Alison Henry
School of Behavioural and Social Sciences
University of Ulster
am.henry@ulster.ac.uk
website
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Alison Henry School of Behavioural and Social Sciences University of Ulster am.henry@ulster.ac.uk website |
| Participants: | 8 |
| Type of Study: | the role of input in Belfast English and Standard English |
| Location: | Northern Ireland |
| Media type: | audio available from Henry |
| DOI: | doi:10.21415/T5VG79 |
Publications using these data should cite:
Henry, A. (1995). Belfast English and Standard English: Dialect variation and parameter setting. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wilson, J. & Henry, A. (1998). “Parameter setting within a socially realistic linguistics”. Language in Society, 27, 1–21.
In accordance with TalkBank rules, any use of data from this corpus must be accompanied by at least one of the above references.
This directory contains transcripts from a study of eight upper-working-class children acquiring English in Belfast, Northern Ireland between 1995 and 1998. The contributors to this project were Alison Henry, John Wilson, Cathy Finlay, and Sile Harrington. The goal of the study was to establish how children treated variable forms in the input, that is, cases where there was more than one possible realization for a form or construction. In terms of subject-verb agreement, Belfast English allows “The eggs is cracked” for standard English “The eggs are cracked.” In regard to negative concord, it allows, “They didn’t bring nothing” for “They brought nothing.” In regard to optional inversion in embedded questions, it allows “I wondered where were they going” for “I wondered where they were going.” In the past tense, it allows “I done that” for “I did that.”
Participants Eight children were recorded over a period of 3 years. Four children were male and four were female. Pseudonyms have been used for all the names of the children and parents and for names of extended family members, areas in Belfast, schools, teachers’ names and so forth. Pseudonyms have not been used for the investigator’s personal details or her own children’s names.
In order to study the impact of variability, it was necessary to
identify children who had variation in the input to acquisition. An
initial study of variation in the community indicated that it was
upper-working-class and lower-middle-class parents who in general
exhibited variability in most or all of the areas of language under
study. Of course, it would be impossible to know exactly what input the
child is exposed to without recording all the language the child hears.
However, we wished to develop a methodology that would allow us to
ensure in so far as that was possible that the sample of adult language
we obtained was representative of the child’s total input. First, we
decided that we should select children whose exposure to language was
relatively homogeneous, not in the sense of excluding variability, but
in the sense of having contact mainly with adults whose grammars were
similar to one another. Thus, we decided to exclude children who spent
extensive periods of time in day care, who spent much time with
relatives or other adults who were from different dialect backgrounds,
or who attended preschool groups outside their own areas. In order to
exclude as far as practicable the possibility of the child being exposed
to language that was radically different from that which we would
record, we thus imposed the following requirements on subject selection:
By selecting children in this way, we hoped to be confident that the parental speech we recorded, together with other adult speech to the child which we were likely to be able to record, would give us a realistic picture of the child’s total input. We also wanted to select adults and children from the same speech community, so that where frequencies of occurrence were low in individual adult–child pairs, we could pool the data across adults and children to see the overall picture without distorting the evidence. In order to avoid atypical acquisition patterns, we also imposed the requirement that the child should have no known hearing or language development problems. In addition, it was necessary that the parents were prepared to have recordings made in their home for at least a year on a regular basis.
Obtaining Participants
Identifying children who met this range of requirements took some time; the most ef-fective means of recruitment turned out to be through mother-toddler groups in appropriate areas; the research officers visited a number of such groups in areas thought to contain speakers who were likely to use the variables concerned, and explained the need for participants in the study. Volunteers who appeared to meet the criteria were then visited in their own homes in order to obtain a clearer picture of the linguistic background to which the child was exposed, to make a recording in order to ensure that variability of the type under study was indeed present, and to explain the requirements of the study. Naturally, not all the features we were interested in would show up in a single recording, but the presence of key variables generally indicated that other aspects of variability would be present.
We also undertook a preliminary study, using children from a preschool day care facility. From this it became clear that reasonable numbers of occurrences of the variable elements we were interested in would not appear before around age 2;6, and some would not be evident until well over age 3. In order to obtain relevant data at an early stage, we therefore chose to begin studying two groups of children — one around 2;4 and the other around 3;4. We also started recording one child at 2;0 in order to have some earlier data available. We excluded younger children who, although their language is interesting for many other reasons, exhibited few of the structures under study (for example, plural participants were very rare so that the study of singular concord was not possible; nor were irregular past tenses). Where the parents were agreeable, recording continued until the child began to attend school (and thus we considered was exposed to a wider range of linguistic influences that we could not reliably record). One family with a child in the younger age group withdrew from the study when the child was 3;2.
