Parental Language Input Research Articles

Predictors of Morphosyntactic Growth in Typically Developing Toddlers: Contributions of Parent Input and Child Sex

Theories of morphosyntactic development must account for between-child differences in morphosyntactic growth rates. This study extends Legate and Yang's (2007) theoretically motivated cross-linguistic approach to determine if variation in properties of parent input accounts for differences in the growth of tense productivity. Fifteen toddlers (and parents) participated. None were producing tense morphemes productively at 21 months. Two dependent measures of morphosyntactic growth between 21 and 30 months were used: empirical Bayes linear coefficients at 21 months and predicted productivity scores at 30 months. Predictor variables included child sex, vocabulary, and mean length of utterance as well as 4 measures of parent language input at 21 months. Input informativeness for tense was the most consistent predictor of morphosyntactic growth, explaining 28.3% of the unique variance in children's linear growth coefficients at 21 months and 23.0% of the unique variance in predicted tense productivity scores at 30 months. General input measures were unrelated. Child sex explained an additional 24.7% of the variance in early linear growth. Child vocabulary at 21 months did not explain a significant proportion of unique variance. The findings provide evidence that input informativeness, an abstract and distributed property of input, contributes to morphosyntactic growth.

Parental numeric language input to Mandarin Chinese and English speaking preschool children

The present study examined the number-specific parental language input to Mandarin- and English-speaking preschool-aged children. Mandarin and English transcripts from the CHILDES database were examined for amount of numeric speech, specific types of numeric speech and syntactic frames in which numeric speech appeared. The results showed that Mandarin-speaking parents talked about number more frequently than English-speaking parents. Further, the ways in which parents talked about number terms in the two languages was more supportive of a cardinal interpretation in Mandarin than in English. We discuss these results in terms of their implications for numerical understanding and later mathematical performance.

Parental language input patterns and children's bilingual use

This article reports on a study that addresses the following question: why do some children exposed to two languages from early on fail to speak those two languages? Questionnaire data were collected in 1,899 families in which at least one of the parents spoke a language other than the majority language. Each questionnaire asked about the home language use of a family consisting of at least one parent and one child between the ages of 6 and 10 years old. The results show that the children in these families all spoke the majority language, but that minority language use was not universal. Differences in parental language input patterns used at home correlated with differences in child minority language use. Home input patterns where both parents used the minority language and where at most one parent spoke the majority language had a high chance of success. The “one parent–one language” strategy did not provide a necessary nor sufficient input condition. Implications for bilingual families are discussed.

Quantity and quality of parental language input to late-talking toddlers during play

This study compared the language behaviours of parents of toddlers with language delay (LD) and language ofparents of typically developing toddlers (LN). Results indicate that parents of children with a language delay and children with normal language produced comparable amounts of linguistic input, but differed on some qualitative measures. Parents of children with normal language used more responses, expansions and self-directed speech than parents of toddlers with language delay. Parents may adjust their conversational style to the communicative ability of their children. These results reinforce language behaviours taught in parent training programmes.

Parental language input to children at stuttering onset.

Many programs for the indirect management of stuttering in early childhood counsel adjustment of parental language models, which are presumed to play an exacerbating influence on vulnerable children's fluency. We examined the relative levels of linguistic demand in maternal language to stuttering and nonstuttering children, adjusted for each child's current level of linguistic development. No significant or observable differences were detected in the relative level of linguistic demand posed by parents of stuttering children very close to onset of symptoms. Empirical support for current advisement and potential ramifications are discussed.