ANALYSIS OF A FATHER'S HIS LANGUAGE-LEARNING
SPEECH CHILD
TO
Jill Giattino Herbert H. Lehman College, CUNY, Bronx, New York
Jeanne G. Hogan Yonkers Public Schools, New York
This study analyzed the speech of a father to his language-learning child. Father-tochild speech was taped daily over a two-week period when the child was three years old. Results indicated that declarative (35%) and interrogative (34%) sentences occurred most often. Smaller percentages of exclamatory (9%) and imperative (6%) sentences were found. The father rarely repeated his own utterances and almost never expanded his daughter's utterances. The child rarely immediately imitated her father's utterances. Comparisons are made of aspects of father-to-child speech with mother-to-child speech as reported in previous investigations.
Child language acquisition has been the focus of a significant amount of recent research. Linguists, psychologists, psycholinguists, sociolinguists, and speech pathologists have used their individual vantage points in attempts to determine how children learn language. Our literature is replete with naturalistic, descriptive, and experimental studies providing evidence on the processes involved in learning to talk. T h e majority of these studies have analyzed, in many and often ingenious ways, the child's output. Recent interest has turned to studying input to the child in attempts to determine the influence of the child's verbal environment on his acquisition of language. Children are continually exposed to language which they often do not fully understand and which may be ungrammatical. In spite of this, they manage to learn to understand and produce complex and grammatically correct linguistic material in a very short period of time. Studies of verbal input to children have focused on various aspects of mother-to-child language. This research has shown that mother-to-child language is different from adult-to-adult language. Brown and Bellugi (1964) found mothers' speech to children simple and grammatical. T h e y found mothers frequently imitate children and expand their utterances. Snow (1972) found that mothers talk more, simplify more, and repeat parts of phrases more to two-year-old than 10-year-old children. She suggested that these adjust524
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GIATTINO, HOGAN: Father's Speech Analysis 525
ments, modifications, and repetitions may aid the child's acquisition of language. Broen (1972) found that when mothers spoke to younger as compared to older children they used slower rate, fewer disfluencies, and smaller typetoken ratios. They also used smaller vocabularies, but they repeated their utterances more frequently. These studies of mother-to-child speech show a "kind of maternal accommodation to the child's growing language knowledge and ability" (Caz~len, 1972, p. 107). T h e linguistic variables tabulated in these studies included amount, complexity, and density of repetitions; length, complexity, imitation, and expansion of sentences; vocabulary range; amount and rate of speech; and adjustments in and frequency of constructions made by the mother as the child's language developed. In 1972, Cazden stated, "Research that differentiates among the many aspects of language development and tests their vulnerability to environmental differences is extremely important" (p. 129). In a child's early life, probably the most significant environmental influences come from the child's parents. Mother and father assume different roles in the child's world and establish different relationships with the child. At an early age, the child becomes aware of and begins to respond to these differences (Biddle and Thomas, 1966). T h e verbal environment provided by the father, a central figure in a child's life, has been largely ignored in child language research. While almost all of the literature describes mother-child interactions, the changing nature of the typical male-female stereotypes in the management of home and family demands that we attend to father-child interactions. In families where both parents are employed it is sometimes the father who is the primary adult in the young child's environment. This study was undertaken to gather some preliminary data about a father's linguistic input to his child. Because the father in this study did spend a considerable amount of time with his child, we felt that their verbal interaction could supply us with an adequate corpus for analysis. T h e purpose of the study was to analyze the speech of one middle-class father to his language-learning child. T h e aspects of his speech which were selected for analysis included items on which comparable data were available from previous analyses of mother-to-child speech. Four questions were considered in this investigation. T h e following statements presenting those questions also present definitions of terms used in this study. 1. What sentence types does the father use most frequently? Four basic sentence types were analyzed. They were classified according to the communicative intent as follows: declarative sentences used to make a statement; interrogative sentences used to ask a question; imperative sentences used to command or request where you is the implied subject but is omitted; and exclamatory sentences used to express strong emotion in the form of an emphatic interjection.
