English assignment

1. Children Language Development Analysis during Their Interaction with Adults
YAMIN
Teaching and Teacher Education (TTE)
LRC 652: Language Acquisition and Development by Dr. Perry Gilmore

2. Setting of the interaction.
Second pictures, right to left:
Joe, Mary, Henry, Anthony, Dr. Perry and
Yamin
Notes:
The script below is a transcribing of a selected four-and-forty-six
seconds video.
The script is divided into five tables (A, B, C, D, E) to ease the readers
and to help the writer pointing out particular part of the script. The
table is accompanied by time of happening, in minutes and second
(00:00)
Small numbers (1, 2, 3 …) on the script indicate the chronological event
of the the verbal and non-verbal utterance. The non-verbal includes
gesture, movement, or facial expression. If there are numbers that are
the same, it means they happen at the same time.
The two pictures in the left depict the setting of the recording where
few adults and children surrounding the table with many toys on it.
The uppercase indicates the volume of the speaker above the normal
tone.
The ‘####’ signs that the utterance is not clear or is unheard, ‘-‘ for no
utterance.
A. 00:05-00:30
Line Speakers Non Verbal Verbal
1 Adrian 1-4Pointing to Kathleen 1Molly, what do you call her? 2What’s her
name?
2 Molly 2Look at Kathleen, confuse 3-
3 Adrian 4still pointing to Kathleen 4Is that, is that Daddy?
4 Molly 5Confuse 5-
5 Evalyn 6Laughing 6No, kali
6 Adrian &
Kathleen
A : 7laughing expression
K: 7teasing expression
A : 7Laughing
K : 7Kathleen
7 Adrian 8Facing Joe, touching his hand,
and pointing to Kathleen
8Here, here. tell me, what do you call her”
8 Joe 9Look at Shally 9kelin
9 Adrian (cameras shows other things) 10What? Kathleen? Oke, thank you for telling
me ###
B. 00:32-00:49
Line Speakers Non Verbal Verbal
1 Henry 1Running toward his mother 1Mommy, mommy, mommy…!
2 Henry 2Showing his toy-camera to
the mother
2#############
3 Henry’s
Mother
3Bowing, 4look into the toy-
camera
4I saw it, I saw it.
4 Henry 5Running back to the table but
he stops, showing picture in
his toy-camera to Dr. Perry
-
5 Dr. Perry 6Put her glasses, look at the
picture in Henry’s toy camera
6##########
6 Henry 7Shrug his shoulder 7They gone away
7 Dr. Perry 8Shrug her shoulder 8##########

3. C. 01:24 - 02:52
Line Speakers Non Verbal Verbal
1 Henry 1Hitting the dough with a stick,
playing
1IIYAIIIYAA.
2 Joey 2Pointing a stick, 3begging
expression
3Have that?
3 Yamin 4Pointing a stick near him 4You need this one?
4 Mary 5Pointing the dough, facing
Henry
6Are you done with your cake?
5 Henry 7Look at Mary. 8shake his head 8No, 10still going
6 Mary 12Nodding her head 9No? 11Still going? 12Oke.
7 Mary 13Pointing Henry dough.
14attaching her thumb and point
finger (to sign a pinch amount)
13Can I have a little pinch of the blue 14like
this little bit?
8 Henry 15Nodding his head 16put his
hand up to sign whole things
15Yea, you have 16the whole thing.
9 Mary 17Nodding his head 17Yea?
10 Mary 18Facing Henry 18oh no,####### not if you are still using it.
11 Henry 20shrug his shoulder 19well 20I am 11not use it
12 Mary 21Playing with the dough
22Pointing a thing on the table
23playing with the dough
21Well, I was wondering I 22cause I saw that
one look like a snake, 23And was wondering
if I could make ###### wormer.
13 Henry 24Look down to what Mary
make
24yea, you can make whatever you want to
use with that. I AM NOT USE IT
14 Mary 25Keep playing with the dough
(stuff on the table)
25well, thank you than, nice to share that.
Did you learn it at school? Or at your
house?
