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CHAPTER 9: LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

Chapter Outline

Please note that much of this information is quoted from the text.
I. WHAT IS LANGUAGE?
A. Defining Language
• Language is a form of communication, whether spoken, written, or signed, that is based on a
system of symbols.
• Infinite generativity is the ability to produce an endless number of meaningful sentences
using a finite set of words and rules and is a basic characteristic of human language.
B. Language’s Rule Systems
1. Phonology: The sound system of language. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a
language.
2. Morphology: Word formation based on meaning. A morpheme is the smallest unit of sound
which carries meaning in a language.
3. Syntax: The way words are combined for acceptable phrases and sentences.
4. Semantics: The meaning of words and sentences.
5. Pragmatics: The use of appropriate conversation and knowledge underlying the use of
language in context.

II. HOW LANGUAGE DEVELOPS


A. Infancy
1. Babbling and Other Vocalizations
• Early vocalizations are to practice making sounds, to communicate, and to attract
attention.
• A universal pattern is observed: newborn cries, cooing at 2 months, babbling by 6
months (deaf babies babble with their hands and fingers), and gestures by 8–12 months.
2. Gestures
• Pointing is considered by language experts as an important index of the social aspects
of language.
• The absence of pointing is a significant indicator of problems in the infant’s
communication system.
3. Recognizing Language Sounds
• Infants can recognize all phonemes of all languages up to about 6 months of age. After
this time, infants become more adept at recognizing the sounds of their native language
and lose the ability to recognize sounds of other languages that are not important in their
native language.
• Infants must identify individual words from the nonstop stream of sound that makes up
ordinary speech. Finding the boundaries between words is a difficult task.
4. First Words
• Between about 5 to 12 months of age, infants often indicate their first understanding of
words.
• The infant’s first spoken word usually occurs between 10 to 15 months of age.
• Long before babies say their first words, they have been communicating with their
parents, often by gesturing and using their own special sounds.
• First words include names of important people, familiar animals, vehicles, toys, body
parts, clothes, familiar items, and greetings.
• Single words are often used to express various intentions.

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•The first words of infants can vary across languages.
•Receptive vocabulary refers to the words an individual understands. Receptive
vocabulary precedes and exceeds spoken vocabulary (words that the child uses).
• The rapid increase in vocabulary that begins at approximately 19 months is called the
vocabulary spurt.
• Cross-linguistic differences in word learning are apparent, with infants learning an Asian
language acquiring more verbs earlier in their development than do children learning
English.
• Some children use a referential style, others an expressive style, in learning words.
• Overextension is the tendency to apply a word to objects that are not appropriate for the
word’s meaning.
• Underextension is the tendency to apply a word too narrowly for the meanings of words.
5. Two-Word Utterances
• By 18 to 24 months of age, two-word utterances begin to occur, which rely heavily on
gesture, tone, and context in order to provide meaning:
— Identification: “See doggie.”
— Location: “Book there.”
— Repetition: “More milk.”
— Nonexistence: “All gone thing.”
— Possession: “My candy.”
— Attribution: “Big car.”
— Agent-action: “Mama walk.”
— Question: “Where ball?”
• Telegraphic speech is the use of short and precise words to communicate and is
characteristic of young children’s two- or three-word utterances.
B. Early Childhood
• Language develops rapidly in early childhood.
• Between 2 and 3 years of age, children begin the transition from saying simple sentences
that express a single proposition to saying complex sentences.
• As young children learn the special features of their own language, there are extensive
regularities in how they acquire that specific language.
• Some children develop language problems, including speech and hearing problems.
1. Understanding Phonology and Morphology
• During early childhood, most children gradually become more sensitive to the sounds of
spoken words and become increasingly capable of producing all the sounds of their
language.
• By the time children move beyond two-word utterances, they demonstrate a knowledge
of morphology rules.
• Use of plural and possessive demonstrates knowledge of morphological rules.
• Jean Berko’s research using sentence completion of a missing word relating to a story of
creatures called “Wugs” also provides evidence of morphological rule use.
2. Changes in Syntax and Semantics
• Preschool children learn and apply rules of syntax.
• Gains in semantics also characterize early childhood.
• Vocabulary development is dramatic.
• Some experts have estimated that between 18 months and 6 years of age, young children
learn about one new word every waking hour.
• The speaking vocabulary of a child entering first grade is approximately 14,000 words.
• One way children may increase their vocabulary so quickly is through fast mapping.

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written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
•Research in Life-Span Development: Family Environment and Young Children’s
Language Development
• Socioeconomic status has been linked with how much parents talk to their children
and with young children’s vocabulary.
• Other research has linked how much mothers speak to their infants and the infants’
vocabularies.
• Maternal language and literacy skills are positively related to children’s vocabulary
development.
• Mothers who frequently use pointing gestures have children with greater vocabulary.
3. Advances in Pragmatics
• Pragmatics or rules of conversation also show great improvement. Indeed, by 4 or 5 years
of age, children can suit their speech style to specific situations (e.g., they speak
differently to younger and older children).
C. Middle and Late Childhood—
• Children gain new skills as they enter school that include increasingly using language to
talk about things that are not physically present, learning what a word is, and learning
how to recognize and talk about sounds.
• It is important for children to learn the alphabetic principle (that the letters of the
alphabet represents sounds of the language) is important for learning to read and right.
1. Vocabulary, Grammar, and Metalinguistic Awareness
• The process of categorizing becomes easier as children increase their vocabulary.
• Vocabulary increases to about 40,000 words by 11 years of age.
• Children make similar advances in grammar.
• Elementary school children, due to advances in logical reasoning and analytical
skills, can now understand comparatives (e.g., shorter, deeper) and subjunctives (e.g.,
“If I were president,…”).
• The ability to understand complex grammar increases across the elementary school years.
• Children learn to use language in a more connected way (producing descriptions,
definitions, and narratives), which allows for connected discourse.
• Children must be able to do these things orally before they can deal with written
language.
• Metalinguistic awareness is a term that refers to knowledge of language, cognition
about language.
• Metalinguistic awareness improves over the elementary-school years; children define
words and learn how to use language appropriately.
• Children also make progress in understanding how to use language in culturally
appropriate ways – pragmatics.
• A research study found that low SES Spanish-speaking families had infants who
experienced more child-directed speech were better at processing words in real time and
had larger vocabularies at 2 years of age
2. Reading
• Before learning to read, children learn to use language to talk about things that are not
present; they learn what a word is; and they learn how to recognize sounds and talk about
them.
• The larger a child’s vocabulary, the easier it is for him/her to learn to read.
• Vocabulary development plays an important role in reading comprehension.
• The whole language approach stresses that reading instruction should parallel children’s
natural language learning. Reading materials should be whole and meaningful.

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written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
•The phonics approach emphasizes that reading instruction should focus on phonetics,
and its basic rules for translating written symbols into sounds. Early reading instructions
should involve simplified materials.
• Researchers have found strong evidence that direct instruction in phonics is a key aspect
of learning to read.
3. Writing
• Early scribbling in early childhood is a precursor for writing.
• Most 4-year-olds can print their first name, and most 5-year-olds can copy several short
words, although some letter reversal may still be evident. As they begin to write, children
often invent spelling of words.
• Advances in language and cognitive development provide the underpinnings for
improved writing. Providing many opportunities for writing is helpful.
• There is growing concern over the writing ability of youth and young adults.
• As with reading, teachers play a critical role in students’ development of writing skills.
4. Bilingualism and Second Language Learning
• Sensitive periods for learning a second language likely vary across different language
systems.
• Children’s ability to pronounce words with a native-like accent in a second language
typically decreases with age, with an especially sharp drop occurring after the age of
about 10 to 12.
• Some aspects of children’s ability to learn a second language are transferred more easily
to the second language than others.
• Students in the United States fall behind students in other countries when it comes to
learning a second language.
• Bilingualism—the ability to speak two languages—is associated with cognitive
development.
• Subtractive bilingualism is the term used when a person learns a second language and
ceases to use their native language.
• ELLs have been taught in one of two main ways: (1) instruction in English only, or (2) a
dual-language (used to be called bilingual) approach that involves instruction in their
home language and English
D. Adolescence
• Adolescents are generally more sophisticated in their language abilities, including:
— Metaphor: An implied comparison between two ideas that is conveyed by the abstract
meaning contained in the words used to make the comparison.
— Satire: Refers to a literary work in which irony, derision, or wit are used to expose folly
or wickedness.
— Young adolescents often speak a dialect (language distinguished by its vocabulary,
grammar, or pronunciation) with their peers, characterized by jargon and slang.
— Nicknames that are satirical and derisive also characterize the dialect of young
adolescents.
E. Adulthood and Aging
• Language abilities are thought to be maintained throughout adulthood.
• A distinct personal linguistic style is part of one’s special identity.
• Vocabulary can continue to increase throughout most of the adult years.
• Decrements may appear in late adulthood.
• Because of a decline in memory skills, older adults may have difficulty in retrieving
words from long-term memory. This often involves the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon.

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written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
• Older adults report that in less than ideal listening conditions they can have difficulty in
understanding speech.
• Some aspects of phonological skills of older adults are different than those of younger
adults.
• In general, though, most language skills decline little among older adults if they are
healthy.
• Researchers have found conflicting information about changes in discourse with aging.
• Nonlanguage factors, such as processing speed, may be responsible for some of the decline in
language skills in late adulthood.
• Alzheimer disease can affect language skills.

III. BIOLOGICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES


A. Biological Influences
• Evidence of biological influence is that children all over the world reach language milestones
at about the same time developmentally and in the same order despite the vast variation in the
language input they receive. The fact that such a difficult feat is done so quickly also points
to biology.
• Evolution and the Brain’s Role in Language:
• In evolutionary time, language is a recent acquisition. The brain, nervous system, and
vocal apparatus of our predecessors changed over hundreds of thousands of years.
• There is evidence that the brain contains particular regions that are predisposed to be used
for language, mainly in the left hemisphere.
• Broca’s area is an area in the left frontal lobe of the brain involved in producing
words.
• Wernicke’s area is another area of the left hemisphere involved in language
comprehension. Individuals with damage to Wernicke’s area often babble words in a
meaningless way.
• Damage to either of these areas produces types of aphasia, which is a loss or
impairment of language processing.
• Chomsky’s Language Acquisition Device:
• The language acquisition device (LAD) is a theoretical construct developed by Noam
Chomsky, which proposes that a biological endowment enables children to detect certain
language categories, such as phonology, syntax, and semantics.
• Chomsky’s LAD is a theoretical construct, not a physical part of the brain.
B. Environmental Influences
• Behaviorists view language as a behavior that is learned like any other behavior with the use
of reinforcement for correct responses and productions. There is no real support for this
position.
• Children are typically immersed in language through their social environment.
• Michael Tomasello stresses that children are intensely interested in their social world and that
early in their development they can understand the intentions of other people.
• Tomasello’s interaction view of language emphasizes that children learn language in specific
contexts. Through joint attention and shared intentions, children are able to use their social
skills to acquire language early in life.
• Child-directed speech is often used by parents and other adults when they talk to young
children. It has a higher-than-normal pitch and involves using simple words and sentences
• A recent study of low SES Spanish-speaking families that found infants who experienced
more child-directed speech were better at processing words in real time and had larger
vocabularies at 2 years of age.

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written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
• Adults use other strategies that may enhance language acquisition:
• Recasting: rephrasing something the child has said in a different way, perhaps turning it
into a question.
• Expanding: restating in a linguistically sophisticated form what a child has said.
• Labeling: identifying the names of objects, which children are asked over and over—
“the great word game.”
• Applications in Life-Span Development: How Parents Can Facilitate Infants’ and Toddlers’
Language Development
• For Infants:
• Be an active conversational partner
• Talk as if the infant understands what you are saying
• Use a language style with which you feel comfortable
• For Toddlers:
• Continue to be an active conversational partner
• Remember to listen
• Use a language style with which you are comfortable, but consider ways of
expanding your child’s language abilities and horizons
• Adjust to your child’s idiosyncrasies instead of working against them.
• Avoid sexual stereotypes
• Resist making normative comparisons
C. An Interactionist View of Language
• An interactionist view of language emphasizes the contributions of both biology and
experience in language development.
• The interaction of biology and experience can be seen in the variations in the acquisition of
language.
• Jerome Bruner developed the concept of a language acquisition support system (LASS) to
describe how parents structure and support the child’s language development.
• While most children acquire their native language without explicit teaching, caregivers can
greatly facilitate a child’s language learning.

