scholarly journals Morphosyntactic Development and Severe Parental Neglect in 4-Year-Old French-Speaking Children: ELLAN study

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 254-264
Author(s):  
Catherine Julien ◽  
Audette Sylvestre ◽  
Caroline Bouchard ◽  
Jean Leblond

Language is the most frequently compromised area of development in English-speaking neglected children, particularly the morphosyntactic component of language. This is very worrisome given its central role in academic success and social participation. No previous study has examined the morphosyntactic skills of French-speaking neglected children, despite the morphological richness of French. This study aimed to fill this gap. Forty-four neglected (mean age = 48.32 months, SD = 0.45) and 92 non-neglected (mean age = 48.07 months, SD = 0.24) French-speaking children participated. Measures of morphosyntactic skills were derived from a sample of spontaneous language collected during standardized semistructured play and analyzed using Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts software (2012) . Four morphosyntactic indicators were compared using analyses of variance and Kolmogorov–Smirnov tests: the mean length of utterances (MLU), verbal inflections, word-level errors, and omission errors. The results indicate that 25.6% of the neglected children presented clinically significant morphosyntactic difficulties, as evidenced by a significantly shorter MLU ( M = 5.60, SD = 1.13; M = 6.90, SD = 1.30), fewer verbal inflections, and more frequent word omission errors compared to their non-neglected peers. The results confirm that French-speaking neglected children present many morphosyntactic difficulties. This study argues for sustained speech–language services for these children.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 541-544
Author(s):  
Juan Carlos Bayo

This monograph deals with illuminated manuscripts created in French-speaking regions from the mid-thirteenth to the mid-fifteenth century, i.e., from the earliest narratives of Marian miracles written in <?page nr="542"?>Old French to the codices produced at the Burgundian court at the waning of the Middle Ages. Its focus, however, is very specific: it is a systematic analysis of the miniatures depicting both material representations of the Virgin (mainly sculptures, but also icons, panel paintings, altarpieces or reliquaries) and the miracles performed by them, usually as Mary’s reaction to a prayer (or an insult) to one of Her images.


2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 244-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mélissa Di Sante ◽  
Audette Sylvestre ◽  
Caroline Bouchard ◽  
Jean Leblond

The goals of this study were twofold: (1) to compare the pragmatic language skills (i.e., social communication skills) of 42-month-old neglected children with those of same-aged non-neglected children and (2) to measure the prevalence of pragmatic difficulties among the neglected children. The study sample was composed of 45 neglected and 95 non-neglected 42-month-old French-speaking children. The Language Use Inventory: French (LUI-French) was completed with all parents. This measure, comprised of 159 scored items divided into 10 subscales, was used to assess the children’s pragmatic skills. The 10th percentile on the LUI-French (95% confidence interval ) was used to identify children with pragmatic difficulties. The neglected children had lower scores than the non-neglected children on all 10 dimensions of pragmatics evaluated ( p < .01), as well as lower LUI-French Total Scores ( p < .001). The effect sizes of these differences varied between 0.84 and 2.78. Forty-four percent of the neglected children presented significant pragmatic difficulties compared to 4.2% of their non-neglected peers ( p < .001). It can be concluded that exposure to neglect significantly compromises children’s pragmatic skills. These results support the need for interventions geared toward neglected children and their families to support the early development of their pragmatic skills.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 155
Author(s):  
Tri Indri Hardini ◽  
Philippe Grangé

When two languages come into contact, they exert a reciprocal influence, often unbalanced. A phenomenon that often occurs in case of language contact is the absorption or borrowing of lexical elements, which will enrich the vocabulary of the receiving language. In this article, we deal with words adopted from French in Indonesian and vice-versa. This research shows that most of the words of French origin in Indonesian/Malay language were borrowed through Dutch. Historical background explains why there are no direct loanwords from French language in Indonesian. Nowadays, a second batch of words originating from Old French finds their way into Indonesian through English. On the other hand, very few words from Malay-Indonesian origin were borrowed in French, and their route was not straight either: they were conveyed through Portuguese or Dutch. Phonological adaptation and shift of meaning may have happen when the words were loaned from French to Dutch language or later, when adapted from Dutch into Indonesian language. The data analysed in this article may help teachers of French as a Foreign Language in Indonesia, as well as teachers of Indonesian as a Foreign Language in French-speaking countries, to predict which words will be immediately recognized by their students, and when they should pay extra-attention to faux-amis (cognates whose meanings differ).


