A Rose By Any other Name--Other Rosebuds
Keith Nelson
k1n at psu.edu
Wed Dec 6 21:53:26 UTC 2006
Matthew and all. Thanks. All very interesting comments and sources.
I would like to add just a few comments, much in line with those of
Dan Slobin, that there are many differentiations that are important
and that a "preferred" general term may not be really that helpful.
The language input that the child "draws upon" (e.g. Nelson,
1980) is what matters for the individual child's progress, and that
attended-to input can be overheard from many ages and sources of
speakers and other attended-to input may be in a variety of ways
"adjusted" or "directed" to the child in terms of the momentary
context, the ongoing relationship, and the speaker's awareness of the
child's current language repertoire. Whenever we can, by both
naturalistic and experimental techniques it is helpful to analyze and
discuss in terms of many of these differentiations.
As far as history of terms goes, I suspect there is quite a
bit more out there. I will point to just a few examples that with
brief digging I have to share.
In 1978-1985 already there were review-extension chapters,
each referring to earlier studies by many authors , by Gleason &
Weintraub (78) Cross & colleagues(85), and Nelson (80, 81, 82)
Examples of terms
Gleason & W input language, mother-child speech, father-child speech,
adult-child speech
Cross et al. maternal speech style, maternal speech,
maternal conversational
style, maternal speech adjustments
Nelson conversational, semantic, and syntactic input,
maternal input,
carriers and subtypes of carriers in input (carrying
particular semantic
and/or syntactic structures)
necessary, sufficient, catalytic, and irrelevant components of --
input, mother-child conversation, language input
Other fairly early work and exploration of terms occurred in
several papers that I collaborated on with John Bonvillian. Again,
with very brief glancing back, the following terms can be spotted in
78 : parental talk to children , mother talk to children , sibling
talk to children , parental style
Again, thanks. Cheers, Keith Nelson
a few refs:
. Cross, T. , Nienhuys, T. G., & Kirkman, M. (1985)
Parent-child iteraction with receptively disabled children: Some
determinants of maternal speech style. In K. E. Nelson (Ed.),
Children's language, Vol. 5. Erlbaum.
Gleason, J B & Weintraub, S (1978) Input language and the
acquisition of communicative competence. In K E Nelson Ed.
Children's Language, Volume 1 Halstead/Wiley.
Nelson, K. E. (1977). Facilitating children's syntax acquisition.
Developmental Psychology, 13, 101-107.
Nelson, K. E. (1980). Theories of the child's acquisition of syntax:
A look at rare events and at necessary, catalytic, and irrelevant
components of mother-child conversation. Annals of the New York
Academy of Sciences, 345, 45-67.
Nelson, K. E. (1981). Toward a rare-event cognitive comparison theory
of syntax acquisition. In P. S. Dale & D. Ingram (Eds.), Child
language: An international perspective (pp. 229-240).
Nelson, K. E. (1982). Experimental gambits in the service of language
acquisition theory. In S.A. Kuczaj (Ed.), Language development,
syntax and semantics. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Nelson, K. E., & Bonvillian, J. D. (1978). Early language
development: Conceptual growth and related processes between 2 and 4
1/2 years of age. In K. E. Nelson (Ed.), Children's language, Vol. 1.
New York: Gardner/Wiley.
At 9:58 AM +0000 12/6/06, Matthew Saxton wrote:
>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>http://ioewebserver.ioe.ac.uk/ioe/cms/get.asp?cid=4578&4578_0=10248
><http://www.ioe.ac.uk>www.ioe.ac.uk
>
--
Keith Nelson
Professor of Psychology
Penn State University
423 Moore Building
University Park, PA 16802
keithnelsonart at psu.edu
814 863 1747
And what is mind
and how is it recognized ?
It is clearly drawn
in Sumi ink, the
sound of breezes drifting through pine.
--Ikkyu Sojun
Japanese Zen Master 1394-1481
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