Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research

University of Diyala
College of Education for Humanities sciences
Department of English

A psycholinguistic study of
parentese in first language
acquisition
A Research
Submitted to the Committee of Discussion at Department of
English-College of Education for Humanities, University of
Diyala_A partial Requirement of Undergraduate Studies for the
Degree of B.A. in English

Presented By:
Zainab Ismail Jalel & Zahraa Saleh Mahdi
Supervised by:
Asst. Inst. Abeer Hadi Mukheef

2022 A.D 1443.H

I
 Dedication

To…

– who has gone beyond the veil, for his endless and infinite love,
dedication, and support for his family;

To ….

our mothers, – who never get tired of being the world’s coolest
mums, for their blessings in every choice that we make and every
action that we take; To every blunt person with loving hearts

II
 Acknowledgements

All praise is due to Allah the Almighty for the

enormous graces he bestowed us to achieve this
research. We are thankful Asst. Inst. Abeer Hadi
Mukheef for the remarkable guidance, advice, and
patience throughout the period of this research. We
also greatly indebted to staff of English Department
who were very cooperative with us.

III
 Table of Contents

No. Contents Page

Dedication II

Acknowledgments III

Table of contents IV

Abstract V

Section One:
1.1 Introduction 1
1.2 Language Acquisitions 1-2
1.3 First Language Acquisition 2-3
1.4 How Children Learn Language 3-4
1.4.1 Speech Comprehension and Production Improvement 4
[Link] Pre-Linguistic Stage 4-6
[Link] Linguistic Stage 6-8
1.5 The Child Development in a Social Context 8-9
1.6 Factors Affecting First Language Acquisition 9-11
Section Two:
2.1 Parentese and Baby Talk 12
2.1.1 The Characteristics of Parentese and Baby Talk 13-16
2.2 The Reasons of Using Parentese 16-17
2.3 The Benefits of Parentese in Language Learning 17-19
Conclusion 20
References 21-23

IV
 Abstract

The main purpose of this research topics focuses on psycholinguistics,

language acquisition. It describes how children learn and acquire their first
language, as well as the factors affecting the acquisition. Parentese and
baby talk, among many other factors, are unique in their nature and
characteristics.

This paper is divided into two sections with introduction and

conclusion.

The first section, sheds the light on a brief introduction about whole
research, and it gives elaboration language acquisition, first language
acquisition and how children acquire language, it also, shows the pre-
linguistic stages and linguistic stages of children.

The second section, points out to the parentese and baby talk with
indication to the and reasons of using parentese and the benefits of
parentese in language learning, at the end of the paper there is a conclusion
about the title of our research.

V
 Section One

1.1 Introduction

Language lies in the central processing system of human beings. It is a

very crucial thing they need to survive. Without language, whether spoken
or written, a communication might fail. In communication, language is
carried out through two basic activities: speaking and listening. In
speaking, people put ideas into words and talk about perceptions, feelings,
and intentions they want other people to grasp. In listening, they turn words
into ideas, try to reconstruct the perceptions, feelings, and intentions to
grasp. The process of how people use language is studied under the field
of psycholinguistics (Joseph, 2003:14).

The term psycholinguistics involves two studies, i.e. psychology and

linguistics. Therefore, in its people study how the psychological condition
can affect the production and comprehension of a certain language. There
are three major topics discussed in psycholinguistics: speech production,
speech comprehension, and language acquisition. The first concerns with
how human can produce speech how to articulate sounds and produce
'utterances. The second concerns with how human can perceive and
comprehend utterances addressed to them, as well as how the language is
processed in the brain. The last one concerns with how children acquire
and communicate using language (ibid).

1.2 Language Acquisitions

Language acquisition is known as the unconscious process by which

the newborn acquires his first language. All children have the capability of
learning any language as their mother tongue. There is no need to teach the
language because the child acquires language through interaction with the
surrounding people (Hutauruk, 2015: 52).

1
 Cole (2008:11) says, “Language acquisition is a matter of growth and
maturation of innate capacities”. i.e., every infant is born with an inborn
ability to acquire any human language. Cole (2008:13) provides that
linguistic structures used by a child are already printed in his mind. Yule
(2010:76) also supports the idea of the existence of an innate capacity in
any normal healthy child to acquire language. He argues that language
acquisition is a fast process which occurs before the child starts learning a
formal language in school.

