DOCUMENT RESUME 1

ED 328 056 FL 018 884

AUTHOR Hakuta, KenjiTITLE An Interview with Werner F. Leopold.INSTITUTION California Univ., Santa Cruz. Bilingual Research

Group.REPORT NO BRG-89-07PUB DATE 89NOTE 22p.PUB TYPE Viewpoints (120)

EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage.DESCRIPTORS *Bilingualism; *Child Language; Educational History;

*Interviews; Language Research; Personal Narratives;*Researchers

IDENTIFIERS *Leopold (Werner F)

ABSTRACT

A 1983 interview with Werner F. Leopold (1896-1984),a key figure in the study of bilingualism and child language, ispresented. An introductory section gives some background to theinterview. The discussion itself reviews Leopold's personal andprofessional background, work, and writing, and focuses largely onthe linguistic development of Leopold's daughter, on which much ofhis work was based. Mrs. Marguerite Leopold, Warner Leopold's wife,who was present at the Interview, contributed several cLements.(MSE)

Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be madefrom the original document.

An Interview with Werner F. Leopold

Kenji HakutaUniversity of California, Santa Cruz

BRG #89-07

An Interview with Werner F. Leopold

Kenji HakutaUniversity of California, Santa Cruz

BRG #89-07

Barry McLaughlin, Maria Eugenia Matute-Bianchi, series editorsValeurie E. Friedman, editorial assistant

Bilingual Research GroupMerrill College

University of CaliforniaSanta Cruz, CA

95064

3

The mission of the Bilingual Research Group is to stimulate and conduct original researchon bilingualism and on the education of language minority populations. The BRG isparticularly interested in encouraging cross-disciplinary research as well as collaborationbetween researchers and educational practitioners. The BRG Working Papers are publishedirregularly to disseminate on-going and pre-publication work by BRO members and visitorsto the unit. Series titles are listed in the last page of each issue.

Bilingual Research Group Associates

Kenji Hakuta (co-director) Education and Psychology, UCSCBarry McLaughlin (co-director) Psychology, UCSCLucinda Pease Alvarez Education, UCSCCatherine Cooper Psycho log, UCSCEugene Garcia Education and Psychology, UCSCRonald Henderson Education and Psycnology, UCSCAida Hurtado Psychology, UCSCViljo Kohonen Visiting Scholar, UCSC (University of Tampere Finland)Ed Landesman Mathematics, UCSCMaria Eugenia Matute-Bianchi Education, UCSCEllen Moir Education, UCSCMartha Moorehouse Psychology, UCSC

Julia Kushner Administrative AssistantGloria CuadrazLaura CurryDaniel D'AndreaValeurie FriedmanGreg PetersDoug RosenerAida Walqui

Staff

i

4

An Interview with Werner F. Leopold

Kenji Hakuta

Introduction

This interview of Werner Leopold (1895-1984), which I conducted in the spring of1983 as part of the research for my bookMirror of Language, is offered as ahistorical document on one of the keyfigures in the study of child language andbilingualism. Leopold's classic 4-volumework based on diaries of his daughterHildegard (published successively in 1939,1'17, and the last two volumes in 1949),titled Speech Development of a BilingualChild, ii known to all students ofdevelopmental psycholinguistics and standsas a paragon of scholarship in this area.I hope that this record will serve as apiece of general interest to anyoneinterested in the history of linguistics andthe study of child language.

Background of Interview

On February 28, 1983, I wrote a letter toProfessor Werner Leopold, who was thenresiding in Lacey, Washington, to requestan interview with him. His address wasobtained through Professor Evelyn Hatchof the English Department at theUniversity of California at Los Angeles,who had become a close acquaintance ofProfessor Leopold while he was living inthe Los Angeles area. In the letter, Iwrote:

I have long been an admirer ofyour workin child language. I am currently in theprocess of writing a book on the psychology

and sociology of bilingualism (to bepublished by Basic Books). In one of thechapters, I would like to use your seminalwork on Hildegard as the centerpiece, whereI would use it both to lay out the basicissues in childhood "simultaneous"bilingualism, and to sketch a history of theinteraction between linguists andpsychologists over the years. What I wouldvery much like to do is to meet you andtalk about your work, and especially toobtain from you your impressions ofchanges that have taken place in linguisticsand psychology over the years since yourwork first appeared.

Professor Leopold promptly responded, onMarch 4, with the following note:

Dear Professor Hakuta,

Your letter was a joy. It is good to seethat my work is still useful. Someimes Iget the impression that child languageresearch has by-passed my contribution. Ipride myself in having opened up the fieldas a legitimate concern of linguistics. Infact I gave currency to the term "childlanguage", which was not used before meand is nuw ubiquitous. The Library ofCongress, for one, still does not use it, but"children's language or speech".

I should like to meet you, but I cannottravel any more. I am handicapped byrheumatoid arthritis, which ties me to awalker. You are welcome here, but Icannot accommodate you in our two-room

r-a

2 Bilingual Research Group

apartment in a retirement home. There aremotels nearby.

1 am not sure that you would profitfrom a conversation with me. 1 am nothappy with the direction the research hastaken (in linguistics). You are welcome touse my work in one of your chapters. 1hope 1 get to see it when it is published.

