Age of Acquisition Estimates for Informal words in Singapore’s Unique Baby Register

• In Event: Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Topic - Language, Communication

Abstract

Background. In Singapore, more than 90% of young people are bi-/multilingual, and dense inter-generational community-level multilingualism is the norm. The colonial past, and historic migration have resulted in a vibrant contact language known as Singapore Colloquial English (SCE) or ‘Singlish’. In contemporary Singapore, English is the main language of education, commerce and governance, with an active policy of bilingualism education (in English and a second language).
Despite Singapore’s routinely high ranks in educational assessments such as PISA (OECD, 2018), discrepancies are observed in language assessments for toddlers. Our previous study suggested that local versions of standardized US language assessments underestimate the vocabulary size of Singaporean children – omitting vocabulary items that do not align with formal descriptions of Singapore’s main languages (ANON, ANON & ANON, 2020). For example, Chinese/English bilingual families are not asked if their toddlers know ‘mam-mam’ (vb. ‘to eat’. onomatopoeia - possibly from Malay ‘makan’ ‘to eat’), nor Malay/English families, ‘pom-pom’ (vb. ‘to bathe’. onomatopoeia - origin unknown). In order to refine developmental assessments and screening tools for the local context, more information is needed about the informal spoken lexicon of Singapore’s babies and toddlers.
Methods. Through an iterative process of community consultation, our multilingual team identified 205 informal words that are used with Singapore’s infants and toddlers. To find out the prevalence rates of the individual words, and their approximate age of acquisition, the words were incorporated into an online word game for adults called ‘Red-Dot Baby-Talk’. Participants were shown short lists of baby words and foils (invented pseudo-words), and asked which ones they were familiar with. After confirming their knowledge of the word’s meaning, participants were asked to estimate age of acquisition (AoA) on a scale from 1 to 7 years-of-age. After four randomly selected blocks of 5 words and a foil, the game ended, and participants could elect to continue. Instructions for the game were written in informal Singaporean English.
Results. 317 Singaporeans participated (modal age range: 30-39, speaking Mandarin: 287, Malay: 172, and Tamil: 29). Participants gave AoA estimates for between 10 to 53 words each (Median: 37 (range: 10-53). Figure 1 shows mean Age of Acquisition estimates for each word, ranging from 1.8 to 5.7 years, with some of the earliest acquired words shown – these words show a high degree of reduplication - a linguistic feature shared by many languages of the region. This finding confirms Singaporean adults believe these words are acquired early. Figure 2 shows the part of speech for words with different AoA estimates, where onomatopoeia is evident in the earlier rated words, with names for local foods gaining importance with age.
Conclusions. Documentation of these child-directed words is the first of its kind in Singapore and brings new sensitivity to the development of new language assessment tools.. In a related study, 105 parents of 8 to 36 month-olds have completed vocabulary checklists containing new items. Data collection in the pilot will conclude by February 2021 (preregistration: TBC_after_blind_review), and will allow comparison of adult AoA estimates with contemporary parental report.

Authors

• Fei Ting Woon, Nanyang Technological University
  Presenting Author

• Suzy J Styles, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
  Non-Presenting Author