ABSTRACT

In this article, I examine how repairs in adult-child conversations guide children’s acquisition of language. Children make unprompted self-repairs to their utterances. They also respond to prompts for repair, whether open (Hm?, What?) or restricted (You hid what?), and to restricted offers (Child: I falled, Adult: You fell?). Children respond to clarification requests with self-repairs in the next turn, and make use of the feedback offered. The contrast between their utterance and the adult utterance identifies the locus of the error (negative feedback), while the adult’s offer presents a conventional version of the child’s utterance (positive feedback). I describe the use of restricted offers in conversations with children acquiring English and French, then present two case studies of how these inform children about homophonous French verb forms and early opaque Hebrew verb uses. These findings demonstrate the fundamental role of repair in the acquisition of a first language.

摘要

在本文中，我将探讨成年儿童对话中的修辞如何引导儿童学习语言。孩子们会根据自己的讲话进行自发的自我修复。他们还会响应维修提示，无论是开放（Hm ?, What？）还是受限制的（您隐藏了什么？），以及受限制的报价（儿童：我摔倒了，成人：您摔倒了？）。孩子们在下一个回合中对自我修复的要求做出回应，并利用所提供的反馈意见。他们的话语与成人话语之间的对比可识别错误的发生地点（负反馈），而成人的报价则提供了儿童话语的常规版本（正反馈）。我描述了在与获得英语和法语的孩子的对话中使用限制性要约的情况，然后介绍了两个案例研究，这些案例如何使孩子了解谐音的法语动词形式和早期不透明的希伯来语动词用法。这些发现证明了修复在母语学习中的基本作用。