Language acquisition is one of the child’s earlier achievements, which

demands three components: the language, the baby and the environment.
First, the existence of the language to be mastered. Second, the baby and
his ability to acquire a language. Third, the environmental setting the child
is surrounded by (Rice, 1989:149).

Language is not an inherited process but it is transmitted through

environment and culture to the child. He acquires his mother tongue
without tutoring. Unlike any other intellectual skill, language acquisition
is affected by mental retardation (Hutauruk, 2015:54).

1.3 First Language Acquisition

Troike (2006:4) states that first language acquisition is a language

which is acquired during early childhood and it normally begins before the
age of about three years old. Children are acquiring the language as long
as they grow up. First language acquisition is the process of children
acquiring their first language. The process takes place naturally in a child.
Parents and the environment are very important and influential in the
process of child language acquisition. Children usually listen and respond
to the utterances produce by people around them, especially their parents.

2
The mother is a person that allows an opportunity for baby to participate in
communication with her.

Basically, a baby only produces sound that is a language that we do

not understand. Wright (1971:114) states that before producing single-
word utterances, children are producing sounds of utterances that are
meaningless to the adult. Then the sounds develop into a language which
is perfectly with the development of their age. Through the first language,
a child learns to express feelings and desires in the form of language. At
the time of this language acquisition, the child uses the language to
communicate with people around them. All normal children who grow up
in normal households will acquire the language that is being used around
them. It is just as easy for a child to acquire their language, as long as they
are regularly interacting with speakers of that language. Children acquire
language in stages, and different children reach the various stages at
different times.

1.4 How Children Learn Language

The majority of people believe that language is learned through

imitation. Children learn language through their exposure to it. They copy
and repeat words they hear aloud. Children learn how to pronounce sounds
and words through imitation, and they appear to enjoy imitating the sounds
they hear (Steinberg et al, 2001: 41). However, there is a clear limitation:
imitation can only be used for speech production, not speech
comprehension. Imitation cannot be involved in the primary process of
language learning, comprehension, because speech comprehension comes
before speech production. Another obvious limitation is that imitation is
not used in sentence construction. Abstract rules cannot be imitated
because rules do not exist in the physical world.

3
 Clark and Clark (1977:296) illustrate that when using a language,
children are faced with two general problems. First, they have to figure out
how to map their ideas and general knowledge into propositions that they
can then express as single words or groups of words. Second, they have to
find out how to communicate speech acts and thematic information along
with the propositional content of their utterances.

After children have begun to map ideas onto propositions, they can
begin to devise rules for combining words into sentences. They must
concentrate on the structure of the language they are learning.
Simultaneously, they must work on determining the rules for carrying on
conversations. Here, they must concentrate on the function of language in
order to understand the cooperative principles and everything that goes
with it. They must also work on mastering the sound system. They must
figure out which sounds are used in their language and learn to recognize
them when others pronounce them. In short, children learn their first
language through phonology, then in lexicon and syntactic structure, and
later on in semantic meanings (ibid).

1.4.1 Speech Comprehension and Production Improvement

Even long before children have the ability to speak a language, they
already have the ability to comprehend utterances addressed to them.
Concerning with how they produce speech, there are some stages of
language acquisition that young children experience (Steinberg et al,
2001:7):

[Link] Pre-Linguistic Stage

1- Crying

The first sound the baby produces is the crying sound (birth cry). It is
the first step in language acquisition that children use to communicate with
4
the external environment. Crying sounds differ one from another. It may
be either a hunger cry, a thirst cry or a pain cry (Scoval, 2008:34). This
crying is considered as non-linguistic sound and universal to all children.
The physical sound of crying and its communicative meaning are directly
related. The more the baby is not comfortable the longer and the louder the
crying is. In this stage making noises and crying help the child to control
the air that comes from their lungs and the use of their vocal cords. By the
end of the crying period, the cry becomes more symbolic than iconic, i.e.
it is not related to the child’s feeling of discomfort but it is related to its
needs and to attract others’ attention (ibid).

2- Cooing

Cooing is the second period in the pre-linguistic stage. This period

continues until the sixth month of age. In this period, the baby’s
vocalization is composed of the following:

A-Short vowels /a/ and /u/.

b- Long vowels /a: /, /u: / and /i: / (Salim and Mehawesh, 2014).

During this stage, the baby starts cooing to express and convey his
comfort and satisfaction with the caregiver. After a period of interaction
between the child and caregiver, the cooing sound of the child is translated
as a way of communication with adults in order to attract their attention.
“After several weeks of extensive interaction with its caregiver the child
starts to coo, making soft gurgling sounds, seemingly to express
satisfaction” (Scovel,2008: 9)

3. Babbling

By about 6 months of age, the baby begins to entertain himself by

producing a collection of different sounds, trying to imitate adults’ speech.