2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edy Veneziano

Abstract Non-literal language most often permeates interesting and informative narratives. These are the non-perceptible, inferential aspects of a story, such as the explanation of events, the attribution of internal, particularly mental, states to the characters of the story, or the evaluation of events by the participants and/or the narrator. The main aim of this paper is to examine whether non-literal uses can be promoted in 7-year-old French-speaking children’s narratives through the use of a short conversational intervention (SCI) which focuses the children’s attention on the causes of events. The results show that, after the SCI, the expression of non-literal aspects, even higher-order ones, may make their appearance or significantly increase in children’s stories. The reasons for the effectiveness of the SCI in the promotion of non-literal uses of language and narrative skills in general, as well as the importance of using the SCI as an evaluative instrument, are discussed.


Urban History ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roderick J. Lawrence

The growth of interest in urban and housing history during recent decades has produced a large volume of studies that has examined broad societal parameters, or themes, such as housing policies, economics and legislation. Concurrently, a growing volume of historical research about households and families has been published, but few studies examine the lifestyles and values of the residents. In sum, there rarely has been any systematic analysis of how longitudinal developments in domestic life are related to developments in the spatial layout, the meaning and use of shared and private spaces and the daily activities these accommodate. In general, the inter-relations between the architectural, cultural and societal dimensions of housing history have commonly been overlooked. This paper argues why, and then illustrates how, integrative concepts and methods can be applied to diversify and enrich recurrent interpretations by referring to a published study of urban housing and daily life in the French- speaking cantons of Switzerland between 1860 and 1960.1


2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 945-970 ◽  
Author(s):  
PHAEDRA ROYLE ◽  
ISABELLE STINE

ABSTRACTWe studied spontaneous speech noun-phrase production in eight French-speaking children with SLI (aged 5 ; 0 to 5 ; 11) and controls matched on age (4 ; 10 to 5 ; 11) or MLU (aged 3 ; 2 to 4 ; 1). Results showed that children with SLI prefer simple DP structures to complex ones while producing more substitution and omission errors than controls. The three groups also showed distinct error patterns. Children with SLI appeared to have difficulty with phonological processes involved in liaison, elision, and contraction, whereas control children tended to make more lexical errors. These data support models of reduced morphosyntactic and syntactic abilities in this population, and suggest that morphophonological processes should also be integrated into descriptive models of SLI.


2001 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 182-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenn Apel ◽  
Julie J. Masterson

Purpose : Current research and theory in spelling development and best practices for literacy instruction were reviewed to develop a set of theoretically guided assessment and intervention procedures. These procedures were applied to the case of a 13-year-old student with spelling difficulties. Method : The student was involved in an intensive group intervention program that focused on increasing foundational skills for spelling and on oral word-level reading. Assessment results led to an intervention program targeting phonemic and morphological awareness skills and orthographic knowledge. Results : The student demonstrated clinically significant growth in phonemic and morphological awareness, orthographic knowledge, spelling, and word-level reading. Conclusion : Results of the case study suggest that assessment and intervention procedures guided by theory and research can lead speech-language pathologists to effective participation in aspects of spelling remediation. Additionally, the case study may serve as a model for clinical services and evidence-based practice within clinical settings.


2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bénédicte Grandon ◽  
Anne Vilain ◽  
Steven Gillis

This study explores the use of F0, intensity and duration in the production of two types of prominences in French: primary accent with duration as the main acoustic cue, and secondary accent with F0 and intensity as acoustic cues. These parameters were studied in 13 children using a cochlear implant (CI) and 17 children with a normal hearing (NH), aged 5 to 10 years. Words were recorded in two different tasks, word-repetition and picture-naming, to compare repetition of an audio model with spontaneous production. NH children were able to produce both types of prominences with duration on the one hand and the combination of F0 and intensity on the other hand, similar to what is described in the literature in French-speaking adults. NH children have a more stable use of prominences than CI children, who demonstrate more variability across tasks, more even-timed duration patterns and less modulation of F0 and intensity at vowel and word level than their NH peers.


2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (6) ◽  
pp. 1292-1309 ◽  
Author(s):  
ARIK LÉVY ◽  
PASCAL GYGAX ◽  
UTE GABRIEL ◽  
PASCAL ZESIGER

AbstractUsing a preferential looking paradigm, the current study examined the role that grammatical gender plays when preschool French-speaking toddlers process role nouns in the masculine form (e.g.,chanteursmasculine‘singers’). While being auditorily prompted with “Look at the ‘a role noun’!”, two- and three-year-olds were presented with two pictures of two characters (‘boy–boy’ versus ‘girl–boy’) with attributes of the given role noun (e.g., singers with microphone and music notes). All role nouns were presented in the masculine plural form, which, despite its use to refer to mixed-gender groups, can be interpreted as referring to men. We expected toddlers to be biased by stereotypes, yet when non-stereotypical role nouns were presented, toddlers were not influenced by grammatical gender, but by their own sex (even more so for three-year-old toddlers). The absence of sensitivity to grammatical cues for either age group is discussed in terms of the developmental awareness of grammatical gender.


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