Excuse the handwriting. My hand issomewhat crippled.

do.Let me know when you come, if you

Sincerely,

W F Leopold

The Interview

Lacey, Washington, April 28, 1983

[The Leopolds live in an apartmentbuilding within a pleasant retirementcommunity called Panorama City. AsHakuta e) its from the elevator on thefloor of the Leopolds' apartment, he isgreeted by Mrs. Marguerite Leopold, whoinforms him that "Professor Leopold hasbeen locking forward to your visit verymuch," and guides him to the apartment.Leopold is seated in an armchair, andgreets Hakuta, "Mr. Hakuta. It is apleasure to meet you." After an exeaangeof pleasantries and small talk, Hakutapresents Leopold with a plaque on whichis written "Professor Werner Leopold,With Appreciation and Affection, StanfordC'hild Language Research Forum, 1983",signed by almost 100 participants whowere at the conference. (Credit for theidea of presenting Professor Leopold withthis plaque goes to Lois Bloom). Leopold

is visibly moved, and throughout theinterview looks through the names. Heimmediately notices the signatures ofJoseph Greenberg, Eve Clark, andCharles Ferguson. He notes thatGreenberg was a graduate student inanthropology at Northwestern, and that hewas on Greenberg's dissertationcommittee. After some time, Hakutarequests permission to record theinterview, which is granted.

[General context of conversation: Hakutais giving his general background, as apsychologist.]

Hakuta: I'm a very....dilettante linguist. I

admire linguistics very much as a fieldbecause it has a very strong theoreticalorientation which psychology tends tolack. Tha..t was one of the things thatyou criticized about the psychologicalworks that were done of language inyour time.

Leopold: I didn't really criticize it. If youread the preface to my volumes, I givethem admiration where the admirationis in place.

Hakuta: I think you're very fair in thekinds of credit that you give to thepeople who've done work in thevarious relevant areas. But I thinkthat a lot of the psychological studiesthat were done in those days were veryoriented towards counting, such asvocabulary counts where they mightnot make any linguistic sense.

Leop)ld: That's right. They didn't havethe linguistic background. They hadthe layman's background.

Working Papers 3

Hakuta: And I think that's also true ofthe studies of bilinguals that youreviewed....

Leopold: That's your real interest, isn'tit? Bilii.gualism.

Hakuta: Currently, it is. My dissertationactually was on syntax acquisition andthe comparison between English andJapanese.

Leopold: Oh, yes. Where was that, atY ale?

Hakuta: It was at Harvard.

Leopold: At Harvard, not a bad place.

Halalta: I studied with Roger Brown.

Leopold: Oh, you studied with RogerBrown. Well, that's a famous name.Is he a Chomsky follower?

Hakuta: Uh, no, he's not. Well, for awhile, he wavered, like mostpsychologists did, in the sixties. AndI thin!: when people really startedlooking for Chomskyan kinds ofphenomena in child language, therewas a few it rs of excitement aboutit, and tl- t receded, because itreally was. i making much sense. Itseemed to make a lot more sensetrying to describe the child's languagein its own right.

Leopold: I onCe heard Chomsky talksomeplace in Indiana or Illinois, andI admire him too. He's a highlyintelligent fellow. There's somethingto him, but I'm a little disgruntledwith what he has done to the field ofchild language study.

7

Hakuta: You mean because he removedthe child from the scene?

Leopold: Well, maybe, yes. And if youhave looked into my volumes, youknow, the child is central throughoutthe study. Incidentally, in the articlethat you sent me a reprint of, youmentioned only the first volume of mywork. Is that all you know?

Hakuta: No, I know all the volumes. I

referred to that because that was theonly volume that I had with me then,but I will include all of the volumes....

[General context of conversation: Hakutabrought with him al' of the 4 volumes,and Leopold is pleased.]

Hakuta: In fact, I find the fourth volumeto be quite interesting....

Leopold: That has called for leastattention of the four volumes. I toldMrs. Hatch [referring to ProfessorEvelyn Hatch, English Department,UCLA] once, and it impressed her,that everybody who gets interested inmy work likes one volume or theother, and not all of them. VolumeOne of course called the mostattention because it was the first. ButVolume Two has captivated manypeople although I thought that mightbe boring. It is to some, I'm sure, andit may not be to others. And the thirdvolume. The fourth volume is....gotleast attention, although that dealswith two children, both of mydaughters, and takes them into thelater years. But there have beenaficionados too.

Hakuta: What I'm personally cpriousabout is where a linguist in the 1930's

4 Bilingual Research Group

would find the motivation to studychild language which was notconsidered, well, it's kind of arevolutionary thing to do.

Leopold: As I told you, the ants and thebees [laughs]. Those were my antsand bees. [Earlier, in an unrecordedpart of the conversation, Leopold hadsaid that he justified his detaileddescriptive approach in studying childlanguage by analogy to scientists whostudy in painstaking detail thebehavior of ants and bees.]

Hakuta: This was as you moved toNorthwestern....

Leopold: it was at that time, yes.

Hakuta: You were at Milwaukee....

Leopold. At Marquette University, fortwo years. I came from....I didn'tcome from Germany. I came fromCentral America. I immigrated from,through New Orleans. And, well, myinterest was linguistics, very definitely,and what better topic could there bethan studying your own children, howthey learn? But not many peoplehave thought so.

[Later on in an unrecorded portion of theinterview, Hakuta asks whether heremembers the moment when he decidedto invest his time in studying the languageof his daughter. He says that he cannot,but Mrs. Leopold recalls that when shefirst brought the baby home, Leopold wasimmediately fascinated by the sounds thatHildegard was making, and that was whenit started. "It fell into place," she said.]

Hakuta: What was your training in? Forexample, your dissertation, did that

have anything to eo with childlanguage?

Leopold: My dissertation was onliterature, English literan ire.

Hakuta: Do you remember the itle of it?

Leopold: Yes. Do you know German?

