Date of Award

11-1988

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Anthropology

Supervisor

Dr. John Colarusso

Abstract

The intent of this thesis is to identify the lexical, syntactic/inflectional and phonological features of East Cree Baby Talk (henceforth BT) as a way of understanding how children acquire the highly complex standard adult (SA) forms. I demonstrate that the early linguistic features are universal and that significant variation among languages occurs subsequent to the BT stage.

As a result of comparative analysis I am able to conclude:

1. East Cree BT exemplifies universal features of BT;

2. The acquisition of BT represents a level of generalized language learning;

3. Language learning is hierarchical;

4. As languages develop, they diverge and give rise to the greatly varied SA surface structures;

5. The occasional variation that occurs in BT registers can be explained in terms of the salient or difficult features of the target language;

6. BT universals are generally absolute, non-implicational and substantive;

7. Absolute, non-implicational and substantive universals precede statistical, implicational and formal universals;

8. The deep structure of SA speech is similar to BT and, in a sense, develops out of it. Thus, deep structures are cognitively concrete while SA surface structures are cognitively abstract.

For three of the comparative languages used in this study I depend upon secondary data. Due to the problems encountered, I suggest steps to improve methodology in the recording, presentation and analysis of BT material.


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