1. UNIVERSIDAD PEDAGÓGICA EXPERIMENTAL LIBERTADOR
INSTITUTO PEDAGÓGICO DE CARACAS
DEPARTAMENTO DE IDIOMAS MODERNOS
PROGRAMA DE INGLÉS
CÁTEDRA DE LINGÜÍSTICA
L1 LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
April, 2012
2. Caretaker Speech
Under normal circumstances, in
Western cultures, the human infant is
certainly helped in his or her language
acquisition by the typical behavior of
the adults in the home environment.
Adults such as mom, dad, granny and
grandpa tend not to address the little
creature before them as if they are
involved in normal adult-to-adult
conversation.
3. Caretaker Speech
Caretaker speech is also characterized by simple sentence structures and a lot
of repetition. If the child is indeed in the process of working out a sys tem of
putting sounds and words together, then these simplified models produced by
the interacting adult may serve as good clues to the basic structural
organization involved.
Mother: there’s your cup of tea Mother: oh— is that nice?
Child: (takes cup) Child: (assents)
Mother: you drink it nicely Mother: will Mummy drink her tea?
Child: (pretends to drink) Child: (assents)
Mother: l’ll drink my tea
4. Lateralization
The term brain lateralization refers to
the fact that the two halves of the
human brain are not exactly alike.
Each hemisphere has functional
specializations: some function whose
neural mechanisms are localized
primarily in one half of the brain.
5. Lateralization
In humans, the most obvious functional
specialization is speech and language
abilities. In the mid-1800s, Paul Broca (a
French neurosurgeon) identified a
particular area of the left hemisphere
that plays a primary role in speech
production. Shortly afterwards, a German
neurologist, Carl Wernicke,
identified another part of the left
hemisphere primarily concerned with
language comprehension.
6. Lateralization
Even thought the two hemispheres have
different functions they do not work
independently of each other. They
communicate back and forth across the
corpus callosum. This is not an equal
partnership however, one hemisphere
usually dominates over the other, an effect
best illustrated by the fact that most people
are only good with either their right or left
hand. In most cases the left hemisphere is
believed to be the dominate hemisphere
7. Critical Period
The general belief is that during childhood
(up until puberty), there is a period when
the human brain is most ready to 'receive'
and learn a particular language.
This period is referred to as the critical
period. If a child does not acquire language
during this period, for any one of a
number of reasons, then he or she will
have great difficulty learning language
later on.
8. Motherese
Many studies were undertaken to see what the effects
of the way a mother spoke to her baby had on the
language learning process. This type of speech was
coined "motherese" and "caregiver" talk.
9. Motherese
Motherese plays an important role in first language
acquisition and that it also has special functions that
are shown to be present in second language Hi baby!!
acquisition.
Motherese serves three purposes: 1. To aid in
communication 2. To teach language and 3. To socialize
the child (Ferguson 1977). The first appears to be the
most important for a mother and child because the
main motivation is to communicate, to understand, to
be understood and to keep two minds focused on the
same topic (Brown 1977)
10. Motherese
How Adults Support Children's Language Learning
When adults are helping infants learn to talk, it is remarkable how much of
this "help" comes naturally and unconsciously. Take the case of a mother
engaged in face-to-face play with a six-month-old child.
•The mother gazes into the child's face and raises the pitch of her voice
to a high register• .
• She makes swooping changes from low to high, from soft to loud.
• She exaggerates consonant sounds, and stretches out vowel sounds.
• She speaks in sentences with few words and simple syntax.
•She leaves pauses in her utterances: she speaks and waits, speaks and
waits, as if she were inviting the baby into a conversation and showing
him where to slot his utterances.
11. Baby Talk
The simple language forms used by
young children, or the modified form of
speech often used by adults with young
children. Also known as motherese.
Motherese is the consciously imperfect
or altered speech used by adults in
speaking to small children ( Merriam-
Webster, 2010)
12. Baby Talk
Examples and Observations
Linguists who have studied the structure of baby talk words have pointed out that there
are some typical sound change rules that relate the baby talk word to its adult
equivalent. For instance, reduction of the word to a shorter form is common, as is
reduplication of the short form, hence, words such as 'din din' and 'bye bye.' It is not
clear, however, how some baby talk words were derived: no simple rule explains how
rabbits turned into bunnies.
13. Baby Talk
Reduplication (repetition) in Baby Talk
It may be agreed that reduplication is a "general pattern that all children follow in
varying degrees" (Fee & Ingram 1980). Reduplication in linguistics is a
morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) is
repeated exactly or with a slight change.(British Encyclopedia, 2010)
'Baby words' like doggie or moo-cow do not help a child to learn language more
efficiently. The reduplication of sounds in words like baba and dada, on the other
hand, does enable babies to communicate because the words are easy to say."
(Sara Thorne, Mastering Advanced English Language. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)
14. Baby Talk
Using Baby Talk With the Elderly
"Caporael (1981) focused on the use of displaced baby talk to the
institutionalized elderly. Baby talk is a simplified speech pattern with
distinctive paralinguistic features of high pitch and exaggerated intonation
contour that is usually associated with speech to young children. More than
22% of speech to residents in one nursing home was identified as baby talk.
Further, even talk from caregivers to the elderly that was not identified as
baby talk was more likely to be judged as directed toward a child than was talk
between caregivers.
15.
16. REFERENCES
Norquist, R (2012) Definition and examples of baby talk[Document on line]
About.English. Available: http://grammar.about.com/od/ab/g/babytalkterm.htm?p=1
[Searched: 2012 April]
Gazzaniga, M (2011) What is Lateralization? [Document on line] The Psychology Career
Center . Available: http://www.allpsychologycareers.com/topics/lateralization-right-
brain-left-brain.html [Searched: 2012 April]
Yule, G (1996). The study of Language. Second Edition. Cambridge University Press . UK.
Temple, J. et al (eds) (2011) "Motherese": How Adults Support Children's
Language Learning [Document on line] Pearson Allyn Bacon Prentice Hall. Available:
http://www.education.com/print/motherese-support-children-language-learning/
[Searched: 2012 April]
