#YouTube Playlists: #LanguageDevelopment #ChildDirectedSpeech #Motherese #Babytalk #ChildDevelopment #ChildDev #ChildLanguage #ChildSpeech

Several YouTube video topics provide playlists, channels, and individual videos about child language, language acquisition, child (language) development, and child-directed speech:

·         Language Acquisition

·         Language Development

·         Baby Talk

·         Child Development

 

These YouTube channels for linguistics have playlists for language acquisition and related topics:

·         The Linguistic Society of America

o   Language Acquisition

o   Psycho- and Neurolinguistics

·         The Ling Space

o   Language Acquisition

o   Psycho- and Neurolinguistics

·         The Virtual Linguistics Campus

o   Psycholinguistics class with several lectures about language acquisition

If you want to focus on child-directed speech, you can have a look at a playlist with TEDx talks about child-directed speech.

 

There are also some playlists with examples of parents talking to their very young children, for instance:

·         Fantasticcaptain

·         Stephannie Blanco

·         Clauglus

 

Any further suggestions?

Sonja Eisenbeiss, now at the University of Cologne in Germany

 

BUCLD 16: Presentations about Child-Directed Speech

Below you can find a list of talks and poster presentations from the 16th Boston Conference on (BUCLD 16). In order to make it easier to find presentations with a strong focus on child-directed speech, I have highlighted them in the copy of the conference schedule below by adding a hashtag symbol that you can search for.

Sonja

P.S. I have moved to Cologne now and I am currently teaching at the University of Cologne and working on my language games.

 

 

9:00	#Nine-month-old infants’ neural oscillatory entrainment to sung nursery rhymes exceeds their parents’ V. Leong, E. Byrne, K. Clackson, S. Georgieva, S. Wass	#Deafness doesn’t impair executive function, but language deprivation might: Parent-report evidence from deaf native signers, deaf non-signers, and hearing children. M. Hall, I. Eigsti, H. Bortfeld, D. Lillo-Martin	Now you hear it, now you don’t: Number mismatch in the comprehension of relative clauses in French A. Bentea, S. Durrleman
9:30	#Infants use prosody for syntactic analysis and grammatical categorization S. Massicotte-Laforge, R. Shi	#Homesign Contact and Conventionalization of a Lexicon L. Horton, S. Goldin-Meadow, D. Brentari	The Acquisition of Ergativity in Samoan G. Muagututia, K. Deen, W. O’Grady
10:00	#Frequent Frames in Maximally Diverse Languages S. Moran, D. Blasi, S. Stoll	American Sign Language Vocabulary Acquisition by Native Deaf Signers N. Caselli, J. Pyers	Effects of pronoun referentiality on children’s relative clause processing in Hebrew Y. Haendler, F. Adani

 

11:00	Cross-linguistic influence in bilingual processing: An ERP study. G. Martohardjono, I. Phillips, C. Madsen II, R. Otheguy, V. Shafer, R. Schwartz.	Fast mapping word meanings across trials: young children forget all but their first guess. J. de Villiers, A. Pace, M. Klein, A. Aravind, R. Golinkoff, K. Hirsh-Pasek, M. Wilson	#Children use syntax of complements to determine meanings of novel attitude verbs J. Lidz, R. Dudley, V. Hacquard
11:30	Acquisition and processing of mass nouns in L2-English: evidence for the role of atomicity S. Choi, T. Ionin	#The natural visual statistics of objects matter in statistical word-referent learning E. Clerkin, L. Smith, C. Yu	Factivity is acquired gradually over the preschool years V. Hacquard, R. Dudley, C. Baron, J. Lidz
12:00	The integration of linguistic and non-linguistic information in L2 sentence processing H. Ahn	The role of temporal dynamics of reference in early word learning L. Pozzan, T. Dawson, L. Gleitman, J. Trueswell	Factivity and At-Issueness in the Acquisition of Forget and Remember A. Aravind, M. Hackl

 

2:00	#English Article Use in Bimodal Bilingual Children with Cochlear Implants:Effects of Language Transfer and Early Language Exposure C. Goodwin, K. Davidson, D. Lillo-Martin	#Structural Alignment Facilitates Spontaneous Adjective Learning in Preschoolers R. Shao, D. Gentner	The Unmarkedness of Plural: Crosslinguistic Data K. Yatsushiro, U. Sauerland, A. Alexiadou
2:30	Processing of which-questions by children with normal hearing and children with a cochlear implant A. Schouwenaars, E. Ruigendijk, P. Hendriks, M. Finke	The Blickish Blob: Object Categories Pose an Obstacle to Adjective Learning S. LaTourrette, S. Waxman	The Syntax and Semantics of Adjectival Distribution in Spanish-Polish Bilinguals T. Judy

 

