Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Motivation
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in these studies, results of all these studies suggest that parents’ language inputs have great influence on children’s development in conversational skills. For younger children, it would be difficult to maintain discourse topics without parents’ aids because of their inadequate linguistic and pragmatic competences. For example, parents may continue asking questions that serve to pass the floor to children and keep the topic going on at the same time. Wanska and Bedrosian (1986) stated that mothers play significant roles in facilitating their children’s discourse skills. In consistence with their study, Huang (2004) also pointed out that the mothers’ interactional styles could facilitate the children’s acquisition of discourse skills.
1.1 Motivation
It has been widely recognized that adults talk to children in different ways from which they talk to adults. In order to communicate with the linguistically unsophisticated children, adjustments of speech are necessary for the adults. In such adjustments,
characteristics such as simplicity and redundancy were found and recognized as features of child-directed speech by Snow (1977). Snow further pointed out that these
characteristics were significant for the parents to maintain the interaction with their children. In terms of child language acquisition, studies regarding the mother’s language inputs were greatly conducted due to the role of primary caregiver. In order to investigate the relationships between maternal speech styles and the child’s language development, both structural and pragmatic characteristics of maternal speech has been analyzed in previous studies (Newport, Gleitman & Gleitman , 1977; Olsen-Fulero’s study, 1982;
Hoff-Ginsberg, 1986, 1987).
However, concerning the pragmatic aspects, topic maintenance was examined
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merely as one of variables in the study concerning maternal speech styles and the child’s language development and did not receive clear explanations (McDonald & Pien, 1982;
Olsen-Fulero, 1982). Since the mother is usually the dominant speaker in the mother-child conversational interaction, the process of engaging the child in the conversation becomes significant for the dyad. For the mother, continuing of the
conversation enables her to encourage the child’s conversational participation and request information from the child in the conversation. For the child, being engaged in the
ongoing conversation plays a significant role for him or her to acquire conversational competences such as conversational exchange and topic maintenance. Considering the relationship between the maternal interactional style and the mother-child conversational interaction, it could be expected that if the mother is careless for engaging the child in the conversation, the dyad’s interaction would become less interactive. In sum, in
maintaining discourse topics, the mother’s interactional style may thus influence the way the child maintain discourse topics. In the present study, we are to investigate how maternal speech styles interact with topic maintenance in the Mandarin mother-child conversational interaction.
1.2 The Present Study
Previous studies focusing on maternal linguistic inputs / interactional styles and child’s language development have been extensively conducted (Newport, Gleitman &
Gleitman , 1977; Olsen-Fulero’s study, 1982; Hoff-Ginsberg, 1986, 1987). These studies are mainly concerned with the child’s acquisition of certain linguistic forms, e.g., child’s acquiring of auxiliaries, or the child’s development of linguistic competence, e.g., syntactic and morphological development, development of MLU. For example,
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Olsen-Fulero (1982) discussed the relationship between maternal styles and children’s development in various aspects on the basis of research across individual mothers. The conversational mother in his study, who asks many yes/no questions and gives few directives, may facilitate the child’s linguistic development more than other mothers; the didactic mother in Olsen-Fulero’s study, who encourages autonomy in the child, may provide facilitation for the child’s cognitive development. Yoder and Kaiser (1992) examined several variables that may be relevant in the study of relations between
maternal language input and child language development in English, including pragmatic development measurement such as percentage of test questions that child addressed and number of child questions. In their study attention was paid to the general pragmatic development rather than development in specific conversational capacities. Lin (2006) investigated maternal styles in conversation with children in Mandarin and provides detailed descriptions as to how mothers differ in terms of speech categories and
conversation parameters. However, how maternal speech styles may interact with child’s communicative capacities in Mandarin are still awaited further studies.
Based on the categorical system in previous studies (McDonald & Pien, 1982;
Olsen-Fulero, 1982; Wanska & Bedrosian, 1986; Huang, 2004), the purpose of our study is to investigate the interaction of the maternal interactional styles and topic maintenance in Mandarin mother-child conversational interaction. What follows are our three research questions in our current study: (a) What are the mothers’ interactional styles? (b) What are the differences among children’s competences of topic maintenance? (c) How do the maternal interaction styles interact with topic maintenance in the conversational
interactions?
