The current status of the motherese hypothesis

Abstract

Partially conflicting results from correlational studies of maternal speech style and its effects on child language learning motivate a comparative discussion of Newport, Gleitman & Gleitman (1977) and Furrow, Nelson & Benedict (1979), and a reanalysis of the original Newport et al. data. In the current analysis the data are from two groups of children equated for age, in response to the methodological questions raised by Furrow et al.; but, in line with the original Newport et al. analysis, linguistic differences between these age-equated children are handled by partial correlation. Under this new analysis the original results reported by Newport et al. are reproduced. In addition, however, most effects of the mother on the child's language growth are found to be restricted to a very young age group. Moreover, the new analysis suggests that increased complexity of maternal speech is positively correlated with child language growth in this age range. The findings are discussed in terms of a theoretical analysis of the Motherese Hypothesis; the conditions of both learner and environment in which ‘simplified’ data could aid a learner. Finally, the results of our past work, those of Furrow et al., and those of the present analysis, are discussed as they fit into, and add to, current theorizing about the language acquisition process.

Maternal verbal responsiveness and directiveness: consistency, stability, and relations to child early linguistic development

“…Hence, in order to make more profound conclusions concerning these matters, further investigations are in order and even up until the third year of children's life. In addition, because according to some earlier findings the way an individual mother talks to her child is significantly determined by the child's own linguistic and communicative ability (see Gleitman, Newport & Gleitman, 1984;Hampson & Nelson, 1993;Lloyd & Masur, 2014;Masur, 1982;Snow, 1995), it would be interesting to study to what extent maternal contingency is stable over the course of time during significant changes in children's linguistic skills. However, in a study by Flynn and Masur (2007), maternal responsiveness and intrusive attentional directiveness demonstrated considerable stability between the children's ages of 0;10 and 1;9.…”

Do as I say, not as I do: A lexical distributional account of English locative verb class acquisition

“…Thus, it is unlikely that the developmental effect is due to imitation or priming. A more likely explanation is that adults used more TL structures early in children's acquisition as a general adjustment to make their utterances comprehensible to children (motherese; Bohannon & Marquis, 1977;Gleitman, Newport & Gleitman, 1984). Importantly, the early TL bias shown in Figure 3 suggests that parents' full locatives information for children to learn LT-biased verbs.…”

The significance of maternal speech styles for children with Down syndrome

“…An alternative interpretation of the same phenomenon places far more emphasis on the child's naturally developing abilities. The changes in adult speech represent accommodation to the child's developing competence (Gleitman et al, 1984). From this perspective adults change what they talk about, and how they talk, to fit in with the child's abilities to understand, but such adjustments follow rather than lead the child on to the next stage.…”

“…However, Gleitman, Newport and Gleitman (1984) argue that the simplest CDS might not be the best basis for learning language. They studied children at the telegraphic speech stage and found that mothers who produced more complex CDS had children who were linguistically more advanced.…”