Every speech community has a baby talk register (BT) of phonological, grammatical, and lexical features regarded as primarily appropriate for addressing young children and also for other displaced or extended uses. Much BT is analyzable as derived from normal adult speech (AS) by such simplifying processes as reduction, substitution, assimilation,…

In any successful conversation, a speaker must select both what is said and how it is said on the basis of various estimates of the listener's abilities, knowledge and interests. Most research on linguistic input to children has focused on the tendency of speakers to simplify their speech for the younger listener. Little attention has been paid to…

The ability of children at different ages to distinguish instructions to "ask" from instructions to "tell" and the types of structures used to express these directives were studied. Subjects were 120 children, aged 2 years 6 months to 6 years 6 months. Children were instructed to either ask or tell an adult or another child to give them puzzle…

This analysis of Brazilian baby talk (BT) includes data from two sources: elicitations of the use of BT from three mothers, all of whom have university degrees, and observations of adult-child interactions in the home. The data shows Ferguson's modified list of thirty lexical items that frequently have BT forms in various languages and the…