responses: both add to the planning required in answering a question

Speaker Perspective and Lexical Acquisition

Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session Dedicated to the Contributions of Charles J. Fillmore (1994

The role of language in processes of internationalization: Considering linguistic heterogeneity and voices from within and out in two diverse contexts in Ontario

This multi-voiced paper considers the role of language and linguistic heterogeneity in relation to larger discourses and processes of internationalization and globalization in Canadian higher education by examining two particular educational contexts in Ontario: newly arrived adult students participating in Immigrant language training programs; and Franco-Ontarian students transitioning to post-secondary schools and gaining access to higher education. The authors argue for a multidimensional conceptual approach to theorizing internationalization; one that takes into account the significance of language from the global, transnational and local levels of the social world whereby linguistic heterogeneity is viewed as the “norm” and one that allows for a broader and deeper engagement when considering what international education might mean for citizenship, integration, and linguistic minorities in Canada

Development of a multivariable risk model integrating urinary cell DNA methylation and cell-free RNA data for the detection of significant prostate cancer

Background: Prostate cancer exhibits severe clinical heterogeneity and there is a critical need for clinically implementable tools able to precisely and noninvasively identify patients that can either be safely removed from treatment pathways or those requiring further follow up. Our objectives were to develop a multivariable risk prediction model through the integration of clinical, urine-derived cell-free messenger RNA (cf-RNA) and urine cell DNA methylation data capable of noninvasively detecting significant prostate cancer in biopsy naïve patients. Methods: Post-digital rectal examination urine samples previously analyzed separately for both cellular methylation and cf-RNA expression within the Movember GAP1 urine biomarker cohort were selected for a fully integrated analysis (n = 207). A robust feature selection framework, based on bootstrap resampling and permutation, was utilized to find the optimal combination of clinical and urinary markers in a random forest model, deemed ExoMeth. Out-of-bag predictions from ExoMeth were used for diagnostic evaluation in men with a clinical suspicion of prostate cancer (PSA ≥ 4 ng/mL, adverse digital rectal examination, age, or lower urinary tract symptoms). Results: As ExoMeth risk score (range, 0-1) increased, the likelihood of high-grade disease being detected on biopsy was significantly greater (odds ratio = 2.04 per 0.1 ExoMeth increase, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.78-2.35). On an initial TRUS biopsy, ExoMeth accurately predicted the presence of Gleason score ≥3 + 4, area under the receiver-operator characteristic curve (AUC) = 0.89 (95% CI: 0.84-0.93) and was additionally capable of detecting any cancer on biopsy, AUC = 0.91 (95% CI: 0.87-0.95). Application of ExoMeth provided a net benefit over current standards of care and has the potential to reduce unnecessary biopsies by 66% when a risk threshold of 0.25 is accepted. Conclusion: Integration of urinary biomarkers across multiple assay methods has greater diagnostic ability than either method in isolation, providing superior predictive ability of biopsy outcomes. ExoMeth represents a more holistic view of urinary biomarkers and has the potential to result in substantial changes to how patients suspected of harboring prostate cancer are diagnosed

Safety on the ground:using critical incident technique to explore the factors influencing medical registrars' provision of safe care

BACKGROUND: Avoidable patient harm in hospitals is common, and doctors in training can provide underused but crucial insights into the influencers of patient safety as those working 'on the ground' within the system. This study aimed to explore the factors that influence safe care from the perspective of medical registrars, to identify targets for safety-related improvements.METHODS: This study used enhanced critical incident technique (CIT), a qualitative methodology that results in a focused understanding of significant factors influencing an activity, to identify practical solutions. We interviewed 12 out of 17 consenting medical registrars in Scotland, asking them to recount their observations during clinical experiences where something happened that positively or negatively impacted on patient safety. Data were analysed manually using a modified content analysis with credibility checks as per enhanced CIT, with data exhaustiveness reached after six registrars.RESULTS: A total of 221 critical incidents impacting patient safety were identified. These were inductively placed into 24 categories within 4 overarching categories: Individual skills, encompassing individual behavioural and technical skills; Collaboration, regarding how communication, trust, support and flexibility shape interprofessional collaboration; Organisation, concerning organisational systems and staffing and Training environment, relating to culture, civility, having a voice and learning at work. Practical targets for safety-related interventions were identified, such as clear policies for patient care ownership or educational interventions to foster civility.CONCLUSIONS: This study provides a rigorous and focused understanding of the factors influencing patient safety in hospitals, using the 'insider' perspective of the medical registrar. Safety goes beyond the individual and is reliant on safe system design, interprofessional collaboration and a culture of support, learning and respect. Organisations should also promote flexibility within clinical practice when patient needs do not conform to standardised care pathways. We suggest targeted interventions within educational and organisational priorities to improve safety in hospitals.</p