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Family influences on the language development of young children
omen's Studies Int. Quart., 1980, Vol. 3, I~P. 259-266
Pergamon Press, Ltd.
Printed in Great Britain
FAMILY I N F L U E N C E S ON THE LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT OF Y O U N G C H I L D R E N MARIANNE E N G L E
Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, U.S.A.
(Accepted December 1979) Syno~is--Recent research has demonstrated that mothers simplify their language in several ways when speaking to young children. As the childrens' language increases in complexity, so does the mothers'. Although fathers also make similar Motherese-typemodifications in their language, these simplificationsdo not change as the child gets older. These results are discussed in terms of the communicative,pedagogicaland socializationfunctions of Motherese. A further study concerning the language parents use during play is presented. Fathers employ a style that is directive and conducive to the presentation of new information. Mothers have a playing style suited to the integration of new ideas. Most young children learn to talk. By the age of 5 the majority of young children have mastered all but the most difficult features of their native languages. The enormity of this task and its seemingly miraculous quality has astonished and bewildered students of linguistics and psychology from the earliest times to the present. 'It is frightening to think what an enormous number of grammatical forms are poured over the poor head of the young child. And he [sic], as if it were nothing at all, adjusts to all this chaos, constantly sorting out into rubrics the disordering elements of the words he hears, without noticing as he does this, his gigantic effort . . . . The labor he thus performs at this age is astonishing enough, but even more amazing and unparalleled is the ease with which he does it' (Chukousky, 1963; p. 10). To account for the ease of this process Chomsky (1968) proposed that the child is born equipped with the universal features shared by all languages. He hypothesized that a child will begin to talk after the development of necessary cognitive structures and some exposure to the native language. He took this extremely nativist position because he believed that children are exposed to haphazard linguistic environments which are not conducive to language instruction. However, neither he nor his colleagues examined any actual transcripts of parent-child language interactions. Once these transcripts were gathered and analyzed by various researchers (Snow, 1972; Phillips, 1970; Broen, 1972; Newport, t 975; Remick, 1971) it became clear that the psycholinguistic environment provided for young children, at least from mothers' speech, is far from haphazard. Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies in the laboratory and in the home during free play and structured activities all seem to point to the existence of a special language that mothers address to their children. Initially, the mothers speak very simply and clearly using a simplified vocabulary. As the children learn more language, the mothers take account of this and adjust their language accordingly. Motherese and Baby Talk Register are the two interchangeable' terms that are used to refer to the highly specific language that mothers address to their young children. 259
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MARL~'~ ENGLE
THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MOTHERESE Motherese has been studied in two ways: syntactically and functionally--the words and grammatical constructions that are spoken and the way in which these words are used. There is a developmental progression as well in that Motherese appears to be attuned to the child's current linguistic abilities. Functionally, the language also changes with the child's growing performance. On a syntactic level Motherese consists of utterances that are simple, short, and grammatically well-formed. As the child masters more of the language, the mother's language slowly gets longer and more complex until it eventually resembles adult speech, usually when the child is between 5 and 7 years old (Baldwin and Baldwin, 1974). This is a gradual process that appears to begin when the mother believes that the child is able, at least minimally, to understand her. In their large and comprehensive study, the Baldwins find that the mothers' average utterance length is 1.5 words greater than the children's at each age. As the children's mean length of utterance grows longer, so do the mothers stay ahead by 1.5 words. The ways that mothers use language are distinctive and also change over time. In comparison to speech to other adults, Motherese is more repetitive (Newport, 1975), more oriented in the present (Phillips, 1970), and more controlling (Baldwin and Baldwin, 1974). In addition, it is slower, having distinct pauses after each sentence, and it has specialized intonation and pitch patterns. Repetitions are particularly interesting since they show a clear interaction effect over time: when the child is speaking in one to three word utterances, the mother repeats herself a great deal. Once the child's speech lengthens, the mother repeats her child's utterances more and her own less (Newport, 1975). Another type of interaction occurs with the uses of labeling and description. Both the mothers and children decrease their frequency of labeling and increase description as the children mature. Labeling is shorter and more easily understood than descriptions which tend to be longer and more complex. Control of an interaction is often measured by the number of utterances contributed by each participant and by the frequency of imperatives or behavior requests which are sometimes couched as questions. Mothers talk more than their young children and request more behaviors of their children than vice versa. Both mothers and children decrease the frequency of behavior requests as the child ages from 2~---5 (Baldwin and Baldwin, 1974). Clearly, mothers direct a very special language to their children. The syntactic and functional phenomena taken together have prompted some researchers to hypothesize that the mothers provide a language teaching environment for the child (Snow, 1972; Ferguson, 1977). The relative contributions of innate mechanisms, this heavily structured environment, and the interactions of the two to the child's acquisition are unknown as yet. What about other people in the child's environment? Other than for fathers, who are discussed in the next section, there are very little data. Female and male day care attendants use many of the Motherese modifications in their speech when talking to their young charges. The male day care workers use the children's names four times as often as the females (Gleason, 1975). Four- and 8-year-old children speak a form of Motherese when addressing 2-year-olds. As might be expected, the older children are better at it (Shatz and Gelman, 1973). Women who are not mothers modify their language along the same lines but not as much as mothers (Snow, 1972). It seems likely that most of the speech directed to young children is modified so that the children can understand some, if not all, of it. Whether speakers other than mothers pitch their speech as directly to the child's current production is not clear. More probably, other speakers use modifications that would be useful to most
Family Influenceson the LanguageDevelopmentof Young Children
261
children regardless of each child's specific age or rate of language development. How do fathers fit into this picture ? Are they more like mothers or like interested others ?
