Question

how does infant-directed speech speech differ adult directed speech? how might the special properties of infant-directed speech help children acquire language?

Answer 1

Ans) Any of various speech patterns used by parents or caregivers when communicating with young children, particularly infants, usually involving simplified vocabulary, melodic pitch, repetitive questioning, and a slow or deliberate tempo.

- Infant-directed speech (IDS), compared with adult-directed speech (ADS), is characterized by a slower rate, a higher fundamental frequency, greater pitch variations, longer pauses, repetitive intonational structures, and shorter sentences.

Infant directed speech is also called
motherese, parentese, or child directed speech

infant directed speech includes: paralinguistic differences, syntactic differences, discourse differences

Paralinguistic differences in IDS include
high pitch, slower tempo with longer pauses between phrases, exaggerated pitch changes

paralinguistic differences is the way adults speak to babies

paralinguistic differences serve to:

- highlight word boundaries, put stress on important words, and put a melody so infants attend more

syntactic differences in IDS include:

- shorter MLU (2-3 words with pauses), fewer subordinate clauses, more content and fewer function words, more repetition and rhetorical questions

function words:
do not have more than 1 descriptor, de-emphasized, give strong weak pattern, still contain content.

discourse difference in IDS is the interaction between adult and child

discourse difference in IDS includes:

- more repetition with a lot of semantic support for development of and more questions (often rhetorical).