Recording Sessions
Visits were made to each family once a month for approximately 1 hour. The recordings were carried out mainly by Cathy Finlay, who is a native speaker of Belfast English, had two young children of her own, and was considered to be an equal participant in the adult child-based conversations with mothers on topics such as toilet training, sleep problems and so forth. Sometimes other children were present (friends, cousins etc). In general, adult and child recordings were informal, particularly as the investigator became more of a friend than investigator, sometimes resulting in two of the children (David and Stuart) playing in the investigator’s house with the investigator’s children. Some self recordings were also made by the families, where a tape recorder was left with the family and the child was recorded at mealtimes, bedtime, bath time etc.
The investigator would bring along toys such as train sets, monster and dinosaur fig-ures, books, and jigsaws. Role play was also encouraged using fire fighter hats, medical kits, dolls etc. Other types of play provided a more language-specific style of data, that is, elementary games, blocks, and coloring activities resulted in language about the task. Sometimes toys were too interesting and the child became engrossed in the game with little language. Also some children were naturally more outgoing and chatty than others.
Recording Equipment
A Sony™ Walkman Professional powered by batteries was used with a boundary microphone. This provided excellent clear sound recordings and freedom to move about at random and was generally reliable, though technical problems resulted in three blank recordings. Video recording was not used. Transcription
A complete orthographic transcription of each recording was made using the CED editor. The investigator created and transcribed or verified the transcription of the recordings. In addition, another member of the research team verified samples of all transcriptions. Overlaps and interruptions were largely ignored in transcription to save time, as the research was primarily interested in syntax. A very small amount of data that might be particularly sensitive or personal has been removed from the transcripts.
Table 1: Belfast Children
| Child | Birthdate | First Age | Last Age | Gender | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barbara | 14-JUL-1993 | 2;4.9 | 4;1.18 | Female | 20 |
| Michelle | 6-JUL-1993 | 2;4.28 | 4;4.19 | Female | 17 |
| Courtney | 8-SEP-1992 | 3;4.0 | 4;0.11 | Female | 9 |
| Rachel | 9-JUN-1993 | 2;5.25 | 3;2.3 | Female | 11 |
| Conor | 5-JAN-1992 | 3;8.14 | 4;5.22 | Male | 22 |
| Stuart | 21-APR-1992 | 3;5.12 | 4;5.4 | Male | 17 |
| Johnny | 29-MAY-1993 | 3;5.29 | 4;4.1 | Male | 10 |
| David | 21-SEP-1993 | 2;0.3 | 4;2.3 | Male | 17 |
Table 2: Belfast Files
| File | Barb | Mich | Court | Rach | Conor | Stuart | John | David |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2;4.9 | Blank | 3;4.0 | 2;5.25 | 3;8.14 | 3;5.12 | 3;6.0 | 2;0.3 |
| 2 | 2;4.23 | 2;4.28 | 3;5.25 | 2;6.10 | 3;8.27 | 3;6.24 | 3;6.21 | 2;0.10 |
| 3 | 2;6.16 | 2;7.20 | 3;6.18 | 2;7.27 | 3;9.4 | 3;7.20 | 3;7.30 | 2;1.1 |
| 4 | 2;7.8 | 2;7.26 | 3;7.24 | 2;8.30 | 3;10.10 | 3;10.2 | 3;9.11 | 2;1.22 |
| 5 | Blank | 2;10.14 | 3;9.4 | 2;11.0 | 3;10.22 | 3;10.14 | 3;10.24 | 2;2.19 |
| 6 | 2;9.12 | 2;11.4 | 3;11.0 | 2;11.26 | 4;0.10 | 4;1.6 | 4;0.12 | Blank |
| 7 | 2;10.28 | 3;1.27 | 4;0.11 | 3;2.3 | 4;0.24 | 3;8.26 | 4;4.1 | 2;7.21 |
| 8 | 3;2.19 | 3;3.25 | 2;9.2 | 4;1.21 | 3;10.16 | 2;8.24 | ||
| 9 | 3;3.3 | 3;6.21 | 2;9.16 | 4;2.20 | 4;4.4 | 3;0.2 | ||
| 10 | 3;5.5 | 3;10.21 | 4;3.17 | 4;5.4 | 3;3.25 | |||
| 11 | 3;6.9 | 3;10.22 | 4;4.15 | 4;4.1 | 3;5.24 | |||
| 12 | 3;7.13 | 3;11.10 | 4;5.22 | 3;8.11 | ||||
| 13 | 3;9.10 | 4;2.25 | 4;0.24 | 3;11.9 | ||||
| 14 | 3;11.5 | 4;6.5 | 4;0.28 | |||||
| 15 | 4;1.18 |
The study was funded by a research grant from the Economic and Social Research Council to Alison Henry and John Wilson for the study of “Language Acquisition in Conditions of Variable Input” (Ref R000235802).