FATHER'S LANGUAGE TO YOUNG CHILDREN Fathers' language to their young children has been examined in both laboratory and home settings. Generally, the laboratory situations have yielded fewer differences between the parents' language than have the home-based investigations. In addition, the parents of younger children exhibit fewer differences in their speech than do parents of children 3 years and older. Finally, the studies that look at a cross-sectional sample of families in the home find that the adjustments made by the mother-child pairs are not duplicated in the fatherchild language interaction. Golhakoff and Ames (1979) examined the verbalizations of 19-month-old children with their parents in a laboratory setting. For 10 minutes both parents and their child played with toys; then each parent helped the child play with a complex toy for 10 minutes while the other parent was absent from the room. In the only difference found, fathers produce fewer utterances and fewer conversational turns than the mothers during the free play segment. The authors interpret these results as indicating that when the family triad is together in a novel situation involving the child, the mother tends to take charge. Otherwise, they report that the fathers make the same modifications in their speech as the mothers. In a somewhat similar study using 3--4½-year-olds with each of their parents in three different play tasks of 10 minutes duration, Weintraub (1978) found that in two of the activities the mothers' mean length of utterance (MLU), a standard measure of complexity, was significantly longer than the fathers'. In addition, the fathers appeared to be introducing lexical complexity by the greater use of low frequency words. These low frequency words tend to be long words such as 'intimidating', 'exasperating', etc. Fathers during family dinner table conversations use many of the syntactic modifications of Motherese but the interactional quality is different. Fathers use more imperatives, fewer questions, and fewer repetitions (Gleason, 1975). In the same paper, Gleason reports a study which compares mothers and fathers telling a story from pictures to their child in a home setting. The fathers' speech contains many of the Motherese type of adjustments but again the fathers ask fewer questions, have fewer conversational turns, and generally appear less interested in what the children are saying. The fathers are more concerned with telling a good story (whether or not the child seems to understand it) while the mothers spend more time interacting with the child, asking questions, and making sure that the meanings are clear. These results prompted Gleason to hypothesize that children must work harder to understand their fathers and to be understood by them. The fathers may be serving a very different function in the children's language acquisition process. Possibly, they are the bridge between the close and tuned-in world provided by the mother and the less comprehensible outside world. Fathers may supply the impetus for the children to expand their language abilities as well as a suitable environment where this can occur. The two studies that systematically examine the language of parents and children at different ages find differences in the parents' speech. Rondal (1978) has gathered language data on five French speaking Canadian couples who each had a child between 18 and 36 months of age. He finds few differences between the three situations--free play, book reading, and mealtime. As in Weintraub's study, the mothers' MLU is greater than the
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fathers'. In addition, the mothers use more words and have a higher proportion of declaratives, joint and indirect requests for action, and explicit corrections of children's utterances. The fathers' speech exhibits a higher type-token ratio (the proportion of different words to total words) and a greater proportion of attentional utterances and requests for clarification. Relevant to Gleason's hypothesis are the parents' behaviors that accompany their speech during mealtime. The mothers' language centers around naming activities such as naming items on the table, correcting the child for incorrect naming, and requesting names of the table items. The older children are taught and asked about more advanced vocabulary items. During these dinner table conversations the fathers more than the mothers question the children about their daily activities. Happenings in the near future are emphasized in conversations with the older children. In addition, the fathers help the children with the actual mechanics of serving and eating more than the mothers. Rondal concludes that parents separate some of the roles that they play with children. Mothers use longer utterances, show concern for linguistic correctness and the acquisition of vocabulary items. Fathers introduce more types of words, engage their children in topics less related to the immediate situation, and all the while speak in shorter utterances. By requesting more clarifications from their children the fathers are requiring them to make changes in their language so that their fathers can understand them. The main thrust of these findings is replicated and extended in a cross-sectional study of the language used by 2- and 3-year-olds and their parents during home free and structured play situations (Engle, 1979). By employing a cross-sectional design inferences can be made about the developmental interaction of parent--child speech. This study finds significant cross-age differences in the speech that parents address to their children. As expected, the mothers of the 3-year-olds employ a more complex surface structure in their speech to their children. The previously described components of Motherese are replicated in this sample. All the differences found between the mothers of the older children and the younger children are in the direction of an increasingly mature use of language. The fathers' language does not show these differences between the children's age groups. Fathers appear to adopt a linguistic level when talking to children and then stick to it even when the children's language matures. The M L U used by the fathers of the 2-year-olds is roughly the same as the M L U employed by their wives. However, while the mothers of the 3-year-olds have a significantly higher MLU, the fathers' MLU remains at the same level. In fact, in the 3-year-old sample the mothers' MLU is significantly higher than the fathers' as was seen earlier in both Weintraub's and Rondal's studies. The language of the fathers of the 3-year-olds does differ from the language of the fathers of the 2-year-olds in some significant ways. They ask fewer questions, reduce the number of imperatives, and increase the number of stock expressions used. The fathers of the younger children do use more imperatives than the mothers of the same children. The fathers of the older children use a reduced level that is the same as the mothers. Thus it appears that over time the mothers increase their language in the direction of greater complexity and greater maturity. The changes in the fathers' speech reflect changes in the quality and content of the language interaction. In a similar fashion, the children differentiate their language to their different sexed parents. The differences found in the speech addressed to parents again lies in the cross-age analysis. All the age changes other than M L U that are significant occur only in the child to mother speech. Those variables that show a significant difference over time are the same ones that change in the mothers' speech. The older children use a significantly higher M L U
