[Linganth] Is "motherese" universal?

[Chad Nilep]

[This message is not being posted to Anthro-L, as I don't subscribe. Feel free
to forward.]

A draft of Dr. Falk's forthcoming "Prelinguistic evolution in early hominins:
Whence motherese?" is at:
http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Falk/Referees/

Quoting one relevant line, "Despite several ‘flawed’ studies to the contrary
(Monnot 1999), Monnot marshals strong support for the hypothesis that ID
[infant-directed] speech that is characterized by a simplified vocabulary,
more repetition, exaggerated vowels, higher overall tone, wider range of tone,
and slower tempo is a universal trait among modern humans."

Monnot, M. (1999) Function of infant-directed speech. Human Nature 10:415-443.

Reading Falk's responses to commentaries
<http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Falk/Falk.Response.html> (I can't locate
the original commentaries) suggests that she has little interest in the sort
of critiques raised on this list. "There are only a few assertions with which
I categorically disagree, such as the argument by Rosenberg et al. that
motherese is not really universal (addressed in 2.2. of the target article and
in the commentary by Monnot et al.), and the statement by Bouissac that I
assert that 'ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.'"

As Professor Woolard suggests, the reason for this categorical disagreement
appears to be at least partially based on personal experience, as well as
review of psycholinguistic literature. "Put a baby in my arms and I cannot
refrain from producing sing-song streams of baby talk, punctuated by attention-
getting clicks and breathy intakes of air, all of which are accompanied by a
barrage of gentle bouncing.  From reading the literature on language
acquisition, I began to realize that motherese occurs all over the world, that
babies like it, and that it is important for (among other things) their
eventual acquisition of language." (from Falk's introduction to her responses)

-Chad Nilep

Quoting Kathryn Woolard <kwoolard at ucsd.edu>:

> Since I haven't seen either the NYT report or the journal article,
> I'm wary of contributing to this discussion - it feels uncomfortably
> like the "Dame Edna" uproar of a while back. But Dean Falk gave a
> colloquium in my department two years ago  on exactly this material
> and thesis, so that's the basis of my comment here. At that talk, I
> expressed  many of the same concerns you've all been discussing here.
> It was apparent in our exchange that she (Dean Falk is a woman) had
> never heard of or read Ochs and Schieffelin's work. (I think I
> remember that she was relying primarily on a psycholinguist's review
> of the literature for the claim that "we now know" that all societies
> have motherese, despite some earlier reports to the contrary.)  After
> the talk I told her how to spell O & S's names, mentioned the
> principal refs. and urged her to look at them. Roy D'Andrade and
> other audience members tackled Falk's conception of what language is
> and the ethnocentric - actually egocentric, since she announced that
> her view of universals of mothering was based on her own experience
> as a mother -  ideas about childcare and childcarrying. It was an
> extended, quite impassioned and very critical discussion, and,  as I
> mentioned above, the relevant ling. anthro. refs. were urged upon
> Falk. So it's not opportunity or awareness that's missing here.
>
> A written comment to the journal seems likely to be in order. But
> it's really important that those concerned about this argument  read
> Falk's own article carefully. I recall that she  defines motherese in
> terms of a very very few features ( I think  exaggerated intonation
> contour was one of them, but I'm not sure), not  the register of
> "babytalk" , e.g. as described by Ferguson or by Ochs &
> Schieffelin/Heath for American middle-class whites. Falk's narrow
> definition might actually fit brief early stages of mother-child
> interaction in more societies than we are accustomed to talk about.
> (do I have a vague recollection of Elinor Ochs reporting a fleeting
> early infant stage in Samoa that looked more like this?)
>
> Kit
> --
> Kathryn A. Woolard			kwoolard at ucsd.edu
> Professor				Phone: (858) 534-4639
> Department of Anthropology, 0532		Fax :     (858) 534-5946
> UCSD
> 9500 Gilman Drive
> La Jolla, CA 92093-0532
>


--
Chad D. Nilep                         Rien ne serait pire pour
Department of Linguistics             l'humanité que de progresser
University of Colorado, Boulder       vers une situation où l'on ne
http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~nilep/      parlerait qu'une seule langue.
                                       -Jacques Chirac