Elements of style: Maternal and child contributions to the referential and expressive styles of language acquisition.
Item
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Title
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Elements of style: Maternal and child contributions to the referential and expressive styles of language acquisition.
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Identifier
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AAI9000700
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identifier
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9000700
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Creator
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Hampson, June Elizabeth.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Katherine Nelson
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Date
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1989
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Developmental
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Abstract
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The present longitudinal study examined potential precursors of the 20-month referential and expressive styles. The main hypothesis of the study was that individual differences are the result of an interaction between child preferences and maternal input variables. Alternative hypotheses that stylistic differences might be merely the unfolding of the child's cognitive style, or related to precocious language development, or purely the result of maternal input were also tested.;36 white, middle-class mother-child dyads were selected from a pool of 45 subjects on the basis of the size of the child's 13-month vocabulary (assessed by maternal questionnaire), and divided into a group of early talkers (vocabularies {dollar}>{dollar}14 words) and another of late talkers ({dollar}<{dollar}8 words). Dyads were videotaped at 13 and 20 months, and distributed into the relevant cells of a 6-cell matrix design according to maternal emphasis upon object or person references and the composition of the child's 13-month vocabulary. While the size of the child's 13-month vocabulary was related to maternal language measures, children's initial stylistic tendencies were relatively independent.;The referential and expressive styles evidenced at 20 months were significantly related to both prior maternal and child measures. An early emphasis on common nouns or non-nouns predicted 20-month style. The referential style was positively associated with maternal use of nouns and descriptions, and negatively associated with the use of performatives and conversational devices. However, interactions between 13-month maternal and child variables were better predictors of 20-month style than either measure alone.;Interaction variables were also the best predictors of measures of maternal language at 20 months. Mothers and children are better predictors of each other at 20-months, but that is the result of bi-directional effects.;Qualitative analyses of a subsample of children revealed that referential and expressive children follow different routes to multiword utterances, and that the expressive strategy is a viable alternate route.;Finally, inconsistencies between motherese findings may be attributable to a failure to take individual differences into account, since maternal input had a differential effect depending upon the strategy adopted by the child.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
