ANTH 120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Baby Talk, Linguistic Competence, Communicative Competence
Anth. 120 Week Three Lecture Notes
● What are children learning as they learn to speak by interacting with parents?
○ Linguistic competence
■ Sounds of the language (phonology)
■ Vocabulary (lexicon) and word formation (morphology)
■ Form sentences (syntax/grammar)
○ Communicative competence
■ How to use language appropriates
■ How to participate
■ Beliefs, values, attitudes
● A Life in a Day Clip
○ In a few verbal interactions much about people can be revealed
○ For instance in clip a routine is being taught to a young child, basically what to do
when first wake up in the morning. Slowly learning how to take care of oneself.
■ Potty training
■ Cultural practice of honoring deceased family members
■ Some stuff about gender
○ Learning at the very least the language of Japanese, the grammar of it
● Two orientations toward children and speech patterns
○ In some cultures adults:
■ Adapt situations to children even if the child can’t really participate yet,
adults adapting behaviour to be more childlike and validate their
developmental process
○ In other cultures adults:
■ Expect children to adapt to situations, if they are unable to do this they
are not included essentially, thus children adapt rather than adults
● Parentese (baby talk)
○ The sing-song speech often accompanied by exaggerated facial expressions
used when talking to a baby and not just in English, applies to other languages
and cultures as well but it's been found that it's mostly Anglo-European/Saxon
highly educated middle class in both America and Europe, which is where most
of this research comes from
○ Apparently helps babies learn language by making a language more simplistic
and easier for their brains to map
○ Feature of Parentese/Baby Talk Register
■ Increased use of high pitch
■ Exaggerated slow intonation
■ Baby-talk lexicon
■ Diminutives reduplicated words, simple sentences
■ Shorter sentences, interrogatives (questions)
■ Vocatives (calling out to someone), talk about here-and-now
■ Play and politeness routines
■ Make effort to interpret child’s intentions/attention
Document Summary
In a few verbal interactions much about people can be revealed. For instance in clip a routine is being taught to a young child, basically what to do when first wake up in the morning. Slowly learning how to take care of oneself. Cultural practice of honoring deceased family members. Learning at the very least the language of japanese, the grammar of it. Two orientations toward children and speech patterns. Adapt situations to children even if the child can"t really participate yet, adults adapting behaviour to be more childlike and validate their developmental process. Expect children to adapt to situations, if they are unable to do this they are not included essentially, thus children adapt rather than adults. Apparently helps babies learn language by making a language more simplistic and easier for their brains to map. Vocatives (calling out to someone), talk about here-and-now.