Learning Goals

1. Define language and describe its rule systems.


• What is language?
• What are language’s five main rule systems?

2. Describe how language develops through the life span.


• What are some key milestones of language development during infancy?
• How do language skills change during early childhood?
• How does language develop in middle and late childhood?
• How does language develop in adolescence?
• How do language skills change during adulthood?

3. Discuss the biological and environmental contributions to language skills.


• What are the biological foundations of language?
• What are the environmental aspects of language?
• How does an interactionist view describe language?

Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior
written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Key Terms

aphasia morphology
Broca’s area phonics approach
child-directed speech phonology
dialect pragmatics
expanding recasting
fast mapping satire
infinite generativity semantics
labeling syntax
language telegraphic speech
language acquisition device (LAD) Wernicke’s area
metalinguistic awareness whole-language approach
metaphor

Key People

Naomi Baron Betty Hart


Jean Berko Kathy Hirsh-Pasek
Roger Brown Janellen Huttenlocher
Noam Chomsky Patricia Kuhl
Ellen Galinsky Todd Risley
Roberta Golinkoff Michael Tomasello
Kenji Hakuta

Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior
written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Lecture Suggestions
Lecture Suggestion 1: Environmental Influences on Literacy

This lecture examines research findings related to environmental influences on children’s literacy.
Santrock addresses the controversy between the phonics method and the whole-word method to teaching
reading. While these methods obviously factor into children’s learning to read, early experiences also
influence this ability. Considerable research has examined adults’ conversations with children and the
influence of parent-child interactions on literacy and language development (Crain-Thoreson & Dale,
1992; Huttenlocher, 1997; Snow, 1993).

• Reading development is influenced by early literacy activities such as “reading” picture books and
storytelling. Parents who ask their child to retell a story are facilitating the young child’s ability to
read. Snow found that children’s vocabulary is enhanced by exposure to adults who use relatively
uncommon words in everyday conversations with the child. Family contexts, especially adult-child
conversations, increase the likelihood of the child developing a larger vocabulary and ability to
recognize the words in print, thus providing a strong foundation for literacy.
• Crain-Thoreson and Dale found that parental instruction in letter naming, sounds, and frequency of
story reading was predictive of reading precocity at age 4 (knowledge of print conventions, invented
spelling, and awareness of phonology).
• Huttenlocher reports that mothers influence children’s vocabulary and grammatical structure as well.
Children of “chatty” mothers averaged 131 more words than children of less talkative mothers by 20
months (by 24 months the difference was 295 words). There are differences in complexity of sentence
structure relative to children’s environments as well. Children who are exposed to their mother’s use
of complex sentences (dependent clauses, such as “When…” or “because…”) are much more likely to
use complex sentences. These early experiences impact a child’s ability to read.

Sources:
Crain-Thoreson & Dale, P. S. (1992). Do early talkers become early readers? Linguistic precocity,
preschool language, and emergent literacy. Developmental Psychology, 28, 421–429.
Huttenlocher, J. (1997). In S. Begley, How to build a baby’s brain. Newsweek, spring/summer, 28–32.
Snow, C. E. (1993). Families as social contexts for literacy development. New Directions in Child
Development (61, 11–25). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Lecture Suggestion 2: Infant Speech Perception—


Use It or Lose It?

Create a lecture on the speech perception abilities in young infants and the contribution of biology and
experience to this ability. Discuss research evidence of categorical perception (the ability to discriminate
when two sounds represent two different phonemes, and when they lie within the same phonemic
category). Young infants have the ability to discriminate speech contrasts that are found in languages they
have not heard (Best, McRoberts, & Sithole, 1988), which suggests that categorical perception is an
innate ability and universal among infants.

The biological component of speech perception is complemented by the experiential component.


Experience plays an important role in the development of speech perception and language. The lack of
exposure to various sounds thwarts speech perception abilities. The Japanese language does not have a
phonemic distinction between r and l sounds. Your students may well have noticed that native Japanese
speakers have trouble pronouncing and discriminating between r and l sounds. Interestingly, Japanese

Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior
written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
infants have no trouble discriminating between these sounds (Eimas, 1975). Research suggests that
infants gradually lose their ability to discriminate sound contrasts that they are not exposed to (Werker &
Lalonde, 1988). Consider showing the Development video from The Mind series because it demonstrates
Werker’s research.

Sources:
Best, C. T., McRoberts, G. W., & Sithole, N. M. (1988). Examination of perceptual reorganization for
nonnative speech contrast: Zula click discrimination by English-speaking adults and infants. Journal
of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 14, 345–360.
Eimas, P. D. (1975). Auditory and phonetic coding of the cues for speech: Discrimination of the r-l
distinction by young infants. Perception and Psychophysics, 18, 341–347.
Werker, J. F., & Lalonde, C. E. (1988). Cross-language speech perception: Initial capabilities and
developmental change. Developmental Psychology, 24, 672–683.

Lecture Suggestion 3: Auditory Skills and Language Development

This lecture extension highlights how the sensation of hearing affects the development of language in
children. It should come as no surprise that language development is intimately linked to auditory
perception. Let’s face it, how can one develop language, or vocabulary for that matter, when one is
unable to hear speech? This becomes an issue for young children who experience multiple ear infections
in early childhood. Language development is delayed if the auditory system is blocked and hearing is
muted or nonexistent. Recent research suggests that it is not only the sensation of hearing that is
important for language development, but also one’s ability to process that auditory information.
Specifically, the ability to process multiple stimuli in a rapid and successive fashion is believed to be a
cornerstone for language acquisition (Benasich, Thomas, Choudhury, & Leppaenen, 2002). Further,
individuals with developmental language disorders demonstrate deficits in rapid processing of both verbal
and nonverbal information.

Source:
Benasich, A. A., Thomas, J. J., Choudhury, N., & Leppaenen, P. H. T. (2002). The importance of rapid
auditory processing abilities to early language development: Evidence from converging
methodologies. Developmental Psychobiology, 40(3), 278–292.

Lecture Suggestion 4: Birth Order and Language Development

There is some evidence that suggests that language development in firstborn children is more advanced
than that of laterborn children. One study found that firstborn children had more advanced lexical and
grammatical development, whereas laterborn children had more advanced conversational skills (Hoff-
Ginsberg, 1998).

We know from Santrock’s text that the verbal communication that parents have with their children affects
the children’s language development. Thus, it is not surprising that birth order may affect language
development given that parents most likely communicate with firstborn and laterborn children in different
ways. Indeed, research suggests that mothers use different categories of language (e.g., social-regulative
versus metalingual language) when interacting with one child than when interacting with two children
(Oshima-Takane & Robbins, 2003). Further, this research also found that older siblings also use different
categories of speech when interacting with both their mother and younger sibling and when interacting
with their younger sibling alone.

Although there is some evidence that the language development of firstborn children is more advanced
than that of laterborn children, not all of the research supports this claim. A relatively recent study found

Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior
written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
that the language competence of firstborn children was more advanced than that of laterborn children only
in maternal report, not in measures of children’s actual speech or in experimenter assessments (Bornstein,
Leach, & Haynes, 2004). Thus, the relationship between birth order and language development is quite
complex. However, it certainly is mediated by parental communication and how that differs for children
who are firstborn as opposed to laterborn.

Sources:
Bornstein, M. H., Leach, D. B., & Haynes, O. M. (2004). Vocabulary competence in first- and
secondborn siblings of the same chronological age. Journal of Child Language, 31(4), 855–873.
Hoff-Ginsberg, E. (1998). The relation of birth order and socioeconomic status to children’s language
experience and language development. Applied Psycholinguistics, 19(4), 603–629.
Oshima-Takane, Y., & Robbins, M. (2003). Linguistic environment of secondborn children. First
Language, 23, 21–40.

Lecture Suggestion 5: Does Feedback Facilitate Language Learning?

One study examined whether providing feedback would facilitate the immediate and delayed learning of
foreign language vocabulary (Pashler, Cepeda, Wixted, & Rohrer, 2005). Participants in this study were
given a Luganda word with its English translation. Luganda words were chosen for this study because
these words are fairly easy to pronounce, but are unfamiliar to American participants. Participants were
presented with the word pairs in the following way: the Luganda word was printed in a text box, and the
English translation was printed in a box immediately below it. To assess learning, the Luganda word was
presented in a text box, and the text box below was blank so that the participant could write in the English
translation.

This experiment took place online, and participants were randomly assigned to one of five conditions.
After viewing the word pairs two times, participants were shown the Luganda word and the blank text
box and were asked to type in the correct English translation. Following the participants’ response, they
either (1) immediately moved on to the next word, (2) moved on to the next word after a 5-second delay,
(3) saw the word correct/incorrect for 5 seconds, (4) saw the correct answer for 5 seconds, or (5) these
participants were not tested on the words following their presentation. One week later, participants were
sent an email asking them to log on to complete the test again (obviously group 5 didn’t complete it the
first time). No feedback was given after this test session.

Only the correct-answer feedback group (group 4) showed significant improvement from the first to the
second testing session. These results suggest that providing feedback about correct answers may facilitate
language learning.

Source:
Pashler, H., Cepeda, N. J., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2005). When does feedback facilitate learning of
words? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 31(1), 3–8.

Lecture Suggestion 6: Ape Talk

The following is a passage from “Ape Talk—From Gua to Nim Chimpsky” that outlines the history of
attempts to teach apes to talk and sketches the controversy resulting from these attempts:

It is the early 1930s. A 7-month-old chimpanzee named Gua has been adopted by humans
(Kellogg & Kellogg, 1933). Gua’s adopters want to rear her alongside their 10-month-old son,
Donald. Gua was treated much the way we rear human infants today—her adopters dressed her,

Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior
written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
talked with her, and played with her. Nine months after she was adopted, the project was
discontinued because the parents feared that Gua was slowing down Donald’s progress.
About twenty years later, another chimpanzee was adopted by human beings (Hayes &
Hayes, 1951). Viki, as the chimp was called, was only a few days old at the time. The goal was
straightforward: teach Viki to speak. Eventually she was taught to say “Mama,” but only with
painstaking effort. Day after day, week after week, the parents sat with Viki and shaped her
mouth to make the desired sounds. She ultimately learned three other words—papa, cup, and
up—but she never learned the meanings of these words, and her speech was not clear.
Approximately twenty years later, another chimpanzee named Washoe was adopted when she
was about 10 months old (Gardner & Gardner, 1971). Recognizing that the earlier experiments
with chimps had not demonstrated that apes have language, the trainers tried to teach Washoe the
American Sign Language, which is the sign language of the deaf. Daily routine events, such as
meals and washing, household chores, play with toys, and car rides to interesting places, provided
many opportunities for the use of sign language. In two years, Washoe learned 38 different signs
and by the age of 5 she had a vocabulary of 160 signs. Washoe learned how to put signs together
in novel ways, such as “you drink” and “you me tickle.”
Yet another way to teach language to chimpanzees exists. The Premacks (Premack &
Premack, 1972) constructed a set of plastic shapes that symbolized different objects and were
able to teach the meanings of the shapes to a 6-year-old chimpanzee, Sarah. Sarah was able to
respond correctly using such abstract symbols as “same as” or “different from.” For example, she
could tell you that “banana is yellow” is the same as “yellow color of banana.” Sarah eventually
was able to “name” objects; respond “yes,” “no,” “same as,” and “different from”; and tell you
about certain events by using symbols (such as putting a banana on a tray). Did Sarah learn a
generative language capable of productivity? Did the signs Washoe learned have an underlying
system of language rules?
Herbert Terrace (1979) doubts that these apes have been taught language. Terrace was part of
a research project designed to teach language to an ape by the name of Nim Chimpsky (named
after famous linguist Noam Chomsky). Initially, Terrace was optimistic about Nim’s ability to
use language as human beings use it, but after further evaluation, he concluded that Nim really
did not have language in the sense that human beings do. Terrace says that apes do not
spontaneously expand on a trainer’s statements as people do; instead, the apes just imitate their
trainer. Terrace also believes that apes do not understand what they are saying when they speak;
rather they are responding to cues from the trainer that they are not aware of. The Gardners take
exception to Terrace’s conclusions (Gardner & Gardner, 1986). They point out that chimpanzees
use inflections in sign language to refer to various actions, people, and places. They also cite
recent evidence that the infant chimp Loulis learned over 50 signs from his adopted mother
Washoe and other chimpanzees who used sign language.
The ape language controversy goes on. It does seem that chimpanzees can learn to use signs
to communicate meanings which has been the boundary for language. Whether the language of
chimpanzees possesses all of the characteristics of human language, such as phonology,
morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, is still being argued (Maratsos, 1983;
Rumbaugh, 1988).

