Child Directed Speech
- Created by: ninabattle
- Created on: 20-03-18 14:57
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
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
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
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
Pragmatics
- Lots of gestures and warm body language
- Fewer utterances per tern - stopping frequently for child to respond
- Supportive language (expansions and recastings)
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
Clarke-Stewart 1973
Found that children whose mothers talk more, have larger vocabularies
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
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'"
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
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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