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263
to both parents. None of the variables that change in the fathers' speech are reflected in a change in the children's speech. THREE FUNCTIONS OF MOTHERESE What do all these results imply? First, it is clear that the fathers modify the surface structure of their language as much as the mothers do. They communicate with their children at a level that they can understand. Through the greater use of imperatives, fathers attempt to control their younger children's behavior more directly. Imperatives are useful since they are short and sure to be understood. Nevertheless, in this function, the Communication function, the fathers' language approximates Motherese quite closely. Another characteristic of Motherese is that it changes over time, becoming more sophisticated as the child's language knowledge grows. This characteristic is seen in the mothers' speech in all the studies reported here. However, it appears that the fathers' language does not exhibit this characteristic. Nor does the child change as many of the modifications to their fathers as they do when speaking to their mothers. In this, the Pedagogical function, it appears that mothers and children speaking to their mothers share a special relationship. Whether the mothers are providing a model for the children to follow or whether the mothers are fine tuning their speech to match changes in their children's language is difficult to determine. Most likely, both processes are occurring concurrently. The relative contributions of neurobiological endowments and environmental conditions to the acquisition of language are still unknown. However, it is now clear that both parents address a simplified language to their young children. Moreover, the changes in the mothers' language are a reflection or a prognosis of the changes in the children's language. That fact that this relationship is not found in the father-child language interaction implies that if language teaching is occurring, the fathers are not participating in it. Language is embedded in behavior, When people speak, there are messages, both conscious and unconscious, that they wish to convey. While conversing with their children, parents are doing more than just managing their current behavior or teaching them the specifics of grammar. Individual, familial, and cultural values are reflected as well. Analyzing the Socialization function of Motherese can facilitate a better understanding of the roles that parents assume with their children. LANGUAGE AND PLAY BEHAVIOR In the studies described earlier, observations were made about the differences in the quality of the interaction that children have with each of their parents. In a family triad situation, mothers tend to take charge by speaking more to their children (Golinkoff and Ames, 1979). During storytelling, fathers are more concerned with telling a good story regardless of the child's comprehension of it. Mothers care more about clarity and understanding (Gleason, 1975). During dinner table conversations father ask more about daily and future happenings: mothers help the child learn names of table items. In many situations, fathers tend to use more 'big' words. Striking interactional differences are also recorded in Engle's cross-sectional study (Engle, 1979). During the tapings both parents in each of the families play avidly with their children. They all seem to enjoy their children and take pleasure in the interaction. Interaction styles between mothers and fathers differ and are consistent across families. The fathers in contrast to the mothers, tend to look at the toys independently and play with them
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whether or not the child appears particularly interested. Parallel play is a common feature of father--child play. In addition, the fathers are very project-oriented, starting and finishing various constructions. They often include the child in the play but nevertheless, the fathers appear to control the interaction quite closely. In contrast, the mothers adopt a style that seems to give some of the control to the child. They often wait until the child initiates play and then expands on the child's choice. If the child does not choose, the mother asks for a choice. Parallel play occurs rarely. When a mother attempts to set it up, it is halted very quickly by either the mother or by the child. This more nurturant style of interaction which progresses at the child's pace is also reflected in the cross-age analysis of the mother-child language as described earlier. From both the language and observational data it seems that the mothers are more responsive to their children and that the fathers are more directive. A second paper on these same families explores that hypothesis by looking directly at the language used in specific play sequences to determine whether these apparently different styles are amenable to quantification (Engle, 1980). A construct called Initiatives is proposed to analyze those utterances that initiate and continue play sequences. Who starts the play and what is said in the process ? Who changes the focus of the ongoing play activity and how is it accomplished .9An initiative is defined as an utterance or set of utterances that are used to direct attention to a new activity or a new variation on an ongoing activity. Each activity begins with one or a series of New Initiatives. The prolonging or redirecting of that activity through the addition of new elements or the recombination of existing elements begins with one or a series of Continuation Initiatives. Making an airplane out of Legos is one new activity. Adding a runway for the plane is a continuation. In addition, the initiatives can be one of two types: either specific or non-specific. These delineations refer to the directive content of the initiatives: does the initiative contain a specific suggestion or does it request a suggestion. Examples of the coding categories follow. New Initiatives-specific: 'I'm going to make a truck.' 'Let's make a dog.' 'Why don't you make a chimney 7' New Initiatives-non-specific: 'Do you want to do anything with these little ones right here,9' 'What else can we make with that?' 'Do you want to look at any of the other toys over there .9" Continuation Initiatives-specific- 'Why don't you give me a man there ? I'll put the man on "the truck.' "Want to make it this way,9 Let's change it over like this.' Continuation Initiatives-non-specific: 'Shall we put something else on the truck ? What else shall we put on the truck,9' 'Okay, now what do you wartt to put on next .9' The results corroborate the observations. Fathers average 88 per cent of the directive Specific Initiatives per play session: mothers, 68 p~r cent. These differences are significant and a multiple comparison test on the cell means within the age groups is also sigrtificant. There were no differences in the percentages of New and Continuation Initiatives for each parent group: these means are compressed here. The results imply that both parents make direct suggestions in guiding their children's play. However, the fathers ask their sons to make a choice in approximately 1 of 10 instances. Mothers, on the other hand, encourage these choices almost a third of the time. What are the consequences of these differences ? The fathers, by being less concerned about the children's immediate desires, introduce new ideas and new ways of playing with toys to the children. Because they are willing to
