Melodies in caregivers' speech: A species‐specific guidance towards language

Abstract

The author reports on a series of integrated studies on melodic contours in infant-directed (ID) speech. ID melodies in speech are taken as an instructive example of intuitive parenting in order to review current evidence on its forms, functions and determinants. The forms and functions of melodic prototypes are compared in terms of universal properties and individual andlor cultural variability across samples of German, Chinese and American mothers, and German mothers and fathers with their 2-and 3-month-old infants. Microanalyses of interactional contexts show that forms and functions of ID melodies are intimately related to typical dimensions of intuitive caregiving-amusing/soothing, turnyieldinglturn-closing, appmving/disapproving. The communicative functions of ID melodies as both categorical and graded signals are discussed with respect to the current knowledge on infant responses to ID speech and on early speech perception. According to a comprehensive longitudinal study of ID speech in relation to stages of infant vocalization, ID speech results from fine-tuned adjustments in various prosodic and linguistic features to developmental changes in idants' perceptual and vocal competence. ID melodies evidently have the potential to draw infant attention to caregivers' speech, to regulate arousal and affect in infants, to provide models for imitation, to guide infants in practising communicative subroutines and to mediate linguistic information. Current evidence suggests that the melodies in caregivers' speech provide a species-specific guidance towards language acquisition. behaviours -gaze, facial and vocal behaviour in particular -and analysed temporal patterns of reciprocity, turn-taking, responsivity and mutual engagement. Few researchers, however, have paid attention to the patterns of caregiving behaviour as such. The repertoire of those behaviours appears to be much richer than the set of a priori selected items used for comfortable descriptions and assessments of maternal caregiving. Systematic attempts at cataloguing infant-directed caregiving

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