Semantics-specificity of child directed speech across activities in socio-economically diverse households

ROSEMBERG, CELIA RENATA; ALAM, FLORENCIA; RAMIREZ, MARÍA LAURA; GARBER, LEANDRO; GIORDANO, CARLA

Lancashire

Conferencia; LCICD; 2019

University of Lancaster

Semantics-specificity of child directed speech across activities in socio-economically diverse householdsCelia Rosemberg, Flor Alam, Laura Ramirez, Leandro Garber, Carla Giordanokeywords: semantics, child directed speech, activities, naturalistic studies, SESSeveral naturalistic studies have recently started to devote attention to the at-home everyday activities in which children are embedded and that likely shape their word development trajectories (Roy, Frank, DeCamp, Miller, & Roy, 2015, Glas & Kern, 2015; Tamis-LeMonda, Custode, Kuchirko, Escobar, & Lo, 2018; Glas, Rossi, Hamdi-Sultan & Batailler, 2018). As suggested by Nelson (1989, 1996) the social, spatial, temporal and linguistic dimensions of the activities provide multiple cues that constitute a context for children?s language experience. Though these dimensions, affecting the ebb and flow of children?s everyday life, vary in different socioeconomic (SES) backgrounds (Bradley & Corwin, 2002), studies have not considered SES differences in the extent in which child directed speech (CDS) is semantically structured around the activities of everyday life. Here we assessed semantic specificity of CDS across different type of activities in a socio-economically diverse sample of Argentinian children. Thirty children (8 to 20 months), half low and half middle SES, were audio-recorded for 4 hours. The 2 middle hours were transcribed and the MOR tool from CLAN was used to identify nouns and verbs. We coded CDS for ongoing activities that implied defined spatial and temporal boundaries: feeding, play, booksharing, grooming, households chores. Following Tamis Le Monda et al. (2018) we calculated the proportion of 21 types of concrete nouns and action verbs, eg. food nouns, eating and cooking verbs, body parts, clothing nouns, washing and dressing verbs, toys, animals, furniture, vehicles. To estimate context-specificity in the semantics of CDS and the impact of SES in the regularity across activities we conducted regression analysis. Findings in this population are in line with those from previous studies: a) the semantics of language is activity specific, however the magnitude varies across activities (see figure); b) the analysis identified a significant effect of the type of activity but no effects of SES. ReferencesBradley, R. H. & Corwin, R.F. (2002). Socioeconomic status and child development. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 371?99.Glas, L. & Kern, S. (2015) Early vocabulary development in French monolingual children and activity types. Poster presented at WILD, 10-12 June, Stockholm.Glas, L., Rossi, C., Hamdi-Sultan, R., Batailler, C., & Bellemmouche, H. (2018). Activity types and child-directed speech: a comparison between French, Tunisian Arabic and English. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique, 63(4), 633-666.MacWhinney, B. (2000). The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk. Computational Linguistics, 26(4), 657-657. Nelson, K. (1989). Narratives from the crib. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nelson, K. (1996). Language in cognitive development. The emergence of the mediated mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University PressRoy, B. C., Frank, M. C., DeCamp, P., Miller, M., & Roy, D. (2015). Predicting the birth of a spoken word. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(41), 12663-12668.Tamis-Lemonda, C.S.; Custode. S; Kuchirko Y; ,Escobar, K. and Lo, T. (2018). Routine Language: Speech Directed to Infants During Home Activity. Child Development, 00(0), 1?18.