A Case Study On Ontogenesis In Early Child Language Development

Language development has long been a heated topic concerned by many disciplines, e.g. linguistics, pedagogy, psychology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, cognitive science, philosophy, artificial intelligence, and computer science, etc. and has also been one of the most controversial and challenging research domains. For the time being, this issue is still worth an in-depth exploration. It is crucial to examine the various interplaying characteristics of various factors and regularities in child growth and language development, which calls for a multidisciplinary approach to reveal its ontogenetic nature. In this aspect, the Complex Adaptive System Theory (CAS) provides a new angle of view for language study and may thus render a new understanding for language development. So far, however, few studies have been done on ontogenesis within Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) from the perspective of complexity science to reveal the developmental stages, the working mechanism and the neurobiological basis of language development. This dissertation aims at revisiting the core thoughts and major theories of SFL by envisaging language as a CAS, particularly focusing on the emergence and development of interpersonal and ideational metafunctions in early child language development, with an aim to throw some new light on semogenesis and to make some breakthroughs in the methodology of child language studies.In this project, the data were collected on the basis of the author’s daughter Y’s natural language development in daily life from birth to the age of 4 by employing the micro-observation method to conduct a longitudinal case study. The process of Y’s language development was recorded by means of diary, recorder and video. The authentic data were recorded along with the time, place and other contextual factors so as to scrutinize the complex and dynamic nature of child language development. With the CAS theory as a radial line, SFL is integrated with the theories of complexity science, neurobiological science, psychology and other related disciplines to interpret the construing process of experience and the enacting process of interpersonal relationship, thus revealing the emerging sequences and features of ideational and interpersonal metafunctions of child language, and then expounding the constructional characteristics in early child language development and the ontogenetic mechanism of language emergence.This study mainly addresses the following three questions:(i) What are the constructional characteristics and regularities of ideation and interaction bases formed in early child language development, and then how can the Hallidayan division of ontogenetic stages be refined based on the current study as well as the previous relevant studies?(ii) What are the internal motivation and operational mechanism for early child language development?(iii) Can the holistic theoretical framework of semogenesis be constructed within SFL from the perspective of language as a CAS to account for the characteristics and regularities of early child language emergence and development?The current study embarks on a survey of the theory of SFL, focusing particularly on its theoretical orientation and significance for the study of ontogenesis, and then adopts the CAS Theory as an appealing perspective on semogenesis in the framework of SFL, emphasizing that language and semogenesis (including phylogenesis, ontogenesis and logogenesis)can be both viewed as CASs, which are characterized with self-organized criticality and simultaneously demonstrates the regularities of the intertextual history of context, the history of personal development, the history of language system and the history within discourse, and then the spatial dimensions of semogenesis is explored. Accordingly, the emergence and development of interaction and ideation bases in early child language are recorded and then analyzed to demonstrate the complex and adaptive nature of ontogenesis. This dissertation is concluded with a brief summary of the major findings and implications of the project, followed by an acknowledgement of the limitations of the study and then some prospects for future research.The major findings of this project are as follows:Firstly, in view of interpersonal function, the interactional, instrumental, regulatory and personal functions are sequentially emerged in Y’s pre-protolanguage phase, while the imaginative, heuristic and informative function emerged in the protolanguage phase. The emerging order of mood system is "declarative> imperative> interrogative> exclamative", whereas the mood structure is developed from simple mood element to subject-predicate structure, and then towards clause complex, embodying the structural complexity and multi-stratum nature of building blocks in syntagmatic networks. On the other hand, mood metaphor is noted in different sub-mood systems. This indicates that the integrative and crossover development of mind and language competence in child, thus confirming Painter’s claim that interpersonal metaphor emerges in early child language development. Futhermore, the modality system successively emerges in the mood system network driven by function; within the modality system, modulation emerges prior to modalization, which is interpreted here as a gradually increasing process of the child’s meaning potentials in modality resources, involving various complex and interplaying factors, such as the context of situation, context of culture, cognitive psychology, individual experience structure and social interaction. It is a step-by-step instantiation of meaning potentials realized by lexicogrammar, reflecting the expansion of the child’s psychological cognition domain and mental process of thinking. With regard to the development of the phonological and polarity systems, the child demonstrates the closed, dynamic and lock-in feature before 2.6 years old.Secondly, in terms of ideational function, the child’s construction of ideation base embarks on constituency, i.e. the naming of individual phenomena, which is a cline from an analytical style to a gestalt style. The emerging order of element is "participant > process> circumstance", while circumstance emerges in the sequence or "location> extent> manner> cause> accompaniment> role> contingency", but the circumstance of matter and angle does not emerge until the age of 4. The emerging order of figure is "material> relational> behavioral> mental> existential> verbal", whereas cognitive sequence develops from lower-order constituents to higher-order delicacy through local social interactional moves by the mechanism of stigmergy. Expansion emerges in the form of elaboration and extension at 22 months, followed by enhancement. Projection emerges at the age of 2.6, and the hypotactic projection is a higher-level organic configuration of verbal and mental process to enable the child to make better expressions so as to adapt to the new environment, thus reflecting the complexity of child’s mental representations resulting from the coordination and adaptation between various factors in language, consciousness and ecological environment.Thirdly, by examining the concepts of CAS in SFL, it is noted that the core concepts and major theories of SFL are highly compatible with the CAS theory. Accordingly, it is argued that by viewing language as a CAS, we can derive a new epistemology and methodology to construct a holistic theoretical framework for semogenesis, which presents a new direction in associating SFL and neurobiological science. Ontogenesis is then postulated as a CAS, and this position indicates that it can be interpreted as a personalized evolution and that the emergence and development of meaning is the outcome of intercourse and aggregation of the three space dimensions of semogenesis (i.e. interaction space, cognition space and meaning space) as well as its three time frameworks.Fourthly, ontogenesis in light of language as a CAS is characterized with aggregation, multi-strata, emergence, pattern-matching, fractal/self-similarity, adaptation, systemicity and idiosyncracy. Child language development is then divided into five stages, namely pre-protolanguage phase, proto-language phase, transitional phase, pre-adult language phase, adult language phase, thus refining Halliday’s theory concerning the developmental stages of ontogenesis.Fifthly, a new account for child language development from the perspective of interactional instinct is tentatively presented, holding that interactional instinct is the internal motive for language emergence; stigmergy is the external motive, and their interaction is the working mechanism of ontogenesis. This position highlights the biological nature of child language development and meanwhile emphasizes the social interactivity and natural emergence therein, which is distinct from the previous prevailing theories on language acquisition, such as behaviorism, innateness hypothesis and interactionalism and thus elaborates the social constructivist theory of SFL. This may throw some light on language teaching and learning so that a new teaching method can be formulated on the basis of interactional instinct.This dissertation is both descriptive and theoretical. On the one hand, the description of Y’s language development in the Chinese context based on a longitudinal case study provides more empirical evidence for the systemic functional study of ontogegenesis. On the other hand, the adaptation of the CAS theory helps to enhance the theoretical construction of semogenesis. This can serve as a new point of view to investigate the relationship between language, consciousness and reality, and entails further experimental research in psycholinguistics, more empirical studies in neurocognitive science and computer modeling generation to test and validate the semogenetic process and its regularities and thus formulate a new research paradigm for language and cognition.