Family Influenceson the LanguageDevelopmentof Young Children
265
play on their own and make their own construction, etc., the fathers exhibit through their own example the inherent possibilities in the activities. Mothers approach the play interaction differently. They very rarely play separately from their children but instead encourage them to develop the activity as they can. Mothers ask their children for suggestions both at the start of an activity and during its progress into other variations. Mothers use play as an opportunity to help their children learn how to choose. These roles complement each other. No doubt, they do not work directly: mothers do bring in many new ideas and fathers are nurturent. Nevertheless, the data support the idea that fathers are a good source of new information for the children and mothers have a playing style suited to the integration of the new ideas suggested by the children. This interaction may be important in the children's learning processes. Ideas that they receive from both parents can be explored, tried out, and extended in play with their mothers. The children's results suggest that the older children are more comfortable with their fathers' style of play than are the younger children. The younger children use significantly fewer initiatives in play with their fathers than in play with their mothers. In fact, there are a variety of instances where these fathers engage in activities that hold little interest for their children. The older children begin and continue as many play sequences with their fathers as their mothers. This number is similar to the younger children to mothers' score. By age 3 the children cannot only understand their fathers' play better but also they have had plenty of practice in making suggestions from play with their mothers. The children use Specific Initiatives fairly exclusively--only one child asked his father what he would like to do.
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH From both the language and the play data it seems clear that mothers and fathers conduct themselves in ways that enhance their children's growth and development. They simplify their speech to their children so that satisfying language interactions can occur. They help their children learn the names of objects in their environment, give the children ideas about their uses, and aid the children's integration of new knowledge through talking and direct manipulation of materials. Additionally, it appears that parents divide these activities between them. The mothers do some of them more and some less: the fathers, likewise. Whether these role differentiations are necessary for the child's best development is, of course, unknown. In all of the studies described in this paper, except Rondal's, the mothers work very little if at all outside the home. Only further studies can determine whether it is primarily the mother's role as primary caretaker or the socializing experiences in her own gender rote development that produce the behaviors described earlier. Similarly, for the fathers in their role as secondary caretaker. This necessary further research is, however, more complicated than it may first appear, A crucial study would be to find families where the father is the primary caretaker: unfortunately, this situation appears to be quite rare (Marilyn Shatz, personal communication) and an inter-city sample may be necessary to find enough such families. Another obvious study, that of parents who both work full-time, also has complications. Most children in such families have female caretakers. What effect these caretakers have on the children's expectations and abilities to elicit specific behaviors of their similarly sexed parent, i.e.
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their mothers, will be difficult to determine. Perhaps, the most useful next step is to collect longitudin/tl data on children's play interactions with b o t h parents varying within the sample n u m b e r o f hours the parents w o r k outside o f the home. In addition, social class differences should be explored. The families in all the studies described in this paper are middle-class. It m a y be reasonable to assume that parents of" varying income levels a n d educational b a c k g r o u n d interact with their children differently. REFERENCES Baldwin, Clara P. and Alfred L. Baldwin. 1974. Cognitive content in mother--child interaction. Unpublished manuscript, Cornell. University. Broen, Patricia A. 1972. The verbal environment of the language.learning child. American Speech and Hearing Association Monographs, 17. Chomsky, Noam. 1968. Language and mind. Harcourt, Brace and Javanovieh, New York. Chukousky, K. 1963. From two tofive. University of California Press, Berkeley. Engle, Marianne, E. 1979. Do fathers speak motherese ? An analysis of the language environment of young children. Manuscript submitted for publication. Engle, Marianne E. 1980. Language and play: A comparative analysis of parental initiatives. In Howard Giles and Philip M. Smith (eds.), Socialpsychology and language. Pergamon Press, Oxford. Ferguson, Charles A. 1977. Baby talk as a simplified register. In Catherine Snow and Charles A. Ferguson (eds.), Talking to children. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Gleason, Jean Berko. 1975. Fathers and other strangers: Men's speech to young children. In D. Dato (ed.), Developmental psyeholinguisties: Theory and applications. Georgetown University Press, Washington, DC. Golinkoff, Roberta M and Gall Ames. 1979. A comparison of fathers' and mothers' speech with their young children. Child Development, 50, 28-32. Newport, Elissa L. 1975. Motherese: The speech of mothers to young children. CHIP Report Number 52, University of California, San Diego. Phillips, Julie R. 1970. Formal characteristics of speech which mothers address to their young children. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Johns Hopkins University. Remick, Helen. 1971. The maternal environment of linguistic development. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Davis. Rondal, Jean A. 1978. Fathers' speech and mothers: Speech in early language development. Paper presented at the First International Congress for the Study of Child Language, Tokyo, August. Sham, Marilyn and Rochelle Gelman. 1973. The development of communication skills: Modifications in the speech of young children as a function of the listener. SRCD Monographs, 38, 152. Snow, Catherine. 1972. Mothers' speech to children learning language. Child Development, 43, 549-565. Weintraub, Sandra. 1978. Parents' speech to children: Some situational and sex differences. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Boston University.
