Two-part vowel modifications in Child Directed Speech in Warlpiri may enhance child attention to speech and scaffold noun acquisition

Study 1 compared vowels in Child Directed Speech (CDS; child ages 25–46 months) to vowels in Adult Directed Speech (ADS) in natural conversation in the Australian Indigenous language Warlpiri, which has three vowels (/i/, /a/, /u). Study 2 compared the vowels of the child interlocutors from Study 1...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Phonetica 2023-02, Vol.80 (1), p.1-42
Main Authors: Bundgaard-Nielsen, Rikke L., O’Shannessy, Carmel, Wang, Yizhou, Nelson, Alice, Bartlett, Jessie, Davis, Vanessa
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
ADS
Adult
Attention
Australia
Australian languages
CDS
Child-directed speech
Data collection
Didacticism
Humans
Indigenous languages
Language
Nouns
Phonetics
Scaffolding
Speech
Speech Acoustics
Speech Perception
Vowels
Warlpiri
Warlpiri language
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Summary:Study 1 compared vowels in Child Directed Speech (CDS; child ages 25–46 months) to vowels in Adult Directed Speech (ADS) in natural conversation in the Australian Indigenous language Warlpiri, which has three vowels (/i/, /a/, /u). Study 2 compared the vowels of the child interlocutors from Study 1 to caregiver ADS and CDS. Study 1 indicates that Warlpiri CDS vowels are characterised by fronting, /a/-lowering, -raising, and increased duration, but not vowel space expansion. Vowels in CDS nouns, however, show increased between-contrast differentiation and reduced within-contrast variation, similar to what has been reported for other languages. We argue that this two-part CDS modification process serves a dual purpose: Vowel space shifting induces IDS/CDS that sounds more child-like, which may enhance child attention to speech, while increased between-contrast differentiation and reduced within-contrast variation in nouns may serve didactic purposes by providing high-quality information about lexical specifications. Study 2 indicates that Warlpiri CDS vowels are more like child vowels, providing indirect evidence that aspects of CDS may serve non-linguistic purposes simultaneously with other aspects serving linguistic-didactic purposes. The studies have novel implications for the way CDS vowel modifications are considered and highlight the necessity of naturalistic data collection, novel analyses, and typological diversity.
ISSN:0031-8388
1423-0321
DOI:10.1515/phon-2022-0039