15 Henry 26Shrug his shoulder and move
his head to the left (gesture for
no) 27pointing to what Mary
making 28shrugging his
shoulders
30shrugging his shoulder and
squeeze his palm hand
(gesturing NO)
26NO. I JUST. I JUST know… that, I JUST
KNOW 27THAT. …… That I’m 28not 29playing
with anything and that…That I’m not
touching it. They 30not tell you.
02:53 - 03:10 people in the table are playing with their own and there is no conversation
D. 03:11 -- 03:43
Line Speakers Non Verbal Verbal
1 Henry 1playing with his dough 1I AM MAKING A POND!!
2 Mary 2playing with hers 2A pond?
3 Henry 3Still looking at his ‘pond’ 3Yea..
4 Mary 4Touch her nose 5facing Henry 4Oh, cool cool. 5Can I have…?
5 Henry 6pointing to what Mary has
made
6That you make a bridge…!
6 Mary 7look at what she made 8look at
Henry while opening her palm
hand
7Oke, you make a pond, I make a bridge…?8
7 Henry 9pointing Mary ‘bridge’ 9That’s the bridge.
8 Mary 10looking at her bridge
11showing confusion expression
10That’s gonna be the bridge?11
9 Henry 12Nodding his head 12Yea
10 Mary 13Lifting her Eyebrow 13Ow…
11 Mary 14facing Henry 15moving up side
down her open palm hand to
signal wider and walk
14Should I make it a little 15wider, Are people
going to walk on it…?
12 Henry 16Look at his pool and wipe his
head 17Hitting the air with his
punch
16oooo…. well and cars … ### 17smush that
…I can crush it an then #### we’ll be all

4. done if we’re %%%? and then would be
awesome if we build.
13 Mary 18Look at Henry. 19open his palm
head move it to left and right to
gesture wider
18########So you’re going to try and squish
it ###.you think we may make it 19wider?
14 Henry 20Sitring down, 21grabbing
something on the floor
20Yea
15 Mary 22Playing with her dough 22Good plan
E. 03:51-04:21
Line Speakers Non Verbal Verbal
1 Joe 1Look at everyone, finally to
Mary next to him
2pointing his dough with stick on
it
1I made a 2H?
2 Mary 3Look at Joe. 4 pointing Henry
next to Her, but still look toward
Joe 5Look at joe, pointing him
3An H? For… for 4Henry maybe. 5What,
what’s letter is your name start with?
3 Joe 6Look at Mary and thinking 7Jei
4 Henry 8Bring his toy-camera to the
front of Mary
9Look…!
5 Mary 10Loot at Henry toy-came and
nod her head
10Oh see, the yellow one. I do. I like the
yellow.
6 Henry 11(Pulling off his camera toy) -
7 Mary 12Look to Joe, and talk to him 12Can you make a J because your name starts
with J?
8 Henry 13pointing a stick in front of Joe
(Interrupting)
13Can I have that please…!
9 Mary - 14Oh, please… see you said please and that
works.
10 Henry 15Use a stick to press his dough 15Smash it up.

5. A. Introduction
1. The Data
The data for this work is gained by recording of an activity deliberately set up for the
children to play and interact. From the recording that last for more than one hour, four minutes
and forty-six seconds clip is selected to be watched and listened carefully, and is transcribed
for further analysis. At first, there would be two kinds of transcribing that I want to use to
analyze the data; the traditional or basic transcribing, and Ochs’ transcribing theory. By
traditional transcribing I meant that the video is transcribed up-down, follow common culture
convention whereby written language is decoded from the top to the bottom). Ochs transcribing
theory is a method of transcription that intended reduce biases by presenting as much as, and
as detail as possible the circumstances happen during the data recording (Ochs, 1979). At the
end, the writer uses the traditional transcription and integrates some suggestion from Ochs
Transcription theory such as giving numbers in accordance with the chronological orders and
adding non-verbal utterances on the table. The aim is to help readers easily follow the
conversation without missing some important information.
The data was taken by setting up an event and inviting children and their parents to the
small library at the College of Education, the University of Arizona. The scene was set up as
comfortable as possible for children to play and interact with the adult, with many toys and
food provided. The wall of the room also had decoration to support the playful atmosphere.
