3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item A cross-linguistic analysis of predicate construction in early language development(2018) Judin, Simone GeneEarly language and lexical acquisition is a field within psycholinguistics in which extensive research has been undertaken. In literature it is stated that children acquire their different linguistic categories in various stages during early language acquisition. One debate that has always existed, regarding the phases in which children learn language, involves the verb grammatical construction and other predicate structures. This research explores some of these well-known linguistic theories. In the study these theories are contrasted with empirical evidence from contemporary research on typologically different languages, in other words Italian, Japanese, Canadian English, Italian Sign Language and isiZulu. This report also contains a separate case study on isiZulu. The assessment tool that was used to assess these languages is called Picture Naming Game (PiNG). It allows one to assess a child’s predicate development in comprehension and production at the same time. The contribution of the current study is to show that most of the above-mentioned languages prove what the universal theory reveals about predicate development. It highlights some language-specific semantic features. Overall, the study seeks to assess predicate development in young children and presents specific aspects of this development for isiZulu.Item An exploratory study to investigate the use of concrete manipulatives to support language acquisition and vocabulary development in grade 1 learners(2016) Smith, Linda MargaretThe aim of this research is to understand how the use and manipulation of concrete tools, specifically six DUPLO bricks, can impact language acquisition and vocabulary development in second language learners. The study works within a social constructivist paradigm and draws on the work of Vygotsky (1978b). This is an exploratory study and the data is gathered from observations, focus group sessions and semi-structured interviews. The research is conducted over a period of 14 weeks with one class of Grade 1 children who are learning through the medium of English but are also second language learners. The selected school was a northern suburbs government school. The findings show that the children did benefit from the intervention and that learning was enhanced through tactile activities and embodiment. The social collaborative learning through play provided the best opportunities for language acquisition and the development of a shared repertoire of vocabulary. The research study has implications for the theory and practice of teaching early literacy in South Africa in particular language learning and vocabulary development.