A cross-linguistic examination of young children’s everyday language experiences

Bunce, J., Soderstrom, M., Bergelson, E., Rosemberg, C., Stein, A., Alam, F., Migdalek, M. J., & Casillas, M. (2024). A cross-linguistic examination of young children’s everyday language experiences. Journal of Child Language. Advance online publication. doi:10.1017/S030500092400028X.
We present an exploratory cross-linguistic analysis of the quantity of target-child-directed speech and adult-directed speech in North American English (US & Canadian), United Kingdom English, Argentinian Spanish, Tseltal (Tenejapa, Mayan), and Yélî Dnye (Rossel Island, Papuan), using annotations from 69 children aged 2–36 months. Using a novel methodological approach, our cross-linguistic and cross-cultural findings support prior work suggesting that target-child-directed speech quantities are stable across early development, while adult-directed speech decreases. A preponderance of speech from women was found to a similar degree across groups, with less target-child-directed speech from men and children in the North American samples than elsewhere. Consistently across groups, children also heard more adult-directed than target-child-directed speech. Finally, the numbers of talkers present in any given clip strongly impacted children’s moment-to-moment input quantities. These findings illustrate how the structure of home life impacts patterns of early language exposure across diverse developmental contexts.
Additional information
S030500092400028Xsup001.pdf
Publication type
Journal article
Publication date
2024

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