A cross-linguistic examination of young children’s everyday language experiences
Bunce, Soderstrom, Bergelson, Rosemberg, Stein, Alam, Migdalek, Casillas
Journal of Child Language
North American English, UK English,
Argentinian Spanish, Tseltal (Mayan), Yeli Dnye (Papuan)
We
present an exploratory cross-linguistic analysis of the quantity of
target-child-directed speech and adult-directed speech in North American
English (US & Canadian), United Kingdom English, Argentinian Spanish,
Tseltal (Tenejapa, Mayan), and Yélî Dnye (Rossel Island, Papuan), using
annotations from 69 children aged 2–36 months. Using a novel methodological
approach, our cross-linguistic and cross-cultural findings support prior work
suggesting that target-child-directed speech quantities are stable across
early development, while adult-directed speech decreases. A preponderance of
speech from women was found to a similar degree across groups, with less
target-child-directed speech from men and children in the North American
samples than elsewhere. Consistently across groups, children also heard more
adult-directed than target-child-directed speech. Finally, the numbers of
talkers present in any given clip strongly impacted children’s
moment-to-moment input quantities. These findings illustrate how the
structure of home life impacts patterns of early language exposure across
diverse developmental contexts.