5
According to Janda and Hamel (Cited in Salim and Mehawesh, 2014:98)
babbling is a necessary step in language development. In this period the
newborn starts producing some plosive consonants like /b/ and nasal
consonants as /m/ and forming consonant-vowel syllables such as: /ba/,
/ma/, /da/, and /ta/.

Psycholinguists give two types of babbling, which are marginal and

canonical babbling.

1- Marginal babbling is similar to cooing. It is considered as a pre-

canonical vocalization. In this stage, the baby starts producing random
consonants. Marginal babbling is defined as an exercise of the organs of
speech. It is composed of consonants + vowel patterns, for example ‘ma’
and ‘ta’ (Sreeja, 2018:78).

2- Canonical babbling is when the child starts producing syllables as the

ones of the caregiver’s language (Scoval, 2008:11). In this period, the child
starts producing a combination of sounds.

He learns to repeat the sounds he hears around him. The parent in this
stage helps their child in relating sounds to specific objects, such as ‘miao
miao’ for a cat. Thus, the child learns to denote to objects or different things
(Sreeja, 2018:79).

[Link] Linguistic Stage

[Link].1 Holophrastic stage

The term ‘holophrastic’ comes from ‘holophrase’, where ‘holo’ means

‘whole’, and ‘phrase’ means ‘phrase’ or ‘sentence’. This stage starts when
the child is about 11 or 12 months. In this stage the infant produces one
word instead of a sentence. Researchers have shown that the young child
can express a variety of semantic functions and complex ideas by the use

6
of single words. For example, instead of saying “give me water” the child
will say just “water”. Most children come out with their first words about
one year of age, some earlier and some later. Some children will reach this
stage much sooner than others. However, that does not mean that there is
anything wrong with the baby who goes through it later (Salim and
Mehawesh, 2014:76).

Through the holophrastic stage, children acquire words by

reinforcement of their parents or caregiver. The reinforcement is
considered as an encouragement to the child, by smiling at him or by acting
any positive signals reacting to his performance. (Steinburg and Sciarini,
2006:56)

What is often seen in children in this holophrastic stage is something

called generalization, which is when a single word is used to mean several
kinds of related things. For example, ‘dada’ may first refer to one particular
person, as it may include all men. The utterance ‘wow-wow’ refers to one
dog, all animals, soft-shippers, or people in furs. (ibid).

[Link].2 Telegraphic speech: two-and three-word utterances

When the child is two years old, he starts to combine more than two
words in their utterances. He starts to use what is called telegraphic speech,
combining words without using functional words. In this stage, the lexicon
of the child reaches more than 50 words (Yule, 2010:90).

The child’s language development goes quickly at this stage. He tries

to link two utterances to form a sentence; however, it cannot be considered
as a sentence yet because it is not complete. For example, the child says
‘mom juice drink’ to mean ‘mom give me some juice to drink’. During this
stage the child starts ordering words correctly; he makes no word order
mistakes. By the age of two and a half, the child’s vocabulary is more

7
developed. Even the pronunciation becomes similar to that of adults
(O’Grady et al. 1997:54).

1.5 The Child Development in a Social Context

As stated by Kopp and Krakow (1982:7) in The Child Development in

a Social Context give a brief description of the stages of children's growth.
They state that children at the age of 2 start to play with peers, feel
empathy, pride, and embarrassment. They start to enjoy games that
entertain them. As for their cognitive development, they can represent
ideas with symbols, recall the past, and understand the future. They begin
to concentrate doing something they are interested in. They sometimes
watch television even though they do not know what actually being shown
is. The language, cognitive, and social development change as the age
changes(ibid).

Moreover, Kopp and Krakow (1982:285) state that language is

composed of units that are nested into each other and combined in certain
ways: The largest of these units, labeled as connected discourse, contains
a series of utterances they are related to each other and are produced in a
conversation. Walton, et al (1972: 274) states that before the age of five
children do not use covert speech to memorize, reason, or plan. Instead,
they seem to use speech in socially communicative ways to respond
impulsively to specific situations, including the naming of objects to other
people. It means that children under five do not consider what is meant by
words and how to apply them correctly. They enjoy the sounds or the way
they can produce the words(ibid).

Children everywhere learn to speak at about the same age and make
progress at a rate that is roughly much the same. The way children talk
would give the hearer a small description about who they are. There are

8
two important terms in children's language development egocentric and
sociocentric modes of speech. Egocentrism refers to the children's isolation
within themselves they sometimes talk without knowing to whom they
speak or whether they are being listened to. The egocentric speech may be
expressed through repetition or talking for the sake of talking, monologue
or talking to oneself as thinking aloud, and collective or dual monologue
(Walton, et al.,1972: 275).

This is in contrast with socialized speech in which the speaker

addresses the listener, considers his point of view, at least to some degrees,
-and tries to communicate with him. It is only at about the age of seven or
eight that true social maturity appears simultaneously the disappearance of
egocentric speech(ibid:276).

1.6 Factors Affecting First Language Acquisition

Nature and nurture are said to be very important factors in the process
of acquiring first language. The concept of nature was proposed by
Chomsky in his Universal Grammar, that children all over the world are
born with a hard-wired language acquisition device in their brains. The
language acquisition device enables human infants to have innate ability
for language, without which they would be incapable of learning such
complete speech patterns in a natural human environment
(Joseph,2003:15).

The concept of nurture refers to the way in which children are treated
as they are growing, as compared with the characteristics they are born
with. In this concept, it is believed that children development is partly
because of the treatment from the people surrounding them. The way
parents and others treat a child will determine the development level,
including the language of the child. First language is picked up at home in

9
the most natural situations. Its learning takes place along with other aspects
of biological growth such as walking and governed by the principles of
proximity, usefulness, concreteness, particularity, and interest
(Joseph,2003:16).

As well nature and nurture, there are some minor factors influencing
the success of first language acquisition. They are proposed by Joseph
(2003: 20) in Psychology of language learning as in the following:

a. The physical environment

The materials surrounding a child have a lot to do with what and how he
picks up a language. Children get involved in the materials surrounding
them much more than adults. Therefore, trees, cats, dogs, etc. have a lot to
do with the way children learn their first language.

b. The social environment

A child growing up with parents and an orphan one will make a world of
difference in language learning. A mother who goes out daily to work and
the one who is always by her child will bring different influence toward the
child's language learning. The mother, family, and neighborhood are
important social elements for the natural language growth of a child.

c. The physical and economic resources

Economic resources influence a child's contact with things and events

and possibly limit the range of the child's overall experience. They also
determine to a great extent the feasibility of the parents to care for the
language development of the child.

d. Motivation

There are several internal and external needs which compel children
to learn their first language. Among the internal needs are the need for food,
10
warmth, and shelter. There are also emotional needs to fulfill, such as the
need for constant love, care, and affection. These needs cannot be met
unless the child masters some kind of liaison devices with the world
outside. The first language is the most essential of such devices. The need
of social interaction requires mastery over a language for interaction with
the members of the society. There is the need for self-expression and
creative behavior that can be met by language.

All the factors influencing first language acquisition, parentese and

baby talk are possible ways to help children acquiring their first language.
They both involve the participation of people surrounding a child that make
the child exposed to certain language.

11
 Section Two

2.1 Parentese and Baby Talk

Obviously, when talking to children, adults use different style of

language. Clark and Clark (1977:322) show that adults talk to young
children mainly about 'here and now'. They make running commentaries
on what children do or for anticipating their actions. Adults talk about
objects that children are interested in. They name, describe the properties,
and talk about the relation between objects. There are two terms used to
refer to the language used by adults when they are talking to children
parentese or motherese and baby talk.

The adults involved in both parentese and baby talk might be the
children's parents or others who are in the children's environment. The term
parentese refers to the sort of speech that children receive when they are
very young (Steinberg et al, 2001: 37). It is often referred to as motherese,
caregiver speech, adult-to-child language, and child-directed speech. All
of these terms take into consideration the fact that the child receives input
from many sources mother, father, siblings, · relatives, friends, etc. and
that such input has special linguistic characteristics.

On the other hand, the term baby talk which some experts say is the
same as parentese is used for referring to a form of parentese that involves
the use of vocabulary and syntax that is overly simplified and reduced
(Steinberg et al, 2001: 39). Some characteristics of both parentese and baby
talk are discussed in the following part:

12
2.1.1The Characteristics of Parentese and Baby Talk

Elliot (1981: 150) states that the term 'motherese' is the same as 'baby
talk' used by Snow and Ferguson in Psychology and Language by Clark
and Clark. It displays special modifications of the adult model, particularly
at the levels of syntactic, and discourse features.