The interaction was made as natural as possible by encouraging children to produce languages
as much as possible while avoiding adults to lead the interaction and interfere too much. The
writer most of the time was in charge with the recording for the group data, and thus had a little
interaction with the children. I was anticipating natural speech production resulted from the
interaction among the kids and between children and the adults. The recording lasted for more
than one hour, however only some tiny minutes of the interaction that will be taken into account
to be analyzed.
2. Participants
There were five children of one to five years old, and are accompanied by eleven adults
consisted of parents, LRC 625 students, teaching assistant and a Professor in the scene during
the recording. To be noted, there are many multiparty interactions that influencing each other
during the two hours recording, thus, there were many utterances layering and overlapping one
to another when the attendees interacting. Therefore, the analysis will only focus to a specific
part of the interaction that is a clip of four minutes and forty seconds video of the more then
two hours’ video. The video is displaying interaction mainly among Henry, Joe, and Mary, but
there are tiny parts of other adults' participants like Adrian, Yamin, Dr. Perry, Kathleen and a
child, Evalyn. Henry is four years old while Joe is heading to his five years old. Henry and Joe
are from the middle-class American family and all of their parents graduated from college.
Henry's parents got the degree from the University of Arizona. The family has been to South
Korea for a while, and the father is able to speak in Korea.
3. Literatures
How language is acquired and developed remains appealing research object by many
scholars. Thus, it has has pulled in numerous researchers. There have been bunch literary works
examining and breaking down kids discourse creation and improvement. Brown (1973) looks
into how to uncovers the secret of how first language (L1) is procured. Apparently, the pattern
on how the language acquired and developed by all accounts are all inclusive, meaning they
are similar all around the world, despite what languages are, as shown by many L1 researchers
e.g. Raja (2003) who study in the Indonesian context. Some longitudinal studies also confirm
and clarify that children language production develops from time to time by start babbling at
the age of zero to three months old, then utter the first word somewhere after six months, multi-
words after eighteen months, and finally, develop complex sentences used in conversation after
twenty-four months.
Language ability, in addition as has been biologically innated to every human, also part of
the social construction. As Ochs and Schieffelin (1989) describes how the pattern of early

6. language socialization between children and adults differs across cultures. They compare
between the white middle-income family with Kaluli and Samoan Family. The research shows
that white middle-class family in raising their children involves simplification of words and
happens in higher frequency between parents and the children. However, this pattern could not
be found in the family in Papua New Guinea, and Samoan where the caregiver does not interact
verbally too frequently. Instead, the children are forceful to adapt themselves with the language
that the adult use.
A study in Japan points out Japanese teaches their children to develop their language by
completing the need of others, such as answering questions from guests in their house if they
are asked. If their children do not answer, they will repeat the request and ask their children
several times to answer. Japanese culture also believes that as the member of a community, an
individual should avoiding conflict between members. On the other words, the community
should be given the priority and avoiding answering no directly. That is why many outsiders
misunderstand and think that Japanese is dishonest and irresponsible (Clancy, 1986)
B. Discussion
This section is devoted to discussing issues related to children language development
specifically in term of the syntactic, phonological, semantic, and pragmatic development in
conjunction with the data taken in the activity. There is also some brief discussion of the
finding that consider as the ‘highlight' from the data.
1. Adult-Children Interaction;
No Speakers Category Number of utterances Number of exchanges (turn-
taking)
1 Yamin Adult 1 0
2 Adrian Adult 5 2 (to Joe and to Evalyn )
3 Kathleen Adult 1 0
4 Henry Mom Adult 1 0
5 Dr. Perry Adult 2 1
6 Mary Adult 25 12 (To Henry and Joe)
7 Henry Child 27 13 (To Mary)
8 Joe Child 4 2 (To Adrian and Mary)
9 Molly Child 0 0
10 Evalyn Child 1 0
Total 47 30
As can be seen on the table of the summary of the transcribing data above, it clearly shows
that the interaction between child and adult dominates the entire conversation rather than a
child to child interaction. Henry produces twenty-seven (27) utterances with the numbers of
turn-taking with thirteen (13). Similarly, Mary produces twenty-five (25) utterances with
twelve (12) turn taking mostly to Henry, and only a few to Joe. By turn taking, I meant is
when an utterance is responded by the addressee, or in the other hand there is an exchange
between the speakers. Turn-taking is a step involved in the conversational process occur in
order to maintain the flow conversation.