4:15	Second Language Processing Efficiency: Experience and Cognitive Effects on L2 Morphosyntactic Integration and Anticipation C. Marull	Blind speakers show language-specific patterns in co-speech but not silent gesture S. Ozcaliskan, S. Goldin-Meadow	On the Nature of the Syntactic Condition on Ellipsis Sites: A View from Child English K. Sugisaki, H. Kurokami
4:45	#Perceptual salience matters for morphosyntactic processing in 9-11-year-olds S. Dube, C. Kung, K. Demuth	Does comprehension of gesture show a pattern similar to its production in verbal children with autism? N. Dimitrova, S. Ozcaliskan, L. Adamson	V-stranding VP-ellipsis in child Japanese Y. Fujiwara
5:15	Acquiring morphological paradigms in early infancy J. Raymond, R. Shi, E. Santos	Universal and language-specific aspects in spatial language development: Revisiting the topological-projective asymmetry M. Johanson, M. Grigoroglou, A. Papafragou	The Bottleneck Hypothesis in L2 acquisition: Norwegian L1 speakers’ knowledge of syntax and morphology in English L2 I. Jensen, R. Slabakova, M. Westergaard

 

 

9:00	Contextual factors in children’s computation of telicity C. Anderson	Accessibility differences during production drive semantic (over)-extension Z. Harmon, V. Kapatsinski	Similarity-based interference in the acquisition of adjunct control J. Gerard, J. Lidz, S. Zuckerman, M. Pinto
9:30	Early knowledge of the interaction between aspect and quantification: Evidence from child Cantonese M. Lei, T. Lee	Children’s use of polysemy to structure new noun categories M. Srinivasan, C. Berner, H. Rabagliati	Prepositional object gap production primes active gap filling in 5-year-olds E. Atkinson, A. Omaki
10:00	A study on bilingual children’s semantic-pragmatic comprehension of quantifiers H. Alatawi	Modeling the Semantic Networks of School-age Children with Specific Language Impairment and their Typical Peers P. Brooks, J. Maouene, K. Sailor, L. Seiger-Gardner	Object clitics in the narratives of high-functioning children with autism A. Terzi, A. Zafeiri, T. Marinis, K. Francis

 

10:30

Break

 

	Session A (Metcalf Small)	Session B (Conference Auditorium)	Session C (Terrace Lounge)
11:00	Lexical and syntactic effects on auxiliary selection: Evidence from Child French V. Boyce, A. Aravind, M. Hackl	#Gender Differences in Lexical Input and Acquisition M. Braginsky, S. Meylan, M. Frank	#Modeling phonetic category learning from natural acoustic data S. Antetomaso, K. Miyazawa, N. Feldman, M. Elsner, K. Hitczenko, R. Mazuka
11:30	#L1 acquisition of thematic role assignment in Tagalog: Word-order-based strategies vs. morphosyntactic cues R. Garcia, J. Dery, J. Roeser, B. Hoehle	Children’s status and growth in word types at 20 months predicts age of onset of complex syntax C. Silvey, Ö. Demir-Lira, S. Goldin-Meadow	#Development of acoustic cue weighting in 3- and 5-year-old children: Evidence from the Albanian lateral contrast D. Müller, E. Kapia

 

12:30

#Lunch symposium: Beyond brilliant babies and rapid learning in lexical development: The long and short of language acquisition Sarah C. Creel (University of California, San Diego) Larissa Samuelson (University of East Anglia) Bob McMurray (University of Iowa)

 

2:15	#Mira el Froggie: Language Mixing in Mother-Child Book-Sharing Interactions Among Spanish-speaking Families A. Weisleder, C. Cates, C. Canfield, A. Seery, A. Mendelsohn	#What do we learn from distributional learning? P. Olejarczuk, V. Kapatsinski	Past tense and plural formation in Welsh-English bilingual children with and without SLI V. Chondrogianni, N. John
2:45	Math Talk in Low Socioeconomic Status Families: An Intervention E. Graf, S. He, K. Leffel, S. Elizabeth, D. Suskind	#The impact of phonological knowledge on statistical learning A. Black, C. Hudson Kam	Delay or deviance: old question – new evidence from bilingual children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) N. Meir, S. Armon-Lotem

 

3:15	Posters II attended

 

	Session A (Metcalf Small)	Session B (Conference Auditorium)	Session C (Terrace Lounge)
4:30	#Testing the Bootstrapping Hypothesis of Infant-Directed Vocabulary: A Longitudinal Individual-Difference Analysis M. Ota, B. Skarabela, N. Davies-Jenkins, J. Fazekas	Cognitive-Control Effects on the Kindergarten Path: Separating Correlation from Causation Y. Huang, N. Hsu, J. Gerard, A. Kowalski, J. Novick	The development of onset clusters in young children’s speech C. Levelt, M. Gulian
4:45	‘What does the cow say?’ An analysis of onomatopoeia in early interactions C. Laing	Inhibitory control is a rate-limiting factor to preschoolers’ use of irregular inflection A. Yuile, M. Sabbagh	What’s a foo? Toddlers are not tolerant of other children’s mispronunciations D. Bernier, K. White

 

5:45	Plenary address Angela Friederici (Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences)