Hakuta: No, I don't, unfortunately.

Le9pold: I see Well, the title is inGerman, of course. The title was"The religious root of Carlyle's literaryactivity." It was English literaturebranching out into theology, you mightsay, something quite different fromwhat I did later on.

Hakuta: But in the course of this trainingyou picked up phonetic analysis....

Leopold: That's right. In my fouruniversities I had different courses.Phonetics was one field. But of courseall the linguistic training at that timewas historical linguistics. That was myapproach. I worked in descriptivelinguistics eventually, but that wasn'tmy starting point.

Hakuta: When you were in Costa Rica,was that a teaching job in linguistics?

Leopold: That was a secondary schoolteaching job. I was called to CostaRica by a businessman in Costa Ricawho was working in the field ofimports, and he came from Hamburg.And Hamburg was the pretty citywhere I was brought up, and I went toschool, and I kept in contact with myclassroom teacher, we had oneclassroom teacher who was responsible

8

-1,

Working Papers 5

for the class for a number of years, Ithink i had him for six years, so hekney me very well and I knew himvery well. And one day, after I cameback from the university, and mydoctor's degree, he called me to hisoffice in the school and met me at thedoor, and asked me, "How would youlike to go as a tutor to CentralAmerica?" My first idea was "Areyou crazy?" I didn't know Spanish atthat time.

Hakuta: You were in your twenties?

Leopold: I was in my middle twenties.But it was a time after the first worldwar when Germany was in poorfinancial conditions, and there was anendless waiting time for a job insecondary school. So thinking it over,I decided, "Why not make use of thattime and learn something different?"And I ertered into negotiations, ofcourse the man had to pay mypassage, and salary, and he was notgoing to do that just for a year, so Icontracted for three years. And nearthe end of the third year, I decided "I,-an't stay here forever, this is not afield for life activity", much as Ienjoyed it, and I was going to stop inthe United States on the way back toGermany. And since I didn't want tospend my savings, I looked around fora job. And I got one soon, a CostaRican who lived in Milwaukee asvice-consul of Costa Rica, a purelyhonorary job, really, he was a teacherat Marquette University for Spanish.So he got me in there, as a teacher ofSpanish, I started teaching Spanish.

Hakuta: So you had picked up Spanish....

m

Leopold: I had begun to publish inSpanish, and one article of mine thatI published in Cost2 Rica wasreprinted in Argentina, so I wasbeginning to develop a reputation inSpanish [slight laugh].

Hakuta: Was this in literature?

Leopold: It was mostly pedagogical,teaching. No, I didn't enter deeplyinto Spanish literature but once I

studied Spanish, I studied Spanishliterature too, so I know quite a bitabout that. But that went by theboard eventually, they soon discoveredthat I knew German better thanSpanish, so they used me for teachingGerman. And after one year I

decided that wasn't enough to getacquainted with America, I accepted ajob for a second year. At the end oftwo years, I got the offer fromNorthwestern, on the basis ofphonetics. There was a teacher there,Hans Kurath, you probably don't knowthe name, he's well known in theGerman and linguistic fields, his hemewas in Milwaukee, and he came forvisits from Northwestern and he hadaccepted a job at Ohio StateUriversity, and needed a successor.We talked about phonetics, I had hadphonetics courses at G8ttingenUniversity, so he knew I knewsomething about phonetics and wasinterested, so he recommended me,and that led to the position atNorthwestern, for a year, and that yearstretched into something likethirty-seven years.

Hakuta: In your page and a half note atthe beginning of your book, youmentioned that you were in

6 Bilingual Research Group

Williamstown, Massachusetts for ayear....

Leopold: That was a substitute job for aman who left for a year, but it turnedout to be a permanent separation.But my job was just for one year, andI enjoyed that, but it was teachingGerman, pure and simple.

Hakuta: At Northwestern, was there alinguistics department then?

Leopold: Nobody talked about linguisticsat that time. People were still castingaround for a suitable name for thefield, and I was in the GermanDepartment, to the end of myteaching career. But my graduatecourses were linguistic. Linguisticscourses were attached to thisdepartment and that department,German or English or anthropologyor psychology, all those fieldsparticipated in it. And much later, itbecame established by itself. I hadmy title at that time changed from'Professor of German' to 'Prfessorof German and I Inguistics% That wasthe first approach to the field oflinguistics at Northwestern.

Hakuta: Do you happen to know whenthe department of linguistics was firstestablished at Northwestern?

Leopold: When? Well, I could look thatup, out I don't remember the exactdate. It was after half my teachingperiod. It must have been aftertwenty five years, maybe. I wasalready working in linguistics, but asa field of German at that time.

Hakuta: As you arrived in Northwestern,Hildegard was about six months then?How old was your daughter?

Leopold: I wasn't married yet. FromCosta Rica to Milwaukee, 1925. FromMilwaukee to Evanston, Illinois whereNorthwestern is located, 1927. Andafter the first year, I taught summerschool too, and one of ray studentswas....[points to his wife, Marguerite,who is sitting to his left]....this [laughs].She was a teacher, already, but shetook summer school courses, and shedidn't want Spanish. She protestedagainst Spanish. "What do I do withSpanish?" Well, she had entered alittle late, and there was no room inany other course. So the dean pushedher into, willy nilly into my course, andshe learned a little Spanish from me insix weeks. And, as we always like totell people, I gave her a poor gradebecause she, it was a funny course, awhole semester's work in six weeks.And she was overworked. She hadhome duties and relative duties too, soshe couldn't do good work, so I gaveher a "D", and in revenge, she marriedme.

