A Rose By Any other Name

Wed Dec 6 09:58:38 UTC 2006

Dear All,

Talking to Children: Origins of Terminology

Many, many thanks to all those who took the time and trouble to help
track down the origins of these stalwart terms from the child language
canon. I have tried to distil the essential sources in what follows, but
Buyer Beware! I do not present this as a definitive list (I still need
to do some more old-fashioned shuffling round real - not virtual -
libraries).

The discussion extended rather quickly beyond my original question,
which simply concerned the provenance of terms. In particular, the
appropriateness of different terms with regard to their precision and
relevance was, quite rightly, raised as a key issue. For what it's
worth, and without going into detail, I think Child Directed Speech
(CDS) covers most of the bases required by child language researchers.
And it certainly seems to have the upper hand as the most popular term
in recent times.

(1)        Baby Talk

The granddaddy (?!) of them all, which goes back at least to 1956 and
almost to 1948:

Casagrande, J.B. (1948). Comanche baby language. International Journal
of American Linguistics, 14, 11-14.

Ferguson, C. A. (1956). Arabic baby talk. In M. Halle (Ed.), For Roman
Jakobson: On the occasion of his sixtieth birthday 11th October 1956.
The Hague: Mouton.

(2)        Motherese

Two competitors here, though InfoCHILDES correspondents clearly favour
Elissa Newport as the True Progenitor:

Newport, E.L. (1975) Motherese: The speech of mothers to young children.
Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.

Newport, E.L. (1976). Motherese: The speech of mothers to young
children. In N.J. Castellan, D.B. Pisoni & G.R. Potts (Eds.), Cognitive
theory (Vol. 2). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

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

(3)        Child Directed Speech (CDS)

Despite some help from Neil Bohannon, I haven't (yet) been able to go
further back than his own 1984 paper.

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

(4)        Input Language

Like linguistic input and exposure language, this one is very broad in
scope:

Ninio, A. (1986). The direct mapping of function to form in children's
early language. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 15, 559
(Abstract).

(5)        Caregiver Talk

Not quite caregiver talk in the references below (maybe it really was a
figment of my imagination), but here are two early uses of caregiver:

Beckwith, L., Cohen, S.E., Kopp, C.B., Parmelee, A.H. & Marcy, T.G.
(1976). Caregiver-infant interaction and early cognitive development in
preterm infants. Child Development, 47/3, 579-587.

Cohen, S.E., Beckwith, L. & Parmelee, A.H. (1978). Receptive language
development in preterm children as related to caregiver-child
interaction. Pediatrics, 61/1, 16-20.

(6)        Caretaker Talk

As Brian Richards points out, this one was not destined to take off in
the U.K. (and other Anglophone countries), because caretaker means
janitor. Please note,  janitor talk has not yet been recognised as a
distinct register, used when talking to children, but this seems like a
terrible injustice to me and I shall be mounting a campaign of support
very soon.

Schachter, F.F., Fosha, D., Stemp, S., Brotman, N. & Ganger, S. (1976).
Everyday caretaker talk to toddlers vs. 3s and 4s. Journal of Child
Language, 3/2, 221-245.

(7)        Infant Directed Speech

I doubt very much this is the earliest usage, but at least it provides a
lead:

Cooper, R.P. & Aslin, R.N. (1990). Preference for infant-directed speech
in the first month after birth. Child Development, 61/5, 1584-1595.

(8)        Linguistic Input

This one is all-encompassing. I guess it extends beyond language
learning and is in the same class as linguistic environment. Again, I
doubt if the following is the first usage of the term, but it provides
something to go on:

Schlesinger, I.M. (1977). Role of cognitive development and linguistic
input in language acquisition. Journal of Child Language, 4/2, 153-169.

(9)        Exposure Language

Dan Slobin's declared favourite. My initial search does not go back too
far, but again, I hope it provides a useful lead.

Gillette, J., Gleitman, H. & Gleitman, L & Lederer, A. (1999). Human
simulations of vocabulary learning. Cognition, 73/2, 135-176.

(A Few) Miscellaneous References

Bohannon, J., Stine, E.L. & Ritzenberg, D. (1982). Motherese: The
effects of feedback and experience. The Bulletin of the Psychonomic
Society, 19, 201-204.

Bohannon, J. & Warren-Leubecker, A. (1988) Recent developments in child
directed speech: You've come a long way, Baby-Talk. Language Science,
10, 89-110.

Phillips, J.R. (1970).Formal characteristics of speech which mothers
address to their young children. Unpublished doctoral dissertation,
Johns Hopkins University.

Phillips, J.R. (1973). Syntax and vocabulary of mothers' speech to young
children: Age and sex comparisons. Child Development, 44, 182-185.

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

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> 

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