User:Ltroftgruben/sandbox

The Tip of The Tongue Phenomenon (1966)

To test the Tip of the Tongue phenomenon empirically, Brown and David McNeill conducted a study in which they asked participants to look over a list of words and definitions and then listen to the definition one of the words on the list. Those in the “tip of the tongue” state were asked to fill out a chart assessing the related words that they are able to come up with. Brown and McNeill were able to identify two types of recall: abstract and partial, that participants exhibited when attempting to remember the target words. Abstract recall relies on the number of syllables in the target word or the location of stressed syllables in the word while partial recall relies on the number of letters the target word.

Early Research on Children's Language Aquisition

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Brown and then his student Jean Berko Gleason undertook the first experimental studies on children's language development. The study published by Brown and Gleason in 1960 "Word Association and the Acquisition of Grammar" attempts to answer whether children's gradual tendency to make word associations based on parts-of-speech is evidence for the maturation of the human brain to comprehend syntax of the English language. The experiment identified that children produce heterogeneous parts-of-speech answers (words thematically related) to prompted words and adults tended to produce homogenous parts of speech answers (syntactically related) to the same prompts. In order to clarify this observation, Browne also conducted a "Usage Test" in which he used nonsense words in specific grammatical contexts and asked his subjects what they understood the word to mean. Younger children answered in similar fashion to the word association test, they made thematic assumptions of the nonsense words and adults again made grammatical assumptions to word’s meaning. He concludes that based on children's increasing rate of homogeneous parts-of-speech answers with age in conjunction with the answers they give to the "Usage Test" are two ways children can be observed to develop an appreciation of English syntax. Thus, supporting a theory that language acquisition is a maturation process.

Frequency-Brevity Principle (1958)

In his “How Shall a Thing Be Called?” article, Brown wrote about how objects have many names, but often share a common name. He proposed the frequency-brevity principle, by which he theorized that children use words that are shorter in length because shorter words are more common for objects in the English language—for example, referring to a dog as “dog” and not “animal”. He elaborated on the frequency-brevity principle and how it may be violated (for example, referring to a pineapple as “pineapple” and not “fruit”). He further argued that children progress from concrete naming to more abstract categorizations as they age.

The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity (1960)

In 1960, Brown and Albert Gilman conducted a questionnaire in order to gain a deeper understanding of the pronoun “you” across five languages. These five languages studied include Italian, German, Spanish, English, and French. The questionnaire presents participants with a scenario in which they must select the appropriate pronoun when speaking to others belonging to different social class, familiarities and ages. The results indicate participants shift between different pronouns in order to best compliment those they are speaking to. Brown and Gilman theorized that there are two different styles of “you,” one to indicate a power dynamic, and the other to indicate a solidarity dynamic. They termed the pronoun of solidarity “T”, and the pronoun of power “V” to make for clarity and understanding. The varied use of T and V is used to implicate different relationships between those in conversation based on factors such as age, social class, similarity, familiarity, respect, and expression of mood.

Linguistic Determinism and the Part of Speech (1957)

In 1957, Brown sought to figure out how language constitutes perception and thought of one's surroundings. Specifically, he took a critical look at how the meanings we assign to parts of speech (e.g., verbs naming actions and nouns naming substances) constitute differences in cognition among people. Brown focused on the semantic definition of a noun, which is known as a person, place or thing. The problem that he identified is that there is no definitive meaning of what a thing is, hence, Brown explained that nouns may be the key to understanding how parts of speech affect cognition. He hypothesized that nouns “tend to have” semantic characteristics contrary to verbs and that speakers pick up these semantic inconsistencies when learning English. To test the hypothesis, an evaluation of nouns and verbs used by children learning English and English speaking adults was completed to identify whether or not the nouns and verbs used had clear semantic differences. The examination showed that child use of nouns and verbs had clear distinctions/imperfect semantic implications as opposed to adults. With this result, Brown also questioned if children were conscious of their distinct semantics. This question was answered through an test. An image association experiment performed on children showed that they are in fact aware of their use of imperfect semantics while engaging in parts of speech. Brown concluded that semantic distinctions of the parts of speech affect cognition and that different languages and their respective parts of speech may be determinants of varying cognitive operations for those who use said languages.