Sign Language And Language Acquisition In Man And Ape by Fred C. C. Peng Roger S Fouts Duane M Rumbaugh

Author:Fred C. C. Peng, Roger S Fouts, Duane M Rumbaugh [Fred C. C. Peng, Roger S Fouts, Duane M Rumbaugh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General
ISBN: 9781000311464
Google: iwWdDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-06-10T03:47:45+00:00

Mean Length of Utterance

Brown (1973) has suggested that the acquisition of speech by human children can be divided into 5 stages each with a Mean Length of Utterance and an Upper Bound or longest utterance, based on a count of morphemes. Each of these stages is characterized by increasingly complicated linguistic operations. For children in the earliest stage (Stage I) of language acquisition (2 to 3 year olds). Brown reports a Mean Length of Utterance target value of 1.75 and an Upper Bound target value of 5· Calculating the comparable Mean Length of Utterance for sign language is complicated by the fact that sign language does not modulate meanings by the addition of morphemes or the use of sequential devices such as word order. However, Hoffmeister et al. (n.d.) has suggested guidelines for applying Mean Length of Utterance measures to the earliest stages of sign acquisition which have been adapted for use with apes (Miles 1977). Based on these measures, apes exhibit a Mean Length of Utterance and Upper Bound in the range of Stage I language acquisition of human children. Ally showed a Mean Length of Utterance of 1.66 with an Upper Bound of 4 and Booee showed a Mean Length of Utterance of 1.79 with an Upper Bound of 6. Patterson (n.d.) reports a Mean Length of Utterance of 1.82 and an Upper Bound of 11 for Koko. Large Upper Bound measures for Stage I acquisition usually indicates the stringing of sequences of signs or words which is common for both apes (Miles 1977) and human children (Brown 1973). Stringing is not considered indicative of sentence formation complexity and thus does not alter the language acquisition state classification.

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