Development of discourse ability in Japanese toddlers : A longitudinal analysis of the communication with their families in natural setting

本研究的目的是纵向分析日本幼儿话语能力的发展。幼儿在开始会说话的同时，也会通过与周围的成年人（主要是父母）在不同的社会文化环境中的交流而开始获得话语能力。如果是这样，我们应该开始以下研究问题：在特定的社会文化背景下，幼儿和周围的成年人在日常生活中谈论什么样的话题？又是什么因素影响了每个主题的选择和保持？七名日本幼儿（1名女孩和6名男孩）参加了这项研究。从24到42个月，每三个月对受试者与父母的谈话进行一次录音。在每一个环节中，当他们从日托中心回家时，母亲们给孩子们穿上T恤，T恤背后有一个口袋，里面有一个小型微型录音机。因此，每个孩子和每个环节中孩子和父母之间的对话总共约200分钟。所有数据均采用JCHAT格式（Oshima-Takane & MacWhinney，1995）进行转录。所有的话语都被分成主题群：孩子和父母谈论一个主题的话语序列被归类为一个主题群：此时此地。过去的事件。未来事件他们的混合物。事实会的第三人称，从真实的到幻想，假装游戏，其他游戏，阅读，歌曲，教育性的，大约60%的话语是在此时此地和将来，每个话题都很快结束。另一方面，关于玩耍的话题约占总话语的10 - 30%。持续时间更长。无论是孩子还是母亲开始了新的话题，所以父母和孩子，不是简单的父母的主动，同样有助于话题的选择和维护。

The objective of this study was to analyze longitudinally the development of discourse ability in Japanese toddlers. Toddlers, who begin to speak, would also begin to acquire discourse ability through the communication with surrounding adults (mainly parents) in each socio-cultural setting. If so, we should begin with the following research questions : What kind of topics do toddlers and surrounding adults talk about in everyday life in a specific socio-cultural setting? and what factors contribute to choose and maintain each topic?Seven Japanese toddlers (1 girl and 6 boys) who attended daycare center participated in this study. Subjects' utterances with parents were audiorecorded every three months from 24 to 42 months. In each session, when they went back home from the daycare, mothers dressed their children in T-shirt with a pocket on its back, and a small microcassette recorder was in it. Totally about 200 minutes of the conversation between children and their parents were, therefore, recorded in each child and each session. All data were transcribed by using JCHAT format (Oshima-Takane ＆ MacWhinney, 1995). All utterances were divided into clusters of topics : Sequences of utterances in which the child and parents talked about one topic were categorized into one topic cluster : here and now. past event. future event. mixture of them. factual. will. third person, real to fantasy, pretend play, other play, book reading, song, educative, About 60% of their total utterances were here and now and will, in which each topic ended up very shortly. On the other hand, the topics about play, which were about 10-30% of their total utterances. continued longer. Either children or mothers began the new topics, so both parents and children, not simple parents' initiative, equally contribute the selection and maintenance of topics.