“So, I told him to look for friends!” Barriers and protecting factors that may facilitate inclusion for children with Language Disorder in everyday social settings:cross-cultural qualitative interviews with parents

Purpose: Although researchers have explored parental perspectives on childhood speech and language disorders, this work has mostly been conducted in English-speaking countries. Little is known about parental experiences across countries. Participation in the COST Action IS1406 ‘Enhancing children’s oral language skills across Europe and beyond’ provided an opportunity to conduct cross-cultural qualitative interviews. The aims were to explore how parents construe inclusion and/or exclusion of their child and how parents involve themselves in order to facilitate inclusion. Method: Parents from nine countries and with a child who had received services for speechlanguage disorder participated in semi-structured qualitative interviews. We used thematic analysis to analyze the data. Results: Two overarching themes were identified: ‘Language disabilities led to social exclusion’ and ‘Promoting pathways to social inclusion’. Two subthemes were identified Interpersonal relationships are important and Deliberate proactiveness as stepping stones for social inclusion. Conclusions: Across countries, parents report that their children’s hidden disability causes misunderstandings that can lead to social exclusion and that they are important advocates for their children. It is important that the voices and experiences of parents of children with developmental disabilities are understood and acknowledged. Parents’ recommendations about how to support social inclusion need to be addressed at all levels of society

In favour of layered feet: A response to Golston

In this response we argue that the factorial typology predicted in Martínez-Paricio & Kager (2015), which representationally relies on the existence of internally layered ternary feet, is complete and accurate. We demonstrate it does not suffer from the problematic cases of overgeneration pointed out by Golston (this issue). Additionally, we corroborate the idea that the internally layered ternary foot is a metrical representation that is typologically warranted for stress phenomena as well as for segmental and tonal metrically conditioned distributions. We suggest that Golston’s claim that “no stress system requires internally layered ternary feet” appears to be too strong and is not empirically substantiated

Language specificity of infant-directed speech: Speaking rate and word position in word-learning contexts

Previous research indicates that infant-directed speech (IDS) is usually slower than adult-directed speech (ADS) and mothers prefer placing a focused word in isolation or utterance-final position in (English) IDS, which may benefit word learning. This study investigated the speaking rate and word position of IDS in two typologically-distinct languages: Dutch and Mandarin Chinese. We used a storybook-telling task to elicit semi-spontaneous ADS and IDS. The storybook contained target words that were familiar or unfamiliar to children. For each language, we asked: (1) whether IDS was slower than ADS; (2) whether mothers slowed down to highlight unfamiliar words; (3) whether the speaking rate of IDS changed between 18 and 24 months; and (4) whether mothers preferred placing unfamiliar words in isolation or utterance-final position in IDS. Results suggest that Dutch IDS, but not Mandarin Chinese IDS, was slower than ADS. Also, only Dutch mothers slowed down specifically when introducing unfamiliar words in IDS. In both languages, mothers placed target words in isolation (but not in utterance-final position) more frequently in IDS. These results suggest that the temporal modifications in IDS may vary across languages. Thus, language-specificity of IDS and its implications for language acquisition should be considered in future research

Definiteness across Languages: from German to Mandarin

We showcase the potential of a data-driven methodology for cross-linguistic research: Translation Mining. We introduce the technique and put it to use in the domain of definiteness. We show how Translation Mining confirms existing insights about definiteness in English, German (Schwarz 2009) and Mandarin (Jenks 2018) while at the same time leading to novel insights for Mandarin

Effects of obstruent voicing on vowel fundamental frequency in Dutch

It has been known for a long time and for a wide variety of languages that vowel fundamental frequency (F0) can be affected by the intrinsic properties of the preceding consonants. In particular, F0 following voiceless obstruents tends to be significantly higher than F0 following voiced obstruents (e.g., House and Fairbanks, 1953; Hombert et al., 1979). There has been a long-standing debate about the cause of this phenomenon. Some evidence in previous work is more compatible with a physiological/aerodynamic account of this effect (e.g., Halle and Stevens, 1967; Kirby & Ladd, 2016), while other supports an auditory enhancement account (e.g., Kingston and Diehl 1994). This paper investigates these consonant-related F0 perturbations in Dutch after initial fricatives (/v f/) and stops (/b p/), as compared to after sonorant /m/, in recordings by Pinget (2015). Dutch is particularly interesting for the investigation of F0 perturbations for two reasons: 1) Dutch – unlike English – is a true voicing language and 2) Dutch initial fricatives are currently undergoing a process of devoicing (e.g., Kissine et al., 2003; Pinget, 2015). The F0 contours in isolated words were analyzed using GAMM (e.g., Wieling 2018) with /m/ as baseline condition. Results show that after unvoiced /p, f/, the F0 at vowel onset is significantly higher than this baseline. Moreover, voicing measures (degree of voicing, duration, and VOT) interact with the main effects of onset consonant on F0. Especially after /v/, F0 at vowel onset increased as the voicing measures of preceding /v/ decreased. Thus, we found no trace of an active gesture to explicitly lower F0 after highly devoiced fricatives, as would be predicted by an auditory enhancement account. In conclusion, these results regarding F0 contours, the time course of the effects and the covariation patterns are taken as evidence to support a physiological/aerodynamic cause of F0 perturbations

Macrostructure in the narratives of Indonesian-Dutch bilinguals: Relation to age and exposure

There is no agreement regarding the relationship between narrative abilities in the two languages of a bilingual child. In this paper, we test the hypothesis that such cross-language relationships depend on age and language exposure by studying the narrative skills of 32 Indonesian-Dutch bilinguals (mean age: 8;5, range: 5;0–11;9). The narratives were elicited by means of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) and analysed for story structure, episodic complexity and use of internal state terms (ISTs) in the home language (Indonesian) and majority language (Dutch). The results demonstrate that story structure scores in the home language (but not in the majority language) were positively related to age. Exposure measures (current Dutch/Indonesian input, current richness of Dutch/Indonesian input, and length of exposure to Dutch) did not predict the macrostructure scores. There was a significant positive cross-language relationship in story structure and episodic complexity, and this relationship became stronger as a function of length of exposure to Dutch. There was also a positive cross-lingual relation in IST use, but it became weaker with age. The results support the idea that narrative skills are transferable between languages and suggest that cross-language relationships may interact with age and exposure factors in differential ways