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

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