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Chapter 2 Literature Review 2.1 Maternal Speech and Child Language Development
Plenty of studies have been conducted to examine influence of the maternal language inputs on children’s language development (Newport, Gleitman & Gleitman, 1977, McDonald & Pien, 1982, Olsen-Fulero, 1982, Snow, 1984, Hoff-Ginsberg, 1987, Yoder & Kaiser, 1989). However, researchers’ perspectives on how children’s language development is influenced by the maternal language inputs differ. For example, Snow (1984) adopted correlational and longitudinal studies to identify aspects of mother speech with the assumption that maternal speech observed in the earlier stage (time 1) affects the child’s language development at a later point (time 2). Many researchers have reported that this time 1-time 2 relationships do not necessarily represent direct or unidirectional influence. These researchers have thus turned to look for evidence supporting indirect or bidirectional influence.
In the direct maternal influence model, it is proposed that children’s language development is facilitated by specific maternal utterance types since they frequently present to-be-learned linguistic structures in salient ways. For example, Newport,
Gleitman & Gleitman (1977) suggested that child’s acquisition of auxiliaries is predicted by mother’s use of yes/no questions.
Olsen-Fulero (1982) provided a model of how specific pragmatic and discourse features of mother interactional styles may positively influence child language
development. They posited that the conversation-elicitating style is positively associated with subsequent child language development. Following Olsen-Fulero’s study,
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Hoff-Ginsberg (1986, 1987) found that requests for unknown information contained more auxiliaries, providing more language model than other utterances did.
In indirect influence models, the mother affects some parts of the child’s outer behavior or inter process and in turn causes changes in the child’s language capacity.
Furthermore, there are two possible types of indirect models: immediate and cumulative.
Hoff-Ginsberg’s study (1987) implied an immediate indirect model where it is proposed that questions may be facilitative because they immediately elicit the child’s conversation, which in turns elicits future language model for analysis. However, a cumulative indirect model is implied when they propose that question may be facilitative because they prompt the child to analyze language so that they can eventually converse appropriately.
It should be noted that in such a model cumulative influence occurs repeatedly.
In the discussion of models of children’s language development, Yoder and Kaiser (1989) explicated that in child-driven models, it is assumed that specific aspects of the child’s language elicit particular maternal interaction styles. For example, child’s long utterances may further stimulate mother’s follow-up questions. In children-directed model, children that have more competent linguistic performance at time 1 may progress more over time since they are linguistically or cognitively more equipped, which in turn facilitates their later language development.
Based on results of their study on the relationship between maternal verbal
interaction style and child language development, Yoder and Kaiser (1989) reported that a mother-driven, direct influence model may be inappropriate for determining the
relationships between mother speech and child language development. Instead, they argued that child-driven and mother-driven explanatory model for the indirect
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relationships are equally practical. They further conjectured that since many instances of social influence are bidirectional, a model of bidirectional influence is possible in some cases.
2.2 Maternal Speech Styles
Major studies considering maternal speech styles are presented in section 2.2.1. In section 2.2.2, maternal speech styles in previous studies are compared to illustrate how they were categorized and differentiated in these studies.
2.2.1 Previous Studies
Among studies on the characteristics of maternal speech, Nelson (1973) is the first researcher who reported the connection between maternal conversational style and early child language development. By investigating structural characteristics such as
interrogatives and imperatives in maternal speech and relating these characteristics to children’s language development, Nelson found that some characteristics could facilitate or inhibit children’s later language development. With the argument that the structural characteristics such as syntactic and semantic characteristics of maternal speech are determined by the underlying intention of mother to influence the child, Nelson further distinguished responsive and directive maternal speech styles and explicated that imperatives were closely attributed to the mother’s intention to control the child.
Supporting Nelson’s perspective of associating maternal structural characteristics with underlying intention, Snow (1977) then proposed characteristics of maternal speech, such as prevalence of interrogatives, simplicity, and redundancy, are associated with the mother’s intention to converse with the child and to maintain interaction. Such intention of the mother thus drives the mother to engage the child in the ongoing conversation.
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Nevertheless, Newport (1977) and Newport et al. (1977) argued that those same characteristic reported by Snow resulted from the mother’s desire to control the behavior of her child. They argued that the prevalence of interrogatives to be explained by the mother’s controlling or directive purposes and that simplicity and redundancy increase the effectiveness of directive communication.
