Future Talk in Two Social Groups from Buenos Aires, Argentina

ROSEMBERG, C. R.; ALAM F.; STEIN A.

Lyon

Congreso; ELA 2012 Lyon Early Language Acquisition; 2012

This study aims to analyze the future talk that Argentinean 4-year-old children from two social-cultural groups - children from marginalized urban neighborhoods and middle income families with university education- produce and have the opportunity to hear in natural discourse in family and community contexts. The analysis considers the temporal and sequential terms that children use to textualize future accounts that are inserted in interactional situations as well as the temporal and sequential terms that constitute the linguistic input of both groups of children in their homes. The theoretical perspective assumes that the child gradually develops knowledge about temporal and sequential expressions as they are used by others in discourse and activity contexts and as she uses them herself (Nelson, 1996; 2007; Nelson & Levy, 1994). The acquisition of time concepts is knowledge mediated through language and cultural artifacts (Nelson, 1996). This development can therefore follow different trajectories and differences between children can be observed. That is why this study focuses on the future expressions hear and used by children from two different socio-cultural groups. The data consists of a) 228 hours of spontaneous situations -play, hygiene, meal- recorded in the home of 19 children (4:5) from low income populations and 216 hours of spontaneous situations -play, hygiene, meal- recorded in the home of 18 children (4:5) from middle-income populations. 12 hours in the home of each child; b) 250 episodes of child talk about future events produced by the same children: 104 produced by the low income group and 146 by the middle income. The units of analysis are interactive episodes that include a child contribution of at least 2 utterances referring to a future event. Both corpora were transcribed according to the Code for the Human Analysis of Transcripts and analyzed using the Computerized Language Analysis (cita). The quantity of the temporal and sequential vocabulary that children from the two social groups were exposed to as well as the vocabulary they use in their future accounts were measured. Findings show differences in the temporal language used in the textualization process of the future accounts by the children from marginalized urban neighborhoods and by the children from middle income families with university education. Children from urban marginalized neigborhoods include less temporal and sequential terms per account than the children from middle income families (temporal terms: UMN: 0,4976 vs. MI:1,0678; sequential terms: UMN: 0,5946; MI: 1,0213). The differences between the groups are statistically significant XXXX.The same pattern was observed regarding the temporal and the sequential terms that the two groups of children have the opportunity to hear in naturalistic situations at their homes and communities. While the middle income children hear in 12 hours 15,76 temporal terms and 20,81 sequential terms the children who live in marginalized urban neighbourhoods hear en promedio 9,72 temporal terms and 13,11 sequential terms. These differences are also statistically significant. (XXX). This data contribuyen con evidencia empírica adicional obtenida en poblaciones no estudiadas acerca the la importancia of taking into account the linguistic signal children experience on a day to day basis (the input) to explain differences in lexical acquisition.