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written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Classroom Activities
Classroom Activity 1: Do Animals Have
the Ability to Communicate?

This activity affords students an opportunity to discuss the utility of animal research in the study of
language development. Begin this discussion by describing research studies such as Washoe (the first ape
to be taught sign language) (Gardner & Gardner, 1971) and Koko the gorilla (Patterson, 1978). Following
is some information about Gua, who was the first chimpanzee whom psychologists raised as if human.

In 1933, Winthrop Niles Kellogg, his wife, and their son Donald (10 months old) engaged in an
experiment in which Donald was raised with a chimpanzee (Kellogg & Kellogg, 1933). Robert Yerkes,
Yale’s ape expert, arranged for the loan of Gua, a 7-month-old female chimpanzee. For nine months, the
Kelloggs and Gua lived in a bungalow near Yale Anthropoid Experiment State in Florida. Both Donald
and Gua were cuddled, fed, dressed, and tested. The Kelloggs reported in The Ape and the Child that Gua
learned to walk upright more quickly than did Donald. Gua liked to pull at hangings, such as curtains,
tablecloths, and skirts. Gua also recognized people better than Donald, by the smell of their chests and
armpits, and did better recognizing by clothes than by faces. Donald, on the other hand, recognized faces.
Although Donald liked perfume, Gua did not. Both reacted the same to sweet, salty, and bitter substances,
except that Gua was more likely to enjoy sour things. Gua recognized herself in a mirror before Donald
did, and she was also the first to become interested in picture books; however, Gua did not learn to speak
human words. At the end of the study, the Kelloggs concluded that when Gua was treated as a human
child, she behaved like a human child in all ways that her body and brain structure allowed. Donald and
his parents went on to Indiana University; Gua was returned to Yerkes, where she lived in a cage and was
part of experiments.

Have students discuss their opinions regarding the value of language learning studies with primates. What
have researchers learned from animal studies about the development or cause of language? Do they have
any ethical concerns? If they think that animal studies are beneficial for the understanding of language
development, they should describe how they think this type of research should be conducted.

Sources:
Gardner, B. T., & Gardner, R. A. (1971). Two-way communication with an infant chimpanzee. In A. M.
Schrier and F. Stollnitz (Eds.), Behavior of nonhuman primates. New York: Academic Press.
Gerow, J. (1988). Time retrospective: Psychology 1923–1988. Time. 16–17.
Kellogg, W. N., & Kellogg, I. A. (1933). The ape and the child. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Patterson, F. G. (1978). The gestures of a gorilla: Language acquisition in another pongid. Brain and
Language, 5, 72–97.

Classroom Activity 2: Which Comes First? The Chicken or the Egg?

This activity highlights some of the caveats of correlational research. First, share the following research
findings with the class. Vigil, Hodges, and Klee (2005) compared the communication of parents with
toddlers who have a language delay with that of parents of toddlers without such a delay. The results
indicated that both sets of parents produced the same amount of linguistic input, but the type of input
differed. Parents of toddlers with normal language development used more responses, expansions, and
self-directed speech than parents of toddlers with language delays. Ask students to explain this
relationship. The discussion should reveal that it is possible that the differences in parental
communication may contribute to language development, but that it is equally plausible that parental

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written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
communication is a function of toddler language. So which came first—parental communication or
language delay?

Students could then be broken down into groups and asked to design an experimental study that examines
the direction of cause.

Source:
Vigil, D. C., Hodges, J., & Klee, T. (2005). Quantity and quality of parental language input to late-
talking toddlers during play. Child Language Teaching & Therapy, 21(2), 107–122.

Classroom Activity 3: Language Development and Multiple Births

Research suggests that there are increased levels of language impairment (e.g., Mogford-Bevan, 2000)
and delay (see Kwong & Nicoladis, 2005; McMahon & Dodd, 1997) in multiple-birth offspring. Further,
it is possible that the extent of the impairment is more significant as the number of children born (e.g.,
quadruplets vs. triplets vs. twins vs. singletons) increases (see McMahon & Dodd). Ask students to use
the three perspectives on language development discussed in the text to formulate explanations for this
finding.

Discussion should reveal that these language delays are most likely due to both genetic and environmental
factors. See Mogford-Bevan (2000) for a discussion of both genetic and environmental factors that can
affect development.

Students should keep in mind that language delay is not a necessary characteristic of multiple births.
Kwong and Nicoladis (2005) found no differences in the linguistic environment of a set of triplets and
their singleton cousin. Further, the triplets’ language skills were in the normal range of development by
the end of the study.

Sources:
Kwong, T., & Nicoladis, E. (2005). Talk to me: Parental linguistic practices may hold the key to reducing
incidence of language impairment and delay among multiple-birth children. Journal of Speech-
Language Pathology & Audiology, 29(1), 6–13.
McMahon, S., & Dodd, B. (1997). A comparison of the expressive communication skills of triplet, twin,
and singleton children. European Journal of Disorders of Communication, 32(3), 328–345.
Mogford-Bevan, K. (2000). Developmental language impairments with complex origins: Learning from
twins and multiple birth children. Folia Phoniatrica et Logopaedica, 52, 74–82.

Classroom Activity 4: Supporting Arguments for


Three Views of Language Development

This activity gives students an opportunity to further their understanding of the three major views of
language development.

• First, have them break into small groups and assign them one of the three positions (biological,
behavioral, and interactionalist). As a group, they should identify the basis of language development
that their theoretical perspective assumes and generate evidence that supports that view using their
textbooks.
• Second, select one group from each perspective to present their theoretical position on language
development to the class. You can have the groups debate their positions or merely present the
arguments and evidence.

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written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
• Third, have the students who are not presenting determine which position makes the most sense to
them. If they cannot come to a consensus, or if they dispute all three of the theoretical claims, have
them generate a new perspective on the development of language. The new perspective can include
components of the three perspectives that were provided.

Logistics:
• Group size: Small groups (2 to 4 students) and full class discussion
• Approximate time: Small group (15 minutes) and full class discussion (30 minutes)

Classroom Activity 5: Observation of Parent-Infant Interaction

With this activity, students will assess the communication patterns of infants and the interactional
synchrony between caregiver and infant. If possible, videotape at least two infants between the ages of 9
and 18 months interacting with their caregiver in face-to-face play for approximately 10 minutes. Have
students identify the infant’s vocal and nonverbal communication behaviors. Depending on the
videotaped segment and the age of the infant, students should notice eye contact, cooing, pointing,
babbling, crying, laughing, facial expressions, intonation patterns, and so on. Next, the students should
focus on what the caregiver is doing to elicit communication from the infant.

• Instructions for Students:


1. List all of the infant’s behaviors that you consider to be communication.
2. List all of the caregiver’s behaviors that you think are eliciting communication from the infant.
3. What sounds did the infant produce? Were all of his or her sounds part of his or her native
language?
4. What babbling patterns were used? Did the infant have the same intonation patterns as his or her
parents’ native language?
5. Did it appear that the caregiver and the infant were having a conversation? Why or why not?

• Use in the Classroom: Discuss the students’ observations and highlight the interactional dance that
occurs and the many different ways that young infants communicate with their world. Note whether
the students considered all behavior to be communication, or whether they discriminated between
communicative and noncommunicative behavior.

Logistics:
• Materials: Two videotapes of parent-infant interaction
• Group size: Full class discussion
• Approximate time: Full class (25 minutes per videotape)

Source:
King, M. B., & Clark, D. E. (1989). Instructor’s manual for Santrock and Yussen’s child development: An
introduction, 4th ed. Dubuque, IA: Wm. C. Brown Communications.

Classroom Activity 6: Testing Language Development

This activity asks students to relate their development to the information provided in the textbook and to
design a research study regarding parental reports of infant development. Santrock describes the
development of language in infants in sufficient detail to allow for a comparison.

1. Have students ask their parents to indicate how old the students were when (1) the parents could tell
the difference between the cry communicating hunger and the cry communicating wet diapers, (2)

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written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
they spoke their first word (indicate what the word was), (3) they first put two words together, and (4)
they created their first sentence.
2. Ask students to bring their data to class and compare it to that provided in the text. Once the
comparison is made, have students indicate why the differences exist.
3. Break the students into groups, and ask them to design a retrospective study that would determine
when each of the initial stages of language development occurred. They should also identify the
problems with this type of study.
4. After sufficient time has passed, bring them back together, and have them describe their studies and
the difficulties they had in designing them.
5. As a class, have students design a more realistic study of the progression of language development
(longitudinal, naturalistic observation).

Logistics:
• Group size: Individual, small group (2 to 4 students), and full class discussion
• Approximate time: Individual (10 minutes before class meeting), small group (30 minutes), and full
class discussion (30 minutes)

Source:
King, M. B., & Clark, D. E. (1989). Instructor’s manual for Santrock and Yussen’s child development: An
introduction, 4th ed. Dubuque, IA: Wm. C. Brown Communications.

Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior
written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Discussion Board Prompts
For each chapter, a few discussion board prompts are provided. Some of these prompts may be
controversial, but all should encourage the student to further process course material. Although these
are intended for online discussions, they could easily be used for an in-class discussion.

1. Should U.S. schools require learning a second language during elementary school? Why or why
not? If yes, which language should be taught and why?
2. Why do teenagers have their own dialect? What benefits and costs could such a dialect have?
3. A surprising number of college students need to take remedial courses in reading and/or writing.
Should all high schools require a minimal standard of reading and writing in order to graduate?
Why or why not?

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written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Classroom Discussion Questions
These questions can be utilized in the classroom with a partner or small group. They can be used as
an introduction to the topic or as questions to start class discussions.

1. With a partner discuss the pros and cons to using child directed speech? Do you think adults
should use “baby talk” when talking to an infant or child? Why or why not?

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written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Journal Entry
For each chapter, a journal entry is suggested that encourages each student to apply that chapter’s
material to his or her own development.

Journal entry prompt: Were you taught to read using the whole-language approach or the phonics
approach? Provide examples of reading activities you were exposed to at school.

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written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Personal Applications
Personal Application 1: Birth Order and Language Development

The purpose of this activity is to get students to think about how birth order could influence language
development. Begin by asking students to share their birth order. Who is firstborn? Second? Middle
child? Last child? Then ask students to share their perspective on how birth order may influence the
development of language. Perhaps language will be accelerated because infants are surrounded by many
more conversations. Alternatively, language could be delayed because the speech that surrounds the
infant is less well articulated and perhaps grammatically incorrect. Further, parents may spend more time
conversing with older siblings and thus spend less time in one-on-one conversations/interactions with the
infant.

One research study examining this issue suggests that secondborn children are more advanced than
firstborn children were in pronoun production, but that there was no difference in overall language
development (Ashima-Takane, Goodz, & Deverensky, 1996). This suggests that there are neither benefits
nor expenses in language development as a function of birth order. This activity could be turned into a
research project as well (see RP 1).

Source:
Oshima-Takane, Y., Goodz, E., & Deverensky, J. L. (1996). Birth order effects on early language
development: Do secondborn children learn from overheard speech? Child Development, 67(2), 621–
634.

Personal Application 2: “Hewo Witto Baby”

Think about the last time you were presented with a baby. Knowing that the child doesn’t understand
language, did you say things like “Hello,” or “How are you today?” Describe the tone of your voice. Did
it change when you spoke to the baby? Now think about times you have seen others talk to babies. While
some people are awkward and others are comfortable; we all tend to change our manner of speaking when
we interact with infants, and the changes are generally in the same direction. That is, most adults change
their speech and mannerisms in the same way when speaking to an infant. This behavior is part of child
directed speech, which is sometimes called motherese or parentese. Why do you think this occurs?

Now think about the ways in which adults talk to young children. When a mistake is made in grammar or
pronunciation, do they correct it or are they more likely to correct the meaning? How do you think this
adult behavior fits into the language development notion held by empiricists or behaviorists that each time
we talk to a child we are giving little language lessons to them? Is this a good argument about how
language is learned, and could it be used as an explanation for concepts like infinite generativity?

Personal Application 3: Does Day Care Facilitate Language?

The most comprehensive study of the effects of early child care has recently reported that children who
attend higher-quality child care in a center-type arrangement have better language performance at 4 and a
half years than children in any other kind of child care arrangement (NICHD, 2002). Ask students to
reflect on their own experiences with child care and discuss their opinions regarding this finding. Ask
students to indicate whether they agree or not and to offer potential explanations for the finding.

