Vaughan Jill, Wigglesworth Gillian, Loakes Deborah, Disbray Samantha, Moses Karin
School of Languages and Linguistics, University of Melbourne Parkville, VIC, Australia.
Northern Institute, Charles Darwin University Alice Springs, NT, Australia.
Front Psychol. 2015 Apr 29;6:514. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00514. eCollection 2015.
This paper reports on a study in two remote multilingual Indigenous Australian communities: Yakanarra in the Kimberley region of Western Australia and Tennant Creek in the Barkly region of the Northern Territory. In both communities, processes of language shift are underway from a traditional language (Walmajarri and Warumungu, respectively) to a local creole variety (Fitzroy Valley Kriol and Wumpurrarni English, respectively). The study focuses on language input from primary caregivers to a group of preschool children, and on the children's productive language. The study further highlights child-caregiver interactions as a site of importance in understanding the broader processes of language shift. We use longitudinal data from two time-points, approximately 2 years apart, to explore changes in adult input over time and developmental patterns in the children's speech. At both time points, the local creole varieties are the preferred codes of communication for the dyads in this study, although there is some use of the traditional language in both communities. Results show that for measures of turn length (MLT), there are notable differences between the two communities for both the focus children and their caregivers. In Tennant Creek, children and caregivers use longer turns at Time 2, while in Yakanarra the picture is more variable. The two communities also show differing trends in terms of conversational load (MLT ratio). For measures of morphosyntactic complexity (MLU), children and caregivers in Tennant Creek use more complex utterances at Time 2, while caregivers in Yakanarra show less complexity in their language at that time point. The study's findings contribute to providing a more detailed picture of the multilingual practices at Yakanarra and Tennant Creek, with implications for understanding broader processes of language shift. They also elucidate how children's language and linguistic input varies diachronically across time. As such, we contribute to understandings of normative language development for non-Western, non middle-class children in multilingual contexts.
西澳大利亚金伯利地区的亚卡纳拉（Yakanarra）和北领地巴克利地区的滕南特克里克（Tennant Creek）。在这两个社区，语言转换过程正在进行，分别从传统语言（瓦姆贾里语[Walmajarri]和瓦鲁蒙古语[Warumungu]）转向当地克里奥尔语变体（分别是菲茨罗伊谷克里奥尔语[Fitzroy Valley Kriol]和温普拉尔尼英语[Wumpurrarni English]）。该研究聚焦于主要照料者对一组学龄前儿童的语言输入以及儿童的产出性语言。该研究进一步强调了儿童与照料者之间的互动在理解更广泛的语言转换过程中的重要性。我们使用来自两个时间点、相隔约两年的纵向数据，来探究成人语言输入随时间的变化以及儿童言语的发展模式。在两个时间点上，当地克里奥尔语变体都是本研究中二元组交流的首选语码，不过在两个社区中也都有一些传统语言的使用。结果表明，对于话轮长度（平均话轮长度[MLT]）的测量，两个社区中重点儿童及其照料者之间存在显著差异。在滕南特克里克，儿童和照料者在时间点2使用的话轮更长，而在亚卡纳拉情况则更具变化性。两个社区在对话量（平均话轮长度比率）方面也呈现出不同趋势。对于形态句法复杂性（平均语句长度[MLU]）的测量，滕南特克里克的儿童和照料者在时间点2使用的语句更复杂，而在该时间点亚卡纳拉的照料者语言复杂性较低。该研究的发现有助于更详细地描绘亚卡纳拉和滕南特克里克的多语言实践情况，对理解更广泛的语言转换过程具有启示意义。它们还阐明了儿童语言和语言输入如何随时间发生历时性变化。因此，我们有助于增进对多语言环境下非西方、非中产阶级儿童规范语言发展的理解。