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2016

	Session A (Metcalf Small)	Session B (Conference Auditorium)	Session C (Terrace Lounge)
9:00	Development of a Collective-Distributive Pragmatic Scale R. Padilla-Reyes, J. Grinstead, M. Nieves Rivera	Lexical processing efficiency in preschool children: Influences of speech perception and inhibitory control T. Mahr, J. Edwards	Control, Raising, and the Problem of Generalization A. Irani, C. Yang
9:30	Some pieces are missing: scalar implicatures in children S. Eiteljoerge, N. Pouscoulous, E. Lieven	Flexibility in nonverbal predictions supports language learning in infancy T. Reuter, C. Lew-Williams	Topicalization from adjuncts in English vs. Chinese vs. Chinese-English Interlanguage F. Zenker, B. Schwartz
10:00	Children’s understanding of distributivity and adjectives of comparison A. De Koster, J. Dotlacil, J. Spenader	Understanding the “word gap”: Cognitive control and processing effects E. Hollister, Y. Huang	What cross-linguistic acquisition differences can tell us about invisible syntax: The case of Spanish ‘parecer’ V. Mateu

 

 

11:00

Closing Symposium: How language learners shape languages Jennifer Culbertson (University of Edinburgh): A bias for simpler grammars shapes language in complex ways Masha Fedzechkina (University of Arizona): Processing and communication shape language learning and structure Kenny Smith (University of Edinburgh): How learning and transmission interact to shape language structure

 

Alternates

#F. Bulgarelli, V. Benitez, J. Saffran, K. Byers-Heinlein, D. Weiss: Statistical learning of multiple structures by 8-month-old infants

1. Butler: The acquisition of number concepts and numerical language in Yucatec Maya

#M. Casillas, P. Brown, S. Levinson: Age and turn type in Mayan children’s predictions about conversational turn-taking

1. Choi, H. Demirdache: Intervention Effects in Korean: Experimental L1 Evidence
2. Fetters, J. Lidz: Early knowledge of relative clause islands and island repair
3. Kapatsinski: Learning rules, templates and schemas in parallel
4. Klassen, A. Tremblay, M. Wagner, H. Goad: Prominence Shifts in Second Language English and Spanish: Learning versus Unlearning
5. Martohardjono, I. Phillips, C. Madsen II, R. Otheguy, V. Shafer, R. Schwartz: Cross-linguistic influence in bilingual processing: An ERP study

#C. Potter, J. Saffran: Variable experience improves infants’ recognition of words spoken in an unfamiliar accent

#M. Valleau, S. Arunachalam: The effects of linguistic context on visual attention while learning novel verbs

#H. Wang, T. Mintz: Statistical Learning Requires a Two-Step Process

1. Yin: The Acquisition of Number Agreement in What BE these/those Sentences in English

Posters

1. Abed Ibrahim, C. Hamann: Bilingual Arabic-German and Turkish-German Children with and without Specific Language Impairment: Comparing Performance in Sentence and Nonword Repetition Tasks
2. Al-Thubaiti: Non-native characteristics in the ultimate grammars of highly proficient child L2 starters of English
3. Altan, H. Annette, U. Kaya: Discrimination of vowel-harmonic vs vowel-disharmonic words by monolingual Turkish infants in the first year of life
4. Austin, K. Syrett, L. Sanchez, A. Lingwall, S. Perez-Cortes: Morphological Development and the Acquisition of Quantifiers in Child L2 Spanish
5. Berends, A. Hulk, P. Sleeman, J. Schaeffer: Ultimate Attainment in Second Language Acquisition: The Dutch quantitative pronoun ER
6. Bergelson, T. Eagle: Links between talking, walking, and pointing: analysis of parental report & observation
7. Bláhová, F. Smolík: Personal pronouns and verb person conjugation: The use of person reference and mental state language is related in 30-month-olds, above and beyond general language

#F. Bulgarelli, V. Benitez, J. Saffran, K. Byers-Heinlein, D. Weiss: Statistical learning of multiple structures by 8-month-old infants

