Variation sets in child-directed and child speech: A case study in Turkish

Year 2021, , 1 - 10, 08.04.2021

Vildan İnci-kavak Enes Kavak

https://doi.org/10.32601/ejal.911137

Abstract

This study analyses variation sets in a sample of child-directed speech (CDS) in Turkish in terms of their structure and effect on child speech. The term “variation set” was first introduced to describe the sequences of repetitions, in which the intention behind expressions stays the same throughout the whole conversation while the form shows constant variation. This occurs in various ways such as lexical substitution, rephrasing and so on. This study attempts to investigate the speech of a child aged 1;8 in various conversations with a Turkish native speaker parent who engages in daily activities with her son. As a longitudinal study, the data was collected through video recordings for a period of three months covering the child’s developmental stages from the age 1;8 to 1;10. The videos were recorded by the mother on a regular basis during day-time activities in play, meal and leisure times each week. Initially, the recorded data was transcribed and variation sets were identified. Later, they were analysed by looking at their structure and functions in the speech. Finally, the findings were compared with each other (in three sets) for the changes in frequency, structure and functions between the ages of 1;8 to 1;10. The data provide ample evidence on how variation sets in CDS are modified for a successful interaction without a communication breakdown in line with the child’s linguistic competence.

Keywords

CDS, variation sets, Turkish, first language acquisition, mother tongue

References

• Aksu-Koç, A. (1998). The acquisition of aspect and modality: The case of past reference in Turkish. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Aksu-Koc, A. & Slobin, D. I. (1985). The acquisition of Turkish. In Slobin, D. I., (Ed.) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition. Vol. 1. The data. Hillsadle, NJ: Erlbaum.
• Altınkamış, F., Kern, S., & Sofu, H. (2014). When context matters more than language: Verb or noun in French and Turkish caregiver speech. First Language, 34(6), 537– 550.
• Barrett, M., Harris, M., & Chasin, J. (1992). Early lexical development and maternal speech: A comparison of children's initial and subsequent uses of words. Journal of Child Language,18, 21-40.
• Bazeley, P. (2007). Qualitative data analysis with NVivo. London: Sage.
• Brodsky, P., Waterfall, H. R., & Edelman, S. (2007). Characterizing motherese: On the computational structure of child-directed language. In D.S. McNamara & J. G. Trafton, (Eds.), Proceedings of the 29th cognitive science society conference (pp. 833–838). California: University of California Press.
• Broen, P. A. (1972). The verbal environment of the language-learning child. American speech and hearing association monographs, number 17, Washington, DC: American Speech and Hearing Association.
• Che, E., Brooks, P. J., Alarcón, M.F., Yannaco, F.D., & Donnelly, S. (2017). Assessing the impact of conversational overlap in content on child language growth. Journal of Child Language, 45(1), 72 - 96.
• Chomsky, N., (1988). Language and problems of knowledge: The Managua lectures. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
• Clark, E. V. (2009). First language acquisition (2nd ed.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
• Clark-Stewart, K. A. (1973). Interactions between mothers and their young children: Characteristics and consequences. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 38 (Serial No. 153).
• Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison, K. (2011). Research methods in education (7th ed.). London: Routledge/Falmer.
• Creswell, J. W. (2012). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches (4th Edition). California: Sage.
• Cross, T.G., (1976). Motherese: Its association with rate of syntactic acquisition in young children. In N. Waterson & C. Snow, (Eds.), The development of communication: Social and pragmatic factors in language acquisition. New York: Wiley.
• Dickinson, D., & McCabe, A., (1991). The acquisition and development of language: A social interactionist account of language and literacy development. In J.F. Kavanagh, (Ed.) The language continuum: From infancy to literacy (pp. 1–40). Parkton, MD: York Press.