Results of Newport (1977) and Newport et al. (1977) were later considered insufficient for explaining the prevalence of interrogatives in maternal speech by
McDonald & Pien (1982). They stated that the former studies with the idea that maternal speech is determined by the mother’s underlying intention led to the outcome that two hypothetical mother intentions (direction and conversation) seems in some aspects accounting for the same phenomenon. In addition, McDonald and Pien (1982) indicated that the focus of syntactic and semantic characteristics in the former studies may cause the two hypothetical mother intentions to be seemingly compatible. As a result,
McDonald and Pien turned to analyze the illocutionary behavior of mothers with respect to two hypotheses: first, determination of maternal underlying intention would be inferable from patterning of illocutionary acts of mothers. Second, utterances with a directive function would show a negative relationship to those with a
conversation-eliciting function.
Eleven mother-child pairs were included in McDonald and Pien (1982)’s study. Free play session of these dyads were videotaped in the laboratory and each dyad was
observed on four sessions, 30 minutes in total. The children, six male and five female, aged from 2;5 to 3;0, which fell within a narrow range since the purpose was to examine the variation and internal structure of conversational behavior among mothers. All the
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families were middle class and educational levels the parents were college or doctoral.
Referring to the illocutionary force of Searle (1969), the category system in McDonald and Pien (1982)’s study included speech categories and conversational parameters. In the speech category level, utterances were categorized as directives,
questions, prompts, attention devices, response to questions/directives, acknowledgement, and spontaneous declaratives. In the conversational parameter level, mothers’
talkativeness, conversational dominance, iequality of participation, rate of topic change, and dyads’ topic maintenance were investigated. By analyzing the mothers’ speech
according to the speech category level and conversational parameter level, McDonald and Pien (1982) discovered variability and patterns of distribution among categories across mothers. Results suggested that most of mothers’ conversational behaviors were polarized into two negatively related clusters and each cluster represents an underlying mother intention for the interaction. The pervasive polarization of mother behavior into cluster supports their hypotheses that the processes of direction and conversation-elicitation are incompatible and even opposing in nature.
Moreover, McDonald and Pien (1982) reported a relationship between
conversational parameters and speech categories: the mother’s directive intention was positively related to mother monologue, mother dominance and inequality of
participation. Regarding the other conversational parameters, it was found that mothers who intend to direct or control the child’s actions tend to change topic frequently and fail to maintain the conversational topic. As for the conversation-eliciting intention, a close survey performed focused on topic shifts revealed that it appears to be served by maintenance of conversational topics or by abandonment of an uninteresting topic.
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Although McDonald and Pien (1982) came out with a clear polarization into
directive/conversation-eliciting of the mother’s intention, they were also aware that there had been evidence suggesting that illocutionary behavior of mothers changes with respect to the child’s age. They stated that when the child matures, the mother might be expected to be less motivated by the desire to control him or to elicit his conversational
participation, but more motivated by the intention to communicate information with him (McDonald and Pien, 1982). However, since the maternal speech behaviors varied to a great extent regarding the restricted range of child age, McDonald and Pien (1982)
pointed out that should such stylistic stability be found, the likelihood of significant effect on the child is very high.
Following McDonald and Pien, Olsen-Fulero (1982) adopted the same category system and differentiated utterances by illocutionary force. Their data collecting method was designed similarly to McDonald and Pien’s. Subjects were eleven middle class mothers of six and five female children and each mother-child dyad was videotaped in the play room in the laboratory. The purpose of Olsen-Fulero’s study was to categorize maternal speech styles based on the relative dominance of directive or
conversation-eliciting behaviors. In addition, in order to solve the stability problem brought out by McDonald and Pien (1982), stability within each mother was examine by surveying two sessions of each dyad’s free play.
Variability in maternal speech styles was proved significant statistically and qualitatively by Olsen-Fulero (1982). Stability of maternal speech style within each mother was calculated by Spearman rank-order correlation coefficients and also proved stable across two sessions. Since results also suggested that conversational variables
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belonged significantly to the directive and conversation-eliciting clusters, Olsen-Fulero (1982) created two scales, one indicating directiveness and the other indicating
conversation-elicitation. The score of a mother on one scale was then plotted against the score on the other according to the combined data. In this way, the relative dominance of each mother’s conversational behaviors was illustrated and each mother’s pattern of her overall conversational behavior was located and compared with that in any other mother in the directive/conversation-eliciting continuum.