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2. Is the father's speech to the child redundant? Redundancy referred to the frequency of the father's use of immediate repetitions (with or without reduction) of his own preceding utterance. 3. Does the child immediately imitate the father's utterances? This analysis was of the child's exact imitation of the father's immediately preceding utterance. 4. Does the father use expansions in his speech to his child? Expansions were defined as "An adult verbal response which is contingent on the child's previous utterance and which expresses in syntactically complete form the meaning of the child's utterance as the adult understands it" (Cazden, 1972, p. 300). DESCRIPTION OF THE SUBJECTS
T h e two subjects in this study were a 24-year-old father and his only child, who we shall call J. This investigation was conducted during the two weeks following J's third birthday. J's parents had kept a detailed written account of all aspects of her development. These records, plus interviews with the parents, provided the following information. J was born after a normal pregnancy and delivery and is in continued excellent health. All developmental milestones were achieved at age-appropriate levels. J sat unsupported at six months, stood at nine months, walked unaided at 10 months. She began to feed herself at 18 months at which time the bottle was replaced by a cup. She was easily toilet trained at 20 months. At age three, she is able to dress herself, failing only in tying her shoes. J began to say words ("mama" and "dada") at five months and began communicative speech, such as saying "baba" when she wanted her bottle, at seven months. At 11 months, she began joining two words together and had no difficulty following simple directions. Her language at age three, as analyzed from the tapes collected in this study in her interaction with both parents, is also at least of normal or above normal levels. Her mean length of utterance is 4.5 words. She uses sentences as long as 15 words, although she still responds in singleword sentences. Most sentences are grammatically complete. She has a vocabulary appropriate for her age and uses most parts of speech. She appropriately uses and understands personal, demonstrative, and possessive pronouns, and she marks verbs correctly for present, progressive, and past tense. She is beginning to use some compound verbs, such as future constructions. She uses and appropriately responds to all types of questions and correctly produces forms of do in both question and negative sentences. Prepositional phrases are emerging but are occasionally used incorrectly as shown in confusions of of, for, and by. Her longer sentences show correct incorporation of adjectives relating to color, number, and size. She is able to recite the alphabet, six nursery rhymes, count to 20, and give her full name and address. She is inquisitive about language, asking for clarification of new words and concepts. According to Berry's (1969) developmental scales, J meets and in some instances surpasses the verbal and nonverbal behavior of a normal three-yearold child. J's father works five days a week, from nine to five, as a salesman for a na-
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GIATTINO, HOGAN: Father's Speech Analysis 527
tional company. He has completed some college education although he has earned no degree. He has been an active participant in J's care and upbringing since she was born. He enjoys spending time in various activities with his daughter. Every evening and weekend he spends time with her, averaging 22 hours in a normal working week. During the period of this investigation, the father spent an average of an additional three hours per week with his child. This was because J's mother was attending graduate school and taking courses in the evening. T h e mother's absence necessitated only a small change in the additional time the father spent with his child. Observation of this family constellation both before and after the period of this investigation indicated that the communication occurring between this father and child was typical of their ongoing interaction in both quality and quantity. In general, J's parents assume stereotyped roles: mother is homemaker and cares for J daily; father is breadwinner. J's mother, at the time of this study, was completing her master's degree. According to the socioeconomic scales of Labor (1966), the family is representative of middle class. COLLECTION OF THE CORPUS
The speech of the father and the child was recorded on a Sony solid-state stereo tape recorder (Model TC-252D). All taping was done during periods of free play, and all conversations took place indoors in a family room-playroom. This is the area where the subjects most often engage in their periods of free play. T h e lengths of each daily session varied and were determined when J terminated the play session. Taping was done over a two-week period during every evening and weekend play period. T h e father turned on the tape recorder at the start of each session. No other persons were ever present during the father-child sessions. Both father and child had had practice taping sessions and had become at ease with the tape recorder on. T h e subjects were given no directions regarding required behavior or responses. They were encouraged to do whatever they wished and to ignore the presence of the tape. As in most studies involving tape recordings, the inherent problem is the participants' awareness