How much input is enough? Correlating comprehension and child language input in an endangered language

Abstract

In situations of language endangerment, the ability to understand a language tends to persevere longer than the ability to speak it. As a result, the possibility of language revival remains high even when few speakers remain. Nonetheless, this potential requires that those with high levels of comprehension received sufficient input as children for the activation of speech to occur in later life. In many areas of Australia, input to children of traditional Aboriginal languages is rarely monolingual, but rather often mixed with a contact variety of English. Thus, it is not clear whether children receive enough input to later become active speakers of the traditional languages. This paper reports on a study which tested the relationship between language comprehension and child language input. A vocabulary test of 40 items was administered to 52 Gurindji participants in five age groups. Participants were asked to listen to a Gurindji word and choose a corresponding picture. The test items were graded as high, medium or low frequency on the basis of their use in a corpus of Gurindji child-input speech. We found that age and frequency of use in child-directed speech significantly altered the chance of a correct response.

Keywords:

• indigenous languages
• language revitalisation
• language testing
• Australia
• Gurindji
• comprehension

Notes

1. Aboriginal communities in Australia are similar to Indian reservations in the USA in that the majority of residents are indigenous.

2. When we refer to Kalkaringi, we include Daguragu. These communities were set up separately historically; however, they operate as a single entity in terms of kin relations and administration.

3. Although Gurindji Kriol is derived from these code-switching practices and bears a striking resemblance to many code-switched clauses, there are a number of reasons to regard Gurindji Kriol as an autonomous language system, rather than a continuation of these code-switching practices. These issues are discussed in detail in Meakins (2012).

4. Glossing abbreviations are as follows: cat, catalyst; dis, discourse; dub, dubitative; erg, ergative; fut, future; impf, imperfective; loc, locative; neg, negative; obl, oblique; pot, potential; prs, present; pst, past; seq, sequential; subsect, subsection (kinship category); tel, telic; top, topic; tr, transitive.

5. The ACLA project was funded by the Australian Research Council between 2003 and 2007 through the University of Melbourne. It was headed by Gillian Wigglesworth, Jane Simpson and Patrick McConvell. The ACLA project was a longitudinal study of child language input in three Aboriginal communities in North Australia: Tennant Creek, Yakanarra and Kalkaringi, with comparisons made with Lajamanu (O'Shannessy 2006). The aim of the ACLA project is to map the community languages and mixing strategies which children are exposed to and acquire.