1. Chen, V. Valian, M. Chodrow: The Same Factors Influence Subject Use in Children and Adults
2. Choi, H. Demirdache: Intervention Effects in Korean: Experimental L1 Evidence
3. Conwell: Pronouns facilitate comprehension of double object, but not prepositional, datives
4. De Cat, L. Serratrice: The Bilingual Profile Index: a new, gradient measure of language experience
5. Dekydtspotter, C. Gilbert, K. Miller, M. Iverson, T. Leal, I. Innis: ERP Correlates of Cyclic Computations: Anaphora in Native and L2 French
6. Eigsti, J. Mayo, E. Simmons, J. Magnuson: Qualitative versus quantitative measurement of speech in autism: Beyond the Good and the Beautiful
7. Family, E. Dovenberg, K. Katsika, M. Naumovets, L. Fernandez, M. Iraola Azpiroz, S. Allen: Cross-linguistic influence in incremental parsing of temporary syntactic ambiguities in L2 English
8. Fetters, J. Lidz: Early knowledge of relative clause islands and island repair
9. Gambi, F. Gorrie, M. Pickering, H. Rabagliati: Do young children predict the forms of words?
10. Gao, W. Ma, P. Zhou: A reduced sensitivity to tones in young tone learners
11. Garcia, H. Goad, N. Guzzo: L2 Acquisition of High Vowel Deletion in Quebec French
12. Gervain, J. Werker, A. Black, M. Geffen: The neural correlates of processing scale-invariant environmental sounds in infancy
13. Goksun, N. George, H. Kartalkanat, B. Uzundag, E. Turan: Expressions of complex causal relations in speech and gesture
14. Gordon, M. Kibbe: Young children’s learning of gestural and verbal labels for novel objects: The role of meaningfulness
15. Grüter, A. Takeda, H. Rohde, A. Schafer: L2 Listeners Show Anticipatory Looks to Upcoming Discourse Referents
16. Hartshorne, J. Tenenbaum, S. Pinker: A critical period for second language acquisition: Evidence from 669,498 English speakers
17. Kamari, S. Raghibdoust: Dyslexic Children and Reading Persian Orthography
18. Kocab, A. Senghas, J. Snedeker: Recursion in Nicaraguan Sign Language
19. Lacerda: Information Structure in child English: Contrastive topicalization and the dative alternation
20. Lau: AI > IA: The Effect of Animacy in the Production of Cantonese Relative Clauses
21. Lima, P. Li, J. Snedeker: Counting on a count list: what Yudja tells us about number word acquisition
22. Manetti, A. Belletti: The production of Clitic Left dislocations by Italian-speaking children and the role of intervention
23. Martohardjono, I. Phillips, C. Madsen II, R. Otheguy, V. Shafer, R. Schwartz: Cross-linguistic influence in bilingual processing: An ERP study
24. Messenger, S. Hardy: Exploring the lexical boost to syntactic priming in children and adults.
25. Miller, C. Renaud: Anticipation in a second language: Examining lexical versus morphological cues in French future tense
26. Myers, D. Skordos, D. Barner: Reasoning with alternatives in logical inference
27. Nguyen, W. Snyder: The (Non)-Effects of Pragmatics on Children’s Passives
28. Patience: The perception of stop-approximant contrasts by L1 English-L2 Spanish speakers

#L. Perry, M. Perlman, B. Winter, G. Lupyan, D. Massaro: The role of iconicity in child-directed speech

#R. Peters, T. Grüter, A. Borovsky: Language experience and skill alters the dynamics of lexical prediction in sentence processing

1. Petroj: Article distribution in child bimodal bilingual whispered speech

#C. Potter, J. Saffran: Variable experience improves infants’ recognition of words spoken in an unfamiliar accent

1. Ramirez, C. Echols: Language Activation in Child L2 Learners

#L. Rissman, L. Horton, S. Goldin-Meadow: Event categories in the absence of linguistic input: a cross-cultural study of child homesign

1. Royle, D. Valois, L. Fromont, J. Drury: French children’s mastery of definiteness and maximality
2. Sauerland, K. Yatsushiro: Conjunctive Disjunctions in Child Language: A New Account
3. Schreiner, N. Mani: Successful word learning across different speech registers
4. Sequeros-Valle, B. Hoot, J. Cabrelli Amaro: Clitic-doubled Left Dislocation in L2 Spanish – Data from a Speeded Production Task
5. Smeets: Ultimate Attainment at the Syntax-Discourse Interface: the acquisition of object movement in Dutch.
6. Soja, M. Goodwin, L. Naigles: The Role of Light Verbs in the Mastery of New Tense Forms: A Case Study of One Child with Language Delay
7. Sutton: Structure & acquisition of Estonian semantic case
8. Tanaka, W. O’Grady, K. Deen, I. Bondoc, J. Soriano: Differential Preferences in the Acquisition of Symmetrical Voice Language
9. Terunuma, T. Nakato, M. Isobe, M. Nakajima, R. Okabe, S. Inada, S. Inokuma: Acquisition of recursive possessives and locatives within DPs in Japanese
10. Tieu, M. Križ: Connecting the exhaustivity of clefts and the homogeneity of plural definites in acquisition
11. Topaloglu, M. Nakipoglu: How Turkish-speaking children interpret pre-verbal sadece ‘only’: the role of prosody and pragmatics

#A. Tsui, M. Berthiaume, L. Erickson, E. Thiessen, C. Fennell: How language background and individuals’ attentional processes contribute to the success of tracking two inputs in a statistical learning task

#M. Valleau, S. Arunachalam: The effects of linguistic context on visual attention while learning novel verbs

#S. van der Feest, C. Blanco, R. Smiljanic: Effects of Speaking Style and Context on Online Word Recognition in Young Children and Adults

1. van Hout, M. Arche, H. Demirdache, I. García del Real, A. García Sanz, A. Gavarró, L. Gomez Marzo, S. Hommes, N. Kazanina, J. Liu, O. Lungu, F. Martin, I. Strangmann: Agent Control and the Acquisition of Event Culmination in Basque, Dutch, English, Spanish and Mandarin
2. Veenstra, K. Antoniou, N. Katsos, M. Kissine: Resisting attraction: The role of executive control in monolingual and bilingual children
3. Wagner, C. Geraci, J. Kuhn, K. Davidson, B. Strickland: Is Telicity in Sign Languages Visible to Children?
4. Wakefield, C. Hall, S. Goldin-Meadow: Representational Gesture as a Tool for Promoting Verb Generalization in Young Children
5. Yow, X. Li, S. Lam, T. Gliga, K. Kwek, S. Saw, L. Shek, F. Yap, Y. Chong, B. Broekman: Effects of bilingualism on children’s use of social cues in word learning
6. Zaretsky: Cross-linguistic Transfer: The Role of L1 Grammatical Morphology in L2 Reading Comprehension Among ELLs From Low SES

