Child Directed Speech

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Phonology

- Separate phrases more distinctly, leaving longer pauses between them

- Speak more slowly

- Use exaggerated 'singsong' intonation - helps emphasise key words 

- Exaggerate the difference between questions, statements, and commands 

- Use a higher and wider pitch range 

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Lexis and Semantics

- Use of concrete nouns (cat, train) 

- Use of dynamic verbs (give, put)

- Adopt a child's own words for things (doggie, babbit)

- Frequent use of a child's name - an absence of pronouns 

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Grammar

- Simpler constructions 

- Frequent use of imperatives

- High degree of repetition 

- Use of personal names instead of pronouns ('Mummy' not I' - third person)

- Fewer verbs, modifiers and adjectives 

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Lots of One-word Utterances

- Deixis used to point child's attention to objects or people 

- Repeated sentence frames (e.g. 'that's a...)

- Use more simple sentences and fewer complex and passives 

- Omission of past tenses, inflections (plurals and possessives)

- Use more commands, questions and tag questions 

- Use of expansions - where the adult fills out the child's utterance 

- Use of recastings - where the child's vocabulary is put into a new utterance 

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Pragmatics

- Lots of gestures and warm body language 

- Fewer utterances per tern - stopping frequently for child to respond 

- Supportive language (expansions and recastings)

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Effect of CDS on Children

FOR

- Retains attention of the child 

- Makes language more accessible - breaks down language into understandable chunks 

- Children learn by repetition (however, children can produce sentences they haven't heard before)

- Makes the conversation more predictable by referring to the here-and-now

AGAINST

- Interferes with language development because children learn incorrect forms (babyish words)

- In Papua New Guinea, adults speak to children as they speak to adults, and children acquire language at the same pace as elsewhere 

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Clarke-Stewart 1973

Found that children whose mothers talk more, have larger vocabularies

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Katherine Nelson 1973

Found that children at the holophrastic stage (12-18 months) whose mothers corrected them on word choice and pronunciation, actually advanced more slowly than those with mothers who were generally accepting 

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Brown, Cazden and Bellugi 1969

- Found that parents often respond to the truth value of what their baby is saying, rather than its grammatical correctness

- For example, a parent is more likely to respond to "there doggie" with "Yes! It's a dog!" than "No, it's 'there is a dog'"

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Berko and Brown 1960 - Fis Phenomenon

- Brown spoke to a child who referred to a "fis" (meaning "fish")

- Brown replied using "fis", and the child corrected him again but saying "fis"

- Finally Brown reverted to "fish", to which the child responded "Yes, fis"

- This shows that babies don't hear themselves in the same way that they hear others

- The perception of phonemes occurs earlier than the ability of the child to produce those phonemes

- No amount of correction will change this 

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Conclusions

- Argued that CDS doesn't directly help babies learn language, instead, it helps parents communicate with children = its purpose is social rather than educational 

- In some cultures, babies are expected to blend in with adult interaction with no special accommodation to help them - they go through the same developmental stages as long as there's exposure to language 

- Clark & Clark's research suggests children who are only exposed to adult speech don't acquire the same standard of language as those whose parents speak to them with CDS 

- Old argument = CDS is harmful to a child learning language (less believed now)

- A child's language improves when in contact with an adult who speaks to them directly 

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