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The determinants of baby talk: relationship to context*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Laura D'Odorico  and
Fabia Franco
Laura D'Odorico
Affiliation:
Università di Padova
Fabia Franco
Affiliation:
Università di Padova
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Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between context and mothers' speech to prelinguistic infants. In the first phase, videorecordings of a mother talking with her infant were transcribed; in the second phase, 48 mothers were asked to select the utterance most apt for a series of drawings representing different contexts of mother–infant interaction. Data analyzed with respect to syntactic and semantic features revealed that the informational content of mothers' speech is different in relation to various contexts. Furthermore, different syntactic types are chosen in relation to different contents. Results are discussed in relation to a hypothesis assuming that mothers' speech is determined by particular interactive rules operating in the mother–infant dyad.

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Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , October 1985 , pp. 567 - 586
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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