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Phonological Variation in Child-Directed Speech is Modulated by Lexical Frequency

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2023

Eon-Suk KO Open the ORCID record for Eon-Suk KO [Opens in a new window]  and
Jongho JUN
Eon-Suk KO*
Affiliation:
Department of English Language and Literature, Chosun University, Gwangju, Korea
Jongho JUN*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea
*
Corresponding authors: Eon-Suk Ko and Jongho Jun; Emails: eonsukko@chosun.ac.kr; jongho@snu.ac.kr.
Corresponding authors: Eon-Suk Ko and Jongho Jun; Emails: eonsukko@chosun.ac.kr; jongho@snu.ac.kr.
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Abstract

We investigate whether child-directed speech (CDS) contains a higher proportion of canonical pronunciations compared to adult-directed speech (ADS), focusing on Korean noun stem-final obstruent variation. In a word-teaching task, we observed that mothers use a higher rate of canonical pronunciation when addressing infants than when addressing adults. In a follow-up experiment, adults exhibited a higher rate of canonical pronunciation for high- than low-frequency words. Additional analyses conducted with only the high-frequency monosyllabic words from the two experiments found no evidence for simplified phonology in CDS when lexical frequency was controlled for. Our findings suggest that the higher rate of canonical forms in CDS, with respect to Korean morphophonological rules, is mediated by the frequency of word usage. Thus, the didactic function of CDS phonology appears to be a byproduct of mothers using familiar words with children. These results highlight the importance of considering word usage in investigating the nature of CDS.

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Article
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , March 2024 , pp. 288 - 313
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© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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