Gisela Szagun

Gisela Szagun
  • PhD BSc
  • Professor Emerita at Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg

About

45
Publications
10,623
Reads
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1,310
Citations
Current institution
Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg
Current position
  • Professor Emerita
Additional affiliations
April 2008 - March 2013
University College London
Position
  • Honorary Visiting Emeritus Professor
October 2006 - February 2023
Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg
Position
  • Professor Emerita
January 1984 - September 2006
Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg
Position
  • Professor (Full)
Education
September 1972 - May 1976
September 1969 - June 1972

Publications

Publications (45)
Article
The present study aims at analysing the role of infinitival clauses (INFCs) in German child-adult dialogue. In German subject-less INFCs are a grammatical sentence pattern. Extensive corpora of spontaneous speech between 6 children aged 1;5 to 2;10 and adults were analysed applying structural and contextual analyses. We extended Freudenthal, Pine a...
Article
Full-text available
This study examines the role of the lexicon and grammatical structure building in early grammar. Parent-report data in CDI format from a sample of 1151 German-speaking children between 1;6 and 2;6 and longitudinal spontaneous speech data from 22 children between 1;8 and 2;5 were used. Regression analysis of the parent-report data indicates that gra...
Article
Full-text available
The aim of the present study was to analyze the relative influence of age at implantation, parental expansions, and child language internal factors on grammatical progress in children with cochlear implants (CI). Data analyses used two longitudinal corpora of spontaneous speech samples, one with twenty-two and one with twenty-six children, implante...
Article
Full-text available
Background The aim of this study was to examine if the parental questionnaire FRAKIS (German CDI questionnaire on early language development) is a valid instrument for assessing linguistic progress in children with cochlear implants (CI). Descriptive statistics on the course of language acquisition in children with CI will also be presented. Materi...
Article
BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to examine if the parental questionnaire FRAKIS (German CDI questionnaire on early language development) is a valid instrument for assessing linguistic progress in children with cochlear implants (CI). Descriptive statistics on the course of language acquisition in children with CI will also be presented. MATE...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose The authors investigated the influence of social environmental variables and age at implantation on language development in children with cochlear implants. Method Participants were 25 children with cochlear implants and their parents. Age at implantation ranged from 6 months to 42 months (Mage = 20.4 months, SD = 22.0 months). Linguistic...
Article
Full-text available
A 5-year retrospective audit of demographic, audiological, and other records of 147 children implanted at one London centre was conducted. The aim was to detail the number of children implanted, with a specific focus on children from families with English as an additional language (EAL), and to compare these children with children from monolingual...
Article
Full-text available
The acquisition of German participle inflection was investigated using spontaneous speech samples from six children between 1;4 and 3;8 and ten children between 1;4 and 2;10 recorded longitudinally at regular intervals. Child-directed speech was also analyzed. In adult and child speech weak participles were significantly more frequent than strong p...
Article
Full-text available
Children's and adults' feeling experience of courage was investigated using an interview technique for younger children and an open-ended questionnaire method for adolescents and adults. There were 80 subjects in four age groups, 6, 9, 14 years, and adults, with 20 subjects and equal numbers of males and females per age group. Six-year-olds describ...
Article
Full-text available
The present study examines the effect of parents’ language input on the linguistic progress of children with cochlear implants. Participants were 21 children with cochlear implants and their mothers. Age at implantation ranged between 14 and 46 months. The study was longitudinal with data collections every 4½ months for a period of 27 months. Spont...
Article
The influence of age at implantation and experiential factors on language development in young children with cochlear implants was examined. There were two samples, one cross-sectional with 41 children, and one longitudinal with 26 children. Age at implantation in both samples ranged from 6 to 47 months, with children evenly distributed in the age...