Pergamon Press, Ltd.
Printed in Great Britain
FAMILY I N F L U E N C E S ON THE LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT OF Y O U N G C H I L D R E N MARIANNE E N G L E
Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, U.S.A.
(Accepted December 1979) Syno~is--Recent research has demonstrated that mothers simplify their language in several ways when speaking to young children. As the childrens' language increases in complexity, so does the mothers'. Although fathers also make similar Motherese-typemodifications in their language, these simplificationsdo not change as the child gets older. These results are discussed in terms of the communicative,pedagogicaland socializationfunctions of Motherese. A further study concerning the language parents use during play is presented. Fathers employ a style that is directive and conducive to the presentation of new information. Mothers have a playing style suited to the integration of new ideas. Most young children learn to talk. By the age of 5 the majority of young children have mastered all but the most difficult features of their native languages. The enormity of this task and its seemingly miraculous quality has astonished and bewildered students of linguistics and psychology from the earliest times to the present. 'It is frightening to think what an enormous number of grammatical forms are poured over the poor head of the young child. And he [sic], as if it were nothing at all, adjusts to all this chaos, constantly sorting out into rubrics the disordering elements of the words he hears, without noticing as he does this, his gigantic effort . . . . The labor he thus performs at this age is astonishing enough, but even more amazing and unparalleled is the ease with which he does it' (Chukousky, 1963; p. 10). To account for the ease of this process Chomsky (1968) proposed that the child is born equipped with the universal features shared by all languages. He hypothesized that a child will begin to talk after the development of necessary cognitive structures and some exposure to the native language. He took this extremely nativist position because he believed that children are exposed to haphazard linguistic environments which are not conducive to language instruction. However, neither he nor his colleagues examined any actual transcripts of parent-child language interactions. Once these transcripts were gathered and analyzed by various researchers (Snow, 1972; Phillips, 1970; Broen, 1972; Newport, t 975; Remick, 1971) it became clear that the psycholinguistic environment provided for young children, at least from mothers' speech, is far from haphazard. Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies in the laboratory and in the home during free play and structured activities all seem to point to the existence of a special language that mothers address to their children. Initially, the mothers speak very simply and clearly using a simplified vocabulary. As the children learn more language, the mothers take account of this and adjust their language accordingly. Motherese and Baby Talk Register are the two interchangeable' terms that are used to refer to the highly specific language that mothers address to their young children. 259
260
MARL~'~ ENGLE
THE CHARACTERISTICS OF MOTHERESE Motherese has been studied in two ways: syntactically and functionally--the words and grammatical constructions that are spoken and the way in which these words are used. There is a developmental progression as well in that Motherese appears to be attuned to the child's current linguistic abilities. Functionally, the language also changes with the child's growing performance. On a syntactic level Motherese consists of utterances that are simple, short, and grammatically well-formed. As the child masters more of the language, the mother's language slowly gets longer and more complex until it eventually resembles adult speech, usually when the child is between 5 and 7 years old (Baldwin and Baldwin, 1974). This is a gradual process that appears to begin when the mother believes that the child is able, at least minimally, to understand her. In their large and comprehensive study, the Baldwins find that the mothers' average utterance length is 1.5 words greater than the children's at each age. As the children's mean length of utterance grows longer, so do the mothers stay ahead by 1.5 words. The ways that mothers use language are distinctive and also change over time. In comparison to speech to other adults, Motherese is more repetitive (Newport, 1975), more oriented in the present (Phillips, 1970), and more controlling (Baldwin and Baldwin, 1974). In addition, it is slower, having distinct pauses after each sentence, and it has specialized intonation and pitch patterns. Repetitions are particularly interesting since they show a clear interaction effect over time: when the child is speaking in one to three word utterances, the mother repeats herself a great deal. Once the child's speech lengthens, the mother repeats her child's utterances more and her own less (Newport, 1975). Another type of interaction occurs with the uses of labeling and description. Both the mothers and children decrease their frequency of labeling and increase description as the children mature. Labeling is shorter and more easily understood than descriptions which tend to be longer and more complex. Control of an interaction is often measured by the number of utterances contributed by each participant and by the frequency of imperatives or behavior requests which are sometimes couched as questions. Mothers talk more than their young children and request more behaviors of their children than vice versa. Both mothers and children decrease the frequency of behavior requests as the child ages from 2~---5 (Baldwin and Baldwin, 1974). Clearly, mothers direct a very special language to their children. The syntactic and functional phenomena taken together have prompted some researchers to hypothesize that the mothers provide a language teaching environment for the child (Snow, 1972; Ferguson, 1977). The relative contributions of innate mechanisms, this heavily structured environment, and the interactions of the two to the child's acquisition are unknown as yet. What about other people in the child's environment? Other than for fathers, who are discussed in the next section, there are very little data. Female and male day care attendants use many of the Motherese modifications in their speech when talking to their young charges. The male day care workers use the children's names four times as often as the females (Gleason, 1975). Four- and 8-year-old children speak a form of Motherese when addressing 2-year-olds. As might be expected, the older children are better at it (Shatz and Gelman, 1973). Women who are not mothers modify their language along the same lines but not as much as mothers (Snow, 1972). It seems likely that most of the speech directed to young children is modified so that the children can understand some, if not all, of it. Whether speakers other than mothers pitch their speech as directly to the child's current production is not clear. More probably, other speakers use modifications that would be useful to most
Family Influenceson the LanguageDevelopmentof Young Children
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children regardless of each child's specific age or rate of language development. How do fathers fit into this picture ? Are they more like mothers or like interested others ?
