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Journal of Child Language

Table of Contents - 2009 - Volume 36, Issue 04  

Cambridge Journals Online - CUP Full-Text Page
Journal of Child Language (2009), 36:909-922 Cambridge University Press
Copyright © 2009 Cambridge University Press
doi:10.1017/S030500090800929X

Brief Research Report

Age-related changes in acoustic modifications of Mandarin maternal speech to preverbal infants and five-year-old children: a longitudinal study*

HUEI-MEI LIUa1 c1, FENG-MING TSAOa2 and PATRICIA K. KUHLa3

a1 Department of Special Education, National Taiwan Normal University
a2 Department of Psychology National Taiwan University
a3 Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, University of Washington, USA
Article author query
liu h [PubMed]  [Google Scholar]
tsao f [PubMed]  [Google Scholar]
kuhl pk [PubMed]  [Google Scholar]

ABSTRACT

Acoustic-phonetic exaggeration of infant-directed speech (IDS) is well documented, but few studies address whether these features are modified with a child's age. Mandarin-speaking mothers were recorded while addressing an adult and their child at two ages (0 ; 7–1 ; 0 and 5 ; 0) to examine the acoustic-phonetic differences between IDS and child-directed speech (CDS). CDS exhibits an exaggeration pattern resembling that of IDS – expanded vowel space, longer vowels, higher pitch and greater lexical tone differences – when compared to ADS. Longitudinal analysis demonstrated that the extent of acoustic exaggeration is significantly smaller in CDS than in IDS. Age-related changes in maternal speech provide some support for the hypothesis that mothers adjust their speech directed toward children as a function of the child's language ability.

(Received September 02 2007)

(Revised March 24 2008)

(Online publication February 23 2009)

Correspondence:

c1 Address for correspondence: Huei-Mei Liu, Department of Special Education, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, TAIWAN. e-mail: liumei@ntnu.edu.tw

Footnotes

[*] This research was supported by a research grant from the National Science Council, Taiwan, to Huei-Mei Liu (NSC 92-2413-H-003-072 & NSC 93-2413-H-003-019). Patricia K. Kuhl's contribution was supported by the Hsin-Yi Foundation of Taiwan and an NSF Science of Learning Center grant (0354453).