This 50th collection of students’ pearls of wisdom, laboriously digitised from hand-
At age 0;11, one child was reported to use the form [ˈwawə] for the adult noun water. One month later, the child started using the same form for any drink (milk, water, juice, etc.). Explain whether these data might create problems for the quantification of this child’s vocabulary.
(Data adapted from Cruz-Ferreira, M. (2006). Three is a Crowd? Acquiring Portuguese in a Trilingual Environment. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.)
These are examples of complexive patterns and concepts.
They overextend meanings in this phenomenon, but this does not support the establishment of child vocabulary inventories.
No problems. The MLU of “drink, milk, water, juice”, shows that the child’s vocabulary is well developed for his age.
No. MLU and CDI are merely tools to measure vocabulary.
It is difficult to measure the child’s MLU. Using IPSyn is also difficult because it involves using words syntagmatically.
The child is undergoing the process of overextension.
The child is overextensionalising. We cannot quantify, because the data are presented as single utterances. We don’t know if the child actually means to overextensionalise.
The child is experiencing overextension, but this is contestible.
The child overextends and assumes taxanomic assumptions too. There is thus a need to control the child’s exaggeration.
The child has not learned to decontextualise words.
The child needs to be taught the grammatical concepts [count ~ mass] in order to be able to use them.
The boy is committing overextension of the words.
The child is deliberately mislabelling the objects to be corrected.
The child generates overextension of words/
The child practises overextensions in these data. There is no problem in quantifying because the child could be hearing speech that is not rich enough.
The MLU and CDI show only two words, but the child may have the ability to actually acquire two to three more words.
The problem lies in the analysts’ own perceptions and associations about the child’s mentality when he is in certain perceived contexts such as the drinking water example.
The child is employing overextension to his surrounding happenings.
The data show that the child will probably overgeneralise past tense inflections too, and this is difficult to quantify.
Yes, there is a problem. Analysts may conclude that the child is underdeveloped or deficient.
More to come...