#Y. Zhang, C. Yu: Investigating Real-Time Cross-Situational Learning Using Naturalistic Data from the Child’s View

#A. Armstrong, N. Bulkes, D. Tanner: Use of quantificational cues in the processing of English subject-verb agreement by native Chinese speakers

1. Bulkes, K. Christianson, D. Tanner: Effects of semantic opacity on prediction during native and nonnative reading
2. Butler: The acquisition of number concepts and numerical language in Yucatec Maya

#C. Canfield, A. Weisleder, C. Cates, A. Seery, A. Mendelsohn: Long-Term Impacts of Parenting Stress on Language Development in Low-Income Children

1. Casillas, P. Brown, S. Levinson: Age and turn type in Mayan children’s predictions about conversational turn-taking
2. Chen, N. Xu Rattanasone, F. Cox, K. Demuth: Australian English-learning 24-Month-Olds (But Not 18-Month-Olds) are Sensitive to Phonemic Vowel Length
3. Chen, R. Magid, J. Pyers: The effect of iconicity type on preschoolers’ gesture learning: A role for embodiment?
4. Chromá, F. Smolík: Personal pronouns and verb person inflections: relations with grammatical development and early social understanding

#C. Core, D. Martinez-Nadramia, S. Chaturvedi: The role of language experience in nonword repetition tasks in young bilingual Spanish-English speaking children

1. Creel: Plausibility constrains accented speech comprehension in monolingual and bilingual children
2. Cuza, P. Guijarro-Fuentes: Copula distribution in the Catalan and Spanish grammars of child and adult bilinguals
3. Davies, N. Xu Rattanasone, K. Demuth: Children’s Emerging Understanding of the Syllabic Plural Allomorph
4. DeAnda, K. Hendrickson, D. Poulin-Dubois, P. Zesiger, M. Friend: Lexical Access in the Second Year: a Cross-linguistic Investigation of Monolingual and Bilingual Vocabulary Development
5. Ergin, D. Brentari: Hand shape preferences for nouns and verbs in Central Taurus Sign Language
6. Flaherty, D. Hunsicker, S. Goldin-Meadow: The Seeds of Nicaraguan Sign Language are Not Found in Gesture
7. Forsythe: Top-down learning in the acquisition of pronouns
8. Foushee, F. Xu: Development in Preschooler’s Learning from Naturalistic Overheard Speech
9. Getz: Tracking forms within structures: How children learn the wanna facts
10. Grigoroglou, A. Papafragou: Informativeness and listeners’ needs in children’s event descriptions
11. Grinstead, P. Lintz, A. Pratt, M. Vega-Mendoza, J. De la Mora, M. Cantú-Sánchez, B. Flores-Avalos: Overt Subjects & Interface Deficit in Spanish SLI: A Discriminant Function Analysis
12. Hara: Second Language Learners’ Greater Difficulty with Structural Processing Routines over Case Morphology in Processing Japanese Relative Clause Sentences
13. Hopp, N. Lemmerth: L2 predictive gender processing: Effects of lexical and syntactic L1-L2 congruency
14. Iraola Azpiroz, J. Järvikivi, S. Allen, L. Roberts, P. Schumacher: Resolution preferences in German: interpretative preferences of 6-year-olds
15. Kang, B. Lust: Bilingual proficiency influences the relationship between code-switching and task-switching in 8-year-old English-Chinese Singaporean children
16. Kapatsinski: Learning rules, templates and schemas in parallel
17. Klassen, A. Tremblay, M. Wagner, H. Goad: Prominence Shifts in Second Language English and Spanish: Learning versus Unlearning
18. Kremer, B. Hollebrandse, A. van Hout: The Role of Working Memory and Theory of Mind in the Acquisition of Definiteness in Dutch Children
19. Lakusta, M. Thothathiri, D. Mendez, M. Marinkovic: Evidence for a Broad Notion of Source in Child Language

#C. Lew-Williams, D. Watson: Acoustic prominence and audience design in child- vs. adult-directed speech

#J. Li, L. liu, J. Snedeker: Whether and Why There Are Cross-cultural Differences in the Acquisition of Reference

#W. Ma, R. Golinkoff: Syntactic Bootstrapping For Form Class Distinction in Mandarin Child-directed Speech

