Language Acquisition

1. Lecture Seven
Child-directed speech

2. What is child-directed speech?
 The academic term for the language
used by adults/caregivers when
addressing children.

3. Phonology
 Separate phrases more
distinctly (longer
pauses).
 Speak more
s-l-o-w-l-y.
 Exaggerated ‘singsong’
intonation.
 Exaggerated difference
between questions,
statements and
commands.
 Higher and wider
range of pitch.

4. Lexis and Semantics
 Use of concrete nouns
(e.g. train, cat) and
dynamic verbs (e.g.
give, put).
 Adopt child’s own
words for things (e.g.
wickle babbit).
 Frequent use of child’s
name and absence of
pronouns.

5. Grammar
 Repeated sentence frames: ‘That’s a …’
 More simple sentences.
 Fewer complex sentence and passives.
 Omission of past tense and inflections.

6. Grammar
 More command, 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.

7. Pragmatics
 Lots of gesture and
body language.
 Stopping
frequently for child
to respond.
 Supportive
language.

8. Clarke-Stewart (1973)
 Children whose mothers talk to them
more have larger vocabularies.

9. Nelson (1973)
 Holophrastic stage
 Children whose mothers corrected
them on word choice and
pronunciation actually advanced more
slowly than those with mothers who
were generally accepting.

10. Kuhl (1992)
 Studied exaggerated vowel sounds
used by parents when speaking to 6-
month olds (in English, Swedish and
Russian).
 Babies turn towards adults who speak
in sing-song voice, ignoring regular
conversation.
 Mothers in all three countries
exaggerated the important vowels.

11. IMPORTANT!!!
 NOT ALL CULTURES USE CHILD-DIRECTED
SPEECH.
 In some (non-western) cultures babies are
expected to ‘blend in’ with adult interaction
and no special accommodation is made.
 These children still go through same
developmental stages at roughly the same
time, as long as there is EXPOSURE to
language.