From phonetics to phonology : The emergence of first words in Italian

This study assesses the extent of phonetic continuity between babble and words in four Italian children followed longitudinally from 0; 9 or 0; 10 to 2;0-two with relatively rapid and two with slower lexical growth. Prelinguistic phonetic characteristics, including both (a) consistent use of specific consonants and (b) age of onset and extent of consonant variegation in babble, are found to predict rate of lexical advance and to relate to the form of the early words. In addition, each child's lexical profile is analyzed to test the hypothesis of non-linearity in phonological development. All of the children show the expected pattern of phonological advance: 'Relatively accurate first word production is followed by lexical expansion, characterized by a decrease in accuracy and an increase of similarity between word forms. We interpret such a profile as reflecting the emergence of word templates, a first step in phonological organization

Estonian Middle Semantics with Evidence from Discourse

This paper presents arguments for recognizing a middle voice in Estonian. The claim that the semantics of middle-marked verbs differs in a substantial way from the semantics of other intransitive constructions leads to the examination of the discourse pragmatics of these constructions, and the relationship between discourse patterns and their valency and argument properties. Various topicality measures show that the argument participant in middle clauses lies between that of the sole participant (S) in intransitive clauses and the O of active transitive clauses. The results regarding the discourse behaviour of middle arguments constitute new evidence for the view that middle constructions differ from ordinary intransitive verbs, despite structural similarities, and mark a unique range on the scale of transitivity exhibited by verbs in Estonian

Pick it up: a look at referential devices in Estonian child-directed speech

This paper compares the forms of expression of core verbal arguments in Estonian child-directed speech (CDS) with those in Estonian speech between adults (ADS). The data, consisting of nearly 600 utterances, is taken from a mother speaking to her two-year-old child, and two adult women speaking to each other. The analysis confirms the observation that one-on-one conversation with toddlers includes a reduced number of declarative sentences (43% vs. 62.5% in the ADS sample), in favor of imperatives and interrogatives. Leaving out the unexpressed subjects of imperatives, we find that CDS contains 20% more overt arguments than ADS, and in the object argument role, nearly 30% more. Avoidance of ellipsis and a preference for lexical (rather than pronominal) noun phrases characterises the CDS in our sample; the data analysed support the principles of Preferred Argument Structure, aligning grammatical role, morphosyntactic form and pragmatic prominence, with some peculiarities accounting for the specific character of mother-child interaction

First language acquisition and phonological change

One of the longest-standing maxims of linguistic thought is that children’s language provides a source for language change. In a very early discussion of acquisition, Schleicher (1861) notes parallels between children’s errors and diachronic changes in a range of languages. For example, his three year old son Ernst

Onset of word form recognition in English, Welsh, and English-Welsh bilingual infants

Children raised in the home as English or Welsh monolinguals or English–Welsh bilinguals were tested on untrained word form recognition using both behavioral and neurophysiological procedures. Behavioral measures confirmed the onset of a familiarity effect at 11 months in English but failed to identify it in monolingual Welsh infants between 9 and 12 months. In the neurophysiological procedure the familiarity effect was detected as early as 10 months in English but did not reach significance in monolingual Welsh. Bilingual children showed word form familiarity effects by 11 months in both languages and also revealed an online time course for word recognition that combined effects found for monolingual English and Welsh. To account for the findings, accentual, grammatical, and sociolinguistic differences between English and Welsh are considered

English-Medium Studies in the Estonian National University: Globalisation and Organic Change

