Children's Development of Knowledge and Beliefs about English Likes(s).

Children and Language Variation;Development of Language Ideologies;Linguistics;Humanities;Social Sciences;Linguistics

Odato, Christopher V.Queen, Robin ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Children and Language Variation;    Development of Language Ideologies;    Linguistics;    Humanities;    Social Sciences;    Linguistics;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/78739/cvodato_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

Much recent research has described the development of innovative functions of ;;like;; as a discourse marker (Like they’re trying to be discreet about it) or discourse particle (;;Maybe it’s like a girl thing;;) and as a quotative marker (;;He’s like ;;I don’t want to work until later”;;).Comparatively little is known about how speakers acquire this variable.This dissertation consists of two studies examining young children’s use of, and knowledge and beliefs about, ;;like;; to better understand how it is incorporated into maturing linguistic systems.The first study examines children’s use of ;;like;; in spontaneous speech.Data come from recorded interactions between pairs of children ages 3-6 and 10.Children as young as four used ;;like;; as a discourse marker/particle and as a quotative.Rather than mirroring adults’ speech, in which ;;like;; is used most frequently clause-initially, young children used ;;like;; primarily as a discourse particle attached to syntactic constituents smaller than the sentence.Children began using ;;like;; in different syntactic positions in the historical order in which ;;like;; began to be used in those positions.The second study comprises two experiments assessing children’s knowledge of grammatical constraints on ;;like;; and social beliefs about ;;like;;.Fifty-seven children ages 5-10 listened to sentences containing a use of ;;like;; that is observed in adults’ speech, ;;like;; in a position from which it is categorically absent in adults’ speech, or no ;;like;; at all.In Task 1 participants made acceptability judgments; in Task 2 they decided whether sentences were more likely produced by a female or male speaker.Children of all ages exhibited awareness of grammatical constraints on ;;like;;.Older children, particularly girls, demonstrated a prescriptive stance toward ;;like;;.Nine- and ten-year-olds attributed sentences to a female speaker more frequently if they contained ;;like;;.The results are evidence for early acquisition of ;;like;;.Knowledge of constraints on grammatical distribution is evident at age five, and may precede the use of ;;like;; in discourse. Social beliefs develop later in childhood, suggesting that ;;like;; is acquired early as part of children’s knowledge of syntax and discourse structure, and social meanings attached later on.