Source:

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written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
NICHD Early Child Care Research Network (2002). Early child care and children’s development prior to
school entry: Results from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care. American Educational Research
Journal, 39(1), 133–164.

Personal Application 4: Language Disorders and Socioemotional Development

It is not hard to imagine that language disorders may affect children’s socioemotional development. Let’s
face it, when you hear an adult speaking with some type of language impediment (e.g., an articulation
disorder, a voice disorder), it is easy to associate the disorder with “inferior” intellectual capability. But
do these two things go hand in hand? Do individuals with language disorders have less sophisticated
cognitive skills? Ask students to contemplate and share their thoughts on this.

After sharing their thoughts, ask students to also think about their early childhood experiences. Do they
remember a child with some type of language disorder (or were they themselves a child with such a
disorder)? If they do remember such a child, do they also remember how this child was treated by others
(e.g., teachers, peers)? What do they think the long-term consequences of this treatment might be?

After this discussion, share the findings of one study examining long-term consequences of
developmental language disorders with the class. This study examined men who had a severe receptive
developmental language disorder in childhood and compared them with their non-language-disordered
siblings and matched controls of another sample. The controls and siblings were matched on such things
as age, performance IQ, childhood IQ, and social class (Clegg, Hollis, Mawhood, & Rutter, 2005). They
found that the men with the developmental language disorder had normal intelligence but had
impairments in social adaptation (e.g., prolonged unemployment, few close friendships, and romantic
relationships) and higher rates of schizotypal characteristics. Ask students to contemplate the reasons for
these long-term consequences.

The authors of the cited study suggest that the long-term consequences are most likely due to some of the
deficits associated with the receptive language disorder (such as deficits in theory of mind, verbal short-
term memory, phonological processing) as well as the social adaptation problems that these individuals
have.

Source:
Clegg, J., Hollis, C. Mawhood, L., & Rutter, M. (2005). Developmental language disorders—A follow-
up in later adult life. Cognitive, language, and psychosocial outcomes. Journal of Child Psychology
& Psychiatry, 46(2), 128–149.

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written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Research Projects
Research Project 1: Birth Order and Language Development

This research project follows from the Lecture Suggestion and Personal Application about Birth Order
and Language Development. Students can work independently or in small (2–3 students) groups.
Research examining relations between birth order and a variety of outcomes (e.g., personality) is
somewhat controversial—some studies find support for birth order effects whereas others do not.
Oshima-Takane, Goodz, and Deverensky (1996) found that secondborn children have more advanced
pronoun production as compared to firstborn children, but that the overall language development of
siblings was the same. Students could be asked to share their own experiences within their families and
to form an opinion regarding birth order and language development. After doing so, students could then
be sent to the library to research this topic. After examining the literature, students could report their
findings orally in class or in a written paper. It would be interesting to open the discussion in class,
because it would enable the instructor to also highlight how important it is to validate commonsense
notions and popular media reports in the empirical literature.

Source:
Oshima-Takane, Y., Goodz, E., & Deverensky, J. L. (1996). Birth order effects on early language
development: Do secondborn children learn from overheard speech? Child Development, 67(2), 621–
634.

Research Project 2: Caregiver-Infant Language

In this project, students will gain a better understanding of communication techniques that caregivers use
when interacting with infants, and they will gain experience with naturalistic observation methods.
Students will examine recasting, echoing, and expanding using naturalistic observation. They should go
to a local shopping mall and observe a caregiver with an infant 18 to 24 months old. The observation
period should be approximately 15 minutes. Using the provided data sheet (Handout RP 9-2), they
should record three instances of speech by the caregiver to the infant and classify each instance as
recasting, echoing, or expanding. In addition to noting the caregiver’s statements, they should also note
the infant’s response to each statement. Finally, they should answer the following questions:

• What types of techniques did the caregiver use with the infant you observed?
• How did the infant respond to the statement made by the caregiver?
• From your observations, do you think recasting, echoing, and expanding are effective techniques in
aiding infants to learn language? Why or why not?
• What variables might have affected the quality of data you collected? Might your conclusions have
been different if you had observed a different caregiver-infant pair? How?

Have the students present data from the research project in class. Do the observations agree with the
presentation in the textbook?

Research Project 3: Dementia and Language

There is some research to suggest that cognitive deficits, including language decay, may be predictive of
later cognitive impairment (see Jorm, Masaki, Petrovitch, Ross, & White, 2005). For this project,
students will be asked to explore this finding in the literature and/or in a naturalistic observational study.

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written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
This research project could include a review of the literature and research proposal, a naturalistic
observational study, or both.

Students could begin by exploring the literature relating to language development and cognitive
impairment/dementia (this could be done individually or in small groups). After exploring the literature,
students could generate an introduction and proposed methodology for a naturalistic observation
examining this relationship. Students could then visit a nursing home, personal care home, or retirement
community to investigate the hypotheses generated through their review of the literature. This project
would highlight the importance of interrater reliability and clear operational definitions of variables.
Upon completion of the project, data could be analyzed individually in written reports or for the class as a
whole (it would be possible to design the study as a class so that all students are collecting the same data).
Discussion should involve the actual findings, and how they relate to the literature as well as
problems/issues that arose during the study.

Source:
Jorm, A. F., Masaki, K. H., Petrovitch, H., Ross, G. W., & White, L. R. (2005). Cognitive deficits 3 to 6
years before dementia onset in a population sample: The Honolulu-Asia aging study. Journal of the
American Geriatrics Society, 53(3), 452–455.

Research Project 4: Biology and Language

Research in all areas of psychology is finding more and more connections between brain biology and
behavior. Research in language development is certainly no different. For example, some of the studies
indicate that polymicrogyria (a rare brain disorder that produces structurally abnormal cerebral
hemispheres) is related to severe developmental language disorders (Guerreiro et al., 2002), and that
children with developmental language disorders also have an increased brain volume and an increased
volume of cerebral white matter (Herbert et al., 2003).

Have students form groups, and send them to the library to research the underlying biology of language
development—either “normal” or “abnormal.” Have each group choose one area of the brain on which to
focus (you could have the groups identify the area themselves through their literature search, or you could
assign each group an area). Groups should answer the following questions:

1. What area of the brain did you find to be related to language development?
2. How is it related, specifically (i.e., does it relate to speech production, comprehension, etc.)?
3. How does it influence language (i.e., does it regulate particular neurotransmitters, is this area of the
brain smaller in children with language disorders, and so on)?
4. To what other behaviors/disorders is this area related (e.g., polymicrogyria is related to other
developmental disorders or delays, seizures, motor problems, and so on)?
5. How do these other disorders relate/connect to language development?

Students can report their findings orally or in written form, although oral presentations would allow the
dissemination of more information to the entire class. Alternatively, if one chooses to use written papers,
perhaps students could read one or two papers from other groups and critique them thus allowing the
dissemination of new information.

Sources:
Guerreiro, M. M., Hage, S. R. V., Guimaraes, C. A., Abramides, D. V., Fernandes, W., Pacheco, P. S.,
Piovesana, A. M. S. G., Montenegro, M. A., & Cendes, F. (2002). Developmental language disorder
associated with polymicrogyria. Neurology, 59(2), 245–250.

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written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Herbert, M. R., Ziegler, D. A., Makris, N., Bakardjiev, A., Hodgson, J., Adrien, K. T., Kennedy, D. N.,
Filipek, P. A., & Caviness, V. S., Jr. (2003). Larger brain and white matter volumes in children with
developmental language disorder. Developmental Science, 6(4), F11–F22.

Research Project 5: Does Feedback Facilitate Language Learning?

This research project extends the Lecture Suggestion on the same topic. Students can be asked to design
an experimental study on whether feedback facilitates language learning in children. They can use a
methodology similar to the one used in the Pashler, Cepeda, Wixted, and Rohrer (2005) study or can
design their own. To design the study, students can be placed in small groups, and then the class can
reconvene as a whole and integrate their ideas into one methodology. After completing the methodology,
each student could be required to test children (the age of the children would need to be determined) to
determine whether feedback facilitates language learning. The number of children that each student
would need to test would depend on the number of conditions in the study. Students could then report
their findings in class, and the results could be discussed.

Research Project 6: Language Errors

This class project exposes students to the kinds of errors children make when they are acquiring language.
Have each student pair up with another student in the class. One student will act as the experimenter,
while the other will act as the observer. They should test two different children: one 3 to 4 years of age,
the other 7 to 8 years of age. In order to test the children, the project will have to be approved by the
human subjects review board at your school, and the students will need to get a signed informed consent
form from the children’s parents.

The children will receive from the students three different tasks evaluating their understanding and use of
the passive construction. Students should present an act-out task, an imitation task, and a production task.
The task and sentence descriptions follow. Handout RP 9-6 can be used as a data sheet to record
observations. The students should answer the provided questions as well.

• Act-out Task: Have several objects available—a toy car and truck; a toy doll; a toy horse, cow, dog,
and cat. Read the sentences below one at a time, and have the child act out the sentences with the
toys.
• Imitation Task: Present each of the sentences below to each child, and have the child repeat the
sentences back to you.
• Production Task: Perform the actions in each of the sentences below with the toys for the child. Ask
the child to tell you what happened starting with the first noun in the sentence. (For instance, for item
5, roll the car along so that it hits the truck, and then ask the child to tell you what happened
beginning with the truck.)

1. The car hit the truck. 6. The cow stepped on the horse.
2. The dog was kicked by the cat. 7. The cat kicked the dog.
3. The boy was bitten by the dog. 8. The cat was hit by the boy.
4. The boy hit the cat. 9. The dog bit the boy.
5. The truck was hit by the car. 10. The horse was stepped on by the cow.

• What did the 3- to 4-year-old child do in response to the act-out task? The imitation task? The
production task? Was performance on one task better than on the others? If so, which? What sorts of

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written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
errors appeared in the act-out task? What about the imitation task? The production task? Were the
errors similar in the various tasks?
• What did the 7- to 8-year-old child do in response to the act-out task? The imitation task? The
production task? Was performance on one task better than on the others? If so, which? What sorts of
errors appeared in the act-out task? What about the imitation task? The production task? Were the
errors similar in the various tasks?
• Compare the two children. What differences, if any, did you see on their performances on these three
tasks? How would you account for the differences? What is the nature of language learning that
seems to be occurring during this time?
• What criticisms could be leveled at the procedures you used in this demonstration? For example, do
you think each task should have had different questions?

Have students present the data from the research project in class. What kinds of errors did the younger
children make on the tasks? Were there individual differences within age groups present (i.e., did some of
the younger children perform all tasks well, while other children made errors with all tasks?)? How did
the older children perform on these tasks? Were some tasks easier? What do these findings tell us about
the development course for understanding active and passive sentences? What strategies did children use
when they made errors?

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written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Film and Video List
The following films and videos supplement the content of Chapter 9. Please note that some of the video
descriptions are quoted from the publisher’s/distributor’s description.

Body Language: Cultural Differences (Insight Media, 2007, 30 minutes). In this program, a diversity
specialist outlines differences in behaviors among non-U.S. cultures and introduces multicultural
manners. The program covers such topics as greetings, physical contact between the sexes, smiling, and
embracing and emphasizes that acceptable norms vary among cultures.

Communication Disorders in Children (Insight Media, 1990, 30 minutes). This DVD shows how
newborns and young children develop communication skills and investigates developmental challenges in
various stages. It presents strategies and interventions for the recognition and treatment of developmental
disorders and discusses behavioral and acoustic features of hearing loss, language disorders, and speech
dysfunction.

Cross-Cultural Communication (Insight Media, 2002, 24 minutes). Providing a sociological and


psychological perspective on cross-cultural communication, this program explores the nature and
significance of cultural variations in verbal and nonverbal communication.

Developing Language (Insight Media, 24 minutes). This program charts the development of children’s
language from birth to age 5, and then asks the question, “What is left to learn?”

Developing Language: Learning to Question, Inform, and Entertain (Films for the Humanities and
Sciences, 1994, 25 minutes). Starting right from infancy, this program charts the development of
language during childhood. Basic language acquisition, learned from rudimentary and higher-level
child/caregiver interactions, is described. Aspects of competence that go beyond the purpose of simple
communication are also considered, including the skill of using conversation for establishing and
furthering social relationships, the ability to employ language as a part of games, the capacity to
understand jokes, and the awareness of what other people know and understand at various stages of
maturation.

