Detecting structured repetition in child-surrounding speech: Evidence from maximally diverse languages

Lester, Nicholas; Moran, Steven; Küntay, Ayli̇n C.; Allen, Shanley; Pfeiler, Barbara; Stoll, Sabine

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104986

Cited by 15 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…In addition, repetitive structures or distribution of words surrounding specific verbs support the generalization of meaning [ 94 ], and the high number of repetitions found in CDC are positively correlated with word comprehension [ 95 , 96 ]. A specific form of repetitions frequently used in CDC is variation sets, successive utterances with partial self-repetitions produced by caregivers [ 71 , 72 ], which themselves are positively related to better linguistic outcomes in naturalistic longitudinal [ 97 ], and experimental settings [ 98 ]. These findings again support the hypothesis that CDC functions to accelerate language acquisition.…”

Section: The Features and Functions Of Cdcmentioning

confidence: 99%

The function and evolution of child-directed communication

et al. 2022

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Humans communicate with small children in unusual and highly conspicuous ways (child-directed communication (CDC)), which enhance social bonding and facilitate language acquisition. CDC-like inputs are also reported for some vocally learning animals, suggesting similar functions in facilitating communicative competence. However, adult great apes, our closest living relatives, rarely signal to their infants, implicating communication surrounding the infant as the main input for infant great apes and early humans. Given cross-cultural variation in the amount and structure of CDC, we suggest that child-surrounding communication (CSC) provides essential compensatory input when CDC is less prevalent—a paramount topic for future studies.

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Section: The Features and Functions Of Cdcmentioning

confidence: 99%

The function and evolution of child-directed communication

et al. 2022

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“…Studies have shown multiple differences between the speech addressed to child and adult interlocutors, providing clear evidence that CDS is a separate speech mode, distinct from ADS (e.g., Snow, 1972;Ferguson, 1978;Ringler, 1981;Gallaway and Richards, 1994;Foulkes et al, 2005). Adults adapt their speech addressed to children in numerous ways including structured repetition (Küntay and Slobin, 1996;Lester et al, 2022), exaggerated articulation (Lindblom, 1990;Minjung and Stoel-Gammon, 2005;Green et al, 2010) and prosody (Fernald and Simon, 1984;McLeod, 1993), syntactic and lexical simplification (Fernald and Morikawa, 1993;Kunert et al, 2011), and a large emphasis on interaction (Hoff and Naigles, 2002). Numerous studies also show that CDS is preferred by children (Fernald, 1985;Schachner and Hannon, 2011;Masapollo et al, 2016).…”

Section: Background and Motivation For The Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A separate group of studies emphasizes the role of variation sets for making morphology more salient. Lester et al (2022) broadly describes a variation set as a tightly clustered set of partially repetitive utterances that are linked by interactional context. In analytic languages, such as English, a variation set involves a repetition of a word or a syntactic structure in a variety of syntactic contexts.…”

Section: Morphology Of Child-directed Speechmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recently, however, studies have examined their use for morphologically rich languages as well. For example, Lester et al (2022) examined child-surrounding speech in eight typologically maximally diverse languages and found variation sets in all of them (Chintang, English, Inuktitut, Japanese, Russian, Sesotho, Turkish, and Yucatec). While these results suggest that the use of variation sets in CDS is universal, the frequency trends for different languages varied considerably.…”

Section: Morphology Of Child-directed Speechmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Polysynthetic languages in particular offer much opportunity to explore the morphological aspects of CDS due to their complex morphological structure. However, to date, very few studies have been conducted on the morphology of CDS in polysynthetic languages (e.g., Crago and Allen, 2001;Lester et al, 2022;Johnson et al, in press). In the present study, we provide insight into how the morphosyntax of CDS is adjusted based on children's linguistic ability in Inuktitut -a polysynthetic language spoken in arctic Canada.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The use of complex structures with a word class change in Inuktitut child-directed speech

Johnson

Allen

2022

Front. Psychol.

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Caregivers typically use a simplified mode of the language – child-directed speech (CDS) – when addressing young children. In this study, we investigate the use of complex morphological structures with a word class change within a single word in Inuktitut CDS. Inuktitut is a polysynthetic agglutinative language of the Inuit–Yupik–Unangan language family spoken in arctic Quebec, which allows more than 10 morphemes per word and in which the meaning of an entire sentence can be expressed in one word. Clearly, such a complex morphological system presents special challenges for young children, which raises the question of whether caregivers shape their CDS in ways that facilitate acquisition. Using the data from mothers addressing eight Inuktitut-speaking children aged 0;11 to 3;6, we investigated whether the frequency and complexity of polysynthetic structures in CDS are dependent on the stage of the children’s linguistic development. The results demonstrate that the number and morphological complexity of the structures with a word class change increased as the children developed linguistically. The variety of nominalizers and verbalizers – the key components of such structures – also increased through the stages and were used in variation sets, which help children acquire morphological items by providing examples of use of the same morpheme in morphologically contrasting environments. These results show the presence of morphological simplification in Inuktitut CDS and demonstrate that such simplification is fine-tuned, i.e., that mothers are sensitive to their children’s level of linguistic development.

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