Kanto Laura, Huttunen Kerttu, Laakso Marja-Leena
Faculty of Humanities, Logopedics, University of Oulu, PO Box 1000, FI-90014 Oulun yliopisto, Finland.
J Deaf Stud Deaf Educ. 2013 Apr;18(2):242-60. doi: 10.1093/deafed/ens071. Epub 2013 Jan 24.
We explored variation in the linguistic environments of hearing children of Deaf parents and how it was associated with their early bilingual language development. For that purpose we followed up the children's productive vocabulary (measured with the MCDI; MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory) and syntactic complexity (measured with the MLU10; mean length of the 10 longest utterances the child produced during videorecorded play sessions) in both Finnish Sign Language and spoken Finnish between the ages of 12 and 30 months. Additionally, we developed new methodology for describing the linguistic environments of the children (N = 10). Large variation was uncovered in both the amount and type of language input and language acquisition among the children. Language exposure and increases in productive vocabulary and syntactic complexity were interconnected. Language acquisition was found to be more dependent on the amount of exposure in sign language than in spoken language. This was judged to be related to the status of sign language as a minority language. The results are discussed in terms of parents' language choices, family dynamics in Deaf-parented families and optimal conditions for bilingual development.
我们探究了聋人父母的听力正常子女的语言环境差异，以及这种差异与他们早期双语语言发展之间的关联。为此，我们追踪了12至30个月大的儿童在芬兰手语和芬兰口语方面的产出性词汇（用MCDI；麦克阿瑟交流发展量表进行测量）和句法复杂性（用MLU10；儿童在视频记录的玩耍时段中说出的最长的10个话语的平均长度进行测量）。此外，我们开发了新的方法来描述这些儿童（N = 10）的语言环境。研究发现，儿童在语言输入的数量和类型以及语言习得方面存在很大差异。语言接触与产出性词汇和句法复杂性的增加相互关联。研究发现，语言习得更多地依赖于手语的接触量，而非口语的接触量。这被认为与手语作为一种少数民族语言的地位有关。我们从父母的语言选择、聋人家庭中的家庭动态以及双语发展的最佳条件等方面对研究结果进行了讨论。