Doing What Comes Naturally: Childhood Language Acquisition (Films for the Humanities and Sciences,
47 minutes). Experts deflate misconceptions about childhood language acquisition.

Do You Speak American (PBS, 2005, 180 minutes). Is American English in decline? Is there a difference
between men and women in how they adapt to linguistic variations? These questions, and more, about our
language catapulted Robert MacNeil and William Cran—authors of The Story of English—across the
country in search of the answers

Gender and Communication: How Men and Women Communicate Differently (Insight Media, 2007, 20
minutes). Discussing research findings on communication differences between males and females, this
DVD presents and analyzes vignettes that illustrate the differences among male-male communication
interactions, male-female interactions, and female-female interactions. It considers verbal and nonverbal
differences in communication styles.

Gender and Communication: Styles and Stereotypes (Insight Media, 2008, 22 minutes). This program
explores the communication gap between men and women. It considers why some men emphasize the
literal meaning of words and why some women weaken their speech patterns. The program also examines
each gender’s motivations for asking questions.

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Infancy: Beginnings in Cognition and Language (Magna Systems, 29 minutes). This video explores infant
senses and perception and the development of cognition and language during the first year of life. In
addition, the role that parents play in language learning is discussed.

Interpersonal Communication and Conflict (Insight Media, 2008, 21 minutes). In this program, Thomas
E. Harkins of New York University examines conflict, outlines the potential benefits of conflict, presents
various definitions for conflict, negates common misconceptions surrounding conflict, discusses sources
and patterns of conflict, and discusses conflict management and prevention. He looks at pragmatic and
social constructionist views of communication and conflict; emphasizes the role of context in determining
communication content; and explains how differences in core beliefs, values, attitudes, habits, and goals
can cause conflicts, even when these differences occur on a subconscious level. The program contrasts
constructive and destructive patterns of conflict, outlines the characteristics of destructive conflict, and
presents constructive methods of conflict management. It covers such topics as flexibility, paralinguistics,
avoidance and engagement, styles and tactics of conflict resolution, and the role of egocentrism in
conflict. The DVD features entertaining, illustrative vignettes.

Interpersonal Communication with People of Different Ages (Insight Media, 2008, 22 minutes).
Emphasizing the role of respect in all interpersonal interactions, this program examines communication
with individuals of different ages and considers the ways in which human development affects
communication abilities. It outlines the developmental psychology and life-space perspectives of human
development and explains that age groups are social constructs. The program explores the role of positive
and negative stereotypes in age-related communication, outlines the natural reasons individual create and
use stereotypes, shows how stereotypes provide categories that offer cues for appropriate behavior,
discusses the limits of stereotypes, and teaches how to employ stereotypes and the recognition of their
existence to treat people of all ages as unique individuals. The program also offers skills and techniques
for communicating with individuals of different ages and provides specific guidelines for modifying
communication to enhance interpersonal interactions with infants, toddlers, adolescents, and older adults.

Invisible Rules: Men, Women, and Teams (Insight Media, 2005, 33 minutes). Exploring the different
rules that men and women use to determine the appropriateness of behavior, this program shows how
such unwritten rules result in conflict and confusion. It offers techniques that improve cross-gender
understanding and facilitate teamwork.

Language and Thinking (Insight Media, 30 minutes). Brain development and language acquisition are
explored. This video features Elizabeth Bates, Jean Mandler, and Susan Curtiss’s perspectives on the
beginning of language and grammar.

Language Development (Films for the Humanities and Sciences, 40 minutes). This program emphasizes
the development of language in babies and young children from the first cry to the language development
of a 7-year-old. In addition, the program discusses the arguments in the nature-nurture debate, as well as
other theories.

Listening (Insight Media, 2008, 26 minutes). Differentiating between listening and hearing, this DVD
examines different types of listening, including discriminative, comprehensive, critical-evaluative,
therapeutic, and appreciative forms, and looks at the elements of the listening process. The program also
considers barriers to effective listening.

Nonverbal Communication and Culture (Insight Media, 2005, 20 minutes). This DVD addresses cultural
issues in nonverbal communication. It examines conscious and unconscious gestures; facial expressions;

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cultural differences in voice, paralanguage, and the use of silence; and space and body distance. The
program offers illustrative vignettes and expert commentary.

Principles of Interpersonal Communication (Insight Media, 2008, 25 minutes). In this program, Karina
Alexanyan of Columbia University outlines the functions of interpersonal communication, instrumental,
prevention, phatic, affective, and deceptive forms; introduces the theory behind interpersonal
communication; and teaches how to increase the effectiveness of interpersonal interactions. Explaining
that communication cannot be separated from context and that context can be as important to
communication as the words spoken, Alexanyan explores the variables that define context, including
situation, style, function, participants, body language, and conscious and unconscious assumptions and
intentions. She considers the influences of group affiliation and diversity on interpersonal interactions;
discusses such facets of nonverbal communication as body language, personal appearance, proxemics,
paralanguage, haptics, and chronemics; examines listening and offers tips to improve listening
effectiveness; and covers such interpersonal skills as relating, conflict management, responding to self-
disclosure, giving and receiving feedback, and enhancing communication with individuals from diverse
backgrounds. The DVD includes vignettes that illustrate effective and ineffective interpersonal
interactions.

Scales of Symbolic Formation and the Acquisition of Language (Insight Media, 30 minutes). This video
discusses how symbolic capacity relates to language development by following a child’s development and
profiling a deaf child’s language acquisition.

Secrets of the Wild Child (NOVA/PBS, 1994, 60 minutes). In 1970, social workers in Los Angeles
discovered a modern-day "wild child," a 13-year-old girl who had been locked in a room in social
isolation for most of her life. At the time of her discovery, a debate raged over a hypothesis describing a
"critical period" of language acquisition. NOVA probes her strange and riveting story as doctors tried to
unravel this linguistic riddle.

Student and Adult Conflicts (Insight Media, 2006, 11 minutes). This program teaches how to manage
conflicts between teenagers and adults. It features illustrative vignettes that show an argument between a
student and teachers and a situation in which a storeowner mistakenly believes a group of youths has
stolen from him.

Talking (Films for the Humanities and Sciences, 1999, 52 minutes). For the newborn, the notion of
coexistence—that there are others in their world with whom they can communicate—begins with crying.
In this program, researchers and other experts join with parents to discuss the steps children go through in
mastering their mother tongue. Topics include the process of cognition, a baby’s ability to make use of
body language and semiotic gestures, babbling as a precursor to language acquisition, time frames for
learning to speak, and growing up in a multilingual home.

That’s Not What I Meant: Language, Culture, and Meaning (Insight Media, 2004, 55 minutes). In this
considers why communication between the sexes often goes awry. She discusses language and meaning;
signals, devices, and rituals; framing and metamessages; pacing and pausing; overlap and interruption;
indirectness; listening; and conversational style. Tannen also considers the effects of cultural factors on
communication.

Through Deaf Eyes (PBS, 2007, 120 minutes). Through Deaf Eyes explores nearly 200 years of Deaf life
in America. The film presents the experiences of American history from the perspective of deaf citizens.
Interviews include actor Marlee Matlin, I. King Jordan, other community leaders, historians, and deaf
Americans with diverse views on language use, technology and identity. Six artistic works by Deaf media
artists are woven throughout the documentary that complement the core of the film.

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True Whispers: The Story of the Navajo Code Talkers (PBS, 2007, 60 minutes). Exploring the personal
and heartfelt story of the Navajo Code Talkers, this program tells the stories of the young Navajo men
recruited from harsh government boarding schools into the Marines during World War II. From 1942–
1945, the Code Talkers devised an unbreakable code in their native language and transmitted vital
messages in the midst of combat against the Japanese.

Unlocking Language (Films for the Humanities and Sciences, 29 minutes). Experts discuss the
development and transmission of language. Topics covered include language used to express abstractions,
the evolution of language, language as an innately guided behavior in unborn babies, infants and toddlers,
the parts of the brain involved in language, language disorders, and isolation of the Speech 1 gene.

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Web Site Suggestions
American Academy of Family Physicians, information on Language Delay:
www.aafp.org/afp/990600ap/990600d.html

American Association for Applied Linguistics: http://www.aaal.org/

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association: http://www.asha.org/public/speech/development/

English Language Learners: http://www.nea.org/home/32346.htm

Language Development in Children: http://childdevelopmentinfo.com/child-


development/language_development/

National Association for Bilingual Education: http://www.nabe.org/

National Council of Techers of English:


http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/PolicyResearch/ELLResearchBrief.pdf

Noam Chomsky Website: http://www.chomsky.info

Reading Wars: Phonics vs. Whole Language: http://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/reading/

Statistics on Bilingual Education: http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=96

Warning Signs of a Language Delay:


www.babycenter.com/general/toddler/toddlerdevelopment/12293.html

Writing Development in Childhood: http://www.pbs.org/parents/readinglanguage/writing/main.html

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Resources Available Within Connect
Listed below is a sampling of the resources available with this chapter within McGraw-Hill
Education’s digital learning platform, Connect.

Chapter Activity Titles Activity Type Learning Objective


Characterize thinking and its
9 Bilingualism NewsFlash developmental changes.

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written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Handout RP 9-2
Caregiver-Infant Language

In this project, you will examine recasting, echoing, and expanding using naturalistic observation. Go to a
local shopping mall, and observe a caregiver with an infant 18 to 24 months old. Observe them for 15
minutes. Record three instances of speech by the caregiver to the infant, and classify each instance as
recasting, echoing, or expanding. Note the caregiver’s statements and then the infant’s response to each
statement. Then answer the questions that follow.

Speech Response of Infant Age ____ Sex ____

Statement 1

Statement 2

Statement 3

• What types of techniques did the caregiver use with the infant you observed?

• How did the infant respond to the statement made by the caregiver?

• From your observations, do you think recasting, echoing, and expanding are effective techniques in
aiding infants to learn language? Why or why not?

• What variables might have affected the quality of data you collected? Might your conclusions have
been different if you had observed a different caregiver-infant pair? How?

Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior
written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Handout RP 9-6

Language Errors

This class project exposes you to the kinds of errors children make when they are acquiring language. Pair
up with another student in the class. One of you will act as the experimenter, while the other will act as
the observer. Test two different children, one 3 to 4 years of age, the other 7 to 8 years of age. In order to
test the two children, the project will have to be approved by the human subjects review board at your
school, and you will need to get a signed informed consent form from the children’s parents.

The children will receive from you three different tasks evaluating their understanding and use of the
passive construction. Present an act-out task, an imitation task, and a production task. The task and
sentence descriptions follow. Use the provided data sheet to record your observations. After you have
collected your data, answer the questions provided.

Act-out Task: Have several objects available—a toy car and truck; a toy doll; a toy horse, cow, dog, and
cat. Read the sentences below one at a time, and have the child act out the sentences with the toys.

Imitation Task: Present each of the sentences below to each child, and have the child repeat the
sentences back to you.

Production Task: Perform the actions in each of the sentences below with the toys. Ask the child to tell
you what happened, starting with the first noun in the sentence. (For instance, for item 5, roll the car
along so that it hits the truck, and then ask the child to tell you what happened beginning with the truck.)

1. The car hit the truck. 6. The cow stepped on the horse.
2. The dog was kicked by the cat. 7. The cat kicked the dog.
3. The boy was bitten by the dog. 8. The cat was hit by the boy.
4. The boy hit the cat. 9. The dog bit the boy.
5. The truck was hit by the car. 10. The horse was stepped on by the cow.

• What did the 3- to 4-year-old child do in response to the act-out task? The imitation task? The
production task? Was performance on one task better than on the others? If so, which? What sorts of
errors appeared in the act-out task? What about the imitation task? The production task? Were the
errors similar in the various tasks?

• What did the 7- to 8-year-old child do in response to the act-out task? The imitation task? The
production task? Was performance on one task better than on the others? If so, which? What sorts of
errors appeared in the act-out task? What about the imitation task? The production task? Were the
errors similar in the various tasks?

Handout RP 9-6 (continued)

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written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
• Compare the two children. What differences, if any, did you see on their performances on these three
tasks? How would you account for the differences? What is the nature of language learning that
seems to be occurring during this time?

• What criticisms could be leveled at the procedures you used in this demonstration? For example, do
you think each task should have had different questions?

