By Nicole North

​Indigenous Languages and Linguistics Master of Arts (INLL MA) students Martina Joe and Randeana Peter​ and Graduate Program Chair Henny Yeung​ ​presented in Prague ​during the XVIth International Congress for the Study of Child Language​. The conference took place from July 15th to 19​th, 2024. The congress is organized ​by the International Association for the Study of Child Language (IASCL)​, whose mission is to promote international and interdisciplinary cooperation in the study of child language. Martina and Randeana's research work and travel to the conference were supported by the SSHRC Partnership Grant for the project “Ensuring full literacy in a multicultural and digital world” (Principal Investigator Dr. Janet Werker, UBC; co-Investigator Dr. Henny Yeung).

​On July 16​th, during the symposium “Developing materials on healthy language development with and for Indigenous communities” organized by Shanley Allen of the University of Kaiserslautern in Germany, Randeana Peter delivered a presentation. The symposium focused on the development of language-related materials in Indigenous communities around the world, in collaborations between community members and academics, to revitalize and strengthen the acquisition of those languages. Randeana's work is titled t’ut’a’thut ‘un thathun: Beatboxing exercises for children learning Hul’q’umi’num’ sounds​. During her talk, Randeana​ emphasized that, in order to learn Hul’q’umi’num’, it is vital that children learn ​the sounds of Hul’q’umi’num’, which ​involve glottalization, ejectives, and complex consonant clusters not found in English.​ You can read the full description below. 

July 17​th was the day that Henny Yeung presented research titled Visual speech enhances children’s looking but does not speed naming: A priming study​, during a symposium organized by Fleur Vissers. ​His co-authors are listed below, along with the abstract. Their work examines whether visual speech processing has distinct connections to speech production versus perception tasks.

On July 18th, during a symposium organized by Henny Yeung titled "Language acquisition in Indigenous North and Central American contexts", Martina Joe presented a talk. Her work is titled Child pronunciation in a language revitalization context: Evidence from Hul’q’umi’num’. Martina's co-authors are listed below, along with the abstract. The research seeks to examine at what point children master specific sounds, and how L2 adult input affects children’s pronunciation of these sounds. 

t’ut’a’thut ‘un thathun: Beatboxing exercises for children learning Hul’q’umi’num’ sounds

Author
Randeana Peter

Decription
hakwush ‘un shqwultun ‘i’ thuythut ‘un sqwal. ‘e’ut wulh t’ut’a’thut ‘un thathun ‘i’ ‘un tuhwthulh ‘i’ ‘un shhw’uthqun. This is how we begin our Hul’q’umi’num’ beatboxing alphabet. I am a Kindergarten and Grade 1 Hul’q’umi’num’ teacher at the Quw’utsun Smuneem Elementary School in my home of Quw’ustun (Cowichan). The Hul’q’umi’num’ language spans from Snuw’nuw’us (Nanoose) to Me’luxutth’ (Malahat) on Vancouver Island in Western Canada, and is an Indigenous Coast Salish language. Our communities have been working on revitalizing our language for many years. My research is on how children learn sounds of Hul’q’umi’num’, which uses glottalization, ejectives, and complex consonant clusters not found in English. Pronouncing Hul’q’umi’num’ involves learning new muscle movements and I remembered what people said about speaking it: “Our people, when they spoke, it was like they were singing to each other,” and “the muscles we are using [when speaking Hul’q’umi’num’] aren’t used all the time.” This had me thinking about when my kids would hold their throat because it was sore. I discuss here how I teach beat boxing warm-ups to help us speak and keep our Hul’q’umi’num’vocal muscles in shape. In this presentation, I will share examples of nonsense words and sentences that keep us walking around the house practicing everyday, reinforcing the kinds of movements that help us produce the new sounds. For example, in the following passage, all the consonants sounds are used for making beats and the vowels are used for harmony or a transition: p’uq’ (white) lhsuq’ (half) shewuq (carrot) | p’, q’, s, lh, q, sh, w - consonants | u, e - vowels. Our Hul’q’umi’num’ speaking at home and school has become stronger because of these beatboxing activities that prime our muscles to work in a Hul’q’umi’num’ way, and has made us—both children and adults—more confident speakers.