that they are being recorded. Both subjects knew they were being recorded but seemed unconcerned about it. There was no conscious effort, especially on the father's part, to modify normal, spontaneous behavior. While tape samples were being collected, the father believed that the mother was also involved in the study. He thought that midday recordings of the mother's speech were being made, in addition to his own evening sessions. Upon completion of the study, the father was told that his wife's speech had not been recorded. He stated that he had been less concerned about his own behavior during the taping sessions because he believed that both parents were being recorded and studied. During the play periods, J had freedom of choice of all her toys. A sample of these included dolls, doll clothes, doll house, furniture, utensils, games (such as Candyland), merry-go-round, puppets, cars, trains, blocks, puzzles, records,
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record player, and books. Father and child engaged in spontaneous play with toys selected by the child. Occasionally the father read a story to the child. His reading was the only aspect of his output which was not considered in the analysis of the tapes. ANALYSIS OF THE DATA
Speech samples were obtained from recording sessions which took place every day for a 14-day period. A total of 18 hours of speech was collected: approximately one hour each weekday and four hours over both weekends. Both the father's and child's utterances were transcribed in order to compare the father-child interactions of each session. The authors transcribed the speech from the tapes and recorded each subject's response on an index card. The adult subject of the experiment was consulted when there was a question regarding intelligibility of an utterance. Responses of the subjects were analyzed by the numbers of communicative units produced. A communicative unit (CU) was measured from the onset of an utterance by one subject to the onset of an utterance by the other subject. Thus, a CU could be one word, one sentence, or several sentences depending upon when the second subject began speaking. For example, each of the following is one CU produced by the father indicating the nature of communicative units. "Sure" is a CU of one word. "I don't know much" is a CU of one sentence. "We did them. Let's put Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater together. All those pieces. O.K.?" is a CU of several sentences. In the total sample, the lengths of the communicative units varied from one word to 56 words in eight sentences. The first 50 CUs of each of the 14 sessions were transcribed. Twenty-five CUs of each session were made up of the father's utterances, 25 were the child's. A total of 700 CUs was evaluated: 350 from each subject. In order to determine if similar linguistic behavior was occurring during the period of the investigation, a comparison was made of the first 50 CUs from each session to the second, third, fourth, fifth, and last set of 50 CUs arbitrarily taken from the seventh recording session. The first 50 CUs of each session proved to be representative of the total father-child interaction. Table 1 reports the occurrence of different sentence types in six segments of the seventh session. Percentages show that a difference of no more than 9% occurs between the CUs of any one category of the samples selected for comparison, indicating that the first 50 CUs of each session were similar to other portions of the sample. The final sample of CUs used for analysis consisted of the first 50 CUs of each session, 25 CUs for each subject for each of the 14 sessions. The initial way of organizing the CUs was to identify each of the father's sentences as falling into the sentence categories to be analyzed: declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory. The actual distribution of utterances led to further subdivision of categories and development of new categories: one-word declarative sentence, repetition, expansion, grammatically incom-
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GIATTINO, HOGAN: Father's Speech Analysis 529 TABLE 1. Percentage of sentence types used by the father in the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and last set of 50 communicative units taken from the seventh recording session.
Percentage per set o150 CUs 2nd 3rd 4th 5th
Sentence Type
1st
Last
Declarative
35
32
30
26
38
34
Interrogative Repetition Exclamation Imperative Grammatically incomplete response Completion* Expansion
34 9 9 6
30 14 10 6
33 9 16 7
36 12 14 4
29 0 11 5
36 10 6 5
5 1.5
8 0
5 1
6 1
11 4
7 1
0.5
0
0
1
2
1
*Completion sentence refers to the intentional omission of a word by the