Hakuta: When you moved to Evanston,how much of a pressure was there topublish papers and do research?

Leopold: There was quite a bit. In fact,American universities were, graduateschools were largely in the wake ofGerman graduate schools, and theyfollowed the German system and theGerman ideals and the Germanmethods and so on. Anyself-respecting teacher of German hadhad some time of studying in Germanyat that time. The chai:man of mydepartment at Northwestern had

1 0

Working Papers 7

studied in Germany, and anotherprofessor in the department..., it wasthe thing to do, if you could possiblymanage it, you had a year inGermany. So, I was accepted with agood reputation for the field.

Hakuta: It didn't particularly matterthat, I assume, anyway, that a lot ofyour time in those initial yeai., weretaken up keeping your diary?

Leopold: Well, in a sense, all the time. Imight mention this detail in myexperience. When my older daughterwas a few years old and speaking in amixture of German and English,German to me, once she askedsuddenly "What are you alwayswriting, Papa?" I always had slips ofpaper in Lny pocket and whenever Inoticed something in the languagethat interested me, I took a noteabout it. So I answered, "Oh, I'mtaking notes for my work." And thatsatisfied her. She knew I was alwaysr...ai!--g or writing. So....theanorlmity was preserved.

Hakuta: Did your senior colleaguesthink that it was a strange thing foryou to be doing? How was thatreceived by your colleagues?

Leopold: Colleagues in the department?Well, I was one of the betterprofessors in the department. Theyprobably looked up to me and I don'tknow whether they even talked toother people about it. I just wentahead and did my job, did what I wasinterested in, and I didn't botherabout anybody else. I got my positionat Northwestern on the basis ofphonetics, so that was linguistics in asense.

11

[General context of conversation: Hakutamentions that being interested inbilingualism in a traditional psychologydepartment, even today, would beconsidered an eccentric activity]

Leopold: But you have a background forthe field now in departments ofEnglish as a second language. Theydidn't exist in those days.

Hakuta: Well, I was thinking, peoplewould think of you as an eccentricgoing out of the beaten path....

Leopold: Well, that's what I was afraidof, that people wouldn't appreciate theendeavor. I went ahead just the samebecause that was my interest. I got myposition at Northwestern on the basisof phonetics and not linguistics, but Icould work on anything I pleased. I

had comlete freedom. So I took thejump, took the chance, and it turnedout better than I thought it would.

Hakuta: The courses you were teachingthen were all in phonetics?

Leopold. No. I had one phonetics course,and being a linguist I knew that much,I think. I taught middle high Germanand old high German, and things likethat, you see, so I did graduate workwith graduate students in linguistics.But the foundation of my job wasundergraduate teaching of German. Icarried on my interest in Germanthroughout life. If you look at my listof puNications, I have one of coursethat I kept going, it's always mixturesof linguistic topics and German topics.Elementary texts, some of them arestill in use.

8 Bilingual Research Group

Hakuta: Did you have any graduatestudents who became interested inchild language that continued topursue that?

Leopold: I wonder. I have never thoughtabout that. Some of my graduatestudents became well known. Bloch,for instance, well, he was a youngman in my graduate class, and heshowed great interest and knowledgein the field of phonetics, and Irecommended him to the LinguisticAtlas workers, and he got the job.That's where Bloch got his start. Butthat wasn't child language. I can'tthink of any of my students whoworked in the field of child language.Probably after you leave I willremember some.

Hakuta: Well, they probably saw thevolume of your notes and thoughtthey wouldn't want to put in as muchwork. Bc;bre the publication of yourbook, did you announce this study atprofessional meetings?

Leopold: I went to Modern Language[Modern Language Association]meetings. The Linguistic Society[Linguistic Society of America] wasfounded in those years, 1925, I think,so it was quite young. The LinguisticSociety was my real home, you m;ghtsay.

Hakuta: When you reported on yourstudy there, what was the responsethat you got of people?

Leopold: I trace it now to a meeting, thesummer meeting, I think, at theUniversity of Michigan, of theLinguistic Society, where I presenteda paper of research in child language

study, or something like that. Andthat developed into an article whichreally established the field, I think, anarticle in Word, you know that journal?[Hakuta shows Leopold the copy ofthat article, which he had brought,which pleases Leopold. Reference:"The study of child language andinfant bilingualism." Word, 1948, 4(1), 1- 17 1. That's it. And that articlemade a stir.

liakuta: It was a very forcefully writtenarticle.

Leopold: After I presented the paper atthe Linguistic Society meeting, acolleague of mine from anotheruniversity came to me, Twadell, youwouldn't know the name probably,well, Twadell came to me after thepaper and said, "I think you have putit across." I didn't quite know what hemeant, but I began to realize that ithad made an impression, and it was abig meeting, there were about ahundred people attending that lecture.And then it was published in Word ayear or two later, it always takes time,you know, and I've never published ananicle that had so much of an echo asthat article. I had one request afteranother for a reprint of the article,from all over. So, my venture wassuccessful to call people's attention tothe field. From that paper, I date thesuccess of the field of child linguistics.

Hakuta: That's a great bit of historythere, that you can pinpoint thespecific time....

Leopold: It wasn't clear to me at thattime. I was surprised that so manypeople wanted reprints, but, it couldn'tbe done this way as you do now

12

Wcrking Papers 9

[referring to photocopying]. I had tohave a certain number of reprints,and I distributed those as long as theylasted. Se it beca.ne clear to me lateron that that was the starting point.Then of cotrse I went ahead inpublishing the four volumes over thespace of ten years.