Article
Valian (1991) proposes that children's use of verb-argument structure is based on abstract knowledge of verb categories and limited by shortcomings of performance. Theakston, Lieven, Pine & Rowland (2001) provide evidence that children's transitive and intransitive verb use is learnt gradually and influenced by verb use in the input. The present st...
Article
The acquisition of noun gender on articles was studied in a sample of 21 young German-speaking children. Longitudinal spontaneous speech data were used. Data analysis is based on 22 two-hourly speech samples per child from 6 children between 1;4 and 3;8 and on 5 two-hourly speech samples per child from 15 children between 1;4 and 1;10. The use of g...
Article
Full-text available
Current assessment procedures of German-speaking children's early language development classify 20 % of two-year-olds as children at risk for language impairment or definitely language-impaired. These procedures are criticized because they do not distinguish adequately between "late talkers" and "language-impairment", use seemingly arbitrary lingui...
Article
Registered paediatricians and professionals in Child Health Service Centres have different requirements with regard to diagnosing language delay or disorder. In this article, an overview of existing tests, screening, and informal procedures for German is presented. However, these instruments are not altogether satisfactory. The results of a Iongitu...
Article
Full-text available
Using a parent report instrument, the development of vocabulary and grammar was examined in 333 German-speaking children aged between 1;6 and 2;6. Grammar scales measured sentence complexity and inflectional morphology. Results indicate that vocabulary increased faster than sentence complexity and inflectional morphology. Within inflectional paradi...
Book
Der umfassende Charakter des Buches und die geschickte didaktische Aufbereitung machen „Sprachentwicklung beim Kind" zur Pflichtlektüre für alle, die sich mit »normaler« und »gestörter« Sprachentwicklung befassen. Darüber hinaus liefert es Eltern wertvolle Hinweise zum Spracherwerb ihrer Kinder und hilft ihnen so, Sprachentwicklungsstörungen zu ver...
Article
Originaltext vom Verlag; nicht vom SfBS bearbeitet. Der umfassende Charakter des Buches und die geschickte didaktische Aufbereitung machen „Sprachentwicklung beim Kind" zur Pflichtlektüre für alle, die sich mit »normaler« und »gestörter« Sprachentwicklung befassen. Darüber hinaus liefert es Eltern wertvolle Hinweise zum Spracherwerb ihrer Kinder un...
Article
The acquisition of language was studied longitudinally in a sample of 22 German-speaking children with cochlear implants (mean age at implantation 29 months) and a control group of 22 normally hearing children. Children in the two groups were matched for initial language level. Spontaneous speech samples were collected for up to 36 months in 4 1/2...
Article
Die frühe Sprachentwicklung von deutschsprachigen Kindern zwischen 1;6 und 2;6 wurde mit einem Elternfragebogen, der sich am MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory orientiert, erfasst. Insgesamt nahmen 333 Kinder in 13 Altersgruppen an der Studie teil, wobei die Anzahl der Kinder in den einzelnen Altersgruppen zwischen 20 und 36 variierte. D...
Article
Existing empirical evidence suggests that lateralisation of language to the left hemisphere and the processing of grammar and semantics in separate brain regions develop gradually. At the start of language acquisition language is processed in both hemispheres and there are no separate locations for processing grammar and semantics. In case of left-...
Article
The acquisition of case and gender marking on the definite and indefinite article was studied in a sample of 6 normally-hearing children and 9 children xith cochlear implants. Longitudinal spontaneous speech data are used. Children were matched by MLU, with 4 MLU levels: 1.8, 2.8, 3.6, 4.8. Age ranges for normally-hearing children were 1-4 to 3-8 a...
Article
A study including 22 children with cochlear implants showed that these children acquired language more slowly than 22 normally hearing children. However, there were large individual differences amongst cochlear-implanted children. Only three children acquired language as fast as normally hearing children with rapid language development. Seven child...
Article
The acquisition of language was studied longitudinally in a sample of 22 German-speaking children with cochlear implants (mean implantation age 29 months) and a control group of 22 normally hearing children. Spontaneous speech samples were collected over 27-36 months, starting at the the one-word stage. Results indicate that grammatical progress as...
