RESUMEN
Child-directed print corpora enable systematic psycholinguistic investigations, but this research infrastructure is not available in many understudied languages. Moreover, researchers of understudied languages are dependent on manual tagging because precise automatized parsers are not yet available. One plausible way forward is to limit the intensive work to a small-sized corpus. However, with little systematic enquiry about approaches to corpus construction, it is unclear how robust a small corpus can be made. The current study examines the potential of a non-sequential sampling protocol for small corpus development (NSP-SCD) through a cross-corpora and within-corpus analysis. A corpus comprising 17,584 words was developed by applying the protocol to a larger corpus of 150,595 words from children's books for 3-to-10-year-olds. While the larger corpus will by definition have more instances of unique words and unique orthographic units, still, the selectively sampled small corpus approximated the larger corpus for lexical and orthographic diversity and was equivalent for orthographic representation and word length. Psycholinguistic complexity increased by book level and varied by parts of speech. Finally, in a robustness check of lexical diversity, the non-sequentially sampled small corpus was more efficient compared to a same-sized corpus constructed by simply using all sentences from a few books (402 books vs. seven books). If a small corpus must be used then non-sequential sampling from books stratified by book level makes the corpus statistics better approximate what is found in larger corpora. Overall, the protocol shows promise as a tool to advance the science of child language acquisition in understudied languages.
Asunto(s)
Lenguaje , Psicolingüística , Humanos , Psicolingüística/métodos , Niño , Preescolar , Lectura , Vocabulario , Masculino , Femenino , Desarrollo del LenguajeRESUMEN
We present Shabd, a psycholinguistic database in Hindi. It is based on a corpus of 1.4 billion words from electronic newspapers and news websites. Word frequencies and part of speech information have been derived and are made available in a cleaned list of 34 thousand hand-selected words, and a list of 96 thousand words observed with a frequency of more than 100 times in the corpus. Next to the Shabd database, we also make a list with all 2.3 million word types available and a list with the 2.5 million most frequent word pairs (word bigrams). The quality of the word frequency measure was tested in two lexical decision tasks. We observed that the Shabd word frequencies outperform existing frequencies based on smaller corpora of newspapers but not the Worldlex word frequencies based on an analysis of blogs. We also observed that word frequency accounts for as much variance as contextual diversity (operationalized as the number of documents in which the words were observed). The Shabd database is freely available for research.
Asunto(s)
Lenguaje , Psicolingüística , Blogging , Bases de Datos Factuales , Humanos , HablaRESUMEN
A majority of Indian schoolchildren are biliterate in that they acquire literacy in at least two language systems, necessitating dyslexia assessment in both. The DALI-DAB assesses risk for dyslexia by evaluating reading ability and literacy-learning potential through a battery including literacy tests (letter and word reading, spelling, nonword reading, reading comprehension), and mediator skills (phonological awareness, processing automaticity and executive fluency, oral language) in multiple languages. DALI-DAB was developed in three languages - English, Hindi, and Marathi - and standardized on a sample of 1013 children. Reliability analyses revealed high internal consistency (α > 0.8) in most tests in all three languages. Low standard error of measurement values supported DALI-DAB score stability over repeated testing. Construct validity was variously reinforced through, (i) selection of culture-referenced, research-based tests, (ii) approval of test materials by schoolteachers (face validity) and (iii) grade-correlated performance increases on all DALI-DAB tests, besides robust correlations between (iv) literacy and mediator skill test scores (p < .001, concurrent validity), (v) equivalent tests across languages (p < .01, convergent validity), and (vi) DALI-DAB and WJ III ACH literacy scores (p < .01, criterion validity), in contrast to (vii) low correlation between DALI-DAB and WJ III ACH math scores (p > .05, discriminant validity). Overall, the DALI-DAB represents the first standardized dyslexia assessment tool for bilingual-biliterate children.
Asunto(s)
Dislexia , Lenguaje , Niño , Humanos , Fonética , Lectura , Estándares de Referencia , Reproducibilidad de los ResultadosRESUMEN
BACKGROUND: Most of the evidence explaining the language-literacy link is derived from children learning to read and write alphabetic orthography. AIM: This study investigated the literacy deficits in children learning to read Kannada, a Dravidian language that employs an alphasyllabary. METHODS: A group of 15 children with language impairment (CwLI) was compared with two groups of control (age- and language-matched) participants on a range of literacy measures. RESULTS: The results showed that, compared to the age-matched group, the CwLI group performed significantly poorer on reading (words and nonwords) and written spelling tasks. However, the performance on akshara (the written symbol in the alphasyllabary) recognition task was comparable between groups. Similarly, comparison of the CwLI group with the language-matched control group revealed poorer performance in the former group on most literacy measures but not the akshara recognition task. Akshara recognition emerged as the most significant predictor of literacy performance in children learning to read and write the Kannada alphasyllabary. Detailed analyses of the written spelling errors unveiled several unique error types in the language-impaired group. CONCLUSION: The findings of our study revealed both orthography-independent and orthography-dependent deficits in the literacy skills of CwLI mastering the Kannada alphasyllabary.
Asunto(s)
Trastornos del Desarrollo del Lenguaje , Alfabetización , Niño , Lenguaje Infantil , Humanos , Lenguaje , LecturaRESUMEN
Background: Reading acquisition varies between languages, as languages differ in terms of phonology and orthography. Orthographic knowledge is demonstrated to be crucial in literacy acquisition in most orthographies. The literature on acquisition of orthographic knowledge has focused more on alphabetic orthographies and less is understood in alphasyllabary Kannada language. The present study aimed to understand the akshara knowledge acquisition by measuring akshara identification accuracy and reaction time in typically developing Kannada medium primary school children. Methods: The study consisted of 315 typically developing children, 45 each from Grade I through Grade VII between the age range of 5 years 6 months to 12 years 6 months. The children were assessed for akshara identification accuracy and reaction time using a representative sample of 67 akshara selected at four different levels of complexity: vowels in primary form, consonant with inherent vowels, consonant with vowel diacritics, and consonant clusters. The mean performance was compared between the groups using one-way ANOVA with post-hoc Bonferroni test. Results: One-way ANOVA revealed significant main effect (p≤0.05) of Grade on akshara identification accuracy and reaction time. The post-hoc Bonferroni test revealed that the mean akshara identification accuracy improved significantly (p≤0.05) from Grade I to Grade V and reached a plateau at Grade VI. The reaction time significantly reduced from Grade I to Grade IV and there was no significant change beyond Grade V. Conclusion: The children learning to read alphasyllabary Kannada gain mastery over the majority of aksharas during the initial years of formal schooling, which develops completely by Grade VI. The automaticity in naming akshara develops gradually and reaches a plateau by Grade IV. The present findings indicate that children acquire automaticity in naming akshara early, while the akshara knowledge continues to develop.