Event: Linguistics Circle Seminar: Maltese First Language Acquisition: A Longitudinal Study (virtual)
Date: 10 November 2023
Time: 11.00-12.00
Venue: Online ()
Speaker: Ms Michela Vella (LLT Postgraduate Student, University of Malta)
This Seminar is being hosted by the Institute of Linguistics & Language Technology.
Title and Abstract of this Seminar:
Maltese First Language Acquisition: A Longitudinal Study
Abstract:
First language acquisition has been studied extensively in the context of various different approaches both in individual languages and cross-linguistically. Yet, research on Maltese First Language Acquisition (MFLA) is lacking. The present study sets out to investigate the developmental patterns and stages that characterise MFLA, focusing specifically on morphosyntactic acquisition.
Eleven typically-developing Maltese-dominant children are being followed up for 2 consecutive years. The children in this longitudinal study are aged 18-36 months at the initial data collection stage and are followed up at 4/6-month intervals. Both naturalistic and controlled data are being collected during video-recorded 45-minute sessions. The recordings are being transcribed orthographically in a format similar to the CHAT format (MacWhinney, 2000). A mixed-methods approach will be adopted in order to analyse the data, mainly limited to gender and number inflection and clause-internal agreement. In this talk, I will provide a brief overview of this work together with preliminary results emerging from a production task conducted with the study鈥檚 participants aged between 36-48 months.