father in anticipation of its immediate utterance by the child. plete sentence, and completion sentence. T h e term c o m p l e t i o n s e n t e n c e refers to the intentional omission of a word by the father in anticipation of its immediate utterance by the child. T h e child's utterances were organized into four sentence categories: interrogative, one-word sentence, immediate imitation, and all other sentences and phrases that did not fall into these categories, such as imperative, exclamatory, and declarative sentences of two words or more, and incomplete sentences. Sentences produced by each subject could sometimes be placed into more than one sentence category. Each sentence was classified into only one category. Sentence classification was based on frequency of occurrence of the sentence types in the actual data. For example, a one-word question was classified only as a question, not a one-word sentence; whereas an expanded question was categorized as an expansion, not a question. Classification of the father's sentences into categories in order of priority was: repetition and expansion, interrogative, one-word declarative, declarative, imperative, exclamatory, grammatically incomplete, and completion sentence. T h e order of priority used for analysis of the child's sentence categories was: immediate imitation, interrogative, one-word sentence, and all other responses. Sentences which could be categorized in more than one way were always placed in the category which was highest on the above list of priorities for each subject. Semantically and syntactically complete units a n d / o r pauses of two seconds or more between utterances were used to mark the end of one utterance and the beginning of another and for categorizing utterances into the different sentence types. R ES U L T S
W i t h i n the 700 communicative units constituting the speech samples, the father produced a total of 563 sentences in his 350 CUs (271 during the first week, 292 during the second week). J produced 503 sentences in her 350 CUs
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(212 the first week, 291 the second week). T h e mean length of utterance (MLU) of the father in his interactions with J was 5.2 words; J's M L U was 4.5 words. An interesting similarity is noted between the father's and the child's MLU. Although the father's M L U was 5.2 words in his speech directed to J, it was 9.7 words as measured in 50 consecutive utterances in adult-to-adult conversation. T h e father is obviously influenced by the child's level of language development and adjusts his language directed to her by producing shorter sentences which seem to be within her comprehension abilities. T h e numerical analysis of the data obtained from the father, based on percentages of sentence types he produced, is shown in T a b l e 2. T h e results of the TABLE 2. Number and percentage of sentence types used by the father to his child. (N = 563 sentences in 350 communicative units.) Number o/ Sentences
Sentence Type
Declarative sentences (including one-word statements) Interrogative sentences (excluding repetitions and expansions) Repetitions Exclamatory sentences Imperative sentences Grammatically incomplete responses Completion sentences Expansions
Percent o/Total Sentences
195
35
190 51 50 37
34 9 9 6
28 9 3
5 1.5 0.5
analysis of each sentence type are discussed below and compared to previously reported investigations on mother-to-child speech where possible. THE FATHER'S SPEECH D e c l a r a t i v e Sentences
Thirty-five percent of all sentences produced by the father were declarative. One-third (65 sentences) of the declarative sentences were single-word utterances. T h e remaining 130 declarative sentences contained two or more words. T h e declarative sentences of this father varied in length from one word, "Dinosaurs."; "Right." to 17 words, "Jeanne, those are very delicate a n d you have to play nicely with them otherwise they will break." Other examples of this father's declarative sentences included: "This looks like a corner piece." 'Tll be patient." "I need more than one triangle."
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GIATTINO, HOGAN: Father's Speech Analysis 531 Mothers in Broen's (1972) study averaged 30.4% declarative sentences in their speech to their children aged 18-26 months. Despite slight age differences in the children, mothers and this father show great similarity in frequency of usage of declarative sentences. Interrogative Sentences Four types of questions were collected in this study: wh- questions (including who, which, what, how, where, and why), tag questions, questions formed by inverting the complete subject noun phrase and the first element of the auxiliary verb, and questions indicated by a rise in intonation at the end of the sentence. Thirty-four percent of the father's sentences were questions. Of these, 56% were wh- questions, 19% were tag questions, 17% were indicated by rising intonation, and 8% were noun phrase inversion. Excluded from this category were questions formed by expanding or repeating the child's utterance. Examples of questions used by the father in each interrogative category included: "What are you doing?" "Where is it?" "Which one do you want?" "She's different from the other witch, isn't she?" "Daddy has a lot of stuff, doesn't he?" "You'll be the doctor?" "I won't believe it?" "Do you know his name?" "Would you like to go to the park?" "Are you getting the baby undressed?" This father's use of questions is similar to that of mothers as reported in the literature. Ervin-Tripp (1971) found that one-quarter to one-half of the utterances of a mother to her child were questions. An average of 37% of the mother's sentences in Broen's (1972) study were questions. Wojick (1973) noted that a mother's questions to her son decreased from 50% at 15 months to 36% at 30 months. It is difficult to assess the true intent of some of this father's questions. Some questions were posed to obtain an answer as yet unknown to the father, as when father says, "Is that the barrette I was looking for the other night, or is it the barrette from today?" Other questions were asked to determine if the child knew the answer to a question already known to the father, as in: Father: Who's this? Child: Fred. Father: Who's this one? Child: Pebbles.
