March 15, 2005
Objects, Events and People
Combine to Make Make Meaning.
Spring Break is upon us. The countdown has begun, but we have a few days of instructional time guarding the starting gate. Our most pressing demand is the quiz on Chapters Seven and Eight. Four Blondes and a Brunette and the Interpersonal People have sent their reports from the field, which are now posted for your study pleasure and edification.
To sum up the discussion we had in class today  (and to provide a review), a one-word utterance from a child has meaning that may differ from what adults understand it to mean. These utterances are sometimes called holophrases. The child is using the utterance to refer to a concept and the child knows how to use it to get things done. It may not be grammatically correct, but it still has meaning.
The case grammar theory developed by Roger Brown in A First Language (1973) focuses on the semantic relations children have developed about language to show what they have learned about how objects, events, and people combine to make meaning. They don't understand grammar, but they do understand that people perform actions and people receive actions.
At about 18 months, children begin creating two-word utterances. Their concept of syntax begins. It's also the time they learn to make self-repairs. The child has begun the search for more efficient ways to organize and pattern reality. This structuring of reality is called predication, the universal principle that a sentence contains a subject (noun) and a predicate (verb).
Adults are experts in their native languages. They posses an intuitive knowledge about grammar (linguistic competence). Adults understand that a sentence has a surface structure (the obvious meaning), a deep structure (a hidden or ambiguous meaning) and that transformations (changes made in a sentence to clarify meaning) help us understand the deep structure of a sentence.
A child's syntax progresses through five sequential stages: Stage I-Semantic roles and grammatical relations, Stage II-Grammatical morphemes and the modulation of meanings, Stage III-Modalities of the simple sentence, Stage IV-Embedding of one sentence within another, and Stage V-Coordination of simple sentences and prepositional relations. Each child's rate of progression differs, but most children reach Stage V around four or five.
Even though a child has acquired basic syntactical rules, they are not always able to use them correctly. They learn grammar rules as needed. However, they learn the necessity of communicating at a very early age. We've discussed the concept of intentional communication and the use of protodeclaratives and protoimperatives in early language development. By 18 months, a child uses Primitive Speech Acts to communicate. A speech act is a pragmatic unit of discourse that involves the participants, setting, sequence (adjacency pairs, for example), and cultural conventions (family, school, community, for example). "The essence of pragmatics is that language is used functionally-to do actions" (Naremore & Hopper, p. 112). Speech acts inform, persuade, entertain (speech play), or explain (metacommunication). Children seem to know at an early age that language is a tool for getting things done.
Naremore, R. C. & Hopper, R. (1997). Children Learning Language, 3rd ed. San Diego: Singular Publishing Group.
A Guide for Your Study.
The following questions will guide your study for the quiz. Use your textbook for further clarification.
Chapter Seven
- A holophrase is a little sentence. How many utterances does it have and how does it relate to intentional communication?
- Explain case grammar and its relationship to syntax.
- Why is 18 months a pivotal time regarding syntax?
- What is predication?
- What is the difference between surface structure and deep structure?
- List the four stages of syntax development. In which stage does the child acquire the 14 grammatical morphemes?
Chapter Eight
- What do the authors mean by function?
- Define speech act and list the four types.
- List the four aspects of situation and briefly describe each one.
*This is the next step toward THE One World Language.
Step Sixteen: *Your dangling participle injected with botox.
Planet Gnosis is ruled by Freddie A. Bowles, a professional educator and fellow at the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. An independent entity in the CornDancer consortium of planets, Planet Gnosis is dedicated to the exploration of education and teaching. CornDancer is a developmental website for the mind and spirit maintained by webmistress Freddie A. Bowles of the Planet Earth. Submissions are invited.
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