Hakuta: What were the critics of yourwork like?

Leopold: I had a hard time getting itreviewed. I remember that Languagedidn't review it for years. Thept.blisher must have sent copies toleading journals, probably a list that Igave them, and some reviewed them,and some never got ground to it. Atone meeting at Indiana University, Ibuttonholed a man who could beinterested, that was....oh, somebodywho belonged *o UCLA in LesAngeles,....the name Hoijer comes tomy mind, but I'm not sure that it washe, anyway, I finally persuaded him toask for a copy and review it. And hereviewed it in detail, but notthoroughly complementarily. He hadcriticisms, too, I don't remember whathis criticisms were. So, not everyjournal reviewed it.... Was it he, orwas it Einar Haugen, who reported atsome meeting about some of mywork, and he said, "Now I'm anxiousto meet Hildegard." If Jegard wasmy older daughter. People didn'trealize by that time that Hildegardhad grown up, she wasn't a little childany more. Ane that still happe. .,.

People write to ti .. ',out Hildegardand visualize a two-year-old girl.

Hakuta: Is she living nearby here?

13

Leopold: Kansas. My second daughterlives on Mercer Island which is Seattle..... The second daughter and herhusband saw to it that we moved intothis place.

[General conversation about th c. livingarrangements].

Mrs. Leopold: Evelyn Hatch was very verysweet to us, and that wholedepartment, and they would getWerner to come to their classes to talkto them.

Leopold: I had pretty good relations atUCLA. ! knew a number of peoplethere. I've never established any realrelations with the University ofWashington. I've met some peoplethere, but no intimate connections.

Mrs. Leopold: Well, you taught at USCtwice.

Leopold: I taught at USC, yes, twice overforty years. And that was my iastteaching job, you know, after I retiredfrom Northwestern, I had three visitingprofessorships at Nebraska, atWisconsin [Madison] and USC. AndUSC was my last job. That broughtme out here, then we moved to SaptaMonica, and we lived there for tenyears. By that time, we were WestCoast people.

[some talk about the weather in theNorthwest].

Mts. Leopold: It would interest you toknow that both girls went to Germanyfor a while. They know German, butbeing married to Americans who knowno German, they don't use theirGerman, but they do still with their

10 Bilingual Research Group

father. Their children, thegrandchildren, leamcd German songsand German verses and Germangames from their grandfather. Twoof the granddaughters are interestedin linguistics. One is a freshman atPomona, and the other is graduatingfrom the University of Alaska and shewants to do graduate work inlinguistics.

Leopold: I didn't make efforts toproselytize, but some of them cau;hton.

Hakuta: I see, it must be genetic.

Leopold: Well, they talked to me, theyknew what I was interested in.

[some talk about the difficulty in expenseof going to graduate school].

[General context of conversation: Hakutacomments generally about how theproblem of bilingualism is still neglectedwithin the field of psychology].

Leopold: Thinking of Mrs. Hatch, I had aqueer experience with her. She wasquite a follower of mine, and shecalled one meeting at UCLA, that'swhere she was teaching, which wasdedicated to me. So she had all thelinguists assembled there that evening,and as the climax of the evening, shespoke an address about me. Myhearing wasn't very good, I waswearing a hearing aid. I didn'tunderstand anything, not a word ofher address except from time to time,I heard "Professor Leopold","Professor Leopold." To this day, Idon't know what she said, but it wascommendatory, I'm sure. [laughs]. Anumber of people at UCLA were

interested in me. So they haven'tcompletely neglected me, I think.

Hakuta: Getting back to your volumes,did you have much contact withpsychologists at that time?

Leopold: No, not any, except for what Iread. But no personal contacts. No,I didn't want to be a psychologist.The field of psycholinguistics hadn'tbeen invented yet, so I wanted to be alinguist and nothing else. I knew ithad ramificztions towards psychology,but I rejected being a psychologist.Well, I want to show you mycollection.

[They go over to the bookcase, whichholds copies of his four volume diary, hibedited volume with Bar-Adon, hisbibliography and Slobin's editedbibliography, among others. Others Inoted were books by Lois Bloom, JoshuaFishman, and Sol Saporta. Embedded inthis bookshelf were several old notebooks,approximately 12cm. x 20cm. x 1cm.,which were the diary notes of Hildegardand later Karla; then they go to hisbedroom/study, where he takes Hakuta,piece by piece, through his publicationslist, neatly written on a small notebook].

[Abont twenty minutes of conversationwas ..ised at this point, going throughthe publications list. Leopold tellsHakuta that he may bring the taperecorder into the stl:dy, which is when thisrecording continues].

[General context of conversation: AsHakuta brings in the tape recorder,Leopold has located an article whichappeared in Time Magazine, January 1,1940, p. 42. The article contains a pictureof Hildegard and Karla].

14

Working Papers 11

Leopold: This might interest you.Hildegard and Karla. This is anarticle in Time Magazine, on the firstof January, nineteen hundred forty,after the first volume came out. Andon one page with Eleanor Roosevelt[another article on the same page hasher picture].

Hakim: This is when they were how old?

Leopold: Oh, it was taken on the shoresof Lake Michigan, north ofMilwaukee, and 1939, Hildegard wasnine years old and Karla was threeyears old.

Hakuta: Two dollars and twenty fivecents, that's inflation for you [notingthat the article cites the publisher andprice for the book].

Leopold: Oh, yes, I don't know how muchit costs now. The original edition isnot available now....

Hakuta: In general, are you happy withthe kinds of generalizations peoplehave made from your work?