FATHER'S LANGUAGE TO YOUNG CHILDREN Fathers' language to their young children has been examined in both laboratory and home settings. Generally, the laboratory situations have yielded fewer differences between the parents' language than have the home-based investigations. In addition, the parents of younger children exhibit fewer differences in their speech than do parents of children 3 years and older. Finally, the studies that look at a cross-sectional sample of families in the home find that the adjustments made by the mother-child pairs are not duplicated in the fatherchild language interaction. Golhakoff and Ames (1979) examined the verbalizations of 19-month-old children with their parents in a laboratory setting. For 10 minutes both parents and their child played with toys; then each parent helped the child play with a complex toy for 10 minutes while the other parent was absent from the room. In the only difference found, fathers produce fewer utterances and fewer conversational turns than the mothers during the free play segment. The authors interpret these results as indicating that when the family triad is together in a novel situation involving the child, the mother tends to take charge. Otherwise, they report that the fathers make the same modifications in their speech as the mothers. In a somewhat similar study using 3--4½-year-olds with each of their parents in three different play tasks of 10 minutes duration, Weintraub (1978) found that in two of the activities the mothers' mean length of utterance (MLU), a standard measure of complexity, was significantly longer than the fathers'. In addition, the fathers appeared to be introducing lexical complexity by the greater use of low frequency words. These low frequency words tend to be long words such as 'intimidating', 'exasperating', etc. Fathers during family dinner table conversations use many of the syntactic modifications of Motherese but the interactional quality is different. Fathers use more imperatives, fewer questions, and fewer repetitions (Gleason, 1975). In the same paper, Gleason reports a study which compares mothers and fathers telling a story from pictures to their child in a home setting. The fathers' speech contains many of the Motherese type of adjustments but again the fathers ask fewer questions, have fewer conversational turns, and generally appear less interested in what the children are saying. The fathers are more concerned with telling a good story (whether or not the child seems to understand it) while the mothers spend more time interacting with the child, asking questions, and making sure that the meanings are clear. These results prompted Gleason to hypothesize that children must work harder to understand their fathers and to be understood by them. The fathers may be serving a very different function in the children's language acquisition process. Possibly, they are the bridge between the close and tuned-in world provided by the mother and the less comprehensible outside world. Fathers may supply the impetus for the children to expand their language abilities as well as a suitable environment where this can occur. The two studies that systematically examine the language of parents and children at different ages find differences in the parents' speech. Rondal (1978) has gathered language data on five French speaking Canadian couples who each had a child between 18 and 36 months of age. He finds few differences between the three situations--free play, book reading, and mealtime. As in Weintraub's study, the mothers' MLU is greater than the
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fathers'. In addition, the mothers use more words and have a higher proportion of declaratives, joint and indirect requests for action, and explicit corrections of children's utterances. The fathers' speech exhibits a higher type-token ratio (the proportion of different words to total words) and a greater proportion of attentional utterances and requests for clarification. Relevant to Gleason's hypothesis are the parents' behaviors that accompany their speech during mealtime. The mothers' language centers around naming activities such as naming items on the table, correcting the child for incorrect naming, and requesting names of the table items. The older children are taught and asked about more advanced vocabulary items. During these dinner table conversations the fathers more than the mothers question the children about their daily activities. Happenings in the near future are emphasized in conversations with the older children. In addition, the fathers help the children with the actual mechanics of serving and eating more than the mothers. Rondal concludes that parents separate some of the roles that they play with children. Mothers use longer utterances, show concern for linguistic correctness and the acquisition of vocabulary items. Fathers introduce more types of words, engage their children in topics less related to the immediate situation, and all the while speak in shorter utterances. By requesting more clarifications from their children the fathers are requiring them to make changes in their language so that their fathers can understand them. The main thrust of these findings is replicated and extended in a cross-sectional study of the language used by 2- and 3-year-olds and their parents during home free and structured play situations (Engle, 1979). By employing a cross-sectional design inferences can be made about the developmental interaction of parent--child speech. This study finds significant cross-age differences in the speech that parents address to their children. As expected, the mothers of the 3-year-olds employ a more complex surface structure in their speech to their children. The previously described components of Motherese are replicated in this sample. All the differences found between the mothers of the older children and the younger children are in the direction of an increasingly mature use of language. The fathers' language does not show these differences between the children's age groups. Fathers appear to adopt a linguistic level when talking to children and then stick to it even when the children's language matures. The M L U used by the fathers of the 2-year-olds is roughly the same as the M L U employed by their wives. However, while the mothers of the 3-year-olds have a significantly higher MLU, the fathers' MLU remains at the same level. In fact, in the 3-year-old sample the mothers' MLU is significantly higher than the fathers' as was seen earlier in both Weintraub's and Rondal's studies. The language of the fathers of the 3-year-olds does differ from the language of the fathers of the 2-year-olds in some significant ways. They ask fewer questions, reduce the number of imperatives, and increase the number of stock expressions used. The fathers of the younger children do use more imperatives than the mothers of the same children. The fathers of the older children use a reduced level that is the same as the mothers. Thus it appears that over time the mothers increase their language in the direction of greater complexity and greater maturity. The changes in the fathers' speech reflect changes in the quality and content of the language interaction. In a similar fashion, the children differentiate their language to their different sexed parents. The differences found in the speech addressed to parents again lies in the cross-age analysis. All the age changes other than M L U that are significant occur only in the child to mother speech. Those variables that show a significant difference over time are the same ones that change in the mothers' speech. The older children use a significantly higher M L U
