The Acquisition of Clicks by Xhosa-Speaking Children

The article deals with the order of emergence of click consonants and the nature of click inventory. It reveals the course of development and differentiation of a phonological repertoire of a type different from those studied in depth to date. The sample consists of 10 children, three males and seven females between 1;0 and 3 years old. The study shows ample evidence of the extensive use of question and prompting routines directed at these Xhosa- speaking children and explains why these children learn these clicks so early despite how marked they are. Results describe the order of acquisition; the appearance of all basic clicks; the tempo between1;7and 2;0 years; the period of occurrence of a spurt; and the development of voiceless to voiced and nasalized clicks

African languages, linguistics, child speech and speech pathology – the connection

This article deals with the need for the incorporation of the study of child language in the field of African Linguistics. It gives an overview of some of the studies conducted in the area of acquisition of Xhosa with a view to developing norms for the development of Xhosa amongst monolingual Xhosa-speaking children. This is useful in the diagnosis of speech and language disorders using criterion referenced measures. The developmental data may be used in the development of culturally appropriate standardised assessment measures: which are severely lacking for the indigenous languages of South Africa

Acquisition of Tense in Xhosa: The Long and the Short of it

The purpose of the present paper it so determine when Xhosa-speaking children master the morphology of tense. Specifically, we ask when Xhosa-speaking children learn the conditions on the two forms of the Present and Recent Past tenses, namely the long and the short forms. Despite the fact that there are complex grammatical conditions on which form is appropriate in a sentence, the paper will demonstrate that young children can attend to these grammatical conditions

Children’s Insensitivity to Information from the Target of Agreement: The Case of Xhosa

The paper presents an account of number agreement phenomena arguing that the target of agreement may be bleached of number information. This would explain why English-speaking children have difficulty relying on the target alone as a clue to number, despite producing it correctly. Xhosa has a very rich subject-verb agreement system and pro-drop, and there is theoretical dispute over its properties. An experiment with Xhosa-speaking children revealed that they, too, are unable to use the morpheme on the verb as a cue to subject number. It is argued that this may be further evidence that the morpheme is agreement rather than a clitic pronoun, but the claim is in need of further test

Sex differences in linguistic ability: a case for

Research indicates that sex’ determines the extent to which linguistic performance affects achievement. In a study undertaken by Liski and Puntancn (1983) aimed at determining the extent to which oral performance in spoken English is affected by variables which have been found to be related to achicvcmcnt, sex proved to be one of the most important variables in explaining differences in language skills. comparison between the girls’ and the boys’ distribution of marks revealed that the girls in their study were better than boys at matriculation level. A similar study was undertaken by the writer, concerning oral proficiency in Xhosa as a second language in schools under the Cape Education Department. A total of 159 pupils was tested, spread over three areas; the Western Cape, Port Elizabeth-Uitenhage and Border. Sex was one of the variables selected. Test results show some interesting findings in a situation where Xhosa is learnt. There was a statistically significant difference between the performance of females and males in important sections of the communicative test

Oral proficiency in Xhosa as a second language

Thesis (D.Litt.) -- University of Stellenbosch, 1987

Number Agreement in English and Xhosa

In this paper we seek to raise questions about the nature of number agreement in the grammars of young children, whether they are learning languages poor in number agreement (African American English (AAE)), relatively simple (Mainstream American English (MAE)) or inherently complex (Xhosa). At first glance, number agreement appears to be a straightforward mechanism, but that mechanism is called into question by peculiar asymmetries of production and comprehension that demand more explanation and exploration. These findings must necessarily be regarded as preliminary, and some studies are still underway to answer the next questions

Children’s Acquisition of Subject Markers in isiXhosa

The study of African languages is a rapidly growing area of investigation in linguistics. It has become clear that there is a rich fund of information in the large number of African languages falling into several families that can inform the science of the universal and particular features of human language. Although the Bantu language family has no historical relation to the family of Romance languages, fruitful discussion has begun among researchers seeking to illuminate some of the special features that are shared (De Cat and Demuth 2008), especially in the area of concern here, namely clitics. But the definition of clitic within Bantu is not without controversy. In order to understand how studying acquisition can contribute to the debates on the nature of Bantu morphosyntax, we open this chapter with a brief introduction of the various proposals regarding the status of subject markers (SM) and object markers (OM) in Bantu