Speech Addressed to Children: Issues and Characteristics of Parental Input

Abstract

The linguistic environment of the child was largely taken for granted by the generative grammarians of the 1960's because of their emphasis on innate ideas as a basis for first language acquisition. Only recently have researchers studied the child's environment linguistically, indicating that not only are adults sensitive to and affected by the need to communicate with their children, but that interaction patterns between parent and child change according to the increasing language skill of the child. These interaction patterns are linguistically summarized here in terms of their syntactic and stylistic features. Such features include sentence complexity, number of transformations involved, types of sentences addressed to the child, the use of repetition, modeling, correcting, baby talk register, and the speed of delivery. All of these features are correlated with the age of the child, but many relationships are still unexplored and questions unresolvEd. If the current trend of research continues, our outlook on the role of parental input in the process of first language acquisition may change quite drastically.

Learning to Talk, Talking to Learn

“…Motherese varies according to the communicative demands of the situation, and even experienced caretakers cannot produce adequate motherese if the child is not present to cue him/her. Landes (1975) highlights that parents and other caretakers modify their speech in various ways until the child is at least 10 years old. From the research into motherese we find claims that the best input for a child is one step beyond the stage the child is at (Gleitman, Newport and Gleitman, 1984).…”

The episodic structure of maternal speech to young children

“…It is well established that the young child is exposed to speech which is modified in ways that could make the task of language comprehension less difficult; a major research effort has been directed to investigate modifications of syntax, semantics and phonology (see Landes 1975, Vorster 1975, and Snow 1977. It is also known that there are elements of behaviour which adults can use to direct the child's attention to particular referents and so assist the comprehension of speech (Scaife & Bruner 1975, Lempers, Flavell & Flavell 1977, Murphy & Messer 1977, Bridges 1979.…”

“…It has been suggested that children do not process the whole corpus of speech they hear, but tune-out part of this sample (Ervin-Tripp 1971, 1973, Landes 1975. It has been suggested that children do not process the whole corpus of speech they hear, but tune-out part of this sample (Ervin-Tripp 1971, 1973, Landes 1975.…”

“…Existing studies (see reviews by Landes 1975, Vorster 1975and Snow 1977 indicate that utterances directed at children are modified in ways that may facilitate language acquisition, but such investigations have tended for the most part to examine the properties of individual utterances. Existing studies (see reviews by Landes 1975, Vorster 1975and Snow 1977 indicate that utterances directed at children are modified in ways that may facilitate language acquisition, but such investigations have tended for the most part to examine the properties of individual utterances.…”

“…Using a similar perspective it was decided to analyse mother-child interaction to discover if maternal speech like non-verbal behaviour is organized in an episodic manner. Existing studies (see reviews by Landes 1975, Vorster 1975and Snow 1977 indicate that utterances directed at children are modified in ways that may facilitate language acquisition, but such investigations have tended for the most part to examine the properties of individual utterances. Here the aim was to complement these studies by investigating the organization of maternal speech in terms of the RELATIONSHIP between utterances.…”