When adults talk to children, they tend to use simpler language than
when they talk to other adults. It is adults who have to adapt themselves to
children's language style. The modifications of the language used by adults
to children as stated by Elliot (1981: 151) are discussed in the following:

a. Syntactic Features

Concerning with the syntactic features, there. are some characteristics

that parentese has:

1) Shorter MLU (Mean Length of Utterance)

MLU (Mean Length of Utterance) is a measure of linguistic

productivity in children. It is traditionally calculated by collecting 100
utterances spoken by a child and dividing the number of morphemes by the
number of utterances. A higher MLU indicates higher level of language
proficiency. The MLU of adult utterances is 7. Therefore, when talking to
children, adults' utterances have fewer MLU.

2) Fewer Verb Forms and Modifiers

Adults also minimized using verb forms and modifiers when talking to
young children. In English, the present verb form is more preferable than
the past one.

3) Fewer Subordinate Clauses per Utterance.

13
 Adults use simpler utterances when talking to children. They usually
use only one clause in each utterance and avoid using complex utterances
to children.

4) More Verbless Sentences

A verbless sentence is a sentence that is grammatically incorrect, since

it has no predicate (no verb). However, it can be analyzed as consisting of
grammatical units functioning as subject, object etc. Some examples of
verbless sentences are questions, commands, and elliptical responses.

5) More Content Words, Fewer Function Words

Content words or open class words are easier to be understood by

children since they have clear referents. Words that are considered as
content words are nouns, adjectives, verbs, numerals, and -interjections.

b. Discourse Features

The discourse features found in the utterances· of adults to children are:

1) More Interrogatives and Imperatives

Interrogative and imperative are used more often than other kinds of
sentence when adults talk to children. The reason is very obvious: the
interrogative is used for encouraging children to give response and the
imperative is used for giving commands or request. Therefore, utterances
such as Do you want some cookies? or Come here. Mommy have
something for you. are common for children.

2) More Fluent and Intelligible Speech

Adults' speech to children are usually fluent and intelligible. Fluent

means speaking in a smooth and easily way. Being intelligible means using
the simplest language, which is usually indicated by the use of simple

14
words and simple sentence structure. As stated by Clark and Clark (1977:
326), an adult's utterance to other adults usually consist of more than 10
words. Thus, when talking to children, adults use less than 10 words in an
utterance.

3) More Repetitions

Using many repetitions is one of the characteristics of adults' utterance

to children. By using more repetitions, children will get the meaning of the
utterance easier. The repetition might be done completely or partially.
Complete repetition refers to the repetition of the whole utterance, such as
in Mommy is coming! Mommy is coming! When the repetition is dorie
partially, only parts of the utterance that are repeated, such as in Mommy
... Mommy is coming!

Besides Elliot, Clark and Clark (1977:327) also, states some

characteristics of adults' utterances to children. They are:

a. Almost 100% of the utterances addressed to children aged two are

followed by a pause. The number is decreasing along with the increase of
the age of the children.

b. Once children begin to see one and two-word utterances, adults begin to
provide both implicit and explicit information about conversational turns.
For example, they may provide model dialogues in which the same speaker
asks a question and then supplies an answer to it.

c. Adults seldom correct what children have to say. When they do it, they
only seem to do it to make sure that the child's contribution is true. The
correction is made explicitly or implicitly.

d. Adults use very short sentences when talking to young children. Since
the sentences are short, the words used are also simple.

15
e. Adults repeat themselves when giving instruction. The repetitions are
more frequent the younger the age of the child is. The repetitions allow
children more time to interpret adults' utterances because they do not have
to remember the whole utterances.

Clark and Clark (1977: 320-321) further state that there are three things
that in.1uence the way adults talk to children. First, they have to make sure
that children understand an utterance being addressed to them, and notto
someone else. To do this, they can use the child's name, a special tone of
voice, or get the child's attention by touching them.

Second, once they have the child's attention, they have to choose the
right words and utterances to make the child understand what is being said.
For example, adults will not discuss something abstract but something that
the child is doing, looking at, or playing with at the moment of the speech.
Third, they shall make utterances that are easy to be understood. Usually,
short sentences are preferable with slow pace of speaking(ibid).

