From: LAURA SLOCUM I found this article fascinating. To think that mothers (in particular) adjust their speech not only according to relative age of their children, but also on the basis of gender characteristics. How interesting! 1. I wonder if the moms and dads perceive differences in male/female speech? 2. I wonder if the moms and dads are cognizant of their production differences in their interactions with boys/girls? 3. I wonder how how their gendered productions with boys/girls compares with that of gendered productions with adult men/women? 4. I wonder what the speech patterns of boys/girls whose primary caregiver is dad would be like? 5. I want more information regarding the children's productions (longitudinal analysis). What are we to make of the fact that: "There is (so far) little evidence of gender-differentiation in children's productions. Gender identity through sociolinguistic variables typically begins to emerge at 3;0 at the earliest. Before that state, variants characteristic of mothers' speach have the greatest chance of being acquired." ??? From: Kirk Baker Measure production of adult /t/ in dialect of cds. Medial [t] more common than [?] for cds. Boys get more ? than girls. Final[t] higher, [t] higher for girls. Age effect, more canonical for younger. Which variant do kids of tyneside dialect acquire first? Which one do boys vs. girls acquire first? From: HELENA RIHA The study examined the segmental features of CDS, specifically phonetic variants used for [t] in word-medial and word-final prevocalic contexts, to determine patterns of variant usage according to the gender of the child. Speech to girls contained more standard variants than speech to boys, which contained more vernacular variants. The authors note that men in general make fewer adjustments to their speech patterns than women when addressing children (p. 180). What might be some reasons for this? Why don?t men ?do motherese?? Some researchers (such as Kuhl 1997) have argued that segmental modifications in CDS serve to play a language-teaching role. Others (Bard and Anderson 1994) disagree, suggesting that ?whatever help parents give to children? does not seem to include ?unusually clear word tokens? (p. 181). It may be that Kuhl's finding of acoustic differences in vowels in CDS may provide a social rather than analytic function to encourage infant interaction and imitation. The researchers recruited families only in working-class neighborhoods, which is not mentioned in the abstract. Their findings pertain only to families in this socioeconomic stratum and can not necessarily be generalized. An economically more diverse group of families would be needed to obtain a thorough understanding of variant usage in CDS. The speech of male caregivers also need to be examined. Findings from the study show that in mothers? speech to children, the proportion of [t] was greater toward children than in interadult speech (Figure 1). It was also found that [t] usage differed according to the age of the child, with 2-year olds receiving the highest [t] usage and older children receiving less (Table 6). The authors argue that these findings do not provide evidence for the notion that CDS serves purely to enhance phonological clarity. While it may be true that CDS is not limited to this one function, it may still be true that enhancing phonological acquisition is one of CDS?s functions. Along the lines of Kuhl?s argument, mothers may speak more clearly toward young children than they do toward adults to facilitate language acquisition. At the same time, CDS also has other, social functions. The study also found that mothers used [t] toward girls more frequently than toward boys (Table 5). The motivation for this may indeed be an effort to create gender-based differentiation. Such patterns may hold for working-class parents, but they may not necessarily be evident in the speech of middle and upper-middle class parents, who may want children of either sex to speak the standard variety. The authors found little evidence of gender-differentiation in the children?s productions and note that the expression of gender identity begins at 3;0 at the earliest. Before that stage, variants of the mother?s speech have the greatest chance of being acquired. As children express their gender identity in subsequent stages of acquisition, it would be interesting to see which variants they use in different contexts, including gender-specific games like playing house and gender-neutral games like putting together jigsaw puzzles. Do children ?perform a gender identity? through language when they play gender-specific games? Kathleen Currie Hall Notes on: Foulkes, Paul, Gerard Docherty, and Dominic Watt. (2005). Phonological variation in child-directed speech. Language 81(1), 177-206. Summary: In this paper, the authors present an analysis of the acoustics of (t) in child-directed speech in Tyneside English. They combine a sociolinguistic and acoustic phonetic approach, and look at effects of age and gender of the child on the mother's speech. They are able to directly compare their findings for the CDS with patterns in interadult speech because they have previously conducted numerous studies on the adult speech patterns of this dialect of English. They find that overall, there is more use of the standard [t] pronunciation of (t) with children than with adults, with girls than with boys, and with younger children than with older children. They emphasize that these differences may reflect (unconscious) efforts on the part of parents to enforce larger societal gender norms. Details: 1. CDS is generally assumed to exist for both analytic and social reasons. Analytic reasons are those that are thought to enhance a child's acquisition of linguistic structure; social reasons are those that are thought to enhance the child's realization that language is a social, interactive phenomenon. 