I was particularly interested in this week’s readings mainly because of four reasons:
1. The fact that Clark and Hecht’s conclusions were derived by experiments only with 48 children. 2. The way that Clark and Hecht’s experiment shows us and arguably provides evidence that Carnie’s statement that children still acquire and learn proper language even with no instruction whatsoever.
3. The explanation of how Semantic Transparency is a device used by children to form compound words in their language.
4. The fact that as children grow up, they start using less compound words, after substituting such with more conventional vocabulary.
Before I make any comment about Clark and Hecht’s content testing and conclusions regarding the way that children rely on known principles through their learning acquisition process, I would like to note that I was fairly surprised that only 48 children were tested. It seems to be that in all of the other experiments we have heard about, the researchers used a much greater amount of subjects, so it made me think about whether the sample size was an accurate proportion to the entire population. I find such margin of error important, based on the fact that we have seen how much language acquisition differs depending on where one is born and raised. Therefore, I would have liked to see this experiment done in different areas of the country, and compare results.
Given the results attained, however, I would then like to pose such results to be evidence as to Carnie’s statement that acquiring language is innate and that children need no instruction to attain such. Clark and Hecht’s experiments make a clear differentiation of language skills dependent on the children’s age. They concluded that while the youngest children coined words relying simply on compound structures, the kids in the middle began to show control over ‘productivity’ devices, which are more frequently used and specialized and gave them control at least in the agentive meaning. Were this not enough, they then concluded that the older kids, not only had figured out the productive devices, but also the the conventional ones, in which children had substituted their previous coined word with the conventional one. So, this show how the children learn from their environment to use the proper language. Although Carnie could argue that the children could have gone through this phases on their own, I believe this would not be possible because they wouldn’t have access to such a big increase on devices they could referred as they grow in the language.
Clark and Hacht’s explanation on how Semantic Transparency works was another thing that I found interesting because it never occurred to me how the fact that a compound word is composed of words known, makes us more drawn as a child to use them. I find this interesting because I think it shows the way that children think the world to be simpler than it actually is, as they only know so much and are only worried about getting a message across. I think the experiment testing the use of the -er to be very representative of how language devices leads us from the wrong idea to the right one.
Finally, the conclusion that as children grow up, more conventional words are used in replacement of compound words is something that I found very interesting based on my experience learning a new language. Having started learning English in preschool, I really do not remember exactly the process I went through to acquire the language. When it comes to compound words, I simply remember such making me happy when they appeared in my spelling vocabulary list for the week, because I only had to remember whether to hyphenate them or not after I have already learned how to spell the words they were made of, and the way that the english word breakfast was named after the fact that you are “breaking the fast”. I remember such discovery came so much later from me learning the word breakfast, though. I believe this is because I learned the word “breakfast” way sooner than the word “fast”. So, I think that an unexplored question would be to figure out which compound words are the ones children of the youngest age understand and come up with. I would claim that the more sophisticated the compound word is, the more it would be used and understood by older children as I think that there is a slippery slope between when are compound words conventionally used, and when are they not.
Still, I relate to their point about how younger kids tend to use compound words as they are learning the language because such was my experience when I was learning French as a teenager. I remember I would always use the word ‘petit ami’ when referring to a boyfriend because I have already learned the words “petit” and “ami”, which made it so much easier for me to remember. Getting more familiarized with the language, however, I learned that the more conventional word was “copain”, however, and started using such instead.
So reading this article made me wonder how would the process of a children acquiring the language would refer to a teenager/adult learning a second language. What would be the factors to consider and discard? Would the use of semantic transparency be as strong as when one learned his/her language as a children or would it be less referred to, once we learned in our language the use of more conventional words?
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