The maternal speech styles were distinguished by Olsen-Fulero into two major types:
the style of mothers who influence and mothers who instruct. The style of mothers who influence was further divided into directive mothers, conversational mothers, and
intrusive mothers. Mothers who instruct were termed as didactic mothers, who encourage autonomy of their children and neither direct nor elicit their children.
2.2.2 Comparisons of Maternal Speech Styles
How maternal interactional styles were differentiated in previous studies is
presented and compared in Table 1. Nelson (1973) distinguished responsive and directive maternal speech styles by means of syntactic and semantic features. However, both McDonald & Pien (1982) and Olsen-Fulero (1982) categorized the mother’s conversational behaviors on the basis of illocutionary force and conversational parameters.
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Table 1 Comparison of maternal styles in previous studies ( Nelson,1973; McDonald &
Pien, 1982; Olsen-Fulero,1982)
Category System Maternal Speech Style Nelson (1973) syntactic andsemantic features
McDonald & Pien (1982) categorized two mothers’ and their children’s utterances by taking illocutionary force and conversational parameters into consideration. Results of their study suggest that intercorrelations among all maternal variables reflect two polar predominant intentions for conversational interaction: the control of the child’s physical actions, and the elicitation of his conversational participation. They stated that mothers’
conversational behaviors are thus clusters of behaviors that reflect their communicative intentions which are negatively correlated— the more a mother displays
conversation-eliciting behavior, the less she tends to control and direct the child in
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conversations.
Acknowledging the contributions and conducting further study of McDonald and Pien’s (1982) study, Olsen-Fulero’s (1982) distinguished two major styles of maternal speech by adopting illocutionary force and conversational parameters as categorization systems: mother who influences and mother who instructs. To provide detailed
description of the conversational style displayed by each mother, the mother who influences are divided into three sub-categories that together form a
continuum—directive, intrusive, and conversational speech styles, which influence the child’s linguistic and cognitive development of the child. The instructive style is also classified as didactic by Olsen-Fulero, which is considered an information-oriented style opposed to child-oriented style, or directive style. In Olsen-Fulero’s classification, the mother who influences is conformed to the directive mother and the mother who instructs is conformed to the responsive mother in Nelson’s (1973) study.
In sum, what the above studies contribute to the inquiry of maternal styles related to children’s language development is that they provide plausible ways in which mothers’
individual differences and underlying communicative intents can be examined by clusters of intercorrelated variables. In addition, statistically significant differences among distinct maternal styles and stability of maternal styles across two time sessions (Olsen-Fulero, 1982) also suggest that maternal styles can be distinguished.
2.3 Discourse Topic and Topic Management
In research concerning the term topic, there have been plenty of definitions and ideas within distinct theoretical approaches. Considering topic a syntactic notion, Mandarin has been considered a topic-prominent language where sentences are usually
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expressed in topic-comment structure (Li & Thompson, 1981). Rather than preposed or base-generated syntactic topic and semantic topic, or frame proposed by Her (1991),
topic is used as a discourse notion in this study in line with Keenan and Schieffelin’s
(1976, 1983) model.Keenan and Schieffelin (1983) stated that discourse topic is the proposition (or set of propositions) about which the speaker is either providing or requesting new
information—not an NP but a proposition. In mother-child conversation, continuation of a discourse topic is frequently achieved by means of adjacency pair of question-answer.
In terms of the continuity of discourse topics, a distinction was made by Keenan and Schieffelin (1983): continuous discourse and discontinuous discourse. Continuous
discourse is further divided into collaborating discourse topic and incorporating discourse topic, where the former refers to a topic that matches exactly that of the immediately preceding utterance and the later refers to a topic that takes some presupposition of the immediately preceding topic and integrates a claim or new information. As for
discontinuous discourse, it includes introducing topic and reintroducing topic. In both cases there are changes of discourse without drawing on the previous utterance.
According to Keenan and Schieffelin (1983), there are four prerequisites for establishing a discourse topic for both the speaker and the hearer: being attentive, articulating and receiving of the utterances, identification of the referents mentioned in the utterances, and identification of the semantic relations obtaining between the referents.
Those prerequisites thus explicate the difficulty for young children to participate in and attend to a discourse topic. First, children may have not attended in the first place. Even if they do, they only have limited attention span and thus usually fail to collaborate on or
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incorporate discourse for an extended period of time. Second, they are easily distracted
incorporate discourse for an extended period of time. Second, they are easily distracted