Dan Slobin
Encyclopedia
Daniel Isaac Slobin is a Professor Emeritus of psychology
and linguistics
at the University of California, Berkeley
. Slobin has made major contributions to the study of children's language acquisition
, and his work has demonstrated the importance of cross-linguistic comparison for the study of language acquisition and psycholinguistics
in general.
Slobin received a B.A.
in psychology
from the University of Michigan
in 1960 and a Ph.D.
in social psychology
from Harvard University
in 1964. In addition to working at the University of California, Berkeley
, Slobin has served as a visiting professor at several universities around the world, including Boğaziçi University
, Tel-Aviv University, Max Planck Institute, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
(CNRS), and Stanford University
.
Slobin has extensively studied the organization of information about spatial relations and motion events by speakers of different languages, including both children and adults. He has argued that becoming a competent speaker of a language requires learning certain language-specific modes of thinking, which he dubbed "thinking for speaking". Slobin's "thinking for speaking" view can be described as a contemporary, moderate version of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis
, which claims that the language we learn shapes the way we perceive reality and think about it. This view is often contrasted with the "language acquisition device
" view of Noam Chomsky
and others, who think of language acquisition as a process largely independent of learning
and cognitive development
.
For the experiment, Dan Slobin modified an existing method—the task-comparison research methods where he provided the "design for the testing of 48 children (three girls and three boys in each of the eight age groups: 2;0, 2;4, 2;8, 3;0, 3;4, 3;8, 4;0, 4;4). In the task, each child was presented with a pair of toy animals or dolls and was asked to demonstrate an action of one object upon the other. For example: "Here's a camel. Let's think of a little story about him. How about, 'the camel is sleeping'. Can you show me what that would be like?" Over the ten-day period, each child received three different kinds of the test. There were 18 verbs and 18 forms of the test allowing for permutations of word order and case inflections. The results is presented in table forms showing percentages of first-choice in all four languages by order of choice, whether it is Subject-Object, Noun-Object, etc. The most significant data gathered from the results was that Turkish children perform extremely accurate on all the grammatical sentences, even from the youngest age. Overall, the Turkish subjects perform better than children learning other languages. "The English and Italian children in the younger ages perform at an intermediate level and the Serbo-Croatian children had the greatest difficulty."
Slobin believes that language is acquired and is a learning as well as cognitive development in a child. His choice of method is the result of his theoretical stance where in task-comparison activity, his subjects get exposed to a consistent variety of tests, administered differently over a period of ten days. In task-comparison, his subjects get to perform or answer questions by displaying the instructions given.
His research generally showed that "children seemed prepared to learn both inflectional and word-order languages". His results contradicted his assumptions of "earlier expectations based on the alleged naturalness of fixed word order, the acquisition of Turkish is not at all impaired by the fact that word order is not a cue for semantic relations since all languages differ from one another on a range of dimensions". That is to say, "one can't make generalizations about the acquisition of English as simply as an example of acquisition of a particular "type" of language". Slobin successfully displayed this with the experiment results. However, his subjects were mainly from different European countries as well as North America and none from any parts of the Asian continent countries. His other work, The frog-story project, gained recognition worldwide.
His project was also mentioned in Raphael Berthele, a professor in the University of Fribourg, Switzerland on her work in the Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology approach by Elena Lieven, Jiansheng Guo.
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
and linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. Slobin has made major contributions to the study of children's language acquisition
Language acquisition
Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive, produce and use words to understand and communicate. This capacity involves the picking up of diverse capacities including syntax, phonetics, and an extensive vocabulary. This language might be vocal as with...
, and his work has demonstrated the importance of cross-linguistic comparison for the study of language acquisition and psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language. Initial forays into psycholinguistics were largely philosophical ventures, due mainly to a lack of cohesive data on how the...
in general.
Slobin received a B.A.
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
from the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
in 1960 and a Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
in social psychology
Social psychology
Social psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. By this definition, scientific refers to the empirical method of investigation. The terms thoughts, feelings, and behaviors include all...
from Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
in 1964. In addition to working at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, Slobin has served as a visiting professor at several universities around the world, including Boğaziçi University
Bogaziçi University
Boğaziçi University is a public university located on the European side of the Bosphorus strait in Istanbul, Turkey. It has five faculties and two schools offering undergraduate degrees, and six institutes offering graduate degrees...