1. Mitsugi: Syntactic prediction in L2 comprehension: Evidence from Japanese adverbials
2. Noguchi, C. Hudson Kam: Learning of talker-specific phonemic contrasts by adults
3. Parish-Morris, M. Santulli, M. Swanson, A. Estes, J. Pandey, R. Schultz, S. Paterson, and the IBIS Network: Individual Growth Trajectories of Typical and Atypical Vocalization from 6 to 24 months
4. Puig-Mayenco, D. Miller, J. Rothman: Language Dominance Affects Bilingual Competence and Processing: Evidence from a bidirectional study of Unbalanced Catalan/Spanish Bilinguals
5. Requena, M. Dracos, K. Miller: Acquisition of Spanish Mood Selection in Complement Clauses
6. Rodina: Understanding the relationship between narrative sample measures and grammaticality in heritage Russian
7. Schaeffer, B. Siekman: Are children with High-Functioning Autism better at syntax than typically developing children? The case of Dutch Object Relative Clauses
8. Schmitterer, S. Schroeder: The Development of Semantic Relatedness from Preschool to School
9. Schuler, C. Yang, E. Newport: Children form productive rules when it is more computationally efficient to do so
10. Serratrice, C. De Cat, S. Berends: Inhibitory control, working memory and language experience in the referential choices of monolingual and bilingual children
11. Smolík: Are adult age-of-acquisition ratings valid measures of child language? Comparing AoA ratings with word emergence in longitudinal corpora
12. Sugawara: Japanese L2 learners of English are sensitive to QUD and prosodic inference
13. Sugiura, H. Shimada: Children’s Non-Isomorphic Interpretation in Japanese Conditinals

#H. Wang, T. Mintz: Statistical Learning Requires a Two-Step Process

1. Westergaard, M. Anderssen, K. Bentzen, G. Busterud, A. Dahl, J. Didriksen, B. Lundquist: The acquisition of Subject and Object Shift in L2/Ln Norwegian
2. Whang, F. Adriaans: Phonotactics and alternations in the acquisition of Japanese high vowel reduction
3. White, H. Goad, J. Su, L. Smeets, M. Mortazavinia, G. Garcia, N. Guzzo: Prosodic Effects on Pronoun Interpretation in Italian
4. Wojcik, J. Werker: The effect of vocabulary size and language exposure on the emergence of monolingual and bilingual toddlers’ lexical-semantic networks
5. Yin: The Acquisition of Number Agreement in What BE these/those Sentences in English
6. Yurovsky, N. Burke, A. Woodward, S. Goldin-Meadow: Children’s gestures provide a continuous signal of word knowledge
7. Ziegler, J. Snedeker: Structural priming across development: The lexical boost, abstract priming, and task demands

Society for Language Development Symposium

The topic is Timing in Development, and the invited speakers are:

Takao Hensch, Harvard University

Elissa L. Newport, Georgetown University

Barbara Landau, Johns Hopkins University

Information about SLD can be found at their website: http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/sld/symposium.html

 

 

Workshop: The role of #Interaction in #LanguageDevelopment and Loss throughout the #Lifespan 26/04/2016

On the 26th of April, 2016, the University of Essex Research Centre for Language Development throughout the Lifespan (LaDeLi) is hosting a workshop on “The Role of Interaction in Language Development and Loss throughout the Lifespan”. You can see the programme below or download a pdf-version of the programme. The Workshop is preceded by a Lecture in our LaDeLi distinguished speaker series on the 25th of April, 2016. Prof. Annick De Houwer will talk about “The earlier, the better? A real life perspective on early bilingual development and its implications for later language learning”. You can see the flyer below or download a pdf-version of the flyer.

It would be great to see you at the lecture or workshop!

Sonja

#ChildDirectedSpeech, #LanguageDevelopment & #Parenting on #SocialMedia: New #Pinterest board & updated lists

We now have a Pinterest board where you can find our most up-to-date collection of recommendations or research summaries about child-directed speech that we have found on other websites or blogs. We will highlight some particularly interesting ones on our updated web resource list on our own blog. We have also updated our list of social media accounts that will help you find out more about child-directed speech. Those of you who search for more websites and social media accounts might find our list and discussion of potential search terms useful (e.g. infant-directed speech, motherese, fatherese, caretaker-speech, baby-talk, etc.). If you have found or created other interesting blogs, websites, Youtube channels, Twitter or Facebook accounts, please let us know by sending me an email (seisen@essex.ac.uk).

Sonja

#ChildDirectedSpeech @ #devsocconf – Annual Conference of the Developmental Section and Social Section of the British Psychological Society @BPSDevSection

There were quite a few presentations about child-directed speech (CDS) at the Annual Conference of the Developmental Section and Social Section of the British Psychological Society. More information about the conference, which took place in Manchester, 9-11 September, can be found HERE. I have highlighted CDS presentations in yellow in my copy of the conference programme so that you can see what was discussed or follow this up. You can also check Twitter for more info and pictures of the conference: @BPSDevSection and #devsocconf.

Sonja

#BabyTalk, #Motherese, Caretaker Talk, #ChildDirectedSpeech,… – are they all Names for the same Thing?

Studies on the language addressed to children that were carried out in Europe and the US have pointed out some special sound properties that can distinguish it from the language we use when we talk to other adults, for instance a special exaggerated – “singsong” or cooing – intonation, a high and varied pitch, and slow speed with comparatively long pauses between utterances and between words. When we interact with children, we also typically use short and simple sentences, a high proportion of repetitions, and a restricted vocabulary. Some – but not all – of us also use special “baby words” like moo-moo for cows or a particularly high proportion of diminutives like doggie. These findings have inspired researchers to investigate whether all mothers and fathers or other caretakers show these properties, independent of their gender, culture, and socio-economic background. This has resulted in a growing body of research – and a growing number of terms for the language we use in conversations with children: baby talk, motherese, fatherese, parentese, caretaker speech/talk, child-directed speech, infant-directed speech, toddler-directed speech, mommy/daddy talk, etc.