In the recording we can see, even though Henry dominates the scene by producing more
utterances other children and the adult (Mary), he is not the one who drive the conversation.
Mary as an adult most of the time control over much of the conversation by asking many
questions. As we can see in the table C:
Mary 5Pointing the dough, facing
Henry
6Are you done with your cake?
Henry 7Look at Mary. 8shake his head 8No, 10still going
Mary 12Nodding her head 9No? 11Still going? 12Oke.
Mary 13Pointing Henry dough.
14attaching her thumb and point
finger (to sign a pinch amount)
13Can I have a little pinch of the blue 14like
this little bit?

7. Also as in table D:
4 Mary 4Touch her nose 5facing Henry 4Oh, cool cool. 5Can I have?
5 Henry 6pointing to what Mary has
made
6That you make a bridge…!
On above scripts, Mary is trying to develop the conversation by posing questions such as
“Are you done with your cake?” and “Can I have a little pinch of the blue like this little bit?”
Posing question by adults to children is common in early language development stage and is
called ‘scaffolding’. Scaffolding gives opportunities to children to exercise and develop their
language ability. At home setting, parents do scaffolding to children very frequently in various
ways. Through these scaffold interactions, children inner speech turns to develop and
expanded, and at the preschooler period, adults support or scaffold the conversation through
questioning, expansion, and extension (Otto, 2010).
On the D table when Mary just said “Oh, cool cool. Can I have…?”, Henry interrupts and
says, "that you make a bridge…!”, this interruption is driven by his semantic aptitude. This
will be further discussed at point 6 below.
2. Conversation and Gesture
Conversation, or dialogue dominate the way human communicate each other. This is
almost impossible that a human being may develop his or her linguistic ability without other
people presence. Conversation has a vital role in accelerating children language development
in early ages. Young children acquire their linguistic and thinking habits through
communication with other human beings, and it is only this association that makes a human
being out of him, that is, a speaking and thinking being (Cukovsky, 1968)
In the recording, we can see that Henry is dominating the scene and is exercising his
language competence, accompanying by adults, most of the time by Marry. From 47 total
utterances, 27 are spoken by Henry and followed by Marry 25. We can see that the recording
clearly shows that Henry is standing nearby Joe and Molly, and other adults in front of him
(Yamin and Anthony). However, we found out from the transcribe that there is no interaction
and conversation among the kids, despite the fact that Joe and Henry are almost in the same
age.
There are some possible reasons why there is only a few utterances and exchange among
the children, especially Henry and Joe while they are in similar age. The first is they are not
contiguous one to another, secondly they are busy with their own play, and thirdly they do not
listen to each other. In order to maintain a conversation speaker and addressee must share a
joint focus of attention to maintain exchange, and they must listen to each other (Clark, 2003).
Another interesting thing from the data is that Henry has been able to utilize gesture to
stress what he is saying. Gesture is a motion of particular of part body that holds information
for example by waving (meaning goodbye), shrugging shoulders for ‘no’ or ‘have no ideas’,
etc. However not all body movement is a gesture, for example pressing a key on a keyboard is
not a gesture because the motion of a finger on its way to hitting a key is neither observed nor
significant (Billinghurst, 2011). During the conversation, Henry occasionally uses many
gestures to negate ‘no’ by shrugging his shoulder, or by motioning his head right-left, and some
other gestures. Look at the following part of the conversation:
Mary 25Keep playing with the dough (stuff on
the table)
25well, thank you than, nice to share that. Did you
learn it at school? Or at your house?
Henry 26Shrug his shoulder and move his head to
the left (gesture for no) 27pointing to what
Mary making 28shrugging his shoulders
30shrugging his shoulder and squeeze his
palm hand (gesturing NO)
26NO. I JUST. I JUST know… that, I JUST KNOW
27THAT. …… That I’m 28not 29playing with
anything and that…That I’m not touching it. They
30not tell you.

