ORCID Profile
0000-0001-5446-946X
Current Organisation
University of Potsdam
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Publisher: ISCA
Date: 13-06-2018
Publisher: Center for Open Science
Date: 13-01-2023
Abstract: A survey of ersity in leading language acquisition journals revealed that only 2% of the 7,000+ languages of the world are represented. With a long-term aim of empowering researchers everywhere to contribute to this literature, we organized the First Truly Global /L+/ International Summer/Winter School on Language Acquisition (/L+/). /L+/ was a free 5-day virtual school that facilitated the interchange of expertise among early career researchers about all levels of language development in monolingual and multilingual contexts. Our paper provides an overview of organizing /L+/, the measures we took to ensure inclusivity, and qualitative and quantitative analyses of attendees' experiences. We asked for volunteers through the LangVIEW consortium resulting in a erse organization team from under-represented areas: Sub-Saharan Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and Central and South America. To promote inclusivity, we (1) employed asynchronous and synchronous elements across three time zones (2) provided closed captions for lectures and international sign interpretation for live sessions (3) issued a code of conduct. For each time zone, an algorithm selected 120 participants (80% from traditionally under-represented regions) and 61 countries were represented. A post-school questionnaire revealed that 99% of attendees enjoyed taking part in /L+/. However, qualitative comments suggested that there were issues in duration, contents and scheduling. Although much remains to be done to promote inclusivity in linguistic research, we hope our school will contribute to empowering researchers to investigate and publish on language acquisition in their home languages.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 08-2021
Publisher: Center for Open Science
Date: 17-09-2020
Abstract: More than 30 years have passed since Mehler and colleagues (1988) proposed that newborns can discriminate between languages that belong to different rhythm classes: stress-, syllable- or mora-timed. Thereupon they developed the hypothesis that babies are sensitive to differences in vowel and consonant interval durations as acoustic correlates of rhythm classes. It remains unknown exactly which durational computations infants use when perceiving speech for the purposes of distinguishing languages. Here, a meta-analysis of studies on babies’ language discrimination skills over the first year of life was conducted, aiming to quantify how language discrimination skills change with age and are modulated by rhythm classes or durational metrics. A systematic literature search identified 42 studies that tested infants’ (birth to 12 months) discrimination or preference of two language varieties, by presenting babies with auditory or audio-visual continuous speech. Quantitative data synthesis was conducted using multivariate random effects meta-analytic models with the factors rhythm class difference, age, stimulus manipulation, method, and metrics operationalising proportions of and variability in vowel and consonant interval durations, to explore which factors best account for language discrimination or preference. Results revealed that smaller differences in vowel interval variability (△V) and larger differences in successive consonantal interval variability (rPVI-C) were associated with more successful language discrimination, and better accounted for discrimination results than the factor rhythm class. There were no effects of age for discrimination, but results on preference studies were affected by age: the older babies get, the more they prefer foreign languages that are rhythmically similar to their native language, but not foreign languages that are rhythmically distinct. These findings can inform theories on language discrimination that have previously focussed on rhythm class, by providing a novel way to operationalise rhythm in language in the extent to which it accounts for infants’ language discrimination abilities.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 15-03-2023
DOI: 10.1017/S0305000923000090
Abstract: There is a large consensus (e.g., Cristia, Foushee, Aravena-Bravo, Cychosz, Scaff & Casillas, 2023 Kidd & Garcia, 2022) that ersification in language acquisition research is needed. Cristia et al. (2023) convincingly argue for studying language acquisition in rural populations and recommend combining observational and experimental approaches in doing so. In this commentary, we identify that ersification efforts must also include children growing up in non-western urban societies and that combining experiments with more easy-to-obtain data on language exposure can be a solid method to start with.
No related grants have been discovered for Natalie Boll-Avetisyan.