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Child-directed and overheard input from different speakers in two distinct cultures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2021

Georgia LOUKATOU ,
Camila SCAFF ,
Katherine DEMUTH ,
Alejandrina CRISTIA  and
Naomi HAVRON Open the ORCID record for Naomi HAVRON [Opens in a new window]
Georgia LOUKATOU*
Affiliation:
LSCP, Département d'études cognitives, ENS, EHESS, CNRS, PSL University, 75005 Paris, France
Camila SCAFF
Affiliation:
Human ecology group, Institute of evolutionary medicine (IEM), University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Katherine DEMUTH
Affiliation:
Macquairie University, Australia
Alejandrina CRISTIA
Affiliation:
LSCP, Département d'études cognitives, ENS, EHESS, CNRS, PSL University, 75005 Paris, France
Naomi HAVRON
Affiliation:
University of Haifa, Israel
*
Address for correspondence: Georgia Loukatou, Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique Paris 75005 France. E-mail: georgialoukatou@gmail.com
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Abstract

Despite the fact that in most communities interaction occurs between the child and multiple speakers, most previous research on input to children focused on input from mothers. We annotated recordings of Sesotho-learning toddlers living in non-industrial Lesotho in South Africa, and French-learning toddlers living in urban regions in France. We examined who produced the input (mothers, other children, adults), how much input was child directed, and whether and how it varied across speakers. As expected, mothers contributed most of the input in the French recordings. However, in the Sesotho recordings, input from other children was more common than input from mothers or other adults. Child-directed speech from all speakers in both cultural groups showed similar qualitative modifications. Our findings suggest that input from other children is prevalent and has similar features as child-directed from adults described in previous work, inviting cross-cultural research into the effects of input from other children.

Keywords

cross-culturallinguistic inputchild-directed speechpeer speechquantitative and qualitative analysisFrench languageSesotho languagelanguage development

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Type
Article
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Journal of Child Language , Volume 49 , Issue 6 , November 2022 , pp. 1173 - 1192
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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