Leopold: I remember I didn't like thiswrite-up at the time it came out, butI look at it again now and I find it'snot so bad at all, for a layman. Hepicked out some interesting items, ofcourse that's the journalistic style.Another feature that I remember was,it was, 1939-40, Christmas time, wehad the Modern Language meeting inNew Orleans. I was there, and thisnumber of Time came out just at thattime, and during the meeting, severalpeople came to me and pointed outthis article on page 42. They hadalready examined that copy and found

15

this article which I didn't, well, I knewit was in the works, but I didn't knowit had already come out. This is quitea nice picture. My wife dug up thisarticle, the copy that I have of it, andhad it xeroxed, nowadays you can dothat, and she gave one copy to Karlaand she was quite interested. Shewants to re-xerox it for her children.

Hakata: It is a very nice picture.

Leopold: Yes, I just figured out,Hildegard must have been nine andKarla three.

[continues to go through bibliographyitems; co. .es to article in LanguageLearning "Patterning in child language,19521.

Leopold: That's another article which hadgreat influence. It has been reprinteda number of times.

Hakuta: Well, this was in your editedbook, in your book of readings.

Leopold: Oh, that's right, we used it toothere. That was interesting too, to me,how that reader came about. Theyounger editor was Bar-Adon, inTexas.

Haku;a: I assumed that because he wasthe one who commented on the morerecent works, in the book.

Leopold: Yes. Well, I attenoed someModern Language meeting and I wassitting at the desk at the receptiondesk, and people came and talked tous, and there was a young man whomI didn't know, who had just arrivedfrom Israel. That was Bar-Adon. Andhe was almost touched to tears that he

12

met me, and had used my work inJerusalem. And we kept in touchafter that and after a few ycars hesuggested to me that we should edittogether a reader in child language.And I told him at the time the customis wh en an old scholar collaborateswith a young scholar in work, the oldscholar gives his name, and the youngscholar does most of the work. Well,he took that seriously, I think,because he has done most of thework, all the modern things, and Ispecialized in translating the Germanarticles from the past. So I did myshare, really, I worked on it too, butI didn't do most of the work, he didmost of the work.

Hakuta: You wrote about half of thecomments on that, as I remember, theintroduction for the readings.

Leopold: Only to those German thingsthat I translated.

Hak-uta: All the German work wastranslated by you....

Leopold: That's right. He didn't makethat too clear, but the introductionsare signed with initials, so people canfind out which I did.

Hakuta: I think that the German wori:sare unappreciated, I guess....

Leopold: Although some of them were byGerman psychologists. WilliamPreyer, the German with an Englishfirst name William, so he usuallysigned W. Preyer, P-R-E-Y-E-R. Hewas a psychologist and he wrote atwo-volume work, I think, on hischildren's language. That's one of themost important predecessors.

Bilingual Research Group

Hakuta: Well there's also Stern. Hiswork....

Leopold: Kindersprache.

Hakuta: I've read another translation ccit by Arthur Blumenthal who wrote abook called "Language andPsychology" in which he translatcdabout a full chapter of that work, andthat was incredibly enlightening.

Leopold: That was the only work reallymore or less on the scale of my work.Preyer's and Stern's. Those were mymodels, really. And they werepsychologists. I met Stern in 1935 inHamburg. He was a Jew, and wasbanished to his home, really, when Ivisited him. He was not well treatedat the Nazi time.

Hakuta: What year was this?

Leopold: During the Nazi period.Nineteen-thirty-one, maybe. And hereceived me and I had an hour withhim, in his home, but he wasn't activein the university any more when I methim. He was a professor ofpsychology. So the psychologists arereally important.

[continues going through bibliography].

[General context of conversation: Theycome to a citation for the re-editedversion of Leoyld's bibliography (by DanSlobin), which had come up earlier in theconversation in front of the bookshelf,where Leopold mentioned that Slobin hadremoved Leopold's original comments onthe works].

16

Working Papers 13

Leopold: This is called Leopold'sBibliography edited by Slobin.

Hakut,: I am surprised that he took yourcomments out from the revision.

Leopold: Well, he had a little committee,including Ferguson and Greenberg,who agreed with him. I suppose theyagreed with everything he suggested.Just to save space, I don't know,maybe he didn't think much of mycomments [laughs]. He filled theboo'r with all sorts of other thingswhich are useful. I see theirusefulness better now than I did atthe time.

[General context of conversation: End ofgoing through the bibliography; but theyare still seated in the study].

Hakuta: With your children's subsequentdevelopment, as the end of yourfourth volume approached, it wasreally clear that English was becomingthe dominant language.

Leopold: Naturally.

Hakuta: Did they maintain their Germanin other ways than speaking to you inGerman?

Leopold: To a considerable extent,although they are not fluent any more.But it's still their habitual address tome, speaking German, so they still doit. But I wouldn't say that they areexperts in German. They haven'tdeveloped in that direction at all,neither one of them.

[end of conversation in the study, theymove back to the living room after abreak].

1 7

Leopold: Are we still recording?

Hakuta: Yes, is that all right?

Leopold: Yes, it's all right I repeat[from earlier when recorder was notrunning], I've never talked so muchabout myself as I have today.

Hakuta: I think that there's a classproblem that has associatedbilingualism to negative implicationsin this country.

Leopold: Well, that's the old idea of themelting pot, they want immigrants toassimilate. And most immigrants wantto asEimilate. I was unusual in wishing.to have my children speak German...Th usual immigrant wants Englishonly. They have to emphasize theEnglish in order to make their way inthis country. Well, since I was ateacher of German, I didn't have thatworry so much.

Hakuta: So you're obviously convincedthat learning two languages in earlyzhildhood had no negativeconsequences in the child'sdevelopment....

Leopold: It certainly hasn't had any badconsequences on my children.

Hakuta: I'm sure that you're often askedby parents, "What is the best way toraise my child bilingually?"

Leopold: Well, I consider my way good.Talk nothing but German to them.Marguerite knew enough German thatI could talk German before her and toher. She answered in English.

14 Bilingual Research Group

Hakuta: So you more or less followedthat principle, one-parent one-child.

Leopold: Yes. I think that's important.It doesn't necessarily mean oneparent, but one person for onelanguage.

Hakuta: Do you think that things couldhave turned out differently if you hadused both languages, that her Englishwould have been much moredominant?

Leopold: You would expect to have someeffect of bilingualism restricting onelanguage in favor of another. I'vehad that with my daughter, Hildegardparticularly, as a transitional period.But .... for a while they didn't knowthere were two languages involved.One was the way all Papas spoke andthe other one was the way all Mamasspoke. And it took some years beforeit dawned on them that that wasn'tthe truth in the general situation.

Mrs. Leopold: When I spoke German,"Ooh, Mama, don't, it soundsterrible."

Leopold: Yes, and I remember someincident when I happened to speakEnglish when there were other peoplearound, you know, and my daughterwondering "oh, Father knows Englishtoo!"

Hakuta: And I guess they still feeluncomfortable using English with you.

Leopold: Well, now they do, becausethere isn't enough support for theGerman any more. They like the factthat they know some German, that

they can still use it, but it doesn'treally mean anything to them.

Mrs. Leopold: This may interest you.Werner has a German class, here inPanorama.

-\Leopold: Just for fun. \

Hakuta: Are these peo0e who alreadyhave some German? ;

i

Leopold: They're all peol-316- who havehad some German in\ theirbackground, either at home ; or inschool. But not very deeply in) it, andthey want to reviye it. Tl*s whatthey do, they trevisi it. / They'velearned quite al.1.11t_29 -spite of theinformality of the teaching. We justtalk and read simple stories.

Hakuta: I think it's a terriblemisconception ihat people have thatadults can't learn new languages.

Leopold: They enjoy it. They comebecause they like the class.

Hakuta: What do you think is thedifference between children learning asecond language and adults?

Leopold: Well, the great advantage is forchildren to learn the second languageis they get the pronunciation muchbetter than adults. Adults are too setin their speaking ways, and theytransfer those speaking ways into theforeign language. That's unavoidable,it seems to me, although people differof course. Some adults are goodlearners too.

[The tape ret;order is shut off for lunch;Hakuta takes a few photographs of

1 s

Working Papers 15

Leopold with his original diaries; it isvery clear from the way he thumbsthrough the notes that he is very proud ofhis accomplishment. "I can still getinterested in this," lie remarks. Afterlunch, Hakuta and Leopold go for a walkaround the grounds of Panorama City,Leopold in his wheelchair and Hakutapushing him. During the walk, Leopoldjokes to Hakuta that he now has thedistinction of being the only person tohave pushed the father of child languagearound in a wheelchair].

[General context of conversation: Afterthe walk, sitting once again in the livingroom. Leopold gives Hakuta abibliography, volume 3, Linguistics, of theModern Language Association, which hehad recently received in the mail].

[General context of conversation: Hakutatakes out of his briefcase the StanfordUniversity library's copy of the firstedition of Leopold's Bibliography to showLeopold].

Leopold: Let's see, that's the librarycopy? [reads] Leopold, bibliography.They ought to reproduce it before itwears out completely [its pages arefalling apart]. [Leopold looks on theback cover]. Nobody has used it sincespring of '83, oh, it's due in spring of'83. It's interesting to see a librarycopy.

Mrs. Leopold: I wonder how much moneyNorthwestern University earned onthis book.

Leopold: They were glad if they madetheir expenses.

Mrs. Leopold: That's what they thought inthe beginning....

1 M

Leopold: Well, when they had earnedtheir expenses, I think, they sold it toAMS Press.

Mrs. Leopold: When they were babies,[Leopold] could analyze the sounds,but when he was gone, for about twomonths on a tour taking a grouparound Germany, I stayed with Hildia few weeks and then joined thegroup. So she was with hergrandfather and housekeeper and theyspoke German only. I don't think theywere as interested in the language asin the things that she said that were alittle different. So they tried to keepup the diary....

Leopold: Yes, my father's housekeeperkept a diary for me while I was gone.

Mrs. Leopold: Well, I couldn't writephonetically either.

Leopold: The diary was interestingbecause the housekeeper didn't knowEnglish, so she wrote down in Germanthe way it sounded, and I recognizedthe English words behind them whenthere was a mixture.

[skipped some conversation]

Hakuta: When you spoke to each otheryou used English?

Leopold: I spoke to her in German, sheanswered in English.

Mrs. Leopold: It was a real bilingualsituation.

Leopold: Yes, it was in a sense the idealbilingual situation.

16 Bilingual Research Group

Hakuta: Before you had the child, didyou speak that way to each other?

Leopold: [to Mrs. L] I think I spokeGerman to you before.

Mrs. Leopold: She [Hildegard] came ourfirst year, the first year we weremarried. We were thirty andthirty-two, but before we weremarried [to WFL] you wrote to me inGerman.

Leopold: Yes, I think so. And you triedto answer in Gel-wan and I criticizedyour Gcrman [laughs].

Mrs. Leopold: No, I learned a lot thatway. He would take my love lettersand correct them.