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to both parents. None of the variables that change in the fathers' speech are reflected in a change in the children's speech. THREE FUNCTIONS OF MOTHERESE What do all these results imply? First, it is clear that the fathers modify the surface structure of their language as much as the mothers do. They communicate with their children at a level that they can understand. Through the greater use of imperatives, fathers attempt to control their younger children's behavior more directly. Imperatives are useful since they are short and sure to be understood. Nevertheless, in this function, the Communication function, the fathers' language approximates Motherese quite closely. Another characteristic of Motherese is that it changes over time, becoming more sophisticated as the child's language knowledge grows. This characteristic is seen in the mothers' speech in all the studies reported here. However, it appears that the fathers' language does not exhibit this characteristic. Nor does the child change as many of the modifications to their fathers as they do when speaking to their mothers. In this, the Pedagogical function, it appears that mothers and children speaking to their mothers share a special relationship. Whether the mothers are providing a model for the children to follow or whether the mothers are fine tuning their speech to match changes in their children's language is difficult to determine. Most likely, both processes are occurring concurrently. The relative contributions of neurobiological endowments and environmental conditions to the acquisition of language are still unknown. However, it is now clear that both parents address a simplified language to their young children. Moreover, the changes in the mothers' language are a reflection or a prognosis of the changes in the children's language. That fact that this relationship is not found in the father-child language interaction implies that if language teaching is occurring, the fathers are not participating in it. Language is embedded in behavior, When people speak, there are messages, both conscious and unconscious, that they wish to convey. While conversing with their children, parents are doing more than just managing their current behavior or teaching them the specifics of grammar. Individual, familial, and cultural values are reflected as well. Analyzing the Socialization function of Motherese can facilitate a better understanding of the roles that parents assume with their children. LANGUAGE AND PLAY BEHAVIOR In the studies described earlier, observations were made about the differences in the quality of the interaction that children have with each of their parents. In a family triad situation, mothers tend to take charge by speaking more to their children (Golinkoff and Ames, 1979). During storytelling, fathers are more concerned with telling a good story regardless of the child's comprehension of it. Mothers care more about clarity and understanding (Gleason, 1975). During dinner table conversations father ask more about daily and future happenings: mothers help the child learn names of table items. In many situations, fathers tend to use more 'big' words. Striking interactional differences are also recorded in Engle's cross-sectional study (Engle, 1979). During the tapings both parents in each of the families play avidly with their children. They all seem to enjoy their children and take pleasure in the interaction. Interaction styles between mothers and fathers differ and are consistent across families. The fathers in contrast to the mothers, tend to look at the toys independently and play with them
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whether or not the child appears particularly interested. Parallel play is a common feature of father--child play. In addition, the fathers are very project-oriented, starting and finishing various constructions. They often include the child in the play but nevertheless, the fathers appear to control the interaction quite closely. In contrast, the mothers adopt a style that seems to give some of the control to the child. They often wait until the child initiates play and then expands on the child's choice. If the child does not choose, the mother asks for a choice. Parallel play occurs rarely. When a mother attempts to set it up, it is halted very quickly by either the mother or by the child. This more nurturant style of interaction which progresses at the child's pace is also reflected in the cross-age analysis of the mother-child language as described earlier. From both the language and observational data it seems that the mothers are more responsive to their children and that the fathers are more directive. A second paper on these same families explores that hypothesis by looking directly at the language used in specific play sequences to determine whether these apparently different styles are amenable to quantification (Engle, 1980). A construct called Initiatives is proposed to analyze those utterances that initiate and continue play sequences. Who starts the play and what is said in the process ? Who changes the focus of the ongoing play activity and how is it accomplished .9An initiative is defined as an utterance or set of utterances that are used to direct attention to a new activity or a new variation on an ongoing activity. Each activity begins with one or a series of New Initiatives. The prolonging or redirecting of that activity through the addition of new elements or the recombination of existing elements begins with one or a series of Continuation Initiatives. Making an airplane out of Legos is one new activity. Adding a runway for the plane is a continuation. In addition, the initiatives can be one of two types: either specific or non-specific. These delineations refer to the directive content of the initiatives: does the initiative contain a specific suggestion or does it request a suggestion. Examples of the coding categories follow. New Initiatives-specific: 'I'm going to make a truck.' 'Let's make a dog.' 'Why don't you make a chimney 7' New Initiatives-non-specific: 'Do you want to do anything with these little ones right here,9' 'What else can we make with that?' 'Do you want to look at any of the other toys over there .9" Continuation Initiatives-specific- 'Why don't you give me a man there ? I'll put the man on "the truck.' "Want to make it this way,9 Let's change it over like this.' Continuation Initiatives-non-specific: 'Shall we put something else on the truck ? What else shall we put on the truck,9' 'Okay, now what do you wartt to put on next .9' The results corroborate the observations. Fathers average 88 per cent of the directive Specific Initiatives per play session: mothers, 68 p~r cent. These differences are significant and a multiple comparison test on the cell means within the age groups is also sigrtificant. There were no differences in the percentages of New and Continuation Initiatives for each parent group: these means are compressed here. The results imply that both parents make direct suggestions in guiding their children's play. However, the fathers ask their sons to make a choice in approximately 1 of 10 instances. Mothers, on the other hand, encourage these choices almost a third of the time. What are the consequences of these differences ? The fathers, by being less concerned about the children's immediate desires, introduce new ideas and new ways of playing with toys to the children. Because they are willing to
