Szreder, M.
University of York
Claims about individual learning tendencies (or ?strategies?) in children often appear to either be based on post-hoc analysis (Ferguson & Farwell, 1975; Farwell, 1976), or to limit individual variation to distinct ?learning types? (Bates, Bretherton & Snyder, 1988; Bates, Dale & Thal, 1995.) We propose that individual tendencies should be included in the study of language development, but that their effects on the path of acquisition are not predictable when they are considered in isolation. Instead, we argue that language develops in response to all factors acting upon it (cf. Lindblom, Studdert-Kennedy & MacNeilage, 1983; Ferguson, 1986), which include individual learning tendencies but also articulatory constraints. We collected longitudinal data from three children, from the 25 word point onwards for six months, and examined the following variables: 1) accuracy (PCC: Shriberg & Kwiatkowski, 1982), i.e. articulatory precision; 2) whole-word templates (T score: Vihman et al., in prep), i.e. early phonological systematicity; 3) boldness (% attempted fricatives, affricates and liquids), i.e. the individual tendency to attempt challenging targets. The results show that articulatory routines only evolve into wide-spread templates if the child exhibits high boldness coupled with limited articulatory skills. Therefore, templates are grounded in the individual inclination to expand vocabulary in children whose articulatory skills are not yet developed well enough to allow for accurate production of many diverse targets. Conversely, while templates aid lexical expansion, they further reduce accuracy and increase boldness, showing that the interaction between the factors is bi-directional. We conclude that individual differences should not be viewed in terms of ?types of learners?. Rather, early phonological systematicity is the outcome of interplay between articulatory constraints and individual learning tendencies, whose dynamic is constantly changing in development. Factors involved in word learning and production interact bi-directionally resulting in re-organisation of the dynamically developing phonological system.