Article
In einer Längsschnittstudie wurde der Spracherwerb von 22 jungen, hörgeschädigten Kindern mit Cochlea Implantat mit dem von 22 normal hörenden Kindern verglichen. In der Gruppe der cochlea-implantierten Kinder lag das Implantationsalter zwischen 1;2 und 3;10. Es wurden spontane Sprachstichproben in Abständen von 4œ Monaten über einen Gesamtzeitraum...
Article
The acquisition of German noun plurals was examined on the basis of two-hour spontaneous speech samples from 6 children between 1;4 and 3;8 recorded every 5-6 weeks, and from 15 children recorded every 20 weeks. Adult speech was also sampled. Onset of use of plural forms was early, with variation in individual growth rates of type frequencies. Chil...
Article
Es wird untersucht, ob und inwiefern sich im frühen Sprachalter der Dialog von cochlea-implantierten (= CI) Kindern und ihren Müttern von jenem normal hörender Kinder und ihrer Mütter in seiner Zusammensetzung unterscheidet. Sechs CI-Kinder und sechs normal hörende Kinder und ihre Mütter werden an zwei Messzeitpunkten in einer Spielsituation jeweil...
Article
The acquisition of grammatical and lexical structures was studied in a sample of 10 young German-speaking children with cochlear implants (mean implantation age 2 years 3 months). Spontaneous speech samples were collected covering the first 18 months after first tune-up. At the end of this period, 8 children were able to produce two- or multi-word...
Article
A comparison is made between language acquisition in 7 children with cochlear implants and 7 normally hearing children. The data consist of spontaneous speech samples recorded at regular intervals over a period of 13 months. For implanted children recordings started 5 months after their first tune up, for normally-hearing children at age 1;4. Age a...
Article
This article presents some important processes of normal child language acquisition and applies them to language acquisition data of children with cochlear implants. Modern studies of language acquisition, covering various languages, have demonstrated a close link between linguistic and cognitive development. Sensorimotor intelligence provides a co...
Article
The development of language in two children with cochlear implants was analyzed using longitudinal data of videorecorded mother-child interactions. Recordings were made over a period of 14 months for child A and over a period of 3 years for child B. At the beginning of data collection the children were 2;11 and 3;7 respectively. Results reveal subs...
Article
Six hundred ten German and 610 Russian adolescents in three age groups—12, 15, and 18 years—were given a questionnaire assessing their environmental awareness. In both nationalities, anxiety, sadness, and anger about environmental destruction were high, but hopelessness was rejected. Willingness to engage in pro-environmental behavior was also quit...
Article
Eight hundred thirty West German adolescents aged 12, 15, and 18 years were given a questionnaire assessing their ethical and emotional concern about nature. Their consideration in dealing with nature and degree of sympathy with living things were high. On both scales, scores were highest for 12-year-olds, and higher for 15- and 18-year-old females...
Article
Tested 90 German children's (aged 5–6 yrs, 8–9 yrs, and 11–12 yrs) understanding of the concept of "courage," using an interview and a rating technique. Interview data indicate that 5–6 yr olds regarded having no fear and performing a risky action as typical of courage. For 8–9 yr old and 11–22 yr old Ss, overcoming fear and subjective risk taking...
Article
German children in five age groups, 5-6, 7-8, 9-10, 11-12 and 14-15 years, were interviewed about feeling experiences of sympathy and situations that elicit sympathy. While the younger children focussed on the emotion of sadness, the older children increasingly described sympathy as a multi-dimensional emotional experience consisting of sadness, de...
Chapter
Research on the development of word meaning has concentrated on object, concrete action, and relational words. But children also learn words that name mental processes and the ideas and values of a society. I have studied the acquisition of two words of this kind by German children: mutig (‘courageous’) and leid tun (‘feel sorry’).
Article
This cross-cultural study examined the frequency of use of tenses by English and German children between 2-6 and 4-6. Developmental changes in frequency of use of tenses were observed: frequency of use of present tenses decreased significantly with age, at the same rate and level in both languages, and frequency of past and future tenses increased...

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