, Tel-Aviv University, Max Planck Institute, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Centre national de la recherche scientifique
The National Center of Scientific Research is the largest governmental research organization in France and the largest fundamental science agency in Europe....
(CNRS), and Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
.
Slobin has extensively studied the organization of information about spatial relations and motion events by speakers of different languages, including both children and adults. He has argued that becoming a competent speaker of a language requires learning certain language-specific modes of thinking, which he dubbed "thinking for speaking". Slobin's "thinking for speaking" view can be described as a contemporary, moderate version of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis
Linguistic relativity
The principle of linguistic relativity holds that the structure of a language affects the ways in which its speakers are able to conceptualize their world, i.e. their world view...
, which claims that the language we learn shapes the way we perceive reality and think about it. This view is often contrasted with the "language acquisition device
Language acquisition
Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive, produce and use words to understand and communicate. This capacity involves the picking up of diverse capacities including syntax, phonetics, and an extensive vocabulary. This language might be vocal as with...
" view of Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
and others, who think of language acquisition as a process largely independent of learning
Learning
Learning is acquiring new or modifying existing knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines. Progress over time tends to follow learning curves.Human learning...
and cognitive development
Cognitive development
Cognitive development is a field of study in neuroscience and psychology focusing on a child's development in terms of information processing, conceptual resources, perceptual skill, language learning, and other aspects of brain development and cognitive psychology compared to an adult's point of...
.
Research work
Dan Slobin did a research study, published in 2007, titled the Children use canonical sentence schemas: A crosslinguistic study of word order and inflections. The aim of the study was to show that we must not generalize that the acquiring of English language in children is the same as the acquiring of "x" languages. Slobin proposed that children "construct a canonical sentence schema as a preliminary organizing structure for language behaviour. This canonical sentence schemas provide a functional explanation for the order of words and inflectional strategies based on each child's attempt to quickly master basic communication skills in his or her languages."For the experiment, Dan Slobin modified an existing method—the task-comparison research methods where he provided the "design for the testing of 48 children (three girls and three boys in each of the eight age groups: 2;0, 2;4, 2;8, 3;0, 3;4, 3;8, 4;0, 4;4). In the task, each child was presented with a pair of toy animals or dolls and was asked to demonstrate an action of one object upon the other. For example: "Here's a camel. Let's think of a little story about him. How about, 'the camel is sleeping'. Can you show me what that would be like?" Over the ten-day period, each child received three different kinds of the test. There were 18 verbs and 18 forms of the test allowing for permutations of word order and case inflections. The results is presented in table forms showing percentages of first-choice in all four languages by order of choice, whether it is Subject-Object, Noun-Object, etc. The most significant data gathered from the results was that Turkish children perform extremely accurate on all the grammatical sentences, even from the youngest age. Overall, the Turkish subjects perform better than children learning other languages. "The English and Italian children in the younger ages perform at an intermediate level and the Serbo-Croatian children had the greatest difficulty."
Slobin believes that language is acquired and is a learning as well as cognitive development in a child. His choice of method is the result of his theoretical stance where in task-comparison activity, his subjects get exposed to a consistent variety of tests, administered differently over a period of ten days. In task-comparison, his subjects get to perform or answer questions by displaying the instructions given.
His research generally showed that "children seemed prepared to learn both inflectional and word-order languages". His results contradicted his assumptions of "earlier expectations based on the alleged naturalness of fixed word order, the acquisition of Turkish is not at all impaired by the fact that word order is not a cue for semantic relations since all languages differ from one another on a range of dimensions". That is to say, "one can't make generalizations about the acquisition of English as simply as an example of acquisition of a particular "type" of language". Slobin successfully displayed this with the experiment results. However, his subjects were mainly from different European countries as well as North America and none from any parts of the Asian continent countries. His other work, The frog-story project, gained recognition worldwide.
Other work
Dan Slobin also designed a project, along with Ruth Berman in the beginning of 1980. He created "The frog-story project", a research tool which was a children's storybook that tells a story in 24 pictures with no words. This makes it possible to elicit narratives that are comparable in content but differing in form, across age and languages. There is now data from dozens of languages and most of the world's major language types. The Berman & Slobin study compared English, German, Spanish, Hebrew and Turkish on a range of dimensions.His project was also mentioned in Raphael Berthele, a professor in the University of Fribourg, Switzerland on her work in the Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology approach by Elena Lieven, Jiansheng Guo.