8. Mary, as an adult also contributes to teaching Henry by showing some gesture as she
expresses and stresses the word wide and wider', as the following table:
Henry 16Look at his pool and wipe his head
17Hitting the air with his punch
16oooo…. well and cars … ####### 17smush that
…I can crush it an then ####### we’ll be all done if
we’re #### and then would be awesome if we build.
Mary 18Look at Henry. 19open his palm
hand and move it to left and right.
18#########?So you’re going to try and squish it
###... you think we may make it 19wider?
Gesture and verbal communication relate intimately, and they are almost equal partners.
As we may see in the daily routine, people when they are conversing, and delivering speeches,
specific particular movements go along with verbal expression. At the very earliest
development, gestures have taken place. These gestures can be in the form requesting for
example by extending the arm toward an object, showing by holding up an object in the adult’s
line of sight, giving by transferring an object to another person, and pointing with index finger
or full hand extended towards an object, location, person, or event (Gulberg, 2008). When
infants grow up, more gestures are developed and enrich the children communication ability.
However, the important point to bear in mind is that gestures may vary from one society with
another society.
3. Syntactical Development
Both Henry and Joe are in their preschool period. The pre-school period is an importance
period for children to exercise and develop their linguistic repertoire as noted by Otto (2010)
that during the pre-school period, children's language ability develops and increases in both
complexity and volume. Henry, and other kids in the recording, have had a syntactic
knowledge, yet they developed that knowledge and ability through conversation with adults.
O'Grady, Debrovolosky, & Aronoff (1989) states that such development can be seen in the
ways such as increasing noun and verb phrase, negation use, produce interrogative sentences,
and start forming the passive forms in their utterance.
It is observed in the recording that Henry has been able to produce a range of multiple
nouns and verbs phrase. It is also clear that he has been able to produce a short but effective
phrase as to response the adult addressee (Mary) as he said “no, still going” to response the
question, “are you done with your cake?”. Besides, Henry has been able to produce a long
sentence with its complexity. Henry produced also negation with NO, and NOT, and also
multiple words combination such as in the phrase ‘the whole things’. Take a look on the
following script:
Mary : Are you done with your cake?
Henry : No, still going -- Negation NO, with auxiliary verb
Mary : Can I have a little pinch of the blue. Like this little bit???
Henry : Yea, you can have the whole things.-- grammatically correct, with
Mary : Well no, not if you are still using it.
Henry : well, I am not use it -- missing complete auxiliary verb (-ing form)
Mary : well. I was wondering. I saw that one a snake. I was wondering if I make a snake
but it is a worm.
Henry : yea, you can make whatever you want to use with that. I AM NOT USE IT.
Mary : well, thank you for sharing. Did you learn it at school? Or at your house?
Henry : NO. I JUST. I just know… that I just know that. …… That I’m not playing with
anything and that…That I’m not touching it. They not tell you.
The usage different types of sentences as shown above indicates that Henry has been
capable to use the expansions and recombination strategy (Brown, 1973) in constructing a
multiword utterance to address adult, as well as have acquired the concept of tenses, negation,
and disagreement.
In another part of the transcript:
Henry : I AM MAKING A POND.
Mary : A pond?
Henry : Yea.

9. Mary : Oh, cool. Oh cool. Can I have…?
Henry : That you make a bridge… (while pointing to marry dough with sticks on it)
Mary : Oke, you make a pond, I make a bridge?
Henry : That’s the bridge.
Mary : That’s gonna be the bridge?
Looking at the first sentence of the second script, the phrase "making a pond” which is part
of auxiliary verb and expansion of the noun “pond”, with determiner “a” and auxiliary verb
“making”. The sentence “I a making a pond” also indicates that Joe has acquired the concept
of reconstructing present participle and turn into the form into affirmative form. His ability
shows that he is able to construct present continuous tense, even though not consistent as he
said in another line ‘I am not use it’ which supposedly I am not using it.
