[Xmca-l] Re: Acquisition of word meaning

[Bella Kotik-Friedgut]

Without theorizing I want to share my recent observation of development of
word meaning in my grandson 3.10. Everyday there is something reminding me
of LSV. Here are examples of words that still are not full concepts.
Driving home at narrow crowded street he proclaims "The street is sad"
(atsuv in Hebrew)
We ask him what exactly is sad, may be people, but he insists that "The
street is sad";
Other day I use word single (boded in Hebrew) and he asks what does it mean
and with a lot of questions try to develop a concept: A child can be
single? An adult? When I will be adult? and so on. Sometimes he hears an
expression and try to use it in order to test appropriateness: "You cause
me a bunch of problems!" (Zarot zrurot) and after our reaction and
questions about specific problems he escapes and seemingly gets the idea.
So the vocabulary expands very intensively, but the meaning of each word is
still to be mastered.

Sincerely yours Bella Kotik-Friedgut


On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 10:52 AM, Ma, James (james.ma@canterbury.ac.uk) <
james.ma@canterbury.ac.uk> wrote:

>
> Hi David, for your info, the below article contains an overview of
> perspectives on semiotic mediation within sociolinguistics and
> sociocultural theory:
> http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2014.913294
> Best wishes
> James
> ________________________________________
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf of David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
> Sent: 19 July 2014 23:12
> To: Mike Cole; eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Acquisition of word meaning
>
> Halliday is Vygotskyan. Explicitly so in places: he says that his concept
> of consciousness as a social being derives from Vygotsky. Ruqaiya Hasan,
> who sometimes lurks on this list, has written extensively on the
> "exotropic" links between Halliday and Vygotsky. At first I didn't quite
> believe this, because for Vygotsky what develops is a meta-system made up
> of functions (psychological abilities), while for Halliday what develops is
> a metafunction made up of systems (linguistic choices). But Gordon Wells
> persuaded me: he points out that Halliday's "ideational metafunction" (this
> is the function that allows us to represent the world as figures of
> experience linked by logic, and is realized in nouns, verbs, and other
> open-class words) is essentially equivalent to "thinking" and the
> "interpersonal metafunction (this is the function that allows us to
> exchange commodities such as goods and services or information and is
> realized in commands, statements and questions) is essentially equivalent
> to "speech".
>
> I think the reason that I didn't get the profound and very
> thorough connection between Halliday and Vygotsky (which seems more
> endotropic than exotropic to me now) was that I kept assuming that when
> Vygotsky says "word" he means something like a noun, as in the block
> experiments of Chapter Five Thinking and Speech. But of course even in the
> block experiments, what is meant is not a noun but something much more like
> an attribute, which would be expressed as a nominal group in English but a
> verbal group in Korean. And elsewhere it's clear that the word 'word'
> actually means "wording"--what is a single word in the mouth of a very
> young child is going to be a whole clause in an older child and eventually
> an entire text.
>
> So Mike's example is quite a propos. When I first read this example from
> Shweder back in 2007, it seemed to me that Vygotsky would say that this
> particular "wording" has nothing to do with morality, and of course it's
> not really a concept. Now I am not so sure: I'm convinced that a lot of
> ethical concepts develop out of almost purely esthetic ones, which is
> actually a good example of how "perizhivanie" starts by meaning feeling and
> only in the course of development comes to mean thinking.
>
> In China, what girls tell their classmates in high school is that their
> "Grandma is visiting" or else that they are "dao mei le" ("doomed"). This
> was a highly prized condition when my wife was in high school, because it
> meant that you didn't have to go out for physical education and you could
> stay in and do math homework instead. So one day the boys told the physical
> education teacher that they were all "doomed" and could not go either,
>
> David Kellogg
> Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
>
>
> On 20 July 2014 03:02, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > While puzzling over all the interesting notes on
> > language/thought/emotion/development in recent days I happend upon the
> > following. It seems a potential object of interpretation that would help
> to
> > hightlight for us (for me at least) the stakes in the pattern of
> agreements
> > and disageements and silences in the conversation. Does Halliday inform
> our
> > understanding differently from Vygotsky might be a helpful question. Is
> > convergence of meaning and generalization manifest?  Anyway, perhaps it
> > will be of interest:
> >  (From an essay on culture's involvement in moral development by Shweder
> > and colleagues. Data from Orrisa).
> >
> >
> >
> > *"Mara heici. Chhu na! Chhu na!*" is what a menstruating Oriya mother
> > explains when her young child approaches her lap. It means, "I am
> polluted.
> > Don't touch me! Don't touch me!" If the child continues to approach, the
> > woman will stand up and walk away from her child. Of course, young Oriya
> > children have no concept of menstruation or menstrual blood; the first
> > menstruation arrives as a total surprise to adolescent girls. Mother's
> > typically "explain" their own monthly "pollution" to their children by
> > telling then that they stepped in dog excrement or touched garbage, or
> they
> > evade the issue. Nevertheless, Oriya children quickly learn that there is
> > something called "*Mara"* (the term *cchuan* (check spelling) may also be
> > used) and when "*Mara*" is there, as it regularly is, their mother avoids
> > them, sleeps alone on a mat on the floor, is prohibited from entering the
> > kitchen... eats alone, does not groom herself and is, for several days,
> > kept at a distance from anything of value. Children notice that
> everything
> > their mother touches is washed. (Shweder, Mahapatra, & Miller, 1987, p.
> 74)
> >
>
>