CARE TAKER SPEECH

Arranged by:

Puput Yulianawati (S200170013)

MAGISTER OF LANGUAGE STUDIES

MUHAMMADIYAH UNIVERSITY OF SURAKARTA
2018
Introduction
In the early life, the center of children’s speech environments is their parents (or
caretakers). Whta their parents say to children provide them with information about the
structure and function of the language they are to acquire. Children can acquire the language
because they have adequate physical and cognitive endowment. From birth they are well
equipped to perceive human speech.
In general, people talk to one another in order to be understood. They want their
listeners to understand what they are saying. This applies just as well when the interlocutors
are adults and infants. The problem is that infants have very limited knowledge on the
structure and function of the language adults to use to communicate with each other.
This section will discuss the particular type of speech which is usually used by adults
when talking to infants. The popular term for this speech is caretaker speech.

1. The Notion of Care Taker Speech

Caretaker speech is a sort of speech that children receive when they are still very
young. In other words, caretaker speech is a speech addressed to infants by adults. Caretaker
speechis also often referred to as motherese, care giver speech, adult to chlid language (ACL)
and child directed speech (CDS). Steinberg (1998: 22) and Steinberg, et. Al., (2004: 37)
coined a term “parentese” to refer to this speech. Most of these terms indicate the fact that
children receive linguistic input from different sources especially the people around them
such as mother, father, siblings, relatives, and friends.
Caretaker speech attracts great attention of psycholinguists because of many reasons.
For one thing, it has specific characteristics. Another reason is that craetaker speech provides
“an indirect measure of how much children understand (Clark and Clark, 1977: 320). Clark
and Clark further argue that adult’s speech to children is influenced by three factors. First,
adults have to make sure that children realize a speech is being addressed to them. Second,
once they have the children’s attention, they must choose the right words and the right
sentences to make the children easily understand them. Third, they say what they have to say
in many different ways.
Clark and Clark (1977: 321-322) explain that adults usually use three types of attention
getters: names, exclamation, and modulations. First, adults very often use the child’s name at
the beginning of their speech. For example: Fian, there is a car; Reza, is this car yours, and
etc. Second, adults often use exclamation to get children’s attention, such as look! or Hey! as
a preface to each utterance. Finally, adults use modulations in order to distinguish speech
addressed to young children from the speech addressed to other listeners (adults).
In addition, adults talk to young children mainly about the ‘here and now’; they usually
talk about things surround them and which exist right now. For examples, they comment on
what children do, describe what has just happened or has just been done by children. Adults
talk about the objects that children show interest in they name them, describe their
properties, and the relations with other object as in That’s puppy; He’s very soft and funny;
The puppy is in the basket.
2. Characteristics of Care Taker Speech
Caretaker speech tends to consist of short sentences with simple structure. The
vocabulary used by adults is simple and restricted. They are very selective about the words
they use. In selecting the words they seem to be guided by some assumptions explained
below:
1) Some word are easier for children to pronounce then others;
2) Some words are more useful for children than others; and
3) Some words are hard to understand and best avoided.
(Clark and Clark, 1977: 322)
Furthermore, adults generally exaggerate intonation and use a slower tempo and frequently
repeat or rephrase what they or their children say. For examples, they tend to use higher
pitch, slower speech, with more and clearer pauses between and place more distinctive stress
on words than they do when speaking with other adults (Steinberg, 1998: 22); Steinberg, et.
Al., 2004: 38). Finally, adult’s speech adressed to young children often contains baby talk.
This phenomenon seems universalin any language. Since baby talk is considered appropriate
in talking to very young children. For better understanding, baby talk gains specific
discussion below.
3. Baby Talk
Baby talk is very special, but limited, instance of caretaker speech. Baby talk often
involves the use of vocabulary which is over simplified and reduced. There are at least three
forms of baby talk: a diminutive form of adult’s word, an onomatopoeic form, and an
addition of the sound /iy/ to adult’s words ending in a consonant.
First, vocabulary used in baby talk is often a diminutive form of adult’s word. For
examples, there are already established words for English words like bow wow for dog, pee-
pee for urine, and choo-choo for train.these examples show that the structure of such words is
dominated by a consonant + vowel syllable or consonant + vowel + consonant unit which are
reduplicated.
Second, the formation of baby talk also follows the principle of onomatopoeic; they
represent the sounds which various things make. For exampels, English bow-wow, Japanese
wa-wan, and Indonesian gu-guk are simulations of the barking of dogs.
Third, another way to construct baby talk is by adding sound /iy/ to adult’s words
ending in a consonant. This modification appears because the word seems to be easier for
children to pronounce. The /iy/ suffix also serves as diminutive and affectionate function. For
examples, the word bird become birdy, dog become doggy, mother become mommy, horse
become horsy, and kittens become kitty. (See Clark and Clark, 1977: 320-322; Moskowitz,
1978: 123; Kess, 1999: 336; Aitchison, 1998: 149; Taylor, 1990: 236; Steinberg, 1998: 23-
24; Steinberg, et al., 2004: 39-40).
According to Kess (1999: 336), baby talk only fulfills a pseudo-function in linguistic
terms. It is only a marker of affection and caring. This function is supported by the finding
that babies typically prefer voices that employ baby talk features.