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For some questions a response was not expected, and the father supplied the answer immediately after completing the question, as in: Father: "Do you know his name? His name is Jughead." Here the father was aware that the child did not, or could not, know the answer. Some of the father's questions appeared to provide a means of conversing with the child, although most were appropriate to the situation and required a response from the child. Repetitions
Repetitions constituted only 9% of all utterances of the father. He never produced the same sentence twice in a row and all repetitions refer to the exact reproduction of the child's utterances, not his own, as in the following example: Father: What was that? Child: Ear. Father: Ear. What's that? Child: Foot. Father: Foot. You got it. Almost 25% of the father's repetitions were questions posed by him, repeating the child's utterances, as in the following examples: Father: Who's this? Child: Pebbles. Father: Pebbles? Child: Yeah, Pebbles. Child: Captain Hook with no feet. Father: Captain Hook with no feet? T h e remaining 75% of his repetitions were declarative sentences and exclamations. T h e type of repetitions this father produced differs from that previously reported for mothers. Broen (1972) noted that mothers repeat themselves both sequentially and nonsequentially. T h i s father's repetitions were mainly sequential, that is, he repeated the child's immediately preceding response. However, he did not repeat his own utterances, either immediately or later on in father-to-child CUs, as is indicated in the literature for mother-to-child speech. Exclamatory Sentences
Exclamatory remarks, such as "Wow! . . . . Good! . . . . Right!" and " O h no!" represented 9% of the father's utterances. Almost all exclamations were positive and were followed by a short declarative remark, such as " T h a t ' s good" or "You do nice work." No results are available to compare this father to mothers' use of exclamatory sentences.
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GIATTINO, HOGAN: Father'sSpeechAnalysis 533 Imperative Sentences T h i s father used imperative constructions such as " H o l d it." " D o n ' t push." "Wait." and "Stop it." for only 6% of his utterances. T h i s is less than one-third the n u m b e r reported in Broen's (1972) study. She h a d found that 24.3% of mothers' sentences to both younger and 61der children were imperatives. T h u s , this father is seen to use substantially fewer directives in his speech to his child.
Grammatically Incomplete Responses Only 5% or 28 sentences of this father were grammatically incomplete. Most of these involved deletion of some word(s), usually in sentence initial position, as in " a spaceman." Other examples of his deletion patterns, in both sentence initial and sentence final position included: " cause we have to make a long, long trip." " ~ m y hand." "A castle and a _ _ " "If you poke them like this ." T h i s result again differs from data on mother-to-child speech. T h e mothers in Broen's (1972) study used sentences that were grammatically incomplete 15.2% of the time. Other reports in the literature have noted that mothers' speech to children is often ungrammatical and grammatically incomplete. T h i s was not found to be the case with this father.
Completion Sentences T h e development of the category of completion sentences was necessitated by the analysis of the data and referred to the intentional omission of a word(s) by the father in anticipation of its immediate utterance by the child. T h i s p h e n o m e n o n usually occurred in sentence final position. If the child did not respond to the deletion, the father then questioned the child more directly. For example, the father said, " T h i s i s " to which J replied, "BamBam." T h e father's pitch remained level in these completion sentences b u t in the above example, the ]z] on is was abnormally lengthened. Other examples of completion sentences included: Father: That was a pretty Child: Dinosaur. Father: Dinosaur. That was silly. Father: That's Child: a bear. Father: That's right. A bear.
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Completion sentences comprised 1.5% of the sentences used by this father. No data are available on use of this type of sentence by mothers. Expansions
Although Brown and Bellugi (1964) noted that mothers in their study responded to their children with expansions 30% of the time, this phenomenon was barely apparent in this father's speech. A total of three utterances (0.5%) of this father were expansions. T h e three expansions found in the father-child CUs were: Child: A mother. Father: This is a mother. Father: How are they different? Child: Their coats. Father: Their coats are different. Yes. Father: What's this? Child: A square. Father: This is a square. T h e ages of the children in the Brown and Bellugi (1964) study and the child in the present study were similar and they were in similar stages of language development as measured by MLU. This father is significantly different from mothers in his use of expansions providing a notable difference in linguistic input to his child. It is possible that this difference between mothers and this father may be attributed to the fact that very few of J's utterances were reduced or incomplete. This factor would eliminate the need for the father to expand the child's utterance. THE CHILD'S SPEECH
Although this study was concerned with the father's speech, some analysis was done of the child's speech for comparative purposes. J's speech sample consisted of 503 utterances. Distribution of sentences in J's speech is shown on Table~3. Questions of all types constituted 13% or 66 utterances. Examples of question types she produced included: "Is it going too fast?" "You need people too?" "What are you doing that for?" "Where do you put this square?" Thirty-five percent (178 utterances) were single-word sentences, such as: "Door." "Yeah." "Wrong." "Okay." "Red." Only two percent (nine utterances) were immediate imitations of the father. T h e remaining 250 utterances were
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GIATTINO, HOGAN: Father's Speech Analysis 535 TABLE 3. N u m b e r and percentage of sentence types used by a three-year-old child to h e r father. (N = 503 sentences in 350 communicative units.)
