Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T14:35:37.383Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The unintelligibility of speech to children*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Ellen Gurman Bard  and
Anne H. Anderson
Ellen Gurman Bard
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Anne H. Anderson
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Words artificially isolated from twelve parents' speech to their children (aged 1; 10–3; 0) were significantly less intelligible to adult listeners than words originally spoken to an adult. This effect holds for randomly sampled words and, to a lesser extent, for matched pairs. While parents did not adjust the clarity of word tokens to the linguistic naiveté of the child listeners, they did adjust intelligibility inversely to the observed predictability of the sampled words in their sentence contexts, and words to children proved more redundant in this sense. The relationship of these findings to other work on the clarity of motherese is examined and the implications for the study of children's speech perception outlined.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , June 1983 , pp. 265 - 292
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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.)

Footnotes

[*]

The research reported here was supported by Social Science Research Council project grant HR 6130 to J. D. M. H. Laver and the first author. The authors wish to thank Dr T. G. Bower for help in obtaining informants and Dr Laver, Dr J. Marshall, Dr T. Pitcairn, Dr M. Donaldson-Salter and Mr P. Fisk for discussion of various aspects of the work. Any remaining errors are our own. Address for correspondence: E. G. Bard, Department of Linguistics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9LL.

References

REFERENCES

Bowerman, M. (1977). The acquisition of word meaning: an investigation of some current conflicts. In Johnson-Laird, P. N. & Wason, P. C. (eds), Thinking. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Broen, P. (1972). The verbal environment of the language-learning child. ASHA Monograph.Google Scholar
Brown, R. (1973). A first language: the early stages. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, H. H. (1973). The language-as-fixed effect fallacy: a critique of language statistics in psychological research. JVLVB 12. 335–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, H. H. & Clark, E. V. (1977). Psychology and language: an introduction to psycholinguistics. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Cole, R. & Jakimik, J. (1980). A model of speech perception. In Cole, R. (ed.), Perception and production of fluent speech. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Coleman, E. B. (1979). Generalization effects vs. random effects: is a source of Type 1 or Type 2 error? JVLVB 18. 243–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cross, T. (1975). Mothers' speech and its association with the rate of linguistic development in young children. Paper presented at the Third International Child Language Symposium,London.Google Scholar
Cross, T. (1977). Mothers' speech adjustments: the contributions of selected listener variables. In Snow, C. & Ferguson, C. (eds), Talking to children. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Donaldson, M. (1978). Children's minds. Glasgow: Collins.Google Scholar
Erman, L. D. & Lesser, V. R. (1980). The HEARSAY-II speech understanding system: a tutorial. In Lea, W. (ed.), Trends in speech recognition. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Garnica, O. (1977). Some prosodic and paralinguistic features of speech to young children. In Snow, C. & Ferguson, C. (eds), Talking to children. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Ingram, D. (1974). Phonological rules in young children. JChLang 1. 49–64.Google Scholar
Lewis, M. & Freedle, R. (1973). Mother–infant dyad: the cradle of meaning. In Pliner, P., Crames, L. & Alloway, J. (eds), Communication and affect, language and thought. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Lieberman, P. (1963). Some effects of semantic and grammatical context on the production and perception of speech. L & S 6. 172–5.Google Scholar
Marslen-Wilson, W. & Welsh, A. (1978). Processing interactions and lexical access during word recognition in continuous speech. CogPsychol 10. 29–63.Google Scholar
Nelson, K. (1977). The conceptual basis for naming. In Macnamara, J. (ed.), Language learning and thought. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Nelson, K. E. (1981). Toward a rare-event cognitive comparison theory of syntax acquisition. In Dale, P. & Ingram, D. (eds), Child language – an international perspective. Baltimore: University Park Press.Google Scholar
Newport, E., Gleitman, H. & Gleitman, L. (1977). Mother, I'd rather do it myself: some effects and non-effects of maternal speech style. In Snow, C. & Ferguson, C. (eds), Talking to children. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Phillips, J. R. (1973). Syntax and vocabulary of mothers' speech to young children: age and sex comparisons. ChDev 44. 182–5.Google Scholar
Pollack, I. & Pickett, J. M. (1963). The intelligibility of excerpts from conversation. L & S 6. 165–71.Google Scholar
Remick, H. (1976). Maternal speech to children during language acquisition. Neurolinguistics 5. 223–33.Google Scholar
Ringler, N. M. (1973). Mothers' language to their children and to adults over time. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Case Western Reserve University.Google Scholar
Rosenzweig, M. K. & Postman, L. (1958). Frequency of usage and the perception of words. Science 127. 26–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sachs, J. (1977). The adaptive significance of linguistic input to prelinguistic infants. In Snow, C. & Ferguson, C. (eds), Talking to children. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Shatz, M. (1978). On the development of communicative understandings: an early strategy for interpreting and responding to messages. CogPsychol 10. 271–301.Google Scholar
Shockey, L. & Bond, Z. S. (1980). Phonological processes in speech addressed to children. Phonetica 37. 267–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slobin, D. I. (1973). Cognitive pre-requisites for the acquisition of grammar. In Ferguson, C. A. & Slobin, D. I. (eds), Studies of child language development. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Smith, N. V. (1973). The acquisition of phonology: a case study. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Snow, C. (1977). Mothers' speech research: from input to interaction. In Snow, C. & Ferguson, C. (eds), Talking to children. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Wike, E. L. & Church, J. D. (1976). Comments on Clark's ‘The language-as-fixed-effect fallacy’. JVLVB 15. 249–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilcox, S. & Palermo, D. (1982). Children's use of lexical and nonlexical information in responding to commands. JChLang 9. 130–50.Google ScholarPubMed
Winer, B. (1971). Statistical principles in experimental design. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar