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The Characteristics Of Child-Directed Speech ( CDS )

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“Talking to children has always been fundamental to language development, but new research reveals that the way we talk to children is key to building their ability to understand and create sentences of their own. The exaggerated speech we naturally use with young children is a special register – often called ‘motherese’” (Medical Xpress , 2011). Moreover, child-directed speech (CDS) plays an important role in language acquisition because while modifying and adjusting speech to a child, this keeps their attention and meets the needs of providing understanding to the young addressee.
Child-directed speech (CDS), also referred to as infant-directed speech (IDS) or motherese is a speech register that is characterized by pitch and intonation, slower speech rates with pauses in between words, shorter simple sentences and frequent repetition (O’Brien, 2017). Moreover, the role child-directed speech (CDS) plays in language acquisition is that it modifies and adjusts speech directed to children and keeps their attention as well as meets the needs of providing understanding to the young addressee (Clarke, p. 45).

This paper will examine the cultural variations embedded in child-directed speech (CDS) and how the characteristics of child-directed speech (CDS) differ cross-culturally. Specifically, this essay will show evidence of cultural variation from several case studies by focusing on the differences and similarities in prosodic characteristics within child-directed speech (CDS)

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