• Fernald, A. (1976). The mother’s speech to the newborn. Paper presented at the Max-Plank Institute for Psychiatry, Munich.
• Fernald, A. (1989). Intonation and communicative intent in mothers' speech to infants: Is the melody the message?. Child development, 1497-1510.
• Fernald, A., & Mazzie, C. (1991). Prosody and focus in speech to infants mothers’ speech to new-borns. Developmental Psychology, 27, 209–221.
• Field, T., Woodson, R., Greenberg, R., Cohen, D., (1982). Discrimination and imitation of facial expressions by neonates. Science 218, 179–181.
• Frank, S. L., Bod, R., & Christiansen, M. H. (2012). How hierarchical is language use?. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 279(1747), 4522-4531.
• Gallaway, C., & Richards, B.J. (1994). Input and interaction in language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Gleitman, L., Newport, E., & Gleitman, H. (1984). The current status of the motherese hypothesis. Journal of the Child Language, 11(1), 43-79.
• Göksel, A., & Kerslake, C. (2005). Turkish. London and New York: Routledge.
• Grigonytė, Gintarė, &Björkenstam, Kristina N. (2016). Language-independent exploration of repetition and variation in longitudinal child-directed speech: a tool and resources. In Proceedings of the Joint Workshop on NLP for Computer Assisted Language Learning and NLP for Language Acquisition at SLTC, Umeå, 16th November 2016 (pp. 41– 50). Linköping University: Electronic Press.
• Hatch, J. A. (2002). Doing qualitative research in education settings. New York: State University of New York Press.
• Hoff-Ginsberg, E. (1986). Function and structure in maternal speech: Their relation to the child's development of syntax. Developmental Psychology, 22, 155–63.
• Hoff-Ginsberg, E. (1990). Maternal speech and the child’s development of syntax: A further look. Journal of Child Language, 17, 85–99.
• İnci-Kavak, V. (2018). The development of forms of negation in the acquisition of Turkish. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 14(4), 93-110.
• İnci-Kavak, V. (2019). The acquisition and use of negation in the early child language. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 15(2), 587-604.
• Janesick, V. J. (2004). Stretching exercises for qualitative researchers (2nd Edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• Jusczyk, P. W., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Kemler Nelson, D. G., Kennedy, L., Woodward, A., & Piwoz, J. (1992). Perception of acoustic correlates of major phrasal units by young infants. Cognitive Psychology, 24, 252–293.
• Kaye, K. (1980). Why we don't talk ‘baby talk’ to babies. Journal of Child Language, 7(03), 489–507. doi:10.1017/S0305000900002804.
• Küntay, A., & Slobin, D. I. (1999). The acquisition of Turkish as a native language. A research review. Turkic Languages, 3, 151–188.
• Küntay, A., & Slobin, D. I. (1995). Nouns and verbs in Turkish child directed speech. In D. MacLaughlin, & S. McEwen (Eds.), Proceedings of the 19th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development 1 (pp. 323–334). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
• Küntay, A., & Slobin, D. I. (1996). Listening to a Turkish mother: Some puzzles for acquisition. Social interaction, social context, and language: Essays in honor of Susan Ervin-Tripp, 265–286.
• Küntay, A., & Slobin, D.I. (2002). Putting interaction back into child language: Examples from Turkish. Psychology of Language and Communication, 6(1), 5–14.
• Landis, J. R., & Koch, G. G. (1977). An application of hierarchical kappa-type statistics in the assessment of majority agreement among multiple observers. Biometrics, 363-374.
• Lederer, A., & Kelly, M. H. (1991). Prosodic correlates to the adjunct/complement distinction in motherese. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development, 30, 55– 63.
• Lincoln, Y.S., & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
• Matychuk, P. (2005). The role of child-directed speech in language acquisition: A case study. Language sciences, 27 (3), 301–379.
• Merriam, S. B. (1998). Qualitative research and case study applications in education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
• Morgan, J. L. (1986). From simple input to complex grammar. Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Ninio, A. (1992). The relation of children's single word utterances to single word utterances in the input. Journal of Child Language, 19, 87–110.
