Methods for Studying Language Production (review)

This book presents approaches to gathering language production data from children and young adults. The 26 contributors to the volume speak from experience, and the variety of their interests and techniques is reflected in the titles of the four parts to which the twenty chapters have been assigned: Part 1, ‘Eliciting knowledge of language’ (25–178); Part 2, ‘Gathering production data in naturalistic settings’ (179–288); Part 3, ‘Developmental disorders’ (289–368); and Part 4, ‘Adult disorders’ (369–416).

Among the topics discussed in Part 1 are infants’ verbal imitation and its potential role in language acquisition; the relationship between elicited production and spontaneous speech data as a means of gauging a child’s linguistic competence and performance; new word coinages by children and some of the techniques used to elicit new word forms; and options available to elicit second-language speech data.

In Part 2 the reader will learn that broad transcriptions (those lacking in details) are likely to weaken the researcher’s conclusions concerning language acquisition; that mealtimes may be particularly valuable occasions for data gathering; and that any study of discourse development and sociolinguistic variation in school-age children should include a record of spontaneous peer or sibling talk obtained without the presence of adults.

In Part 3 one of the editors of this volume discusses the use of elicited imitation to explore cross-domain interactions between children’s evolving speech and their linguistic competence. The other papers of this part describe a variety of research projects: approaches to the study of language abilities of children who exhibit a specific language impairment; the study of how beliefs and goals of school-age children with learning disabilities influence their elicited performance; and problems associated with the language skills of autistic children.

Part 4 begins with a brief appreciation of Jean Berko Gleason’s contributions to the study of aphasia. The two research reports that follow deal with, respectively, the pragmatic microstructure of both aphasic and normal speech and eliciting language data from patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

Most of the data illustrating the articles are drawn from English, but some are from Hebrew, Swedish, French, and Argentinean Spanish. Extensive bibliographies accompanying all chapters will prove useful to readers who wish to follow up certain aspects of language acquisition by children. The virtue of this volume is that it deals with language production in terms of specific cases; students of children’s language development may therefore find valuable pointers as well as cautions for their own work.