Child-caregiver interaction in two remote Indigenous Australian communities

Abstract

This paper reports on a study in two remote multilingual Indigenous Australian communities: Yakanarra in the Kimberley region of Western Australia and Tennant Creek in the Barkly region of the Northern Territory. In both communities, processes of language shift are underway from a traditional language (Walmajarri and Warumungu, respectively) to a local creole variety (Fitzroy Valley Kriol and Wumpurrarni English, respectively). The study focuses on language input from primary caregivers to a group of preschool children, and on the children's productive language. The study further highlights child-caregiver interactions as a site of importance in understanding the broader processes of language shift. We use longitudinal data from two time-points, approximately 2 years apart, to explore changes in adult input over time and developmental patterns in the children's speech. At both time points, the local creole varieties are the preferred codes of communication for the dyads in this study, although there is some use of the traditional language in both communities. Results show that for measures of turn length (MLT), there are notable differences between the two communities for both the focus children and their caregivers. In Tennant Creek, children and caregivers use longer turns at Time 2, while in Yakanarra the picture is more variable. The two communities also show differing trends in terms of conversational load (MLT ratio). For measures of morphosyntactic complexity (MLU), children and caregivers in Tennant Creek use more complex utterances at Time 2, while caregivers in Yakanarra show less complexity in their language at that time point. The study's findings contribute to providing a more detailed picture of the multilingual practices at Yakanarra and Tennant Creek, with implications for understanding broader processes of language shift. They also elucidate how children's language and linguistic input varies diachronically across time. As such, we contribute to understandings of normative language development for non-Western, non middle-class children in multilingual contexts.

Child-directed Speech in Qaqet: A Language of East New Britain, Papua New Guinea

“…2 When adults speak with young children, many of these features figure prominently in their language but they disappear as the child matures (Phillips 1973;Harkness 1977), a process referred to as finetuning (Snow 1996). 3 2 Summaries of the features of CDS are to be found in Snow (1972), Snow and Ferguson (1977), Gallaway and Richards (1994), O'Grady (2005), Lieven and Stoll (2009), Saxton (2009) and Vaughan et al (2015). The detailed findings of previous research on the relevant features of CDS (Section 1.5) are presented in the respective sections.…”

“…1 He attributes this to the effect of cultural concepts, as children are not usually addressed in K'iche', but also considers personality and speech style as possible factors (Pye 1986a: 92). Vaughan et al (2015) measured the caregivers' MLU in naturalistic recordings at two distinct points of time for two Australian Kriols. They discovered, for Wumpurrarni English in Tennant Creek, that the caregiver's MLU increases as children grow older, but the opposite happens in the Fitzroy Valley Kriol-speaking community in Yakanarra.…”

“…However, much of this research focuses on the cultural context of language acquisition and the amount of language input. Nevertheless, our knowledge of the structural variation in children's input is still rather limited (Pye 2020;Hellwig & Jung 2020;Vaughan et al 2015). The relationship between language by and with children is what ultimately influences theories of language learning.…”

Effects of an Evidence-based Intervention on the Australian English Language Development of a Vulnerable Group of young Aboriginal Children

“…Both the findings reported in this paper and limitations discussed above highlight the need to continue investigation into strategies to support vulnerable children's language learning. While not the focus of this paper, recent research studies have focused on the complexity of Aboriginal children's language environments (McLeod, Verdon & Bennetts Kneebone, 2014), the development of Australian Aboriginal children's language (Farrant, Shepherd, Walker & Pearson, 2014;Vaughan, Wigglesworth, Loakes, Disbray & Moses, 2015), and the need to use assessments of language that are appropriate to English as additional language learners for an accurate representation of children's language abilities (Gould, 2008;Miller, Webster, Knight & Comino, 2014;Pearce & Williams, 2013). These studies highlight the paucity of research on Aboriginal children's language acquisition and the high incidences of diagnosed language delay prevalent within Aboriginal populations.…”

The Development of Reference Realization and Narrative in an Australian Contact Language, Wumpurrarni English

“…In Australia, there is a growing research base describing the bi- and multi-varietal repertoires of Indigenous children in complex dynamic contact settings (Disbray and Wigglesworth, 2008; Meakins, 2008; Morrison and Disbray, 2008; Simpson and Wigglesworth, 2008; O'shannessy, 2009; Dixon, 2015; Vaughan et al, 2015). Angelo and colleagues have cast light on the “invisibility” of contemporary Indigenous language varieties, particularly in the education sphere, where high stakes testing regimes in Standard Australian English overshadow attention to children's linguistic abilities in their home varieties (Angelo, 2012, 2013; McIntosh et al, 2012; Sellwood and Angelo, 2012; Angelo and Carter, 2015).…”