Visual speech enhances children’s looking but does not speed naming: A priming study

Authors
Henny Yeung (Simon Fraser University), Theresa Rabideau (University of Ottawa), Margarethe McDonald (The University of Kansas), and Tania Zamuner (University of Ottawa). 

Abstract
How multimodal information is integrated in children’s speech remains an active area of research. Following predictions from adult neuroimaging models, we ask here whether visual speech processing has distinct connections to speech production versus perception tasks. We previously measured 2-8 year-olds’ looking to a target object (e.g., ball) over a distractor object (e.g., coat) after children either saw a visual prime (a face silently articulating ball), heard an auditory prime (the word ball), or were presented with an audiovisual prime (a face saying the word ball). Results suggested increasing target-object looking across age in V, A, and AV modalities, and although visual speech had comparably weaker effects, it reliably increased in strength from the youngest to oldest ages. The current study investigates whether children were able to use visual speech to prime spoken word production in an almost identical procedure. Instead of two target images, however, only one image was shown (e.g., ball), which was preceded by the same V, A, or AV primes, which presented either the target word (ball), or an unrelated word (coat). Naming latencies for the target object were also recorded instead of looking times. Data collection is ongoing but results to date from 48 children in the 4-6 year range (M = 5;4 years) show strong priming effects in AV and A conditions, but surprisingly, no priming effect or age-related improvement in the V condition. Overall, we replicate the finding that visual speech is less effective than audio speech at activating (or inhibiting) lexical representations in children. Critically, we also show that visual speech is far more effective at enhancing looking (a perceptual skill) than speeding word naming (a production skill). This suggests a rich avenue of future research that investigates why visual speech may interface differently with children’s perceptual versus productive lexical development. 

Child pronunciation in a language revitalization context: Evidence from Hul’q’umi’num’

Authors
Martina Joe, Boey Kwan, Elise McClay, Henny Yeung, and Sonya Bird

Abstract
Hul’q’umi’num’ is an Indigenous language spoken on southeastern Vancouver Island (British Columbia, Canada). Through intense grassroots activism, many communities have a remarkable increase in the number of young children learning Hul’q’umi’num’ through early home- and school-based language programs. Hul’q’umi’num’ has a rich consonant inventory, including many place and manner contrasts not used in English, as well as complex consonant clusters, and children most commonly learn Hul’q’umi’num’ from their teachers and parents, who are themselves adult L2 speakers. In our research, we ask at what point children master specific sounds, and how L2 adult input affects children’s pronunciation of these sounds. As community- and university-based linguists, including an adult learner of Hul’q’umi’num’ who is a parent of young children enrolled in this language programming, we have been examining children’s recitations of word and phrase lists that are representative of the language’s sound system. In our talk, we present an overview of a corpus of 173 transcribed words from 8 children, and we track the acquisition of individual consonants based on children’s age and adult input patterns. Results show that (1) the more often children hear a particular sound, the more often they faithfully reproduce it, (2) consonants present in both English and Hul’q’umi’num’ are more easily produced at earlier ages, whereas consonants unique to Hul’q’umi’num’ are produced more accurately at older ages, and (3) some select non-English sounds are nevertheless produced accurately from an early age (e.g., uvular /q/). These patterns are beginning to build a full picture of the developmental pathway of pronunciation acquisition among young Hul’q’umi’num’-learning children. Our research furthers our understanding of phonological acquisition in languages with more complex consonant inventories than those currently well-studied in the literature. Results will also provide benchmarks that can be used by parents, teachers, and clinicians in supporting Hul’q’umi’num’ speaking children.