LANGUAGE IN INDIA

ADULT INTERACTION WITH CHILDREN: LANGUAGE USE

G. Sankaranarayanan , Ph.D.

1. CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND ENVIRONMENTAL AGENTS

Indian studies on child language acquisition focus more on the child output, and less on the environmental factors that facilitate the child language acquisition process. The child acquires his language by interacting with his surroundings. A variety of situations and people around the child instigate the acquisition process. Above all, the caregivers, parents, play a very crucial part in the early interaction of the child with his environment.

2. BABY TALK

The adults in the environment often indulge in baby talk. Ashok Kelkar, a versatile Indian linguist, defined baby talk as the style of speech used by adults as an analogue of child speech that serves as the model (Kelkar 1964:41). Kelkar distinguished baby talk from child language. He reported that the adults indulge in baby talk in the following types of situations:

1. Talking to a child as a sort of fond concessions to the child's imperfections.
2. Talking to infants or pet animals largely for his own pleasure and within the family circle.
3. Talking to another adult when wishing to reproduce child speech.
4. Normally talking only in his native language and only in a face-to-face social interaction.

3. PARENTAL INTERACTION IN BABY TALK

In the beginning of language acquisition, children are capable of recognizing several concepts, but are somewhat incapable of putting their concepts or ideas in words. Parents, peer group, and other environmental factors and participants play an important role in facilitating the child's ability to express in oral language what he wants to communicate.

4. PARENTAL TECHNIQUES

The parents, in particular, employ a variety of techniques to achieve this goal. While interacting with the child they may use a special type of vocabulary that may be a modification of the adult vocabulary, or the special vocabulary could be entirely different from the vocabulary used by the adults in the environment for communication among themselves.

Even though the parents may use full sentences in their interaction with the their child who is yet to have some comfortable language capacity, they tend to recognize the linguistic difficulties of their child and tend to emphasize a particular word or phrase of the sentence with reference to a particular object or event, and thus draw the child's attention to the importance of the word or phrase. This is done in order to enable the child to recall such words and phrases with ease in future communication.

5. REPETITION AND REDUPLICATION

In this process of helping the child to acquire and recall words and phrases more easily, parents repeat or reduplicate a particular item with special intonation, using onomatopoeic words while interacting with the child. Some expressions of the above type are cited below, from the Brahmin dialect of Tamil that I have investigated.

6. MIMICRY

In addition to the above process of repetition and reduplication, the adults simply imitate or mimicry the child's utterances.

7. SPECIAL WORDS

Adults use several special words to refer to gods, food, animals, body parts, toys, and actions relating to the early life of a child.

I have quite a few items of this nature in my field notes. These items form a special category of suppletive vocables. It appears that there is, indeed, an adult dialect of Tamil specifically to communicate with the infants.

8. SIMPLIFIED FORMS

In addition to the suppletive vocables, we notice also a number of other simplified forms that are used by the adults in the communicative interaction with the infants. For example, words that are commonly used in the adult speech are simplified when such words are used in the adult interaction with the infant child. I have quite a few words of this type in my field notes. I give below a few.

9. ACROSS OTHER INDIAN LANGUAGES

Similar trends are noticed in other Indian languages also. For example, I noticed the following words in the Havyaka dialect of Kannada (Bhat 1967:33).

10. WHAT MOTIVATES BABY TALK IN THE ADULTS?

The main motivation of the adult in using the suppletive vocables is to simplify the length as well as the complexity of the words. Vowels seem to be preferred over the consonants and among the consonants the bilabials are preferred over the other consonants for retention in the suppletive vocables.

The simplification processes are used, as Bhat (1968) notes, "as a sort of stepping stone by children starting to learn their first language." The adults seem to assume that in the beginning of language acquisition children are confined to producing simple words; so, phonetically simple words may help develop the articulatory abilities of the child. Reducing the number of syllables is a significant part of this simplification process. Reduction of the syllables from the adult word enables the child to imitate the word with ease. The speech of the parents or caregivers seems to anticipate this and thus we notice deliberate simplification. What is interesting to me is that this simplification process is not random. There is some uniformity and regularity to the simplification process.

11. THE SOUNDS INVOLVED IN BABY TALK

From the illustrations given above, it appears that the candidate words for the simplification process begin either with a vowel or a bilabial consonant. Bilabials and vowels appear to be acquired earlier than other sounds. Note also that the lateral and trill sounds are absent in the suppletive words.

12. TRANSITORY NATURE OF SIMPLIFIED WORDS

The parents do not use these simplified words continuously for a long time. As the child begins to acquire more complexity in his speech, we notice the reduction in the use of baby talk words. The special words are used only for a specific period till the child improves his ability to imitate and use words closer to the adult speech. In this process the suppletive vocables and simplified words are replaced with the adult words. However, a few of these suppletive vocables and simplified words may linger on for a very long time as part of the family dialect in fond memory of the early childhood experience! What is significant is the fact that the adult language provides for the creation of new words or the modification of the current adult words in order to fulfill certain needs felt and anticipated in the process of child language acquisition. Once the child comes to control his language use, he may even correct the parents or others when they use the simplified word!

13. BABY TALK INDIAN UNIVERSALS?

It will be interesting to make a comparative study of the phonological and syllabic structure of baby talk across a variety of Indian languages. I noticed that certain words used by the adults as part of their baby talk may be used across a number of Indian languages, raising an interesting question as to whether there are baby talk Indian universals.

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REFERENCES

Bhat, D.N.S. 1967. Lexical Suppletion in Baby Talk. AL vol. 9.

Kelkar, A. R. 1964. Marathi Baby Talk. Word 20.

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