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play on their own and make their own construction, etc., the fathers exhibit through their own example the inherent possibilities in the activities. Mothers approach the play interaction differently. They very rarely play separately from their children but instead encourage them to develop the activity as they can. Mothers ask their children for suggestions both at the start of an activity and during its progress into other variations. Mothers use play as an opportunity to help their children learn how to choose. These roles complement each other. No doubt, they do not work directly: mothers do bring in many new ideas and fathers are nurturent. Nevertheless, the data support the idea that fathers are a good source of new information for the children and mothers have a playing style suited to the integration of the new ideas suggested by the children. This interaction may be important in the children's learning processes. Ideas that they receive from both parents can be explored, tried out, and extended in play with their mothers. The children's results suggest that the older children are more comfortable with their fathers' style of play than are the younger children. The younger children use significantly fewer initiatives in play with their fathers than in play with their mothers. In fact, there are a variety of instances where these fathers engage in activities that hold little interest for their children. The older children begin and continue as many play sequences with their fathers as their mothers. This number is similar to the younger children to mothers' score. By age 3 the children cannot only understand their fathers' play better but also they have had plenty of practice in making suggestions from play with their mothers. The children use Specific Initiatives fairly exclusively--only one child asked his father what he would like to do.
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH From both the language and the play data it seems clear that mothers and fathers conduct themselves in ways that enhance their children's growth and development. They simplify their speech to their children so that satisfying language interactions can occur. They help their children learn the names of objects in their environment, give the children ideas about their uses, and aid the children's integration of new knowledge through talking and direct manipulation of materials. Additionally, it appears that parents divide these activities between them. The mothers do some of them more and some less: the fathers, likewise. Whether these role differentiations are necessary for the child's best development is, of course, unknown. In all of the studies described in this paper, except Rondal's, the mothers work very little if at all outside the home. Only further studies can determine whether it is primarily the mother's role as primary caretaker or the socializing experiences in her own gender rote development that produce the behaviors described earlier. Similarly, for the fathers in their role as secondary caretaker. This necessary further research is, however, more complicated than it may first appear, A crucial study would be to find families where the father is the primary caretaker: unfortunately, this situation appears to be quite rare (Marilyn Shatz, personal communication) and an inter-city sample may be necessary to find enough such families. Another obvious study, that of parents who both work full-time, also has complications. Most children in such families have female caretakers. What effect these caretakers have on the children's expectations and abilities to elicit specific behaviors of their similarly sexed parent, i.e.
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their mothers, will be difficult to determine. Perhaps, the most useful next step is to collect longitudin/tl data on children's play interactions with b o t h parents varying within the sample n u m b e r o f hours the parents w o r k outside o f the home. In addition, social class differences should be explored. The families in all the studies described in this paper are middle-class. It m a y be reasonable to assume that parents of" varying income levels a n d educational b a c k g r o u n d interact with their children differently. REFERENCES Baldwin, Clara P. and Alfred L. Baldwin. 1974. Cognitive content in mother--child interaction. Unpublished manuscript, Cornell. University. Broen, Patricia A. 1972. The verbal environment of the language.learning child. American Speech and Hearing Association Monographs, 17. Chomsky, Noam. 1968. Language and mind. Harcourt, Brace and Javanovieh, New York. Chukousky, K. 1963. From two tofive. University of California Press, Berkeley. Engle, Marianne, E. 1979. Do fathers speak motherese ? An analysis of the language environment of young children. Manuscript submitted for publication. Engle, Marianne E. 1980. Language and play: A comparative analysis of parental initiatives. In Howard Giles and Philip M. Smith (eds.), Socialpsychology and language. Pergamon Press, Oxford. Ferguson, Charles A. 1977. Baby talk as a simplified register. In Catherine Snow and Charles A. Ferguson (eds.), Talking to children. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Gleason, Jean Berko. 1975. Fathers and other strangers: Men's speech to young children. In D. Dato (ed.), Developmental psyeholinguisties: Theory and applications. Georgetown University Press, Washington, DC. Golinkoff, Roberta M and Gall Ames. 1979. A comparison of fathers' and mothers' speech with their young children. Child Development, 50, 28-32. Newport, Elissa L. 1975. Motherese: The speech of mothers to young children. CHIP Report Number 52, University of California, San Diego. Phillips, Julie R. 1970. Formal characteristics of speech which mothers address to their young children. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Johns Hopkins University. Remick, Helen. 1971. The maternal environment of linguistic development. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Davis. Rondal, Jean A. 1978. Fathers' speech and mothers: Speech in early language development. Paper presented at the First International Congress for the Study of Child Language, Tokyo, August. Sham, Marilyn and Rochelle Gelman. 1973. The development of communication skills: Modifications in the speech of young children as a function of the listener. SRCD Monographs, 38, 152. Snow, Catherine. 1972. Mothers' speech to children learning language. Child Development, 43, 549-565. Weintraub, Sandra. 1978. Parents' speech to children: Some situational and sex differences. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Boston University.