• Onnis, L., Waterfall, H.R., & Edelman, S. (2008). Learn locally, act globally: Learning language from variation set cues. Cognition, 109, 423–430.
• Papoušek, M., & Papoušek, H. (1981). Musical elements in the infant's vocalization: Their significance for communication, cognition, and creativity. Advances in infancy research.
• Papoušek, H., & Papoušek, M. (1987). Intuitive parenting: A dialectic counterpart to the infant's integrative competence. In J. D. Osofsky (Ed.), Wiley series on personality processes. Handbook of infant development (pp. 669–720). John Wiley & Sons.
• Pine, J., Lieven, E., & Rowland, C. (1997). Stylistic variation at the “single-word” stage: Relations between maternal speech characteristics and children's vocabulary composition and usage. Child Development 68, 807–19.
• Piper, T. (1998). Language and learning: The home and school years. Merrill: Pearson.
• Richards, L., & Morse, J. M. (2007). Users guide for qualitative methods (2nd Ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• Saldana, J. (2015). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. California: Sage.
• Slobin, D. I. (1982). Universal and particular in the acquisition of language. In E. Wanner & L. R. Gleitman (Eds.), Language acquisition: The state of the art, (pp. 128–72). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Shneidman, L. A., & Goldin‐Meadow, S. (2012). Language input and acquisition in a Mayan village: How important is directed speech?. Developmental science, 15(5), 659- 673.
• Snow, C.E. (1972). Mothers’ speech to children learning language. Child Development (43), 549–565.
• Slobin, D. I., Küntay, A., & Hoiting, N. (2001, April). Parental variations on a theme as a guide to language form and use. Paper presented to the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Minneapolis, MN.
• Snow, C.E., (1984). Parent–child interaction and the development of communicative ability. In I.R.L. Scheifelbusch, & J. Pickar (Eds.), The acquisition of communicative competence (pp. 69-107). Baltimore, MD, University Park Press.
• Snow, C.E., (1995). Issues in the study of input: Finetuning, universality, individual and developmental differences, and necessary causes. In P. Fletcher & B. MacWhinney (Eds.), The handbook of child language: The spoken language, early speech development. (pp. 180–193). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
• Snow, C., & Ferguson, C. (1977). Talking to children: Language input and acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Sofu, H. ,Türkay, F. (2004). Input Frequency Effects of Child-Directed Speech in Terms of Noun-Verb Dominance. Presented Conference on (In)determinismus in der Sprache on February 23–25, 2005. University of Cologne.
• Spall, S. (1998). Peer debriefing in qualitative research: Emerging operational models. Qualitative Inquiry, 4(2), 280–292.
• Spillett, M. A. (2003). Peer debriefing: Who, what, when, why, how. Academic Exchange Quarterly, 7(3), 36–40.
• Stern, D., Beebe, B., Jaffe, J., Bennet, S., (1977). The infant’s stimulus world during social interaction: A study of caregiver behaviors with particular reference to repetition and timing. In H. Schaffer (Eds.), Studies in mother-infant interaction (pp. 177-202). New York: Academic Press.
• Shira, T. A. L., & Arnon, I. (2018). SES effects on the use of variation sets in child-directed speech. Journal of child language, 45(6), 1423-1438.
• Tardif, T., Shatz, M. &Naigles, L. (1997). Caregiver speech and children's use of nouns versus verbs: A comparison of English, Italian, and Mandarin. Journal of Child Language 24, 535–565.
• Waterfall, H. R. (2006). A little change is a good thing: Feature theory, language acquisition and variation sets. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago.
• Wells, C.G., (1980). Adjustments in adult–child conversation: some effects of interaction. In: H. Giles, W.P Robinson, & R.M. Smith, (Eds.), Language: Social psychological perspectives (pp. 41-48). Oxford, Pergammon Press.
• Wirén, Mats, Björkenstam, Kristina, N., Grigonytė, G., & Cortes, E. E. (2016). Longitudinal studies of variation sets in child-directed speech. In The 54th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Berlin, Germany, August 11, 2016 (pp. 44–52). Association for Computational Linguistics.