Sentence Type Single-word sentences Interrogative sentences I m m e d i a t e imitations All o t h e r responses
N u m b e r of Sentences
Percent o I Total Sentences
178 66 9 250
35 13 2 50
imperative, exclamatory, and declarative sentences of two words or more. Examples of these included: "Yes, it goes right here." "I don't see Ernie's nose." "We never ever did this puzzle, or this puzzle, or this puzzle, or this puzzle." "This is the house." "I'm taking lots of care for her." "I will try doing it." An interesting phenomenon is noted when father's and child's speech are compared. J's samples had fewer than 50% of her father's number of questions but more than 200% of the amount of his single-word declarative sentences. From this we might infer that this father and child had little or no difficulty in understanding each other since neither needed to further question or interpret the other's single-word utterances. T h e importance of the context in which the utterances are produced and the situational cues which help define utterance meaning become apparent in this analysis of the interaction between this father and daughter. DISCUSSION
T h e results of this preliminary analysis of father-to-child speech indicated that similarities and differences exist when this father's output is compared to the previous investigations of mother-to-child speech. Striking similarity was shown in the sentence types most often used. Declarative and interrogative sentences were used most frequently both by this father and by the mothers as reported in previous studies. However, this father rarely imitated or expanded his child's utterances. Mothers in previous research were found to imitate and expand their children's utterances with considerably greater frequency than did this father. This father rarely repeated his own utterances and generally used grammatically complete sentences. Mothers had been shown to frequently repeat their own utterances and to use grammatically incomplete sentences. This father's pattern of word or phrase deletion described above did not appear to interfere with communication as shown by the appropriateness of the child's immediately succeeding response. This
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father, like mothers, does seem influenced by the needs of the child and the feedback he gets from his child, as shown by his modification of his mean length of utterance in language directed to his daughter. Ill listening to the tapes of this father-child pair, we had the subjective impression that this father was "talking with" his child. His goals in terms of communication seemed to be to interact with her, not to teach her language, although we can assume that language learning was occurring on some level. This father did little linguistic correction of his daughter's output. His interaction with her was mainly describing, explaining, and questioning her about ongoing events and activities. These conclusions must of necessity be extremely tentative because we analyzed only one father-child pair. Comparisons of the present results to previous studies is limited by differences in terms of age of the children, parent variables, home environment, and procedures used for data collection and analysis. Our findings can only be considered representative of this one father-child pair and cannot be extended to the linguistic behavior of fathers to children. These preliminary results do, however, suggest areas for future thought and investigation. Several recent investigations have focused on differences in children's style of language acquisition. Dore (1973), for example, points out that, " . . . it seems likely that differences in linguistic style are greatly influenced (if not determined) by environmental influences" (p.. 629). He further states, " . . . there is a strong possibility that a mother's attitude toward language learning will have some influence on her child's style of speech act development" (Dore, 1973, p. 629). Results of his pilot study indicated that a mother's attitude toward language development did, in fact, influence the specific quality of language used by the child. What are a father's attitudes toward language development? It is possible that fathers' attitudes toward language acquisition differ from that of mothers, and hence influence the language-learning process of children. If, as in the present study, the father is a major influence in the child's life in terms of hours spent with the child, how will hls approach to language development alter the child's sequence and style of le/tt'ning? Because of the changing role of women in our society, fathers are spending more time with their children, and we must consider the capabilities of fathers as language teachers. T h e recent study of McDonald et al. (1974) on a parentassisted treatment program for language-impaired Children focused only on mothers and found that mothers could be trained to be effective language teachers. If the fathers of these children had also beefi trained in this program, the children would have had the benefit of those additional hours of language training given by the other significant figure in the child's life. It would also have given us additional information about the fathers' ability to deal with a language-impaired child. T h e role of the father in the management of the language-impaired child has been given almost as little attention as his role with the normal child. T h e influence of adult language output on the rate, sequence, and style of
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GIATTINO, HOGAN: Father's Speech Analysis 537 l a n g u a g e d e v e l o p m e n t needs f u r t h e r investigation in b o t h n o r m a l a n d abn o r m a l child l a n g u a g e . Specification of the characteristics of the linguistic env i r o n m e n t p r o v i d e d for the child d e v e l o p i n g l a n g u a g e n o r m a l l y can isolate those factors w h i c h e n h a n c e l a n g u a g e acquisition. I s o l a t i n g the significant e n v i r o n m e n t a l variables can assist in o u r t r a i n i n g of the l a n g u a g e - i m p a i r e d child by i n d i c a t i n g how, when, what, a n d by w h o m the most effective m e a n s of r e m e d i a t i o n can be achieved.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT This research was based on Jeanne G. Hogan's master's thesis completed at Herbert H. Lehman College, CUNY, under the direction of Jill Giattino. The authors wish to thank Donna Geffner and Lawrence Raphael for their assistance on this project. Portions of this paper were presented at the Annual Convention of the American Speech and Hearing Association, Las Vegas, Nevada, 1974. Requests for reprints should be directed to Jill Giattino, Department of Speech and Theatre, Speech and Hearing Center, Herbert H. Lehman College, CUNY, Bronx, New York 10468.
