Nina Gram Garmann

Oslo Metropolitan University · Department of Early Childhood Education

Parental report instruments are a non-invasive way to assess children’s language development and have proved to give both valid and reliable results when used with children under the age of 2;6 (and in some cases up to 3). In this study we examine the newly developed Norwegian edition of a language assessment tool for older preschoolers: MacArthur-...

Developing proficiency in the language(s) spoken in any given society is crucial for the inclusion and attainment of children in that society. With an enrolment rate in Norwegian early childhood education and care (ECEC) of 93.4% for children between age one and five, ECEC constitutes an important out-of-home learning environment for children in No...

In this paper we present a survey-based study on multilingual practices in 47 ECEC (early childhood education and care) centres, mainly in eastern Norway. Our main concern was to investigate the languages known by staff and children and to explore the extent to which these languages are in active use in day-to-day activities. Our data showed that b...

Social sciences researchers emphasize that new technologies can overcome the limitations of small and homogenous samples. In research on early language development, which often uses parental reports, taking the testing online might be particularly compelling. Due to logistical limitations, previous studies on bilingual children have explored the la...

Rammeplan for barnehagens innhold og oppgaver (Kunnskapsdepartementet, 2017) fordrer at barnehagene støtter flerspråklige barnsutvikling av både hjemmespråket og norsk eller samisk. Dette krever at barnehagelærere har kunnskap om barns hjemmespråk og om flerspråklige didaktiske praksiser, men forskningen tyder på at dette er noe sommangler: Forskni...

In this paper, we investigate a prosodic-phonetic feature in child-directed speech within a dynamic, complex, interactive theoretical framework. We focus on vocalic intrusions, commonly occurring in Norwegian word initial consonant clusters. We analysed child-directed speech from nine Norwegian-speaking mothers to their children, aged 2;6, 4, and 6...

In Norway, 92% of all children between 1 and 5 attend early childhood education and care (ECEC), and 18% of these children are minority language speakers. The Framework Plan for Content and Tasks of Kindergartens (Ministry of Education, 2017, p. 24) states that ECEC staff shall ‘help ensure that linguistic diversity becomes an enrichment for the en...

Young children simplify word initial consonant clusters by omitting or substituting one (or both) of the elements. Vocalic insertion, coalescence and metathesis are said to be used more seldom (McLeod, van Doorn & Reed, 2001). Data from Norwegian children, however, have shown vocalic insertion to be more frequently used (Simonsen, 1990; Simonsen, G...

According to the Norwegian Framework Plan for Kindergartens (Ministry of Education 2017: 24), the staff shall ‘monitor the children’s communication and language and identify and support children who demonstrate various types of communication problems, who are not linguistically active, or who show signs of delayed language development’. As a first...

The number of multilingual families in Norway has increased during the last decades, but there are no official statistics concerning the linguistic situation in Norway today. Immigrants account for 15% of the population. In addition, there are mixed-language families where one of the parents does not have Norwegian as his/her mother tongue. Most to...

The mental lexicon is dynamic and changes throughout the lifespan, but how does it begin? Previous research has established that children's first words depend on their communicative needs, but also on their phonetic repertoire and phonological preferences. In this paper, we focus on the phonological characteristics of children's first words, primar...

Whole word phonological patterns (templates) in utterances produced by children with 5p deletion syndrome are analysed, addressing four questions: (1) Are children with 5p deletion syndrome able to generalise over words? (2) How does the template score of children with 5p deletion syndrome relate to those of typically developing children and of the...

This study 1 investigates the acquisition of the V:C vs VC: contrast in (Urban Eastern) Norwegian for sonorants and voiceless plosives. We find that by 2;6 years children already differentiate between these structures in their own productions, and do so most reliably through proportion of vowel duration in the rhyme (V/VC), with values close to the...

Selv om ettåringen som begynner i barnehagen, ikke kan si noen ord enda, kan hun mye om sitt eget morsmål. Den sjenerte toåringen som møter til kon-troll på helsestasjonen, kan vaere temmelig taus, men som regel kan hun si mange ord og sette sammen ord i korte setninger, i hvert fall i trygge og kjente omgivelser. I dette kapittelet vil vi presente...

This paper examines how young children negotiate complex mappings between phonological structure and durational cues in their early productions, and explores how competition between multiple uses of temporal properties may influence the acquisition pathway. Findings suggest children switch priorities as they develop, possibly as a result of masteri...

This paper examines how young children negotiate complex mappings between phonological structure and durational cues in their early productions, and explores how competition between multiple uses of temporal properties may influence the acquisition pathway. Findings suggest children switch priorities as they develop, possibly as a result of masteri...

Abstract This article focuses on consonant productions by a group of children with cri du chat syndrome (CdCS) and examines how various aspects of these productions contribute to these children's overall intelligibility. Eight children and adolescents with CdCS participated in the study, and the following four questions were addressed: (1) What are...