2. However, there has been a lot of controversy / conflicting evidence about the characteristics and functions of CDS. While some authors claim that CDS tends to be "hyperspeech" and particularly well-suited for analytic processing by a child, others claim that there is in fact more variability in CDS and that its non-canonical nature could make it more difficult for a child to learn language; these authors stress the social functions of CDS. Foulkes, Docherty, and Watt attempt to address some of the controversy over what characterizes CDS by using CDS in a dialect where the adult speech is particularly well studied as well as by doing a cross-sectional study to compare different age groups. 3. The authors recorded mother-child interactions (mediated by clinicians with particular materials designed to elicit particular segments) for 40 dyads. They focused on the production of (t) in two positions: word-medial between sonorants, where it is variably realized as [t] or as a "glottal" (creaky, voiced coronal); and word-final prevocalically, where it is variably realized as [t], the glottal, [R] (retroflex approximant), or a voiced coronal (flap or [d]). In these positions, [t] is the "standard" pronunciation and the others are sociolinguistically marked variants (with the glottal being an overt marker, especially common to this geographic area and particularly among males; the [R] being overt but associated with a larger area; and the voiced variants not being noticed by speakers at all). 4. They found that mothers used more [t] pronunciations in CDS than they do in interadult speech. Furthermore, they tend to use more [t] pronunciations with girls than with boys, and more [t]s with younger children than with older children, though the age differences were more significant with girls than with boys. 5. While the authors acknowledge that their findings do match well with other studies that have found that CDS tends to have more "standard" forms than interadult speech, they question the typical interpretation that this is to enhance the child's acquisition of language. (The standard is not inherently easier to produce, and enforcing the standard form means the child is exposed to more variability and may have a harder time correctly learning the vernacular.) 6. Instead, they espouse the idea that the differences seen in CDS (and especially differences within CDS to girls vs. boys or younger vs. older children) are indicative of the mother's expectations for her child's social identity. The differences between CDS to girls as opposed to boys reflects the tendency for women in Tyneside English to use more standard forms than men; the mother's CDS encourages this differentiation by giving boys more non-standard input than girls and modelling the social differentiation for the children. As the child grows older, the mother feels less pressure to create the child's social identity for him/her (because the child is more linguistically capable and can express his/her own identity), and so use of the standard forms declines with age. Questions: 1. Were the studies they cite on p. 180 about the effects of adult and child gender on CDS controlled for language / society? I would imagine that there are fairly large differences across societies / cultures about the role of men and women in child-rearing -- which groups are these results valid for? 2. The authors note (p. 186) that women in their adult-speech study tended to use the standard [t] variant in the read wordlist almost exclusively, despite using the glottal in unscripted conversation. How did the amount of [t] usage in their CDS compare to the amount of usage on the wordlist? 3. Clearly there is more than just sociolinguistic marking going on, as mothers use more standard forms with boys than they do with adults . . . is it a prescriptive desire on the part of the mothers (e.g. "I want my child to speak properly")? Or is there an advantage to acquisition by hearing more variabiltiy? The adults clearly know the alternations between [t] and the glottals or other forms -- how would the child learn the system if he weren't exposed to such variation? Why is there the assumption that variability would be bad for a child? From: Junko Davis - I am curious to see whether there was any mother who deliberately chose the different speech style for girls (or boys). - "We found little evidence, however, of gender-differentiation in the children's production." (p.200): is it possible to see more difference if the context is well-controlled? Or did they control the context? - This study makes me wonder what Japanese caregivers' speech is like and what degree of gender-differentiation is involved in CDS. (I am intuitively assuming that there should be a difference.) From: nagar@ling.ohio-state.edu This is a study of the way variation occurs in child-directed speech. The authors are interested in segmental phonology and address questions like how does variability in speech by adults affect language acquisition by kids or do kids acquire female variants easily that male variants since they are more exposed to the female variants. Features of CDS vary according to the age of the children they are directed toward. The study involved forty first born children from ages 2 to 4. The study involved interactional data between caregivers and children. They studied the variable (t) in two contexts which are word medial inter- sonorant position and word-final prevocalic position. They compared data in ESV with data in PVC. The results are such: Patterns in inter adult speech: two variants: voiceless stop [t] and laryngealized [d]. The glottal variant is far more common in inter adult data. Pattern in CDS: Women