Some of these terms have been used for a long time by both researchers and the general public in different countries, for instance babytalk in English, Babysprache (‘baby language’) or Ammensprache (‘nursing maid talk’) in German. These terms are often viewed as derogatory because many people view baby talk as a restricted way of talking that makes adults look undignified and does not provide the child with sufficient models of the adult language. Many people also worry that the restricted grammar of baby talk might stand in the way of learning “proper” grammar; and they also point out that children will have to “unlearn” all those special baby words like moo-moo later in life. Hence, when language acquisition researchers in the 1970s started to take a closer look at the way we talk to children, they needed a term that did not have any negative associations. They also wanted to capture the idea that this variety of language has special properties that distinguish it from the language we use when we interact with other adults. Hence, the term motherese was introduced to refer to a non-standard variety of language that is addressed to children and is associated with particular grammatical, lexical, phonetic properties, and linguistic practices. The term became widely used and Elissa Newport was one of the researchers that popularised the name. The idea that motherese is a special language with its own properties is reflected in the way the word motherese itself is formed – by adding the affix –ese to the word mother. This affix is typically used to derive adjectives or nouns that identify a nationality or language, and to describe things that are of, from, or characteristic of specific countries, regions, or cultures (e.g. Japan – Japanese, Portugal – Portugese, China – Chinese). It is also often employed to form a noun for non-standard language varieties that have their own particular properties, e.g. legalese and journalese, the “languages” used by lawyer and journalists, respectively, or officialese and bureaucratese, the often unnecessarily complex and wordy language of official documents or bureaucrats.

The term motherese was popular in scientific discourse about child language acquisition for some time and can still be found in recent studies. However, it was soon perceived as too restricted as researchers also found similar properties in the language (use) of other people that were interacting with children, in particular fathers and other caretakers, such as nursery teachers and grandparents. Hence, the gender-neutral terms parentese, caretaker talk, child-directed speech, and infant-directed speech were introduced and the term fatherese has been occasionally used in opposition to motherese when researchers explicitly wanted to compare or contrast the way in which mothers and fathers talk to their children.

The terms parentese and caretaker talk may be gender neutral, but they are not neutral in all respects. Their use implies that the speaker is an adult or at least old enough to take care of a child. Moreover, it typically implies that the variety of language addressed to children is different from the variety of language directed at adults. This is particularly clear for the term parentese as it contains the –ese affix that is – as we have seen before – used to create names for varieties of a language that have their own specific properties. However, it is far from clear whether all societies have a special way of talking to children and whether all members of societies that have such a variety actually make consistent use of it when they communicate with children. For instance, cross-linguistic studies on languages with very different sound systems try to determine whether the special intonation patterns that were found for languages like English can be observed in all languages. At the same time, studies on English have questioned whether fathers show the same intonation patterns and raised pitch as mothers.

Thus, we need a general term that can be used when one wants to ask whether the language directed at children has any special properties. In this case, one does not want to use terms with ‑ese as this would already imply that one is looking at a language with its own characteristic features. Both child-directed speech and infant-directed speech fulfil this need as they can be used to refer to any linguistic material that people produce when they talk to children, whether it is similar or different from linguistic material in interactions between adults. However, the terms child-directed speech, infant-directed speech, and sometimes toddler-directed speech are also – rather confusingly – used by those researchers who explicitly claim that this type of language has properties that distinguish it from adult-directed speech.

Thus, child-directed speech, infant-directed speech, and toddler-directed speech are gender neutral terms that can be used whether or not one assumes differences between utterances directed at children and utterances directed at adults. The three terms differ from one another with respect to the age range: the term infant-directed speech is typically used when the children in question are not older than one year, the term toddler-directed speech is employed for the language directed at children between 1 and 4 years, while the term child-directed speech can be applied independently of the child’s age. The following table sums up the discussion so far.

Table 1: Terms for Language Addressed to Children

Term	Speaker	Special linguistic properties assumed for CDS	Age	Associations
motherese	mother	yes	any	neutral
fatherese	father	yes	any	neutral
parentese	parents	yes	any	neutral
caretaker talk	any adult	yes	any	neutral
mommy talk	mother	yes	any	negative
daddy talk	father	yes	any	negative
baby talk	anybody	yes (also typically associated with the use of special baby words and particularly exaggerated intonation)	any	negative
infant-directed speech	anybody	not necessarily	infants	neutral
toddler-directed speech	anybody	not necessarily	toddlers	neutral
child-directed speech	anybody	not necessarily	any	neutral

Note that this table only contains terms that are commonly used in the research literature and in advice that is given to parents or educational professionals. Additional terms have been used for other purposes, for instance for comic effect. For instance, in 1919, the satirical magazine Punch presented exam questions on “the interesting language known as Bablingo”, for instance: “Wasums and didums, then? Was it a ickle birdie, then?”, “Did he woz-a-woz, then; a Mum’s own woz-man?”, or “Did she try to hit her ickle bruzzer on his nosie-posie wiz a mug? Did she want to break him up into bitsy-witsies?”.

