First Words

First Words

 * Children's early words are most different from adults' in terms of their length, usually consisting of one syllable.?
 * First words: used in highly restricted ways, often in limited contexts (Clark, Eve 2003:83)
 * Uses: “context-bound”, rarely last more than a few weeks and rarely affect more than 2, 3 words (Barrett 1995)
 * *does the same context affect those words? how many words in their vocab, then?
 * *look up object permanence
 * First words follow long, and for the most part, orderly series of stages (MacNeilage, 1980:P19)
 * Using first words Clark, Eve 2009 E72/130 (Part 2)
 * Making requests, typically accompanied by their request gesture
 * Commenting on events, typically accompanied by a deictic gesture
 * Within these domains, they may use different words for what they want/on which they comment (*different words/domain? Different words for different things? Different words for one thing?) Clark, Eve 2009 E72/130 (Part 2)
 * Productive purposes: requests for actions and objects, comment on what is happening, accept or reject adult proposals
 * Make use of their words in trying to convey their intentions to others within the context of the ongoing interaction, but with only one word at a time, these intentions on their own may be hard to interpret
 * Becomes easier when words are supplemented by gestures and other information about the child’s locus of attention and apparent purpose in context
 * Even easier with longer utterances with the relevant grammatical information (eg inflections for case, tesen, person, number, etc)
 * *when are these acquired
 * First words: narrow range of sounds (Goodluck, 19)
 * Nasals, front voiceless stops, [a]
 * That is, children’s pronunciations tend to favour these sounds, although this may involve a distortion of the target word


 * Single-word productions: these productions in the output of the infant are variously defined. They include protowords (onset at approximately 10 months), in which phonetically consistent forms are used to refer to primitive experimental groupings (Dore, 1976) as an accompaniment to a regularly occurring set of circumstances (Piaget, 1952), or to gain adult attention and express wishes and demands (Carter, 1974); and words used as symbols to refer to specific, recurring sets of objects or events. (Yeni-Komshian, 1980:75)

Informativeness

 * Choices governed by some measure by this (Clark, Eve 2009 E72/130 (Part 2))
 * That is, more likely to mention information they identify as new (as opposed to something that is already known or given (previously mentioned) in the current conversation)
 * *Known: I don’t quite get this-by the child? In general? By the adult?
 * They choose a word for whatever part of the event contributes new information in the current context
 * Even one year olds – this would suggest they are good at assessing what their interlocutors know and at keeping track of what is given and what is new in conversational exchanges. Supposedly, anyway.
 * (Hard to establish, tho: kids’ words are taken as marking what they consider new, but, without an independent judgement about each event in context, this can make for a certain circularity in definition)