Task Child 1 Child 2


Sex ____ Age ____ Sex ____ Age ____
Act-out task

Sentence 1
Sentence 2
Sentence 3
Sentence 4
Sentence 5
Sentence 6
Sentence 7
Sentence 8
Sentence 9
Sentence 10

Imitation task

Sentence 1
Sentence 2
Sentence 3
Sentence 4
Sentence 5
Sentence 6
Sentence 7
Sentence 8
Sentence 9
Sentence 10

Production task

Sentence 1
Sentence 2
Sentence 3
Sentence 4

Handout RP 9-6 (continued)

Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior
written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Sentence 5
Sentence 6
Sentence 7
Sentence 8
Sentence 9
Sentence 10

Copyright © 2016 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior
written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
the contest really lay; and again the duke proved victorious. The
conqueror made his “joyous entry” into Le Mans, and sent for the
little Margaret to be kept under his own protection until her marriage
could take place. But before the wedding-day arrived she lay in her
grave at Fécamp; Walter and Biota had already come to a
mysterious end; and the one gallant Cenomannian who held out
when Walter and all else had yielded—Geoffrey of Mayenne—was at
length compelled to surrender.[505] Thenceforth William ruled Maine
as its Conqueror, and as long as he lived, save for one brief moment,
the homage due to Anjou was heard of no more.

[502] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 532. The


story is somewhat suspicious, because Orderic tells it not in its
proper place, but in a sort of summary of Cenomannian history,
introductory to the war of 1073; so that it looks very much like a
confused anticipation of the treaty of Blanchelande (see below, p.
223). Still there is nothing intrinsically impossible in it, and I do
not feel justified in rejecting it without further evidence.

[503] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 190.

[504] On the pedigree of the house of Maine see note D at end


of chapter.

[505] Will. Poitiers (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 190,


191. Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 27 (ib. p. 283). Ord. Vit. (ibid.) pp.
487, 488.

The rapid decline of the Angevin power after Geoffrey Martel’s


death was due partly to the reaction which often follows upon a
sudden rise, partly to the exceptional greatness of the rival with
whom the Angevin count had to deal in the person of William the
Conqueror. But behind and beyond these two causes lay a third
more fatal than either. The house of Anjou was divided against itself.
From the hour of Martel’s death, a bitter dispute over his
testamentary dispositions had been going on between his nephews.
To young Fulk it seemed an unpardonable wrong that he was left
without provision—for even Saintonge, as we have seen, had now
slipped from his grasp—while his elder brother was in full possession
not only of the paternal county of Gâtinais but also of their uncle’s
heritage. In later days Fulk went so far as to declare that his uncle
had intended to make him sole heir, to the complete exclusion of
Geoffrey the Bearded.[506] Fulk is in one aspect a very interesting
person. Almost the sole authority which we possess for the history of
the early Angevin counts is a fragment written in his name. If it be
indeed his work—and criticism has as yet failed to establish any
other conclusion—Fulk Rechin is not merely the earliest historian of
Anjou; he is well-nigh the first lay historian of the Middle Ages.[507]
But in every other point of view he deserves nothing but aversion
and contempt. His very surname tells its own tale; in one of the most
quarrelsome families known to history, he was pre-eminently
distinguished as “the Quarreller.”[508] With the turbulence, the greed,
the wilfulness of his race he had also their craft and subtlety, their
plausible, insinuating, serpent-like cleverness; but he lacked the
boldness of conception, the breadth of view and loftiness of aim, the
unflinching perseverance, the ungrudging as well as unscrupulous
devotion to a great and distant end, which lifted their subtlety into
statesmanship and their cleverness into genius. The same qualities
in him degenerated into mere artfulness and low cunning, and were
used simply to meet his own personal needs and desires of the
moment, not to work out any far-reaching train of policy. He is the
only one of the whole line of Angevin counts, till we reach the last
and worst of all, whose ruling passion seems to have been not
ambition but self-indulgence. Every former count of Anjou, from Fulk
the Red to Geoffrey Martel, had toiled and striven, and sinned upon
occasion, quite as much for his heirs as for himself: Fulk Rechin
toiled and sinned for himself alone. All the thoroughness which they
threw into the pursuit of their house’s greatness he threw simply into
the pursuit of his own selfish desires. Had Geoffrey the Bearded
possessed the highest capacities, he could have done little for his
own or his country’s advancement while his brother’s restless
intrigues were sowing strife and discontent among the Angevin
baronage and turning the whole land into a hotbed of treason.[509]
Geoffrey’s cause was however damaged by his own imprudence. An
act of violent injustice to the abbey of Marmoutier brought him under
the ban of the Church;[510] and from that moment his ruin became
certain. From within and without, troubles crowded upon the
Marchland and its unhappy count. The comet which scared all
Europe in 1066 was the herald of evil days to Anjou as well as to the
land with which she was one day to be linked so closely. In that very
year a Breton invasion was only checked by the sudden death of
Duke Conan just after he had received the surrender of
Châteaugonthier.[511] Next spring, on the first Sunday in Lent,
Saumur was betrayed by its garrison to Fulk Rechin;[512] on the
Wednesday before Easter he was treacherously admitted into
Angers, and Geoffrey fell with his capital into the clutches of his
brother.[513] The citizens next day rose in a body and slew the chief
traitors;[514] the disloyalty of Saumur was punished by the duke of
Aquitaine, who profited by the distracted state of Anjou to cross the
border and fire the town;[515] while the remonstrances of Pope
Alexander II. soon compelled Fulk to release his brother.[516] Next
year, however, Geoffrey was again taken prisoner while besieging
Fulk’s castle of Brissac.[517] This time the king of France, alarmed no
doubt by the revelation of such a temper among his vassals, took up
arms for Geoffrey’s restoration, and he was joined by Count Stephen
of Blois, the son of Theobald from whom Geoffrey Martel had won
Tours. Fulk bought off both his assailants. Stephen, who was now
governing the territories of Blois as regent for his aged father, was
pacified by receiving Fulk’s homage for Touraine; the king was
bribed more unblushingly still, by the cession of what was more
undeniably Geoffrey’s lawful property than any part of the Angevin
dominions—his paternal heritage of the Gâtinais.[518] It thus became
Philip’s interest as well as Fulk’s to keep Geoffrey in prison. For the
next twenty-eight years he lay in a dungeon at Chinon,[519] and Fulk
ruled Anjou in his stead.

[506] See note B at end of chapter.


[507] “It needs some self-sacrifice to give up the only lay
historian whom we have come across since the days of our own
Æthelweard.” Freeman, Norm. Conq., 3d ed. vol. ii. p. 638.

[508] This seems to be the meaning of “Rechin.”

[509] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 138, 139.

[510] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), pp. 134–137. See


also Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 664, note.

[511] Will. Jumièges, l. vii. c. 33 (Duchesne, Hist. Norm.


Scriptt., p. 286). Chron. Brioc. and Chron. Britann. a. 1066
(Morice, Hist. Bret., preuves, vol. i. cols. 36, 102). Chronn. Rain.
Andeg., S. Serg. and Vindoc. a. 1067 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp.
12, 137, 168)—which, however, means 1066, as all these
chronicles place both the comet and the conquest in the same
year.

[512] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1067 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 403,


404). This was February 25 (ibid.).

[513] Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., S. Serg., Vindoc. a.


1067 (ib. pp. 12, 25, 137, 138, 168). Gesta Cons. (Marchegay,
Comtes, pp. 138, 139), antedated by a year.

[514] Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin. (as above); S. Serg. (ib.


p. 138); Vindoc. (ib. pp. 168, 169).

[515] Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1067 (ib. p. 404).

[516] Fulk Rechin (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 379.

[517] Ib. pp. 379, 380. Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., S.


Serg. and Vindoc. a. 1068 (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 12, 26, 138,
169).

[518] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 139. Chron. Turon.


Magn. a. 1067 (Salmon, Chron. de Touraine, p. 125)—a date
which must be at least a year too early.

[519] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 723, 818.
He makes it thirty years, but the dates are undoubtedly 1068–
1096.
That time was a time of shame and misery such as the Marchland
had never yet seen. Eight years of civil war had fostered among the
barons of Anjou and Touraine a spirit of turbulence and lawlessness
which Fulk, whose own intrigues had sown the first seeds of the
mischief, was powerless to control. Throughout the whole of his
reign, all southern Touraine was kept in confusion by a feud among
the landowners at Amboise;[520] and it can hardly have been the
only one of its kind under a ruler who, instead of putting it down with
a strong hand, only aggravated it by his undignified and violent
intermeddling. Nor were his foreign relations better regulated than
his home policy. For a moment, in 1073, an opportunity seemed to
present itself of regaining the lost Angevin overlordship over Maine.
Ten years of Angevin rule had failed to crush out the love of
independence among the Cenomannian people; ten years of
Norman rule had just as little effect. While their conqueror was
busied with the settlement of his later and greater conquest beyond
sea, the patriots of Maine seized a favourable moment to throw off
the Norman yoke. Hugh of Este or of Liguria, a son of Herbert Wake-
the-dog’s eldest daughter Gersendis, was received as count under
the guardianship of his mother and Geoffrey of Mayenne. But
Geoffrey, who in the hour of adversity ten years before had seemed
little short of a hero, yielded to the temptations of power; and his
tyranny drove the Cenomannians to fall back upon the traditions of
their old municipal freedom and “make a commune”—in other words,
to set up a civic commonwealth such as those which were one day
to be the glory of the more distant Cenomannian land on the other
side of the Alps. At Le Mans, however, the experiment was
premature. It failed through the treachery of Geoffrey of Mayenne;
and the citizens, in the extremity of despair, called upon Fulk of
Anjou to save them at once from Geoffrey and from William. Fulk
readily helped them to dislodge Geoffrey from the citadel of Le
Mans;[521] but as soon as William appeared in Maine with a great
army from over sea Fulk, like his uncle, vanished. Only when the
conqueror had “won back the land of Maine”[522] and returned in
triumph to Normandy did Fulk venture to attack La Flèche, a castle
on the right bank of the Loir, close to the Angevin border, and held by
John, husband of Herbert Wake-dog’s youngest daughter Paula.[523]
At John’s request William sent a picked band of Norman troops to
reinforce the garrison of La Flèche; Fulk at once collected all his
forces and persuaded Hoel duke of Britanny to bring a large Breton
host to help him in besieging the place. A war begun on such a scale
as this might be nominally an attack on John, but it was practically
an attack on William. He took it as such, and again calling together
his forces, Normans and English, led them down to the relief of La
Flèche. Instead, however, of marching straight to the spot, he
crossed the Loir higher up and swept round to the southward
through the territories of Anjou, thus putting the river between
himself and his enemies. The movement naturally drew Fulk back
across the river to defend his own land against the Norman invader.
[524] The two armies drew up facing each other on a wide moor or
heath stretching along the left bank of the Loir between La Flèche
and Le Lude, and overgrown with white reindeer-moss, whence it
took the name of Blanchelande. No battle however took place; some
clergy who were happily at hand stepped in as mediators, and after a
long negotiation peace was arranged. The count of Anjou again
granted the investiture of Maine to Robert of Normandy, and, like his
predecessor, received the young man’s homage to himself as
overlord.[525] Like the treaty of Alençon, the treaty of Blanchelande
was a mere formal compromise; William kept it a dead letter by
steadily refusing to make over Maine to his son, and holding it as
before by the right of his own good sword. A few years later Fulk
succeeded in accomplishing his vengeance upon John of La Flèche
by taking and burning his castle;[526] but the expedition seems to
have been a mere border-raid, and so long as William lived neither
native patriotism nor Angevin meddlesomeness ventured again to
question his supremacy over Maine.

[520] Gesta Amb. Domin. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 175 et seq.

[521] Acta Pontif. Cenoman. c. 33 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal., p.


308).

[522] Eng. Chron. a. 1074.


[523] See note D at end of chapter.

[524] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 533. See


note E at end of chapter.

[525] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 533.

[526] Chron. S. Albin. a. 1081 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 26). See


note E at end of chapter.

