UCC Library and UCC researchers have made this item openly available. Please let us know how this has helped you. Thanks! Title Sealbhú na Gaeilge ag naíonáin: early language acquisition of Irish Author(s) O'Toole, Ciara Publication date 2009 Original citation O'Toole, C. 2009. Sealbhú na Gaeilge ag naíonáin: early language acquisition of Irish. PhD Thesis, University College Cork. Type of publication Doctoral thesis Link to publisher's http://library.ucc.ie/record=b1893594 version Access to the full text of the published version may require a subscription. Rights © 2009, Ciara O'Toole http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Item downloaded http://hdl.handle.net/10468/3662 from Downloaded on 2021-10-04T12:53:34Z SEALBHÚ NA GAEILGE AG NAÍONÁIN: EARLY LANGUAGE ACQUISTION OF IRISH By CIARA O’ TOOLE BSc. (Hons) Clinical Speech and Language Studies MSc. Human Communication Sciences Higher Diploma (Arts) Applied Irish FEBRUARY 2009 A dissertation submitted to the College of Medicine and Health in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Speech and Hearing Sciences National University of Ireland, Cork To Prof Fiona Gibbon (Head of Department, Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences) & Prof Paul J Fletcher (Doctoral supervisor, Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the following people and institutions: • The twenty-one children and their families who so kindly agreed to take part in the study and welcomed me into their homes on each visit • My supervisor, Professor Paul Fletcher, who provided me with support, advice and encouragement throughout the project • All my colleagues in the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, particularly Dr. Cate Pettigrew, who provided me with lots of encouragement and support during my study and helped with proofreading this document • The Irish language officers of the Health Service Executive who provided me with a grant to help with the completion of the study • To all my family and friends for supporting me throughout this process DECLARATION I hereby certify that the thesis I am presenting for examination for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Speech and Hearing Sciences In The Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, College of Medicine and Health, National University of Ireland, Cork is solely my own work, other than where I have clearly indicated that it is the work of others I consider the work to be a complete thesis fit for examination Signed_____________________ Date___________________ ii ABSTRACT Speech and language therapy (SLT) services are coming under increased pressure to provide people living in linguistic minority communities with assessment and intervention in the language of the community in which the client lives. In Ireland, Irish, although a minority language, enjoys a positive attitude and a high status as the first official language of Ireland. However, there is little known about Irish language acquisition in typically developing children, let alone assessment or developmental pathways for speech and language therapists to work with. Furthermore, the study of Irish can make a valuable contribution to cross-linguistic research as it has structures which are very different to English such as a VSO word order, and complex morphophonological inflections in its initial mutations. This study adapted a well-known research tool, the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories, to Irish in order to measure vocabulary and grammatical development longitudinally for twenty-one children aged between 16 and 40 months. Results from the parent-checklists were validated against spontaneous language samples and elicitation tasks, and compared to crosslinguistic studies of early language development. The analysis explored theoretical questions such as whether there is a ‘noun advantage’ in Irish, how grammar is acquired, and the nature of the relationship between the lexicon and grammar. In addition, other theoretical aspects such as the effect of gender, birth order and maternal education on early language milestones were investigated. The findings indicate that Irish-speaking children develop vocabulary at a relatively similar rate to other children but the content of their vocabulary is somewhat different, with a relative advantage in grammatical words once they have 400 words in their vocabulary. On the other hand, many inflectional morphemes are acquired relatively late, and this is largely due to their relative complexity. The outcomes of this study not only give SLTs a descriptive framework of the development of vocabulary and grammar in Irish but also contribute to the body of cross linguistic research. i TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION............................................................................................... 1 1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE CURRENT STUDY ........................................................................................ 1 1.2 THE STATUS OF IRISH AND THE IRISH SPEAKING COMMUNITY ..................................................... 3 1.2.1 Historical Background............................................................................................................ 3 1.2.2 Government Bodies................................................................................................................. 5 1.2.3 Contemporary Irish speakers and the Gaeltacht.................................................................... 6 1.3 INTRODUCTION TO MODERN IRISH ............................................................................................... 9 1.3.1 Morphology and Major Lexical Categories ......................................................................... 10 1.3.2 Initial Mutations ................................................................................................................... 11 1.3.3 The Article ............................................................................................................................ 14 1.3.4 Preverbal Particles............................................................................................................... 15 1.3.5 Nouns.................................................................................................................................... 15 1.3.6 Adjectives.............................................................................................................................. 19 1.3.7 Verbal Nouns & Adjectives................................................................................................... 20 1.3.8 Verbs..................................................................................................................................... 23 1.3.9 Pronouns............................................................................................................................... 29 1.3.10 Prepositions.......................................................................................................................... 30 1.3.11 Quantifiers and articles- Prefixes: an and ró....................................................................... 31 1.3.12 Diminutive suffixes ............................................................................................................... 31 1.3.13 Syntax ................................................................................................................................... 32 1.4 LANGUAGE CHANGE ................................................................................................................... 34 1.5 AIMS OF THE CURRENT RESEARCH .............................................................................................. 36 1.5.1 Profiling and measuring early language acquisition in Irish............................................... 36 1.5.2 Irish in the context of crosslinguistic language acquisition studies ..................................... 39 1.5.3 Challenges of Minority-Language Research ........................................................................ 41 2 ADAPTATION OF THE MACARTHUR-BATES COMMUNICATIVE DEVELOPMENT INVENTORY TO IRISH.................................................................. 43 2.1 PREVIOUS STUDIES ON THE ACQUISITION OF IRISH ................................................................... 43 2.2 THE MAC ARTHUR BATES COMMUNICATIVE DEVELOPMENT INVENTORY (MCDI) .................... 46 2.2.1 Motivation for the selection of the MCDI............................................................................. 46 2.2.2 Description of the MCDI ...................................................................................................... 50 2.3 THE ADAPTATION OF THE MCDI TO IRISH ................................................................................. 51 2.3.1 Adaptation of Part 1: Words Children Use .......................................................................... 53 2.3.2 Adaptation of Part 2: Sentences and Grammar.................................................................... 68 2.4 SUMMARY .................................................................................................................................... 81 3 THE PILOT STUDY......................................................................................... 82 3.1 BACKGROUND TO THE PILOT STUDY ........................................................................................... 82 ii 3.1.1 Language Background of the Researcher............................................................................