Origins of baby talk / motherese / CDS / caregiver talk

[Matthew Saxton]

Dear All,

 

Could anyone please help me trace the provenance of the terms we have
for how adults talk to young children? I'm thinking in particular of
motherese, baby talk, Child Directed Speech and caregiver talk. (If I've
missed any obvious ones, do please let me know this also).

 

My guess for baby talk is Charles Ferguson around 1971, though a
specific reference would be helpful. The earliest use of motherese I can
trace is:

 

Vorster, J. (1975). Mommy linguist - the case for motherese. Lingua,
37/4, 281-312.

 

Catherine Snow does not seem to use the term motherese in her 1972
article, but I would imagine there is an earlier source than Vorster
(1975) (given Vorster's acknowledgement of Snow).

 

For Child Directed Speech (with a hyphen),  I go back as far as:

 

Warren-Leubecker, A. & Bohannon, J.N. (1984). Intonation patterns in
child-directed speech - mother-father differences. Child Development,
55/4, 1379-1385.

 

As for caregiver talk, this phrase throws up precisely no references in
a standard search. Julian Pine talks about "the language of primary
caregivers" in 1995, but that's not quite the same thing:

 

Pine, J. (1995). The language of primary caregivers. In C. Gallaway &
B.J. Richards (eds.) Input and interaction in language acquisition.
Cambridge: C.U.P..

 

Maybe no-one has actually used the phrase caregiver talk and I should
strike it from the record. In any event, any help tracing these terms
back to their various sources would be very much appreciated.

 

Regards,

 

Matthew Saxton.

 

*********************************************************************

 

Matthew Saxton MA, MSc, DPhil

School of Psychology and Human Development,

Institute of Education,

25 Woburn Square,

London,

WC1H 0AA.

U.K.

 

Tel: +44 (0) 20 7612 6509

Fax: +44 (0) 20 7612 6304

 

http://ioewebserver.ioe.ac.uk/ioe/cms/get.asp?cid=4578&4578_0=10248

www.ioe.ac.uk <http://www.ioe.ac.uk> 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/info-childes/attachments/20061204/81d084cd/attachment.htm>