The using of interrogative sentence also marks the development of children syntactical
knowledge development in the early age. As Otto (2010) said that most of preschool children
create their question by using raising intonation, and or a wh-word such as where, what, why,
while still keeping subject  verb order. For example, a young preschooler may ask
"Mommy pinch finger?" using rising intonation, or the older preschooler would ask, "did
Mommy pinch her finger?” (Otto, 2010). In the recording, there are numerous utterances
indicating that children have had the ability in constructing the sentences not only by rising the
intonation but also with question words. For example, when Joe said "have that…?” while
pointing out a stick indicated that he wanted to have that stick. Similarly, Henry in line … say
‘Can I have this please?’ while pointing stick, the adult then say to Henry “Oh, see you said
please and that works” to enforce Henry keep using such utterance for asking and requesting.
4. Phonological Development
Regarding the universality of the beginning particular speech sound production prior to age
three, there is only a little agreement among the researchers. However, for children after three
and preschool, there is a consensus that has been achieved (Otto, 2010). Yet it is challenging
to analyze children phonetic development and pattern. As quoted by Owens (1996) from
Preisser, Hodson, and Paden's study in 1988 that the most frequent phonological process found
in children under thirty months of age is consonant cluster reduction, however, there is a
dramatic drop in the use of this process after twenty-six months. At the beginning of the clip,
there is a short conversation as following:
Adrian 1-4Pointing to Kathleen 1Molly, what do you call her? 2What’s her
name?
Molly 2Look at Kathleen, confuse 3-
Adrian 4still pointing to Kathleen 4Is that, is that Daddy?
Molly 5Confuse 5-
Evalyn 6Laughing 6No, kali
Adrian &
Kathleen
A : 7laughing expression
K: 7teasing expression
A : 7Laughing
K : 7Kathleen
Adrian 8Facing Joe, touching his hand, and
pointing to Kathleen
8Here, here. tell me, what do you call her”
Joe 9Look at Shally 9kelin
In the conversation as transcribed above, Molly was asked by Adrian to mention ‘Kathleen'
name. Molly can't answer that question and then Adrian asks another questions ‘is that, is that
Daddy?’ Molly can not answer and by the sudden Evalyn while laughing saying ‘kali’ instead
of ‘Kathleen’. At this point, because her inability to sound appropriately, Evalyn voice the
name as she is capable to. Owen (1996) explains that at the young age, a child begins to
construct her own production capacity with the words that she selects to produce. There is a
pattern that generally children follow to deal with their difficulties voicing the word. For
multisyllabic words or words ended by consonants, are occasionally produced in a CV
(Consonants-Vowel) voice. Other patterns also appear for the word ‘blanket' become ‘bakie',
and ‘dirty' may become ‘dati' (Owen, 1996)

10. Taking a look of Henry and Joe utterances, such cluster reduction process does not appear
in both of their speech productions. Joe’s speech production is clear even though he speaks in
a low volume and in a limited amount of words. Henry in same ways speaks loudly and he
produces more utterances than any kids in the class, yet he speaks clearly and in great volume:
Henry 1playing with his
dough
1I AM MAKING A POND!!
Mary 2playing with hers 2A pond?
Henry 3Still looking at his
‘pond’
3Yea..
Mary 4Touch her nose
5facing Henry
4Oh, cool cool. 5Can I have…?
Henry 6pointing to what
Mary has made
6That you make a bridge…!
Henry is a four years old kids, and he has been able to pronounce words in a clear sound.
This is in line with Owen (2001) overview of phoneme production that four-year-olds may
produce all vowel sounds /p/, /m/, /h/, /n/, /w/, /b/, /k/, /g/, /d/, /t/, //, /f/, /j/, /r/, /i/, /s/, //, etc.
Henry as shown in above script say loudly and confidently ‘I AM MAKING A POND' to break
the silence and to attract the attention of adults. Preschool children's growing awareness of
phonemes is often evident in their language play (Otto, 2010) and one of the types of language
play is sound play (Schwartz, 1981) that is children manipulating the phonemic elements, a
prosodic feature of pitch, stress, and juncture.
