Early phonological and lexical development and otitis media: a diary study.
This diary study describes early phonological and lexical development in a child with chronic otitis media with effusion. Equipped with the tools of a referential/analytic language-learner, the child solved the problem of reduced and fluctuating auditory input with phonological selection and avoidance strategies that capitalized on prosodic cues. This 'tone-language' approach resulted in a lexical inventory that would be categorized as an extreme expressive style. Having 'boot-strapped' her lexical learning, the child continued to rely on phonological constraints and selection strategies to fuel lexical and syntactic growth, i.e. cross-domain interactions leading to a vocabulary spurt and the onset of two-word utterances. These findings illustrate the need to consider interactions among performance, input and linguistic constraints in order to explain individual variation in language learning.
Donahue
M L
ML
College of Education, University of Illinois, Chicago 60607.
D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004432:Ear, Middle / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000601:surgery; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D010034:Otitis Media with Effusion / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000601:surgery; D010700:Phonetics; D012121:Respiration, Artificial; D014825:Vocabulary