REFERENCES BERRY, M. F., Language Disorders o/Children. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts (1969). BIDDLE, B. J., and THOMAS, E. J. (Eds.), Role Theory: Concepts and Research. New York: Wiley (1966). BROEN, P. A., The Verbal Environment of the Language-Learning Child: ASHA Monograph 17, Washington, D.C.: American Speech and Hearing Association (1972). BROWN, R., and BELLUGI,U., Three processes in the child's acquisition of syntax. Harv. Educ. Rev., 34, 133-151 (1964). CAZDEN,C. B., Child Language and Education. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston (1972). DoPaL J., A developmental theory of speech act production. Trans. N. Y. Acad. Sci., 11:35, 623-630 (1973). ERVIN-TmPP, S., An overview of theories of grammatical development. In D. Slobin (Ed.), The Ontogenesis of Grammar. New York: Academic, 134-166 (1971). I.~nov, W., The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics (1966). MACDONALD,J. D., BLOTT,J. P., GORDON,K., SPIEGEL, B., and HARTMANN,M., An experimental parent-assisted treatment program for preschool language-delayed children. J. Speech Hearing Dis., 39, 395-415 (1974). SNOW, C. E., Mother's speech to children learning language. Child Dew., 43, 549-565 (1972) WOJICK, K. R., Changes in a mother's speech to her language-learning child. Master's thesis, Herbert H. Lehman College, CUNY (1973).
Received July 24, 1974. Accepted April 5, 1975.
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SPEECH CHILD
TO
Jill Giattino Herbert H. Lehman College, CUNY, Bronx, New York
Jeanne G. Hogan Yonkers Public Schools, New York
This study analyzed the speech of a father to his language-learning child. Father-tochild speech was taped daily over a two-week period when the child was three years old. Results indicated that declarative (35%) and interrogative (34%) sentences occurred most often. Smaller percentages of exclamatory (9%) and imperative (6%) sentences were found. The father rarely repeated his own utterances and almost never expanded his daughter's utterances. The child rarely immediately imitated her father's utterances. Comparisons are made of aspects of father-to-child speech with mother-to-child speech as reported in previous investigations.
Child language acquisition has been the focus of a significant amount of recent research. Linguists, psychologists, psycholinguists, sociolinguists, and speech pathologists have used their individual vantage points in attempts to determine how children learn language. Our literature is replete with naturalistic, descriptive, and experimental studies providing evidence on the processes involved in learning to talk. T h e majority of these studies have analyzed, in many and often ingenious ways, the child's output. Recent interest has turned to studying input to the child in attempts to determine the influence of the child's verbal environment on his acquisition of language. Children are continually exposed to language which they often do not fully understand and which may be ungrammatical. In spite of this, they manage to learn to understand and produce complex and grammatically correct linguistic material in a very short period of time. Studies of verbal input to children have focused on various aspects of mother-to-child language. This research has shown that mother-to-child language is different from adult-to-adult language. Brown and Bellugi (1964) found mothers' speech to children simple and grammatical. T h e y found mothers frequently imitate children and expand their utterances. Snow (1972) found that mothers talk more, simplify more, and repeat parts of phrases more to two-year-old than 10-year-old children. She suggested that these adjust524
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GIATTINO, HOGAN: Father's Speech Analysis 525
ments, modifications, and repetitions may aid the child's acquisition of language. Broen (1972) found that when mothers spoke to younger as compared to older children they used slower rate, fewer disfluencies, and smaller typetoken ratios. They also used smaller vocabularies, but they repeated their utterances more frequently. These studies of mother-to-child speech show a "kind of maternal accommodation to the child's growing language knowledge and ability" (Caz~len, 1972, p. 107). T h e linguistic variables tabulated in these studies included amount, complexity, and density of repetitions; length, complexity, imitation, and expansion of sentences; vocabulary range; amount and rate of speech; and adjustments in and frequency of constructions made by the mother as the child's language developed. In 1972, Cazden stated, "Research that differentiates among the many aspects of language development and tests their vulnerability to environmental differences is extremely important" (p. 129). In a child's early life, probably the most significant environmental influences come from the child's parents. Mother and father assume different roles in the child's world and establish different relationships with the child. At an early age, the