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Production Is Only Half the Story - First Words in Two East African Languages.

ABSTRACT: Theories of early learning of nouns in children's vocabularies divide into those that emphasize input (language and non-linguistic aspects) and those that emphasize child conceptualisation. Most data though come from production alone, assuming that learning a word equals speaking it. Methodological issues can mean production and comprehension data within or across input languages are not comparable. Early vocabulary production and comprehension were examined in children hearing two Eastern Bantu languages whose grammatical features may encourage early verb knowledge. Parents of 208 infants aged 8-20 months were interviewed using Communicative Development Inventories that assess infants' first spoken and comprehended words. Raw totals, and proportions of chances to know a word, were compared to data from other languages. First spoken words were mainly nouns (75-95% were nouns versus less than 10% verbs) but first comprehended words included more verbs (15% were verbs) than spoken words did. The proportion of children's spoken words that were verbs increased with vocabulary size, but not the proportion of comprehended words. Significant differences were found between children's comprehension and production but not between languages. This may be for pragmatic reasons, rather than due to concepts with which children approach language learning, or directly due to the input language.

SUBMITTER: Alcock KJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5676187 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Production Is Only Half the Story - First Words in Two East African Languages.

Alcock Katherine J KJ

Frontiers in psychology 20171030

Theories of early learning of nouns in children's vocabularies divide into those that emphasize input (language and non-linguistic aspects) and those that emphasize child conceptualisation. Most data though come from production alone, assuming that learning a word equals speaking it. Methodological issues can mean production and comprehension data within or across input languages are not comparable. Early vocabulary production and comprehension were examined in children hearing two Eastern Bantu ...[more]

PMID: 29163280

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Project description:ImportanceEffective communication between patients and health care teams is essential in the health care setting for delivering optimal cancer care and increasing cancer awareness. While the significance of communication in health care is widely acknowledged, the topic is largely understudied within African settings.ObjectiveTo assess how the medical language of cancer and oncology translates into African languages and what these translations mean within their cultural context.Design, setting, and participantsIn this multinational survey study in Africa, health professionals, community health workers, researchers, and scientists involved in cancer care and research and traditional healers were invited to participate in an online survey on a voluntary basis through online platforms. The survey provided 16 cancer and oncologic terms used in cancer diagnosis and treatment (eg, cancer, radiotherapy) to participants, mostly health care workers, who were asked to provide these terms in their local languages (if the terms existed) followed by a direct or close translation of the meaning in English. The survey was open from February to April 2023.Main outcomes and measuresPatterns of meaning that recurred across languages were identified using thematic analysis of 16 English-translated terms categorized into 5 themes (neutral, negative, positive, phonetic or borrowed, and unknown).ResultsA total of 107 responses (response rate was unavailable given the open and widespread distribution strategy) were collected from 32 countries spanning 44 African languages, with most participants (63 [59%]) aged 18 to 40 years; 54 (50%) were female. Translations for cancer were classified as phonetic or borrowed (34 [32%]), unknown (30 [28%]), neutral (24 [22%]), and negative (19 [18%]), with the latter category including universal connotations of fear, tragedy, incurability, and fatality. Similar elements connoting fear or tragedy were found in translations of terms such as malignant, chronic, and radiotherapy. The term radiotherapy yielded a high percentage of negative connotations (24 [22%]), with a prevailing theme of describing the treatment as being burned or burning with fire, heat, or electricity, which may potentially hinder treatment.Conclusions and relevanceIn this survey study of cancer communication and the translation of oncology terminology in African languages, the findings suggest that the terminology may contribute to fear, health disparities, and barriers to care and pose communication difficulties for health professionals. The results reinforce the need for culturally sensitive cancer terminology for improving cancer awareness and communication.

Project description:Words are made up of speech sounds. Almost all accounts of child speech development assume that children learn the pronunciation of first language (L1) speech sounds by imitation, most claiming that the child performs some kind of auditory matching to the elements of ambient speech. However, there is evidence to support an alternative account and we investigate the non-imitative child behavior and well-attested caregiver behavior that this account posits using Elija, a computational model of an infant. Through unsupervised active learning, Elija began by discovering motor patterns, which produced sounds. In separate interaction experiments, native speakers of English, French and German then played the role of his caregiver. In their first interactions with Elija, they were allowed to respond to his sounds if they felt this was natural. We analyzed the interactions through phonemic transcriptions of the caregivers' utterances and found that they interpreted his output within the framework of their native languages. Their form of response was almost always a reformulation of Elija's utterance into well-formed sounds of L1. Elija retained those motor patterns to which a caregiver responded and formed associations between his motor pattern and the response it provoked. Thus in a second phase of interaction, he was able to parse input utterances in terms of the caregiver responses he had heard previously, and respond using his associated motor patterns. This capacity enabled the caregivers to teach Elija to pronounce some simple words in their native languages, by his serial imitation of the words' component speech sounds. Overall, our results demonstrate that the natural responses and behaviors of human subjects to infant-like vocalizations can take a computational model from a biologically plausible initial state through to word pronunciation. This provides support for an alternative to current auditory matching hypotheses for how children learn to pronounce.

Dataset Information

Production Is Only Half the Story - First Words in Two East African Languages.

Publications

Production Is Only Half the Story - First Words in Two East African Languages.

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