The pragmatic function and lexical diversity of utterances addressed to argentinian children from middle and low SES.

RAMIREZ, M.L.; QUIROGA, M.S.; ROSEMBERG C.R.

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Congreso; International Association for the Study of Child Language (IASCL); 2021

International Association for the Study of Child Language (IASCL)

Early linguistic environment has shown an impact on children’s later language development (Hart & Risley, 1995).Child-directed speech (CDS) contributes to language development providing children the input from which they can learn language regularities and patterns, while at the same time boosting them to produce utterances beyond their current linguistic competence (Hoff-Ginsberg, 1986).Socioeconomic status (SES) disparities have been reported both in linguistic and interactive features of CDS in studies focused on brief child-adult dyadic interactions in US and Western populations.Compared to middle SES CDS that of low SES shows::● a lower quantity of words (Hart and Risley, 1995),● a lesser structural complexity (Huttenlocher et al, 2002; Rowe, 2008)● less diverse vocabulary (Rowe, 2008; Rosemberg et al, 2019)● more directives (Hoff, 1998; Rowe 2008; Mastin et al, 2016)Linguistic and pragmatic properties of CDS have been associated with children’s linguistic abilities:● high indices of lexical diversity and syntactic complexity in CDS during the first years of life were related to broader childhood productive and comprehensive vocabulary (Hoff & Naigles, 2002; Huttenlocher, Waterfall, Vasilyeva Vevea & Hedges, 2010; Rowe, 2008);● a higher proportion of directives was associated with lower vocabulary scores and higher language processing times; conversely a higher proportion of comments was related to higher vocabulary scores and lower language processing times (Mastin et al, 2016).● the proportion of directives together with the amount and linguistic features of CDS were related to children’s vocabulary comprehension (Rowe, 2008).These studies provide evidence about the impact in children's linguistic abilities of both pragmatic and linguistic features of CDS.