The Inevitability of Child Directed Speech
The Inevitability of Child Directed Speech
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儿童定向言语的必然性
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发表时间：
2009
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通讯作者：
M. Saxton
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作者：
M. Saxton
本章将讨论儿童定向言语（CDS）的性质和功能，这是父母和其他人与幼儿交谈时采用的特殊语域。对 CDS 的兴趣在 20 世纪 70 年代达到顶峰，部分原因是 Chomsky (1965) 将语言习得的输入描述为大量错误的开始、犹豫和有缺陷的语法模型。然而，Snow (1972) 的一项里程碑式的研究提供了实证反驳。这项研究以及随后的大量研究证明乔姆斯基是错误的。研究发现，针对儿童的演讲为复杂的语言学习提供了一个非常清晰、简单且格式良好的切入点。尽管如此，CDS 的重要性在某些方面仍然被忽视（例如 Pinker，1994；Hornstein，2005），通常是因为 CDS 只有少数受过良好教育的西方中产阶级儿童才会经历。该论点是：如果 CDS 不是普遍可用的，那么它就可以被视为语言习得的必要甚至重要特征。我将在下面论证这一假设是没有根据的，因为来自跨文化研究的普遍性的现有证据一直被歪曲。我将进一步论证，事实上 CDS 有一些不可避免的东西。如果一个人想让年幼的孩子参与基于语言的互动，那么到目前为止，儿童定向言语的许多特征已经被充分记录下来，自然而然地就会成为成功沟通的产物。
This chapter will consider the nature and function of Child Directed Speech (CDS), the special register adopted by parents and others when talking to young children. Interest in CDS was at its zenith in the 1970s, partly in response to Chomsky’s (1965) characterization of the input to language acquisition as a stuttering mass of false starts, hesitations and flawed models of grammar. However, a landmark study by Snow (1972) provided an empirical refutation. This study, and numerous subsequent studies, proved Chomsky wrong. The speech directed at children was found to provide a remarkably clear, simplified and well-formed entry point into the complexities of language learning. Nonetheless, the significance of CDS continues to be disregarded in certain quarters (e.g. Pinker, 1994; Hornstein, 2005), typically on the grounds that CDS is only experienced by a handful of well-educated, Western, middle-class children. The argument runs: If CDS is not universally available, then it can be disregarded as a necessary or even important feature of language acquisition. I will argue below that this assumption is unwarranted, because the available evidence about universality from cross-cultural research has been persistently misrepresented. I will further argue that there is, in fact, something inevitable about CDS. If one wants to engage a young child in a language-based interaction, then many of the features of Child Directed Speech that are, by now, so well documented, simply fall out naturally as an artefact of successful communication.