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ERIC Number: ED183240
Record Type: RIE
Publication Date: 1978-Sep
Pages: 15
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Early Language Development of Three Children from a White, Working-Class Community.
Miller, Peggy
Early language development was investigated in an observational study of three white 2-year-old infants of working class families in the inner city. In each family's living room, one hour videotapes were made of each infant's behavior at 3-week intervals over a period of 8 months. With the collaboration of family members, transcripts were made of infant speech nonverbal behavior and the speech of others. Analysis of utterances was based on a set of categories identified by Bloom, Lightbown and Hood. Eleven of the categories accounted for 74% of the multi-word relations, which compares to 77% found by Bloom et al. for middle-class children. Also consistent with the findings of other researchers on middle-class children were the following: (1) verb relations are much more frequent than functional relations for all three children; (2) there is a decrease over time in the proportion of functional relations; and (3) the proportions of verb relations are 40 to 50% for all three children. Overall, these findings indicate an impressive degree of resemblance between these three infants from South Baltimore and children from other backgrounds, with respect to one of the major tasks of early language development, learning to combine words to express a small set of meanings. (Author/SS)
Publication Type: Reports - Research; Speeches/Meeting Papers
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: National Inst. of Mental Health (DHEW), Rockville, MD.; National Science Foundation, Washington, DC.
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Note: Paper presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development (Boston, MA, September 1978)