Leopold: That's what she wanted. Andthen she's still telling everybody whatI did to her love letters.

Mrs. Leopold: Oh I learned. It took mefifty years to learn German [laughs].I think that's unique. Don't tellanyone that, though.

Hakuta: Do you feel that the fact thatthe child was bilh .gual made the studyless attractive to use for some peopleas a database? [elaborates]. Somepeople might say she's a different casefrom a normal monolingual child.

Leopold: Yes, of course many point outher father was a college professor, ofcourse what do you expect? Well,those are prejudices.

Hakuta: I think that there is a prejudiceagainst bilingualism, or studies ofbilinguals.

Leopold: Weil, that's what people say,that's a wonderful idea to teachchildren two languages from birth.But nobody else does it.

Mrs. Leopold: Didn't Hildegard havesome French in school, and when shegot to France she was able to getalong too?

Leopold: I think she had a year of Frenchin college. But she told us howrelieved she felt when she got intoGermany, where she could really talk.

Mrs. Leopold: This has nothing to do withbilingualism, but Werner wrotearticlesthat investigated the effect of the waron the food and on the customs andcostumes, language, from the refugees[around Germany]. Then we wentthrough and got words that wereintroduced into the German language,English words.

Leopold: Yes, I wrote several articles onEnglish influence on the Germanlanguage, post-war. And there isconsiderable influence. And that wasreprinted by Fishman ("The decline ofGerman dialects," in J. Fishman (Ed.),Readings in the Sociology of Language.The Hague: Mouton, 1972). Peoplecouldn't speak the dialect any more asthey used to around themselves, youknow, because the refugees didn'tunderstand the dialect. So the dialectswere reduced. It still exists, of course,but they don't play the part anymorethat they used to.

Mrs. Leopold: And he wrote on thedialects in this country. He gave acouple of lectures in Germany on that.

2 ti

Working Papers 17

Leopold: Yes, on one of our trips toGermany, I made arrangements togive lectures at various universities.And one of them at least dealt withAmerican dialects, which of coursecompared to German dialects are notdialects at all. But there aredifferences, of course, and I illustraiedit with records, the dialects withdialect records. "The story of therat." Kurath who was the director ofthe Linguistic Atlas, and the LinguisticAtlas people know the rat story, thatbrings in all kinds of questionableword forms, and when it came to themid-Western dialect to illustrate, welived in the mid-West, my recordwasn't so good, but I had my seconddaughter along, Karla, and so I let herread the rat story to the Germanstudents. That was the universitystudents. And they followed eagcrlybut they didn't learn much, they justlooked at my daughter, she was quitegood looking!

Mrs. Leopold: The funny thing was thatwaf supposed to be mid- West. She'svery susceptible to dialects, and shewent to Cornell University andabsorbed the Eastern dialect, so whenshe got up instead of giving themid-Western dialect she had the NewYork [upstate] dialect, she didn'tsound right at all, but I don't think....these were all young men.... I don'tthink they noticed anything different.They just watched her. [laugh] Whenthe students pounded on the desksloud, she turned to me and said "Ooh,did they not like what Papa did?"

Hakuta: That's one custom that I reallyenjoy [pounding on the desk forapplause].

21

Leopold: When I was a student inGermany, applause was routinely givenby trampling with your feet. And thenthey put linoleum in the classrooms,and the trampling didn't work so well,so they substituted with pounding onthe desk. And that was new to me!

Other 1989 BRC; Working Papers titles:

Aida Hurtado and Gloria Culdraz, A Selected Bibliography on Watsonville History. Anamiotated bibliography of historical and demographic documents on the city ofWatsonville, California. (BRG #89-01)

Kenji Hakuta, Language and Cognition in Bilingual Children. Two studies withSpanish-English bilingual Puerto-Rican children are described. The first studyexamined the issue of cross-language transfer of skills. The results suggest abetter fit with a model of transfer that is more holistic rather than of specificskills. The second study investigated translation skills in 4th and 5th gradestudents. The results show that bilingual children separate the two languageseffectively and that they are extre.nely good translators. (BRG #89-02)

Aida Hurtado, Language as a Social Problem: The Repression of Spanish in South Texas.Data from a survey of 680 Chicano college students at Pan American Universityexamines how school personnel discouraged and encouraged the use of Spanishin South Texas schools. (BRG #89-03)

Viljo Kohonen, Experiential Language LearningTowards Second Langua, . Learning a.Learner Education. An approach to second language learning within theframework of experiential learning theory is outli-..xl. (BRG #89-04)

Maria Eugenia Matute-Bianchi, Situational Ethnicity and Patterns of School PegormanceAmong Immigrant and Non-immigrant Mexican-Descent Students. Persistent schoolfailure among nonimmigrant Mexican-descent high school students is comparedto patterns of school success observed among immigrant Mexican-descent students.(BRG #89-05)

atherine Snow and Kenji Hakuta, The Costs of Monolingualism. An implicit analysisof costs and benefits of bilingualism in U.S. society is conducted, highlightingeducational, economic, national security, and psychological consideratkms. Thepaper concludes that common concerns about bilingual education ref ect -. verynarrow view of costs. (BRG #89-06)

Kenji Hakuta, An Interview WM Werner F. Leopold. An interview with Werner Leopoldreflecting on his life, career and the historical course of linguistics and the studyof child language and bilingualism. (BRG #89-07)

For further information contact: Maria Eugenia Matute-Bianchi or BarryMcLaughlin, Bilingual Research Group, Merrill College, UCSC, Santa Cruz,CA 95064, (408) 429-3351.

22