While having a broad range of terms may be confusing at first, it can be useful for studies that want to compare speakers of different genders (parentese vs. motherese) or children of different ages (infant-directed speech vs. toddler-directed speech) or for giving advice to parents. For instance, some parent-directed websites or support services advise parents to use parentese, but not baby talk. By this, they typically mean that parents should avoid the use of special baby words, but employ the special attention-catching sound properties and simple sentence structures that have been found in the language of parents.

For chick-directed speech, you can follow them (and us via: @LanguageGames4a)

Sonja Eisenbeiss

#ChildDirectedSpeech – What does it sound like – and where can I find out more?

The way in which we talk to children has been the focus of extensive study and there are many introductory texts that give an overview about child-directed speech (CDS) and its role in language acquisition. In studies from the 1970s and 1980s, this type of speech was often called “motherese” and the focus was on specific features of mother’s speech that might support language acquisition. However, many patterns in mothers’ speech also occur when other adults – and even older children – talk to children. Hence, most researchers now employ more general and gender-neutral terms like “child -directed speech” (CDS) or “infant-directed speech” (IDS), “caretaker speech” or “parentese”. Moreover, some researchers explicitly use the terms “motherese” and “fatherese” when they want to compare the way mothers and fathers talk to children. The term “baby talk” and the related terms “mommy talk” and “daddy talk” are usually avoided in research contexts or specifically used to describe a particularly exaggerated and “cute” way of talking that is also rich in special “baby words” or expressions, like moo-moo for cow, dada for daddy or nighty-nighty for good night.

Studies on the sound structure of CDS have documented its slow speed, longer pauses between utterances and between words, high and varied pitch, exaggerated stress patterns, and (“singsong”) intonation. At the same time, experimental studies have demonstrated that young children prefer to listen to speech with these CDS-properties rather than standard adult-directed speech. This seems to make CDS more effective than “standard” adult-directed speech in getting young children’s attention.

Studies on caretakers’ use of vocabulary have typically found a restricted vocabulary of words; and many of these words refer to concrete objects, animals, or frequently encountered people (e.g. cat, car, mummy). An inventory of special “baby words” like moo-moo for cow has been be observed for many languages, though even in communities where the use of such words is common, not everyone necessarily uses these words in interactions with young children.

Studies on grammar and sentence structure in CDS have observed that child-directed utterances are typically shorter and grammatically less complex than utterances aimed at adults. This lexical and structural simplification lowers the processing load for speakers and can explain why CDS also contains far fewer hesitations or interruptions than adult-directed speech and has a high percentage of grammatically correct utterances. In order to get their message across to a listener with limited linguistic abilities and a tendency not to do as they are told, parents often repeat their utterances, either word by word or with slight variations, e.g. Now we’ll put your toys away. Can you please put those toys away, sweetie? Please put them away! Put your toys away! All of your toys!…. This gives children a better chance to pick up words from sentences. It also demonstrates the many different ways in which words can be combined and shows which sentence structures are used for descriptions, questions, and imperatives..

Researchers studying CDS have collected data for a growing range of languages and many of these data sets are freely available. You can click HERE to find out more about CDS datasets and tools or go to another website to find out how language games can be used in CDS-research. These resources have allowed researchers to study many different aspects of CDS, for instance cultural differences, the sound structure, the role of mothers vs. fathers, etc. If you click HERE, you can find introductory readings and articles that give an overview of child language development and the role of children’s input. You can also click on the bullet points below to find more readings on specific topics

• introductions to language acquisition and CDS
• the sound structure of CDS: “Baby Talk” and the phonological/phonetic properties of CDS
• CDS in different cultures
• feedback: correction, recast, reformulations
• the role of caretaker self-repetition and variation (sets) in CDS
• the role of frequency in CDS and formulaic utterances in early child language
• CDS and the acquisition of grammar
• CDS, joint attention, social interaction, and the role of media use
• CDS for bilingual or multilingual children
• methods and tools for research on CDS
• feedback: corrections, recasts, and reformulations
• language and hearing disorders, learning difficulties
• gender differences: mothers vs. fathers, boys vs. girls
• socioeconomic status and parental education
• meal-time conversations
• CDS from other children: peers and siblings
• CDS vocabulary and word learning (including links to lists of “baby words”)
• politeness, discourse, pragmatics, and metalinguistic abilities
• CDS vs. foreigner-talk
• CDS and parental depression
• CDS, nursery rhymes, and signing
• CDS for prelinguistic infants
• children’s imitation of parents and their uptake of CDS
• the motherese hypothesis

There are many academic journals that regularly publish studies on CDS, e.g. American Journal of Speech Language Pathology; Applied Psycholinguistics; British Journal of Developmental Psychology; Child Development; Cognition; Developmental Psychology; Developmental Science; European Journal of Developmental Psychology; First Language; Infancy; Infant and Child Development; Infant Behavior and Development; Journal of Child Language; Journal of Experimental Child Psychology Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research; Language; Language; Language Acquisition; Lingua; Linguistics; The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

See in particular:

• the special issue of the journal Linguistics 47(2), 2009, with a special focus on different theories of language learning.
• the special issue of Journal of Child Language, 42(02), 2015, with a special focus on input frequency effects.

For chick-directed speech, you can follow them (and us via: @LanguageGames4a)

Sonja Eisenbeiss