Hostname: page-component-5447f9dfdb-97xxw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-29T00:54:17.180Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Maternal speech to prelingual infants in Japan and the United States: relationships among functions, forms and referents*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Hiromi Morikawa ,
Nancy Shand  and
Yorio Kosawa
Hiromi Morikawa*
Affiliation:
University of Kansas
Nancy Shand
Affiliation:
Menninger Foundation
Yorio Kosawa
Affiliation:
Kobe University
*
Child Language Program, University of Kansas, 1043 Indiana, Lawrence, Kansas 66044, USA.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Maternal speech to 3-month-old infants was compared for American and Japanese mother-infant dyads. Utterances were analysed at the levels of function, form and referent, and in relation to infant gaze direction. Loglinear categorical analysis revealed that infant gaze affected the intended functions of maternal speech differently for the two cultural groups. Cultural differences were also seen in the nature of function-form, and function-referent relationships. The differences seem to be consistent with culture-characteristic profiles of maternal behaviour towards older infants and children. It is suggested that transmission of culture through maternal speech starts at the earliest stage of infant development.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , June 1988 , pp. 237 - 256
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

*

This study was supported in part by grants from the National Science Foundation (BNS80-07131, BNS76-83007), Japan Ministry of Education and Research Department of Menninger Foundation awarded to the second and third authors. We acknowledge Jan Lyle for her assistance in transcribing and coding utterances. We thank Susan Kemper for her continuing support during the preparation of this manuscript. We would also like to thank Edwin Martin for his statistical advice, and Mabel Rice, Clifton Pye, Jeanne Johnson and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions and comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.

References

REFERENCES

Azuma, H. (1982). Current trends in studies of behavioral development in Japan. International Journal of Behavioral Development 5. 153–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Azuma, H., Kashiwagi, K. & Hess, R. (1981). Child's cognitive development and mother's attitude and behavior style. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press.Google Scholar
Bishop, Y. M. M., Feinberg, S. E. & Holland, P. W. (1975). Discrete multivariate analysis: theory and practice. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Blount, B. G. (1977). Ethnography and caretaker-child interaction. In Snow, C. E. & Ferguson, C. A. (eds), Talking to children: language input and acquisition. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Brown, R. (1977). Introduction. In Snow, C. E. & Ferguson, C. A. (eds), Talking to children: language input and acquisition. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Caudill, W. (1972). Tiny dramas: vocal communication between mother and infant in Japanese and American families. In Libra, W. P. (ed.), Transcultural research in mental health. Honolulu, HI: The University Press of Hawaii.Google Scholar
Caudill, W. A. & Weinstein, H. (1969). Maternal care and infant behavior in Japan and America. Psychiatry 32. 12–43.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cherry, L. (1976). Interactive strategies in language development: a model of social cognition. Paper presented to the Conference on Language, Children, and Society, Columbus, Ohio.Google Scholar
Clancy, P. M. (1986). The acquisition of Japanese. In Slobin, D. (ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition. Hillsdale NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Cohen, J. (1960). A coefficient of agreement for nominal scales. Educational and Psychological Measurement 20. 37–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collis, G. M. & Schaffer, H. R. (1975). Synchronization of visual attention in mother–infant pairs. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 16. 315–20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cross, T. G. (1977). Mothers' speech adjustments: the contribution of selected child listener variables. In Snow, C. E. & Ferguson, C. A. (eds), Talking to children: language input and cquisition. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Della Corte, M., Benedict, H. & Klein, D. (1983). The relationship of pragmatic dimensions of mothers' speech to the referential-expressive distinction. Journal of Child Language 10. 35–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Villiers, J. G. (1984). Form and force interactions: the development of negatives and questions. In Schiefelbusch, R. L. & Pickar, J. (eds), The acquisition of communicative competence. Baltimore, MD: University Park Press.Google Scholar
Dixon, W. J. (ed.) (1983). BMDP statistical software. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Dunn, J. B. (1977). Patterns of early interaction: continuities and consequences. In Schaffer, H. R. (ed.), Studies in mother-infant interaction. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Feinberg, S. E. (1980). The analysis of cross-classified categorical data. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Ferguson, C. A. (1977). Baby talk as a simplified register. In Snow, C. E. & Ferguson, C. A. (eds), Talking to children: language input and acquisition. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Fischer, J. L. (1970). Linguistic socialization: Japan and the United States. In Hill, R. & Konig, R. (eds), Families in East and West: socialization process and kinship ties. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Fleiss, J. L., Cohen, J. & Everitt, B. S. (1969). Large sample standard errors of kappa and weighted kappa. Psychological Bulletin 72. 323–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Folger, J. P. & Chapman, R. B. (1978). A pragmatic analysis of spontaneous imitations. Journal of Child Language 5. 25–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Francis, P. L., Self, P. A. & Noble, C. A. (1982). Maternal verbal control techniques with young infants during mutual gaze and visual co-orientation episodes. International Journal of Behavioral Development 5. 317–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hymes, D. (1967). Models of the interaction of language and social setting. Journal of Social Issues 23. 8–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jaffe, J., Stern, D. N. & Perry, J. C. (1973). ‘Conversational’ coupling of gaze behavior in prelinguistic human development. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 2. 321–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Morikawa, H. (1986). Social and cultural aspects of language acquisition: examples from Japanese language. Working Papers in Language Development 1. 59–76. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas.Google Scholar
Newport, E. L., Gleitman, H. & Gleitman, L. R. (1977). Mother, I'd rather do it myself: some effects and non-effects of maternal speech style. In Snow, C. E. & Ferguson, C. A. (eds), Talking to children: language input and acquisition. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Penman, R., Cross, T., Milgrom-Friedman, J. & Meares, R. (1983). Mothers' speech to prelinguai infants: a pragmatic analysis. Journal of Child Language 10. 17–34.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Phillips, J. (1973). Syntax and vocabulary of mothers' speech to young children: age and sex comparison. Child Development 44. 182–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pye, C. (1986). Quiche Mayan speech to children. Journal of Child Language 13. 85–100.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sachs, J. & Devin, J. (1973). Young children's knowledge of age-appropriate speech styles. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America.Google Scholar
Schieffelin, B. & Eisenberg, A. R. (1984). Cultural variation in children's conversation. In Schiefelbusch, R. L. & Pickar, J. (eds), Communicative competence: acquisition and intervention. Baltimore, MD: University Park Press.Google Scholar
Sengoku, T. (1984). Itsu Nihonjin ni naru ka. Tokyo: Shogakukan.Google Scholar
Sherrod, K. B., Crawley, S., Peterson, G. & Bennett, P. (1978). Maternal language to prelinguistic infants: semantic aspects. Infant Behavior and Development 1. 335–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snow, C. E. (1977). The development of conversation between mothers and babies. Journal of Child Language 4. 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snow, C. E., Arlan-Rupp, A., Hassing, Y., Jobse, J., Joosten, J. & Vorster, J. (1976). Mothers' speech in three social classes. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 5. 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trevarthen, C. & Hubley, P. (1978). Secondary intersubjectivity: confidence, confiding and acts of meaning in the first year. In Lock, A. (ed.), Action, gesture and symbol: the emergence of language. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
White, B. L., Castle, P. & Held, R. (1964). Observations on the development of visually-directed reaching. Child Development 35. 349–64.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed