LINGUIST List 21.2075
Mon May 03 2010
FYI: Setting Language Acquisition Research to Music
Editor for this issue: Danielle St. Jean
<daniellelinguistlist.org>
1. John
Stephenson,
Setting Language Acquisition Research to Music
Message 1: Setting Language Acquisition Research to Music
Date: 29-Apr-2010
From: John Stephenson <jstephhuman.mie-u.ac.jp>
Subject: Setting Language Acquisition Research to Music
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While language learning may be of interest to the general public,acquisition research rarely makes forays into wider culture, partly dueto the apparent difficulty of reconciling the needs of an audienceseeking an entertaining and informative experience with the rigorousprocedures of linguistic science. In the English city of Newcastle uponTyne, however, groups including linguists, musicians and talentedschool children have set out to change public perceptions throughsetting language acquisition research to music.
Insights into first language acquisition lend themselves to musicalperformance, as far as Martha Young-Scholten (project management)and Andy Jackson (composer) are concerned. With the help ofNewcastle schoolchildren and University of Newcastle linguisticsstudents, music is used to illustrate various stages of coming tolanguage, starting in the womb. In the first piece on the group’s CD,'Swing Cycle,' Jackson brings forth phonological acquisition in musicalform.
The early stages of 'Swing Cycle' present the emergence ofphonological distinctions from background noise. First to reach theears are the vowels, presented in various ways, even distorted, to putacross the experience of initial linguistic processing. 'Birth' presents a"consonant explosion" starting, of course, with the plosives. [b], [d], [k]and so on are uttered, with the earliest-acquired sounds repeated.Clusters of consonants soon emerge, including those which willultimately fall by the wayside, sequences such as [rm] not being part ofEnglish.
As the piece goes on, the listener is reminded less of the cacophonywhich must be the infant’s initial experience of language, in favour ofthe appearance of syllables and word-like units. At this stage,messages themselves are indistinct, reflected in the incomprehensiblelyrics. The listener hears such sequences as, "Ah, moo chitty ferry vinefact or thrive. Fizzy bee. Rice inn," with a glance at the accompanyingCD guide revealing that this is a disguised form of the final song. Fornow, intonation and rhythm dominate, with finer details yet to come.
The listener is next treated to various stages that represent morecomplex language acquisition. Inappropriate stress and word boundaryconfusion are exemplified in various intriguing ways: lyrics such as,"Carmpad ling pool paw" and "Bam burble murple chop" mark some ofthe boundary changes (answers revealed in the final stage).
Young-Scholten et al. recognise, of course, that speech is merely themodality that children make use of if local conditions demand it. Othersfind themselves signing as well as or instead of speaking. The secondpiece, 'Out of the Mouths,' reminds the listener in its first section thatthe languages of the Deaf are also underlain by similar processes oflanguage acquisition. In fact, most of the stages here apply equally tosigners as speakers: cooing, babbling, touching, pointing and thinkingare all represented. Only in the 'Singing' and 'Talking' stages doesspeech take centre stage.
Newcastle has brought language acquisition research into a new lightwith this activity, but music appreciation that is fun also has aneducational role. Language students in Japan, for example, haveexperienced the music for themselves in order to learn about languageacquisition and English, with the help of a former Newcastle studentinvolved with the project. Kaori Ando’s students at the Kanda Instituteof Foreign Languages in Tokyo enjoyed the music and were able tofind out new things about language acquisition, such as the gradualnature of L1 development, without the need to draw this understandingfrom dense text or somewhat drier material. The may have helped themto develop realistic goals and performance expectations.
The two pieces of music were performed at the Sage Gateshead, oneof Tyneside’s major music venues, in July 2008. MP3 files and lyricsare available for download at the Newcastle University website:
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/elll/news/item?young-ears-young-tongues-concert-at-the-sage-copy
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/elll/news/item?setting-language-research-to-music-the-swing-cycle
John StephensonFaculty of Humanities, Law and EconomicsMie UniversityJapan
Linguistic Field(s): Language Acquisition; Phonetics; Phonology; Psycholinguistics
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