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Katherine S. White; Thomas St. Pierre; Elizabeth K. Johnson – Language Learning and Development, 2024
The acquisition of variation is a fundamental -- but poorly understood -- part of child language acquisition. We fully endorse Shin and Miller's call for us to recognize the importance of this core issue, and argue that our understanding could be further enriched by greater reliance on convergent methods. As such, we implore researchers to…
Descriptors: Language Variation, Child Language, Language Acquisition, Research Methodology
Carla L. Hudson Kam – Language Learning and Development, 2024
Based on findings from a variety of research, Shin and Miller (2022) propose a 4-step process that children go through as they learn sociolinguistic variation. Their proposal raises many interesting questions that should inspire future research. Here, I discuss their Step 1 -- the stage in which, according to their proposal, children produce only…
Descriptors: Language Research, Language Acquisition, Language Variation, Child Language
Kristen Syrett – Language Learning and Development, 2024
I argue that the variation within and across contexts detailed by Shin & Miller is indicative of a broader phenomenon in which morphosyntax and the discourse context are intertwined, including elements like perspective, discourse relations, information structure, and common ground. Appealing to independent evidence highlighting the role of…
Descriptors: Language Variation, Language Research, Language Acquisition, Learning Processes
Pablo E. Requena – Language Learning and Development, 2024
The well-known sampling limitation of most longitudinal corpus data can be even more consequential in the study of morphosyntactic variation in child language. An analysis of caregiver input suggests that variable use in overlapping contexts may be hard to find by solely relying on corpus data collected under the sampling procedures that are…
Descriptors: Morphology (Languages), Syntax, Language Acquisition, Language Variation
Janna B. Oetting – Language Learning and Development, 2024
Shin and Mill (2021) propose four steps children go through when learning "variable form use." Although I applaud Shin and Miller's focus on morphosyntactic variation, their accrual of evidence is post hoc and selective. Fortunately, Shin and Miller recognize this and encourage tests of their ideas. In support of their work, I share data…
Descriptors: Language Impairments, Language Research, Contrastive Linguistics, Comparative Analysis
Benjamin Luke Davies; Katherine Demuth – Language Learning and Development, 2024
When acquiring the English plural, children correctly produce plural words long before they develop an understanding of morphological structure. When acquiring Sesotho noun prefixes, children are aware of the multiple constraints governing variation from a young age. Both of these cases raise questions about the Shin and Miller (2022) account of…
Descriptors: African Languages, Morphology (Languages), Syntax, Second Language Learning
Kaveri K. Sheth; Naja Ferjan Ramírez – Language Learning and Development, 2025
Research on "parentese," the acoustically exaggerated, slower, and higher-pitched speech directed toward infants, has mostly focused on maternal contributions, although it has long been known that fathers also produce parentese. Given recent societal changes in family dynamics, it is necessary to revise these mother-centered models of…
Descriptors: Computational Linguistics, Parent Child Relationship, Child Language, Syntax
Yi-Ching Su – Language Learning and Development, 2024
It has been reported for decades that preschool children (age 4-7) tend to assign non-adult-like interpretations for sentences with pre-subject exclusive only. This study reports findings from two experiments investigating (1) the effects of (in)congruent implicit questions in discourse contexts and (2) word order transformation on children's…
Descriptors: Preschool Children, Language Processing, Adults, Language Patterns
Virginia Valian – Language Learning and Development, 2024
The first stage of combinatorial speech is better described as variable than uniform. Talk of variants obscures two different aspects of language (knowledge and use) and two different aspects of language development -- acquisition of the grammar (competence) and deployment of the grammar in speaking and listening (performance). Null subjects and…
Descriptors: Phrase Structure, Language Acquisition, Language Variation, Grammar