use more of the [t] variant in child directed speech than in adult directed speech. Men, though only three in the study, did not show much variation between CDS and inter adult speech. There was also variation depending on the sex of the child. Data from word-final prevocalic position: There are many variables in this position. The glottal variable is more common in the speech of men. Patterns in CDS: CDS has lower occurrence of glottal and approximant. Usage of the variable [t] was more common in the speech directed to the female child. ] The usage of [t] is also influenced by the age of the child. How did the experimenters control for stereotypes during transcription? It is hard to believe that the boundaries between the different variables were as clear-cut as they are shown to be. From: Fangfang Li This paper investigates the segmental phonological features of CDS of British mothers in relation with sociolinguistic variation. more specifically, it studies an English dialect spoken in Tyneside of England, where the sociolinguistic contructions have been studied thoroughly. the varibles examined in this study is word-medial (t) and word-final prevocalic (t), both of which exhibit socialinguistic alternatives. questions: 1. CDS is cover term that specify a speech register that mothers use in address their young children. however, i would expect greater inter-individuality in the exercise of CDS. some mothers may use it more and better than others, first-time mothers may use it less than second-time mothers, and so on. and mothers use it may be because of different motivations. why do those literature that the author cited seem to all assume a unified function of CDS? 2. on page 190, at the bottom, it mentions that "some mothers explicitly corrected their children when the children used glottal forms for medial (t) in naming task". i am a little bit suspicious of why the mothers want to do that. couldn't it be that the mother is aware of the presence of the investigator and therefore make adjustment in CDS? the reason i question it is because the paralle adults' data were obtained as spontaneous speech where the presence of the investigation is less obvious to the speakers. 3. if we were to compare Figure 4 with Figure 5, it is clear that for both boys and girls (if we disregard the compensatory distribution of t and glottls in boys and girls, which is influenced by gender), exhibit similar production pattern with their mothers' ---- all having voiced as the protypcial representation for word-medial (t). so it seems that socially marked but not stigmatized variable does not behave the same as the socially stigmatized one (namely word-medial t), with the former being not within speaker's consciousness, and therefore, is not manipulated in a way the stigmatized on is in CDS. From: ASIMINA SYRIKA A very interesting study on CDS from a more sociolinguistic perspective. Questions: -p.183: The writers mention that "the children were selected according to various criteria. Both parents had to be monolingual English speakers. The children were all born after full-term pregnancy..." They don't mention the education level of the parents. Shouldn't this factor be taken into consideration in CDS input studies? -p.183: "All informants were drawn from the same broadly working-class neighborhoods..." I was wondering how exactly is working class defined. We use the term widely when we're describing selection of informants, but what do we really mean when we say that someone belongs to the working class? Are there factors other than income that play a role in this classification? -What was the context of the interadult speech? Was it free conversation or was the topic of discussion somehow controlled? Were women and men conversing with members of the same or the opposite sex? I think that the way people use dialectal features (and especially stereotype variables in Labov's terminology) is to a great extent affected by the sex of the addressee. Was this factor taken into account in Foulkes et al. study? From: ejkong@ling.ohio-state.edu It examined the realization of /t/ in two phonological contexts in CDS of Tyneside, English, to find out whether CDS plays as a 'social' function or 'anaylytical' function. The data analysis turned out that caregivers in CDS use more standized form of /t/ in both word medial and word final before voiced segment, compared to the frequency of local dialectal form of /t/. This tendency was more often observed in CDS of mothers of girl than that of boy, and decresed as babies grow up. The authors treat these results as an evidence that the characterizations of CDS, such as simplified and emphatic use of phonology/phonetic properties, are primary attributed to 'social function' where mothers are consciously aware of social norms of linguistic forms and therefore use certain forms to influence thier babies. I've been thinking of the impact of less variated realizations of /t/ in CDS on babies' collecting linguistic inputs and phonological generalization over them. Later in the paper, they discuss this to favor 'social' function over 'linguistic' function of CDS (p197). In some part, I agree with them: lack of variability may cause more difficulty in learning. But I doubt that their results only can be explained by 'social' function of CDS but not by 'anaylitical' function of CDS. When dialectal users speak to people from other dialects, they may decide to use the standard dialect not only for overt prestige but also for the easy of communication. (if they think glottlized forms are more difficult way of pronouncing /t/ because not many people use it.) If the same possibility can be applied to CDS, couldnt' we say that caretakers begin with simplified forms and go on complicated forms for 'language teaching' purpose?