Ingliskeelne õppetöö Eesti rahvusülikoolis:üleilmastumine toetab järkjärgulist muutumistVirve-Anneli Vihman, Ülle TensingTartu ÜlikoolKäesolev ülevaateartikkel kirjeldab inglise keele kui õppekeele kasutamistTartu Ülikoolis alates Eesti Vabariigi taasiseseisvumisest.Artikli esimeses pooles antakse kokkuvõtlik ülevaade ingliskeelseteainekursuste ja semestriprogrammide loomisest 1990. aastatel.Artikli teine pool kirjeldab sellele järgnenud sotsiaalseid, poliitilisija hariduskorralduslikke muudatusi hõlmavat perioodi, mis mõjutasülikoolis ingliskeelsete õppekavade kujunemise esimest etappi,aastatel 2005–2011. Artiklis heidetakse pilk Tartu Ülikooli rahvusvahelistumisehoogustumisele ja peatutakse küsimusel, kuidaskeelepoliitika dokumentides ja ühiskonnas toimuvates aruteludes onkäsitletud inglise keele rolli suurenemist viimase kahekümne aastajooksul.Artikli autorid leiavad, et ülikooli akadeemilise ja tugipersonalihoiakud, põhimõtted ja tegevuste ulatus on oluliselt muutunud võrreldesingliskeelse õppe arenduse esimese etapiga. Ingliskeelne õpeon jõudnud teise etappi, kus selle osakaal ülikooli õppetöös kasvabmärgatavalt kiiremini ja see on suunatud kõigile õppijatele, mitteüksnes välisüliõpilastele. Kasvav kokkupuude välisüliõpilastega japaremad võimalused kaasata välisõppejõude on andnud tõuke ingliskeelseõppe väärtustamisele teiste akadeemilist keskkonda mõjutavateeesmärkide kõrval, nagu õpetamisoskuste arendamine jateadustegevuse konkurentsivõime suurendamine.Nii ülikoolis kui ühiskonnas arutatakse selle üle, millist mõjuavaldab ingliskeelne õppetöö eestikeelsele haridusele ja teaduselening kuidas parandada ja tagada inglise keeles toimuva õppetöö kvaliteeti.Arutelude lähemal uurimisel on näha, et inglise keele osatähtsusekasv ärgitab tuliseid sõnavõtte ja hoiakud õppekeelte mitmekesisusesuhtes on vastandlikud. On oluline, et avalikud arutelud eestija inglise keele kasutusest ja nende tasakaalust Eesti kõrgharidusesjätkuvad ka ingliskeelse õppe teises etapis, mida iseloomustab sellekeele oluliselt ulatuslikum kasutamine õppetöös eesti keele kõrval

Bringing the toys to life: Animacy, reference, and anthropomorphism in Toy Story

In the children’s film Toy Story, toys spring to life when their human owners are away, creating an alternative world of transferred animacy relations signalled by visual and linguistic cues. The storylines and characters explore the nature of animacy and relationships between conspecifics and ‘others’. Our analysis focuses on the use of referring expressions as they reflect the animacy of their referents, as it develops and changes during the course of the narrative. We relate these findings to well-established scales of animacy which link our perception of the world to the categories imposed by language. We find that, as predicted by models of animacy proposed by Dahl (2008) and Yamamoto (1999), among others, shifts in reference – specifically from common noun to proper noun to pronoun, and from collective to individuated referents – reflect characters’ shifting conceptualisation of, and empathy with, each other. We argue that referring expressions are used at key points in the film script to subtly mediate accessible cues to animacy like eyes, speech and motion, and to guide viewers’ empathies and allegiances, extending our understanding of animacy beyond ordinary anthropocentrism

A corpus study of grammatical case forms in written and spoken Estonian: Frequency, distribution and grammatical role

In this paper, we present the results of a corpus study investigating the distribution of the three grammatical cases in Estonian (nominative, genitive, partitive) and the factors affecting the interpretation of syntactic role for nouns marked in these cases. Unlike previous studies, which have focussed on the properties of grammatical relations, we take the perspective of morphological case, and investigate the relative frequency of each case in both written and spoken corpora, according to the encoded grammatical roles, referential properties (animacy, number, countability) and syntactic context (word order, transitivity), as well as probing the differences according to register. We find that each case is prototypically, but not reliably, associated with a particular grammatical role, and that a cluster of features are available to assist speakers in identifying the function of a case-marked noun. Kokkuvõte. Merilin Miljan, Virve Vihman: Eesti keele grammatilised käänded kirjalikus ja suulises korpuses: sagedus, jaotumus ning süntaktilised rollid. Artiklis esitatakse tulemused korpusuuringust, mille eesmärgiks oli välja selgitada eesti keele grammatiliste käänete (nominatiiv, partitiiv, genitiiv) jaotumus ning tegurid, mis mõjutavad nende käänetega markeeritud nimisõnade süntaktiliste rollide tõlgendamist. Erinevalt varasematest töödest, mis keskenduvad grammatilistele suhetele ja (seejärel) nende käändetähistusele, lähtub selle uurimuse fookus eelkõige morfoloogiast, st käändest endast. N-ö käände perspektiivist vaatleme iga grammatilise käände esinemise sagedust kirjalikus ja suulises korpuses: milliseid süntaktilisi funktsioone see markeerib, markeeritava nimisõna omadusi (elusus, arv, loendatavus), süntaktilist konteksti (sõnajärg, transitiivsus) ning registri erinevusi. Leiame, et kuigi üldpildina eristub iga grammatilise käände puhul sagedaim süntaktiline põhiroll, toob detailsem analüüs välja nimisõna omaduste ja süntaktilise konteksti olulisuse nende rollide jaotumuses