2.2 The Reasons of Using Parentese

Although they are still young in age, children are intelligent learners.
They learn things faster than adults. However, since children are still
egocentric, adults need to modify their language to get closer to them.
There are some reasons behind the modifications of the language. All of
them aim at stimulating children's learning process in producing and
comprehending language (Cook,1979:67).

a. Giving general problem-solving advice

By their speech, adults give children a hint or a method rather than a

solution. However, sometimes they also give direct instruction to get
children involved in an activity (ibid).

16
b. Giving a manageable task.

Some tasks are too complex for children. Thus, adults may break the
tasks into smaller ones that are still challenging, but children can handle.
They divide the tasks into several stages (Cook,1979:68).

c. Giving advice in the form of questions

By using questions more than commands, adults challenge children to

think and elaborate the answer as well (ibid).

2.3 The Benefits of Parentese in Language Learning

The most important factor leading to the success of learning a certain

language, whether the first the mother tongue or the second language, is
language exposure. Whenever children are exposed more to a certain
language, their learning will result better than they who are not exposed
directly to the language. The language exposures that young children
receive are mainly from their parents and people in the surrounding. Thus,
the way these people communicate with the children is significant enough
for the development of the children's language (Taylor,1992:32).

Investigating the process of how children learn language and also the
characteristics of parentese and baby talk, there are some benefits that can
be unveiled regarding the use of parentese or baby talk in relation to
language learning. The benefits are that young children (Taylor,1992:34):

[Link] more vocabulary

The speech that parents and others used in talking to children is usually
around the concept of here .and now about what is happening in the
immediate environment and not-about remote objects and events. The
vocabulary used is simple and short. For example, consonant plus vowel
word patterns such as mama are preferable than the more complex sound

17
patterns such as mother. This will provide children easy pronunciation of
words that they will enjoy to pronounce.

The words parents use in speaking to young children anticipate the

nature of the child's world (Clark and Clark, 1977: 323). Adults select their
words that seem to have the most immediate relevance to what their
children might want to talk about. The principle of immediacy is really held
tightly when. adults are talking to children. Besides the ease in
pronunciation, introducing words this way enables children to relate the
words with their referents. Thus, children will develop more vocabulary
easily even though their pronunciations are not yet perfectly developed.

2. Understand abstract concepts easier

Although there are more concrete words learned in comparison to the

abstract ones, children are sometimes presented with abstract concepts.
When parents or others surrounding the children introduce abstract
concepts, they usually do this with exaggerated intonation, pitch, and stress
(ibid).

Parents tend to use higher pitch, slower speech, with more and clearer
pauses between utterances, and they placed more distinctive stress on
words that are considered important. They also frequently repeat or
rephrase what they or their children say. For example, when introducing
the concept hungry, which is a quite abstract, parent can use higher pitch
and stress on words associated with it such as stomach and eat. They can
also use gestures to accompany them. By this way, children will have better
understanding on the concepts introduced, including the abstract ones
(Taylor,1992:39).

18
[Link] grammar naturally

Besides the advantages concerning with vocabulary, using parentese

and baby talk help children with grammar. Generally, the speech to
children is short and simplified. Although it is simplified, it is highly
grammatical. Ungrammatical utterances are found to occur but rarely
(Taylor,1992:40).

'This grammatical consistency is useful to children who are searching

to discover the structures which underlie utterances. They do this naturally
of course, since parentese and baby talk are conducted in natural settings
the children will find it unconsciously without being taught officially
(ibid).

[Link] conversation routines

From very early on, adults encourage children to take their turns as
speaker and listener in conversation. Even when they talk to very small
infants, they thrust conversational turns upon them. Whatever the children
do is treated as a conversational turn, even though the adults carry most of
the conversation. Once children begin to use one-and two-word utterances,
adults begin to provide both implicit and explicit information about
conversational turns (ibid:42).

One of the characteristics of parentese is that the utterances used are

mostly· in the form of interrogatives and imperatives. Adults use them
hoping that their children will give responses to those speech acts. As a
result,. the children are accustomed to respond to these situations. They
will understand when to take their turns in conversation without being
aware that they have learned this from a very young age (ibid:43).

19
Conclusion:

Children learn language through their exposure to it. These language

exposures come from their parents and others around them. When adults
speak to their children, they modify their language so that the children can
understand it more easily. Parentese and baby talk are terms used to
describe the unique language modification that occurs when talking to
young children.

Parentese and baby talk are beneficial in language learning process.

The benefits are that young children can develop more vocabulary,
understand abstract concepts easier, learn grammar naturally, and
understand conversation routines. In short, although parentese and baby
talk are not the only factors leading to the success of language learning,
they are of great contribution toward it.

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