Therefore, while 4-year-old children have started the maturation of producing adult-like
pronunciation, 3-year-old children's pronunciation on a certain syllable might still be typical
as children under 30 months or 24 months old, as it might be the concept that is typically
acquired late. However, this variation also depends on various of factors, most notably
individual differences.
5. Pragmatic Development
Having the development of ability in syntactic, semantic and phonetic, children begin to
use the acquired language for different purposes for their interaction. They may use the
language to request permission, to show emotion, to appeal social rule, and to make a judgment
(Owen, 1988).
In the recording, there are numerous utterances with different purposes used by the
children, especially Henry when interacting with adults. By examining the table below, we
figure out how Henry has been able to engage actively with the adult (child-adult), and with
his peer (child-child). Although there is a limited interaction between Henry and other children,
it does not mean that Henry or other kids have limited ability in interaction but rather than
because of circumstances where Henry and other kids did not join at the same activities or
having a face to face interaction.
Looking at the data above, it shows that Henry dominates the conversation accompanied
by the adult, in this case, Mary. Joe who is in the same table with Henry and Mary does not
speak a lot and engage in the conversation. This is somehow because either he is not involved
by other interlocutors, or he is not interested with the conversation. He is also busy with the
toy. The total turn taking both adult and Henry is which implies that the dynamics of
interaction happened synchronously between the child and the adult during the recording.
No Speaker Number of turns
1 Henry 13
2 Joe 2
3 Adult 12
Declarative Directive Interrogative Exclamative
Henry 11 1 1 0
Mary 2 0 8 0
Joe 2 0 1 0
Total 15 1 10 0

11. Throughout the recording, there is a very limited interaction between the children. Instead,
Henry interaction with the adult is dominating the recording. In terms of the sentences
category, it is found that Henry uses many declarative utterances, only one directive utterance,
one interrogative, and no exclamative. Mary as an adult who most of the time accompanying
Henry in the dialog performs more interrogative sentences (8) than the declarative (2), directive
(0) and, exclamative (0). The reasons because Mary is likely to encourage Henry as well the
others children to produce more utterances. It is also possible that the inexistence of
exclamative sentences during the recording might be an indication that it could be the category
that is acquired quite late and not an essential feature in a conversation. Its frequency of
appearance in adults is also low which zero frequent, compared to other categories of
sentences. This dominant result is the appearance of interrogative sentences, that used by adults
to address the children, so that children, mostly Henry answered the questions in a declarative
sentence. It implies that adults intervention for the purpose of getting the data may impact the
nature of the data. So, please bear in mind that the type of sentences used by children might
not reflect what might appear in natural setting during interaction among children..
6. Semantic Development
During the preschool years, children’s vocabulary expands and also starts to be more
sophisticated and resumed (Otto, 2010). Children at these years do not only show a wide
variety of vocabulary but also appropriate and relevant gesture as well as semantic repertoire
as shown in the recording. Owens (2001) points out that children gradually acquires an abstract
knowledge of meaning that is independent of particular context or individual interpretation.
He also mentions that in constructing meaning, children use different strategies of semantic
mapping. There are three different concepts of semantic mapping, such as semantic feature
hypothesis, functional core hypothesis, associative complex hypothesis. Semantic feature
hypothesis refers to how children establish meaning based on the recognizable and perceivable
features of a certain concept of word, for example, the definition of cat might include meow,
four legs, two eyes, two ears, and fur. Functional core hypothesis refers to the idea that children'
definition of the word relates to the action, relationship, and function of the word they are
defining, for example, ice is something in refrigerator and cat is something that sleeps on the
couch. Associative complex hypothesis relates to the extension of meaning that children
construct from the association of the core concept of the words,
1 Henry 1playing with his dough 1I AM MAKING A POND!!
2 Mary 2playing with hers 2A pond?
3 Henry 3Still looking at his ‘pond’ 3Yea..
4 Mary 4Touch her nose 5facing Henry 4Oh, cool cool. 5Can I have…?
5 Henry 6pointing to what Mary has made 6That you make a bridge…!
6 Mary 7look at what she made 8look at
Henry while opening her palm hand
7Oke, you make a pond, I make a bridge…?8
7 Henry 9pointing Mary ‘bridge’ 9That’s the bridge.
8 Mary 10looking at her bridge 11showing
confusion expression
10That’s gonna be the bridge?11
In above transcript, Henry is playing with the play-dough, sticks, and other stuff on the
table, he then initiated making a small pond by forming his dough into a small pool-shape, and
mentioning ‘I am making a pool’ At this point, Henry has possessed a semantic ability as what
linguist said as semantic feature hypothesis because he is able to establish meaning based on
the recognizable and perceivable features of the pool. This claim is supported by next utterance
of Henry:
Mary Oh, cool. Oh cool. Can I have…?
