Origins of baby talk / motherese / CDS / caregiver talk

[Marilyn Vihman]

>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:

Ferguson's work on this goes back quite a bit earlier:

Ferguson, C. A. (1956). Arabic baby talk. In M. Halle et al., eds., 
For Roman Jakobson. The Hague: Mouton.
Ferguson, C. A. (1964). Baby talk in six languages. American 
Anthrolpologist, 66, 103-114.

In the 1964 paper, of which I have a reprint, I find only one earlier 
paper cited that uses a term for CDS:

Casagrande, J. B. (1948). Comanche baby language.  Intl J of Amer. 
Ling., 14, 11-14.

Hope that's helpful!

-marilyn
>
>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>http://ioewebserver.ioe.ac.uk/ioe/cms/get.asp?cid=4578&4578_0=10248
><http://www.ioe.ac.uk>www.ioe.ac.uk
>


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   Marilyn M. Vihman		       |
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