But on his death in 1087 the advantage really given to Anjou by


the treaties of Alençon and Blanchelande at last became apparent.
From the moment when Robert came into actual possession of the
fief with which he had been twice invested by an Angevin count, the
Angevin overlordship could no longer be denied or evaded. The
action of the Cenomannians forced their new ruler to throw himself
upon Fulk’s support. Their unquenchable love of freedom caught at
the first ray of hope offered them by Robert’s difficulties in his
Norman duchy and quarrels with his brother the king of England, and
their attitude grew so alarming that in 1089 Robert, lying sick at
Rouen, sent for the count of Anjou and in a personal interview
besought him to use his influence in preventing their threatened
revolt. Fulk consented, on condition that, as the price of his good
offices, Robert should obtain for him the hand of a beautiful Norman
lady, Bertrada of Montfort.[527] Fulk’s domestic life was as shameless
as his public career. He had already one wife dead and two living;
Hermengard of Bourbon, whom he had married in 1070[528] and who
was the mother of his heir,[529] had been abandoned in 1075 without
even the formality of a divorce for Arengard of Châtel-Aillon;[530] and
Arengard was now set aside in her turn to make way for Bertrada.
[531] These scandals had already brought Fulk under a Papal

sentence of excommunication;[532] he met with a further punishment


at the hands of his new bride. Bertrada used him simply as a
stepping-stone to higher advancement; on Whitsun-Eve 1093 she
eloped with King Philip of France.[533]
[527] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 681.

[528] Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1070.

[529] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 140.

[530] According to a charter in Marchegay, Documents inédits


sur l’Anjou, p. 96, Fulk married Arengard on Saturday the feast of
S. Agnes (January 21) 1075—i.e. what we call 1076, as the year
was usually reckoned in Gaul from Easter to Easter; see editor’s
note 4, as above. The Art de vérifier les dates, however (vol. xiii.
p. 62), refers to a document in Dom Huyne’s collection where the
marriage is dated 1087.

[531] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 681, seems


to date Bertrada’s marriage about 1089. The Chron. Turon.
Magn. puts it in 1091 (Salmon, Chron. Touraine, vol. i. p. 128);
but a charter in Marchegay, Archives d’Anjou, vol. i. p. 365,
shows that it had already taken place in April 1090.

[532] Gregor. VII. Epp., l. ix. ep. 22. Fulk’s violence to the
archbishop of Tours had also something to do with his
excommunication; see ib. ep. 23; Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1081
(Salmon, Chron. Touraine, vol. i. p. 126), and Narratio
Controversiæ in Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p. 459. So too had his
imprisonment of his brother; Rer. Gall. Scriptt. as above, p. 664,
note.

[533] Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1093 (as above, p. 128).

By that time Maine was again in revolt. The leader of the rising
was young Elias of La Flèche, a son of John and Paula; but his place
was soon taken by the veteran Geoffrey of Mayenne, whose
treasons seem to have been forgiven and forgotten, and who now
once more installed Hugh of Este as count at Le Mans. Hugh proved
however utterly unfit for his honourable but dangerous position, and
gladly sold his claims to his cousin Elias.[534] For nearly six years the
Cenomannians were free to rejoice in a ruler of their own blood and
their own spirit. We must go to the historian of his enemies if we
would hear his praises sung;[535] his own people had no need to
praise him in words; for them he was simply the incarnation of
Cenomannian freedom; his bright, warm-hearted, impulsive nature
spoke for itself. The strength as well as the charm of his character
lay in its perfect sincerity; its faults were as undisguised as its
virtues. In the gloomy tale of public wrong and private vice which
makes up the history of the time—the time of Fulk Rechin, Philip I.
and William Rufus—the only figure which shines out bright against
the darkness, except the figure of S. Anselm himself, is that of Count
Elias of Maine.

[534] Acta Pontif. Cenoman. c. 34 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal.), pp.


310–312. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 683, 684.

[535] Ord. Vit. (as above), pp. 768, 769.

During these years Anjou interfered with him as little as


Normandy; Fulk was overwhelmed with domestic and ecclesiastical
troubles. His excommunication was at length removed in 1094;[536]
two years later Pope Urban II., on his way to preach the Crusade in
western Gaul, was received by the count at Angers and consecrated
the abbey church of S. Nicolas, now at length brought to completion.
[537] From Angers Urban passed to Tours and Le Mans; and among
the many hearts stirred by his call to take the cross there can have
been few more earnest than that of Elias of Maine. Robert of
Normandy was already gone, leaving his dominions pledged to his
brother the king of England. Elias prepared to follow him; but when
his request to William Rufus for the protection due to a crusader’s
lands during his absence was met by a declaration of the Red King’s
resolve to regain all the territories which had been held by his father,
the count of Maine saw that he must fight out his crusade not in Holy
Land but at home. The struggle had scarcely begun when he was
taken prisoner by Robert of Bellême, and sent in chains to the king
at Rouen.[538] The people of Maine, whose political existence
seemed bound up in their count, were utterly crushed by his loss.
But there was another enemy to be faced. Aremburg, the only child
of Elias, was betrothed to Fulk Rechin’s eldest son, Geoffrey,[539]
whose youthful valour had won him the surname of “Martel the
Second;” Geoffrey hurried to save the heritage of his bride, and Fulk
was no less eager to seize the opportunity of asserting once more
his rights to the overlordship of Maine.[540] The Cenomannians
gladly welcomed the only help that was offered them; and while
Geoffrey reinforced the garrison of Le Mans, Fulk tried to effect a
diversion on the border.[541] But meanwhile Elias had guessed his
design, and frustrated it by making terms with the Norman.[542] If
Maine must needs bow to a foreign yoke, even William Rufus was at
least a better master than Fulk Rechin. To William, therefore, Elias
surrendered his county as the price of his own release;[543] and to
William he offered his services with the trustful frankness of a heart
to which malice was unknown. The offer was refused. Then, from its
very ashes, the spirit of Cenomannian freedom rose up once more,
and for the second time Elias hurled his defiance at the Red King. An
Angevin count in William’s place would probably have flung the bold
speaker straight back into the dungeon whence he had come; the
haughty chivalry of the Norman only bade him begone and do his
worst.[544] In the spring Elias fought his way back to Le Mans, where
the people welcomed him with clamorous delight; William’s
unexpected approach, however, soon compelled him to withdraw;
[545] and Maine had to wait two more years for her deliverance. It
came with the news of the Red King’s death in August 1100. Robert
of Normandy was too indolent, Henry of England too wise, to answer
the appeal for succour made to each in turn by the Norman garrison
of Le Mans; Elias received their submission and sent them home in
peace;[546] and thenceforth the foreign oppressor trod the soil of
Maine no more. When the final struggle for Normandy broke out
between Robert and Henry, Elias, with characteristic good sense,
commended himself to the one overlord whom he saw to be worthy
of his homage.[547] Henry was wise enough loyally to accept the
service and the friendship which Rufus had scorned; and he proved
its value on the field of Tinchebray, where Elias and his
Cenomannians decided the battle in his favour, and thus made him
master of Normandy. On the other hand, the dread of Angevin
tyranny had changed into a glad anticipation of peaceful and equal
union. The long battle of Cenomannian freedom, so often baffled and
so often renewed, was won at last. When next a duke of Normandy
disputed the possession of Maine with a count of Anjou, he disputed
it not with a rival oppressor but with the husband of its countess, the
lawful heir of Elias; and the triumph of Cenomannia received its
fitting crown when Henry’s daughter wedded Aremburg’s son in the
minster of S. Julian at Le Mans.

[536] Letter of the legate, Archbishop Hugh of Lyons, dated S.


Florence of Saumur, S. John Baptist’s day, 1094; Gallia
Christiana, vol. iv., instrum. cols. 10, 11.

[537] Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., S. Serg., a. 1095


(Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 14, 27, 140); Chron. S. Maxent. a. 1096
(ib. p. 411). This last is the right year; see the itinerary of Pope
Urban in Gaul, in Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. pp. 3 note m, and 65
note d.

[538] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 769–771.


Acta Pontif. Cenoman. c. 35 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal., p. 313). The
exact date of the capture is April 20, 1098; Chron. S. Albin. ad
ann. (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 28).

[539] Acta Pontif. Cenoman. c. 35 (Mabillon, Vet. Anal., p.


313). Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 142.

[540] “Quia capitalis dominus erat.” Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist.


Norm. Scriptt.), p. 772.

[541] Ibid. Acta Pontif. Cenoman., as above.

[542] Acta Pontif. Cenoman. (as above), p. 314.

[543] Ibid. Ord. Vit., as above.

[544] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 773.

[545] Ib. pp. 774, 775. Acta Pontif. Cenoman., as above.

[546] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 784, 785.

[547] Ib. p. 822.


The union of Anjou and Maine did not, however, come to pass
exactly as it had been first planned; Aremburg became the wife of an
Angevin count, but he was not Geoffrey Martel the Second. That
marriage, long deferred by reason of the bride’s youth, was
frustrated in the end by the death of the bridegroom. His life had
been far from an easy one. Fulk, prematurely worn out by a life of
vice, had for some years past made over the cares of government to
Geoffrey.[548] Father and son agreed as ill as their namesakes in a
past generation; but this time the fault was not on the young man’s
side. Geoffrey, while spending all his energies in doing his father’s
work, saw himself supplanted in that father’s affection by his little
half-brother, Bertrada’s child. He found a friend in his unhappy uncle,
Geoffrey the Bearded, whose reason had been almost destroyed by
half a lifetime of captivity; and a touching story relates how the
imprisoned count in a lucid interval expressed his admiration for his
nephew’s character, and voluntarily renounced in his favour the
rights which he still persisted in maintaining against Fulk.[549] On the
strength of this renunciation Geoffrey Martel, backed by Pope Urban,
at length extorted his father’s consent to the liberation of the captive.
It was, however, too late to be of much avail; reason and health were
both alike gone, and all that the victim gained by his nephew’s care
was that, when he died shortly after, he at least died a free man.[550]
His bequest availed as little to Geoffrey Martel; in 1103, Fulk openly
announced his intention of disinheriting his valiant son in favour of
Bertrada’s child. A brief struggle, in which Fulk was backed by the
duke of Aquitaine and Geoffrey by Elias, ended in Fulk’s abdication.
For three years Geoffrey ruled well and prosperously,[551] till in May
1106, as he was besieging a rebellious vassal in the castle of Candé
on the Loire, he was struck by a poisoned arrow and died next
morning.[552] The bitter regrets of his people, as they laid him to
sleep beside his great-uncle in the church of S. Nicolas at Angers,
[553] were intensified by a horrible suspicion that his death had been

contrived by Bertrada, and that Fulk himself condoned her crime.[554]


It is doubtful whether her child, who now had to take his brother’s
place, had even grown up among his own people; she had perhaps
carried her baby with her, or persuaded the weak count to let her
have him and bring him up at court; there, at any rate, he was at the
time of Geoffrey’s death. Philip granted him the investiture of Anjou
in Geoffrey’s stead, and commissioned Duke William of Aquitaine,
who happened to be at court, to escort him safe home to his father.
The Poitevin, however, conveyed him away into his own territories,
and there put him in prison. Philip’s threats, Bertrada’s persuasions,
alike proved unavailing, till the boy’s own father purchased his
release by giving up some border-towns to Poitou, and after a year’s
captivity young Fulk at last came home.[555] Two years later, on April
14, 1109, he was left sole count of Anjou by the death of Fulk
Rechin.[556]

[548] Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1098 (Salmon, Chron. Touraine,


p. 130).

[549] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 141.

[550] Ibid. Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1098 (Salmon, Chron.


Touraine, p. 128). Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p.
723.

[551] Ord. Vit. (as above), p. 818. Chron. S. Albin. a. 1103–


1105 (Marchegay, Eglises, p. 30).

[552] Ord. Vit. as above. Chronn. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., S.


Serg., Vindoc., S. Flor. Salm., S. Maxent., a. 1106 (Marchegay,
Eglises, pp. 15, 16, 30, 142, 171, 190, 423). The three first-
named chronicles give the day as May 19, the Chron. S. Maxent.
makes it May 26, and according to M. Marchegay’s note (as
above, p. 171) the obituary of S. Maurice makes it June 1. This,
however, might be owing to an accidental omission of the “xiv.”
(or “vii.”) before Kal. Junii. The Gesta Cons. (Marchegay,
Comtes), p. 142, places the death a year later.

[553] Ord. Vit. and Gesta Cons. as above.

[554] Gesta Cons. as above. Chron. Turon. Magn. a. 1108


(Salmon, Chron. Touraine, p. 130). See also a quotation from Le
Pelletier’s Epitome S. Nicolai, in Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. p.
486, note.
[555] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 818. Will.
Tyr., l. xiv. c. 1, has a different version, which does not look
authentic.

[556] Chron. Rain. Andeg., S. Albin., Vindoc., S. Flor. Salm. ad


ann. (Marchegay, Eglises, pp. 16, 31, 172, 190). The Chronn. S.
Serg. and S. Maxent. (ib. pp. 143, 424), date it 1108.