Henry That you make a bridge…
Mary, in fact, does not intend to make a bridge, but Henry led her to admit and say that she
made a bridge. Mary with not any intention to disagree with Henry and then imply that yes she
is making a bridge by saying ‘oke, you make a pond. I made a bridge’. Henry utterances by
mentioning or perhaps guessing ‘a bridge' has something to do with the statement that he made
earlier, ‘I am making a pond’.

12. C. Closing
By recording the data, and then analyze the data and relate them with many works of
previous researchers, the finding mostly gives its confirmation or support its predecessor. In
the other word, that the language development of children in this assignment confirmed
previous studies. In general, the children utterances become more and more sophisticated in
term of pragmatic, semantic, and syntactical development. This is in aligning with Owen says
that children speech production becomes more complex after 24 months (Owens, 1996).
Henry has started producing some sentences in progressive present tense, and other tenses,
with a minor error. He also produces not only declarative, but also in interrogative, and
imperative form. Joe and Henry no longer has phonological constraints since they are now in
their four and five years old, while phonological constraint mostly happens in the age below
two years old (Owen, 2001). Evalyn at the beginning of the conversation indicates toddler
phonological phenomenon in a way she pronounces the multisyllabic with the CV pattern, by
supposedly ‘Kathleen’ become ‘kali’. In semantics, Henry shows a linguistically genius that
indicates his ability to use and play with language. In pragmatics, Henry is able to engage in
conversations, and demonstrate different language speech ability, politely request, having the
turn taking, gestures and conversations.
These understandings and the ability that are observed potentially are shaped through
socialization with their mother and father, and other members’ community. This is very typical
in the western middle-income family. These claims are in align with has been described by
Ochs and Schieffelin’s. It implies that the role of the caregiver in L1 acquisition and
development is crucial, especially in giving them feedback and reinforcement of their language
production, as well as transferring culturally appropriate values of how children should say
appropriately (Ochs and Schieffelin, 1989). For the latter, I recall, in addition to his verbal
language competence, Henry shows his respect to adults as he says mannerly to me ‘Can I
have that please…!” when asking for a stick near me (table E line 8)
The analysis in this recording has limitation. The data is only a minute part of the whole
interaction among the children, and children with adults. My works look only what the children
produced in term of the verbal utterances and non-verbal attribute. Also, Adults appearance,
as well as their direct and frequent intervention during the conversation, may have affected the
and the nature and richness of the data. However, setting and circumstances have been made
possible to interact among them, but only a few occurred.
To end, from this work I notice that children language ability develops time to time and
people and circumstances around them contribute greatly contribute to their language
development. Children anywhere in the world are language genius. Since at the young age,
they have been the greatest and fastest learners. With such a complicated and sophisticated of
the language system, not only in term of the grammatical pattern but also its social context,
children have been able to use the language without assign them with a particular teacher. By
doing this work, I become more aware on how language development takes places and am
more and more highly appreciated people work on the language development studies or alike.
Finally, I would like also to thank and express sincerely gratefulness to Dr. Perry Gilmore
who has given me opportunity experiencing this activity. The activity seems small, but it
impacts me a lot in some ways. A warm and positive atmosphere that Dr. Perry created in the
classroom, as well as her outstanding insight on the field, made the class was enjoyable,
meaningful, and insightful. I do learn on the subject, and beyond the subject that was taught. I
learn how to be a great teacher for my students later. I’d like to thank you to Cheehye Lee for
her assistance, and shared experiences. Thank you to the entire class members who are super
helpful and supportive.
Terima kasih!

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