Environmental Factors Flashcards
What is child directed speech (CDS)?
The various ways in which a caregiver (unconsciously) adapts their speech in order to aid a child in their language development.
What are the key features of CDS?
- higher or melodic pitch
- more frequent and longer pauses
- slower and clearer speech
- repetition
- grammatically simpler sentences
- more questions (including tag and known-answer q’s), as well as providing the answer
- diminutives
- use of nouns rather than pronouns
- more frequent use of plural pronouns rather than singular
- expansion
- recasts
- politeness features
- mitigated imperatives
What are diminutives?
Words that suggest a smaller scale of what is being described, often with a suffix e.g. doggie
What is expansion?
Where a caregiver might develop the child’s utterance to make it more grammatically complete.
What is a recast?
The grammatically incorrect utterance of a child is spoken back to the child but in the corrected form.
What are mitigating imperatives?
Where a command is given but disguised in the form of a question e.g. ‘should we get this homework done then?’
What is a research point about CDS?
The Kaluli tribe in Papua New Guinea has been identified as not using specific child directed speech and yet the children do not experience late or impaired language as a result.