“Ill he began; worse he lived; worst of all he ended.”[557] Such is


the verdict of a later Angevin historian upon the man whom we
should have been glad to respect as the father of Angevin history.
Fulk Rechin’s utter worthlessness had well-nigh undone the work of
Geoffrey Martel and Fulk the Black; amid the wreck of the Angevin
power in his hands, the only result of their labours which seemed still
to remain was the mere territorial advantage involved in the
possession of Touraine. Politically, Anjou had sunk far below the
position which she had held in the Black Count’s earliest days; she
had not merely ceased to be a match for the greatest princes of the
realm, she had ceased to be a power in the realm at all. The title of
count of Anjou, for nearly a hundred years a very synonym of energy
and progress, had become identified with weakness and disgrace.
The black cloud of ruin seemed to be settling down over the
marchland, only waiting its appointed time to burst and pour upon
her its torrent of destruction. It proved to be only the dark hour before
the dawn of the brightest day that Anjou had seen since her great
Count Fulk was laid in his grave at Beaulieu—perhaps even since
her good Count Fulk was laid in his grave at Tours.

[557] Hist. Abbr. Com. Andeg. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 360.

Nearly nine months before the death of Fulk Rechin, Louis VI. had
succeeded his father Philip as king of France.[558] His accession
marks an era in the growth of the French monarchy. It is a turning-
point in the struggle of the feudataries with the Crown, or rather with
each other for control over the Crown, which lay at the root of the
rivalry between Anjou and Blois, and which makes up almost the
whole history of the first three generations of the kingly house
founded by Hugh Capet. The royal authority was a mere name; but
that name was still the centre round which the whole complicated
system of French feudalism revolved; it was the one point of
cohesion among the various and ill-assorted members which made
up the realm of France, in the wider sense which that word was now
beginning to bear. The duke or count of almost any one of the great
fiefs—Normandy, Flanders, Burgundy, Aquitaine—was far more
really powerful and independent than the king, who was nominally
the lord paramount of them all, but practically the tool of each in turn.
In this seemingly ignominious position of the Crown there was,
however, an element of hidden strength which in the end enabled it
to swallow up and outlive all its rivals. The end was as yet far distant;
but the first step towards it was taken when Louis the Fat was
crowned at Reims in August 1109. At the age of thirty-two he
ascended the throne with a fixed determination to secure such an
absolute authority within the immediate domains of the Crown as
should enable him to become the master instead of the servant of
his feudataries.

[558] Hist. Franc. Fragm. (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii.), p. 7.

This policy led almost of necessity to a conflict with King Henry of


England, who had now become master of Normandy by his victory at
Tinchebray. Louis appears never to have received Henry’s homage
for the duchy;[559] and it may have been to avoid the necessity of
performing this act of subordination that Henry, as it seems,
refrained from formally assuming the ducal title, at least so long as
his captive brother lived.[560] Whatever may have been his motive,
the fact aptly typifies his political position. Alike in French and
English eyes, he was a king of England ruling Normandy as a
dependency of the English Crown. Such a personage was far more
obnoxious to Louis and his projects than a mere duke of the
Normans, or even a duke of the Normans ruling England as a
dependency of the Norman duchy. On the other hand, Henry, in the
new position given him by his conquest, had every reason to look
with jealousy and suspicion upon the growing power of France. The
uncertain relations between the two kings therefore soon took an
openly hostile turn. In 1110 a quarrel arose between them
concerning the ownership of the great border-fortress of Gisors.
They met near the spot, each at the head of an army; but they parted
again after wasting a day in fruitless recriminations and empty
challenges.[561] Their jealousy was quickened by a dispute, also
connected with the possession of a castle, between Louis and
Henry’s nephew Theobald count of Blois.[562] Uncle and nephew
made common cause against their common enemy; but the strife
had scarcely begun when a further complication destined to be of far
weightier consequence, if not to France at least to England, arose
out of the position and policy of the young count of Anjou.

[559] See Freeman, Norm. Conq., vol. v. p. 193.

[560] Freeman, Norm. Conq., vol. v. p. 180 and note 2.

[561] Suger, Vita Ludov., c. 15 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt., vol. xii. pp.
27, 28).

[562] Ib. c. 18 (pp. 35, 36).

The accession of Fulk V., no less than that of Louis VI., began a
new era for his country. The two princes were in some respects not
unlike each other: each stands out in marked contrast to his
predecessor, and in Fulk’s case the contrast is even more striking
than in that of Louis, for if little good was to be expected of the son of
Philip I., there might well be even less hope of the child of Fulk
Rechin and Bertrada. As a ruler and as a man, however, young Fulk
turned utterly aside from the evil ways of both his parents.[563] Yet he
was an Angevin of the Angevins; physically, he had the ruddy
complexion inherited from the first of his race and name;[564] while in
his restless, adventurous temper, at once impetuous and wary,
daring and discreet, he shows a strong likeness to his great-
grandfather Fulk the Black. But the old fiery spirit breaks out in Fulk
V. only as if to remind us that it is still there, to shew that the demon-
blood of Anjou still flows in his veins, hot as ever indeed, but kept
under subjection to higher influences; the sense of right that only
woke now and then to torture the conscience of the Black Count
seems to be the guiding principle of his great-grandson’s life. The
evil influences which must have surrounded his boyhood, whether it
had been passed in his father’s house, or, as seems more probable,
in the court of Philip and Bertrada, seem, instead of developing the
worse tendencies of his nature, only to have brought out the better
ones into more active working by sheer force of opposition.
Politically, however, there can be no doubt that the peculiar
circumstances of his early life led to important results, by reviving
and strengthening the old ties between Anjou and the Crown which
had somewhat slackened in Fulk Rechin’s days. The most trusted
counsellor of the new king, the devoted supporter and not
unfrequently the instigator of his schemes of reform or of aggression,
was Almeric of Montfort, the brother of Bertrada. She herself, after
persecuting Louis by every means in her power so long as his father
lived, changed her policy as soon as he mounted the throne and
became as useful an ally as she had been a dangerous enemy.
Almeric’s influence, won by his own talents, seems to have been
almost all-powerful with the king; over the count of Anjou, far
younger and utterly inexperienced, natural ties had given a yet more
complete ascendency to him and his sister, Fulk’s own mother. Their
policy was to pledge Anjou irrevocably to the side of the French
crown by forcing it into a quarrel with Henry I.

[563] Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 143.

[564] “Vir rufus, sed instar David.” Will. Tyr. l. xiv. c. 1.

The means lay ready to their hands. Aremburg of Maine, once the
plighted bride of Geoffrey Martel, was still unwed; Fulk, by his
mother’s counsel, sought and won her for his wife.[565] Her marriage
crowned the work of Elias. The patriot-count’s mission was fulfilled,
his task was done; and in that very summer he passed to his well-
earned rest.[566] Fulk, as husband of the heiress, thus became count
of Maine, and the immediate consequence was a breach with Henry
on the long-vexed question of the overlordship of the county.
Whether Elias had or had not recognized any right of overlordship in
Fulk Rechin or Geoffrey Martel II. is not clear; he certainly seems to
have done homage to Henry,[567] and their mutual relations as lord
and vassal were highly honourable to both; but it was hardly to be
expected that Fulk, whose predecessors had twice received the
homage of Henry’s elder brother for that very county, should yield up
without a struggle the rights of the count of Anjou. He refused all
submission to Henry, and at once formed a league with the French
Crown in active opposition to the lord of England and Normandy.

[565] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 785, 818.
Gesta Cons. (Marchegay, Comtes), p. 143. Will. Tyr., l. xiv. c. 1.

[566] Chronn. S. Albin. and S. Serg. a. 1110 (Marchegay,


Eglises, pp. 31, 143). Eng. Chron. a. 1110. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne,
Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), pp. 785, 839.

[567] “Eac thises geares forthferde Elias eorl, the tha Mannie
of tham cynge Heanri geheold, and on cweow.” Eng. Chron. a.
1110. Nobody seems to know what “on cweow” means; Mr.
Thorpe (Eng. Chron., vol. ii. p. 211) suggests that it may stand for
“Angeow.”

The war began in 1111, and the danger was great enough to call
Henry himself over sea in August and keep him on the continent for
nearly two years. The leading part was taken by the count of Anjou,
whose marriage enabled him to add the famous “Cenomannian
swords” to the forces of Touraine and the Angevin March.[568]
Moreover, treason was, as usual, rife among the Norman barons;
and the worst of all the traitors was Robert of Bellême. One after
another the lesser offenders were brought to justice; at last, in
November 1112, Robert himself fell into the hands of his outraged
sovereign, and, to the joy of all men on both sides of the sea, was
flung into a lifelong captivity.[569] Then at last Henry felt secure in
Normandy; the capture of Robert was followed by the surrender of
his fortress of Alençon, and the tide of fortune turned so rapidly that
Fulk and Louis were soon compelled to sue for peace. Early in Lent
1113 Fulk and Henry met at Pierre-Pécoulée near Alençon; the count
submitted to perform the required homage for Maine, and his infant
daughter was betrothed to Henry’s son, the little Ætheling William. In
March the treaty was confirmed by the two kings at Gisors; and as
the first-fruits of their new alliance there was seen the strange
spectacle of a count of Anjou and a count of Blois fighting side by
side to help the lord of Normandy in subduing the rebels who still
held out in the castle of Bellême.[570]

[568] Eng. Chron. a. 1111, 1112.

[569] Eng. Chron. a. 1112. Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm.


Scriptt.), pp. 841, 858. Will. Malm. Gesta Reg., l. v. c. 398 (Hardy,
p. 626).

[570] Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p. 841.

Henry’s next step was to exact, first from the barons of Normandy
and then from the Great Council of England, a solemn oath of
homage and fealty to his son William as his destined successor.[571]
This ceremony, not unusual in France, but quite without precedent in
England, was doubtless a precaution against the chances of the war
which he foresaw must soon be renewed. This time indeed he was
himself the aggressor; Louis had made no hostile movement, and
Fulk was troubled by a revolt at home, whose exact nature is not
clearly ascertained. The universal tendency of feudal vassals to
rebel against their lord had probably something to do with it; but
there seems also to have been another and a far more interesting
element at work. “There arose a grave dissension between Count
Fulk the Younger and the burghers of Angers.”[572] In this
provokingly brief entry in one of the Angevin chronicles we may
perhaps catch a glimpse of that new spirit of civic freedom which
was just springing into life in northern Europe, and which made some
progress both in France and in England during the reigns of Louis VI.
and Henry I. One would gladly know what were the demands of the
Angevin burghers, and how they were met by the son-in-law of Elias
of Le Mans; but the faint echo of the dispute between count and
citizens is drowned in the roar of the more imposing strife which
soon broke out anew between the rival kings. Its ostensible cause
was now Count Theobald of Blois, whose wrongs were made by his
uncle a ground for marching into France, in company with Theobald
himself and his brother Stephen, in the spring of 1116. Louis
retaliated by a raid upon Normandy; the Norman barons
recommenced their old intrigues;[573] and they were soon furnished
with an excellent pretext. After the battle of Tinchebray, Duke
Robert’s infant son William had been intrusted by his victorious uncle
to the care of his half-sister’s husband, Elias of Saint-Saëns. Elias
presently began to suspect Henry of evil designs against the child; at
once, sacrificing his own possessions to Henry’s wrath, he fled with
his charge and led him throughout all the neighbouring lands,
seeking to stir up sympathy for the fugitive heir of Normandy, till he
found him a shelter at the court of his kinsman Count Baldwin of
Flanders.[574] At last the faithful guardian’s zeal was rewarded by
seeing the cause of his young brother-in-law taken up by both
Baldwin and Louis. In 1117 they leagued themselves together with
the avowed object of avenging Duke Robert and reinstating his son
in the duchy of Normandy; and their league was at once joined by
the count of Anjou.[575]

[571] Eng. Chron. a. 1115. Flor. Worc. (Thorpe), vol. ii. p. 69.
Eadmer, Hist. Nov. (Rule), p. 237.

[572] “Facta est gravis dissensio inter Fulconem comitem


Juniorem et burgenses Andecavenses.” Chron. S. Serg. a. 1116
(Marchegay, Eglises, p. 143). The Chron. S. Albin. a. 1114 (ib. p.
32) has “Guerra burgensium contra comitem”; but M. Marchegay
says in a note that two MSS. read “baronum” for “burgensium.”

[573] See details in Suger, Vita Ludov. c. 21 (Rer. Gall. Scriptt.,


vol. xii. p. 43), and Ord. Vit. (Duchesne, Hist. Norm. Scriptt.), p.
843.

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