Description
In Latvia, child language studies as an independent field of inquiry is quite recent, and large-scale studies on the acquisition of Latvian are still lacking. As a result, there are no norm-referenced early language assessment instruments available for Latvian.The proposed synergetic donor partnership project represents a systematic and comprehensive investigation of monolingual and bilingual acquisition of the Latvian language, unprecedented in theoretical and empirical scope. During the project two language assessment tools will be created and longitudinal recorded corpora transcribed, coded and annotated. The project is expected to involve more than 25 researchers, 6 MA and 2 PhD students, and result in 10 internationally refereed scientific publications, 11 scientific publications and 18 scientific publications. Target group is very wide - stakeholders, scientists, researchers, etc. Developing such data resources and making them freely available through specialised international databases will not only strengthen the empirical foundation of child language studies in Latvia and create a sustainable boost of interest in the national linguistic community; it will also facilitate scientific exchange on the European and global level, pave the way for new international collaboration and considerably increase the visibility of the Latvian language on the international arena of language studies.The project will ensure free access to the research results by the international community and establish a solid foundation for future scientific collaboration between LV-NOR in the area of child language studies.
Summary of project results
The overall goal of the project was to address certain challenges in language acquisition as a field of inquiry in Latvia. The most important challenges were seen as the lack of data resources that individual researchers and practitioners can build upon, such as longitudinal corpora of child speech and normative data pertaining to the typical acquisition of vocabulary, grammar and articulation by Latvian-speaking children. The project has reached its objectives in terms of creating the language resources, thus strengthening the empirical foundation of child language studies in Latvia. Through the active dissemination of the project results, we also believe we have achieved a sustainable boost of interest in child language studies in the national linguistic community and increased the visibility of the Latvian language internationally – which should be evident in the coming years as new research based upon the resources created during the project emerges. More globally, the project has undoubtedly facilitated the scientific exchange on the European level, having created lasting research networks and ensuring that these will continue beyond the lifetime of the project. We have produced three norm-referenced language development assessment tools: CDI I: Words and gestures (for use with children aged 8–16 months) and CDI II: Words and sentences (for use with children aged 17–36 months) (communicative development); Latvian Phoneme Test (for use with children aged 3–6 years) (phonemic development); we have also produced an orthographically transcribed and morphologically annotated longitudinal corpus of Latvian child speech, complete with a user-friendly search interface. In addition, we have conducted a number of experimental and theoretical studies based upon these resources that were presented in over 50 scientific publications. Promotion of gender-equality in academia measured as involvement of female researchers into research activities, including leading research positions have been achieved in full.
Summary of bilateral results
Bilateral cooperation project No BFP/2016/2 REPORT, Reporting period 17.10.2016 – 18.10.2016 Funding from the Bilateral Cooperation Support grant was used to cover the travel and accommodation costs of the project’s Norwegian partners Dr. Olga Urek and Dr. Martin Kræmer, who participated in the EEA/Norway grants progress meeting organised by VIAA on 17th of October 2016 in Riga and the NFI/R/2014/053 project’s Progress meeting on 18th of October, 2016. In the project’s Progress meeting, we discussed the interim results of the Project (specifically, the progress of experiments in WP4 and norming in WP1 and WP2), as well as work on the ongoing publications and possible directions for future cooperation. Visibility of the project results (Output 1) was ensured through the participation in the progress meeting arranged by VIAA and the publication of the summary and pictures on
www.lamba.lv website. In addition, the meeting contributed to the strengthening of cooperation between Norway and Latvia (Output 2) within the Project. Additionaly bilateral cooperation Project No BFP/2017/17 has got (19.06.2017) financing - authors are experts from project LAMBA for visit to Research visit to Nord University, Nesna for discussion of future cooperation possibilities and exploring practical issues of bilingual education in pre-school education in Norway