child becomes aware of and begins to respond to these differences (Biddle and Thomas, 1966). T h e verbal environment provided by the father, a central figure in a child's life, has been largely ignored in child language research. While almost all of the literature describes mother-child interactions, the changing nature of the typical male-female stereotypes in the management of home and family demands that we attend to father-child interactions. In families where both parents are employed it is sometimes the father who is the primary adult in the young child's environment. This study was undertaken to gather some preliminary data about a father's linguistic input to his child. Because the father in this study did spend a considerable amount of time with his child, we felt that their verbal interaction could supply us with an adequate corpus for analysis. T h e purpose of the study was to analyze the speech of one middle-class father to his language-learning child. T h e aspects of his speech which were selected for analysis included items on which comparable data were available from previous analyses of mother-to-child speech. Four questions were considered in this investigation. T h e following statements presenting those questions also present definitions of terms used in this study. 1. What sentence types does the father use most frequently? Four basic sentence types were analyzed. They were classified according to the communicative intent as follows: declarative sentences used to make a statement; interrogative sentences used to ask a question; imperative sentences used to command or request where you is the implied subject but is omitted; and exclamatory sentences used to express strong emotion in the form of an emphatic interjection.
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2. Is the father's speech to the child redundant? Redundancy referred to the frequency of the father's use of immediate repetitions (with or without reduction) of his own preceding utterance. 3. Does the child immediately imitate the father's utterances? This analysis was of the child's exact imitation of the father's immediately preceding utterance. 4. Does the father use expansions in his speech to his child? Expansions were defined as "An adult verbal response which is contingent on the child's previous utterance and which expresses in syntactically complete form the meaning of the child's utterance as the adult understands it" (Cazden, 1972, p. 300). DESCRIPTION OF THE SUBJECTS
T h e two subjects in this study were a 24-year-old father and his only child, who we shall call J. This investigation was conducted during the two weeks following J's third birthday. J's parents had kept a detailed written account of all aspects of her development. These records, plus interviews with the parents, provided the following information. J was born after a normal pregnancy and delivery and is in continued excellent health. All developmental milestones were achieved at age-appropriate levels. J sat unsupported at six months, stood at nine months, walked unaided at 10 months. She began to feed herself at 18 months at which time the bottle was replaced by a cup. She was easily toilet trained at 20 months. At age three, she is able to dress herself, failing only in tying her shoes. J began to say words ("mama" and "dada") at five months and began communicative speech, such as saying "baba" when she wanted her bottle, at seven months. At 11 months, she began joining two words together and had no difficulty following simple directions. Her language at age three, as analyzed from the tapes collected in this study in her interaction with both parents, is also at least of normal or above normal levels. Her mean length of utterance is 4.5 words. She uses sentences as long as 15 words, although she still responds in singleword sentences. Most sentences are grammatically complete. She has a vocabulary appropriate for her age and uses most parts of speech. She appropriately uses and understands personal, demonstrative, and possessive pronouns, and she marks verbs correctly for present, progressive, and past tense. She is beginning to use some compound verbs, such as future constructions. She uses and appropriately responds to all types of questions and correctly produces forms of do in both question and negative sentences. Prepositional phrases are emerging but are occasionally used incorrectly as shown in confusions of of, for, and by. Her longer sentences show correct incorporation of adjectives relating to color, number, and size. She is able to recite the alphabet, six nursery rhymes, count to 20, and give her full name and address. She is inquisitive about language, asking for clarification of new words and concepts. According to Berry's (1969) developmental scales, J meets and in some instances surpasses the verbal and nonverbal behavior of a normal three-yearold child. J's father works five days a week, from nine to five, as a salesman for a na-
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GIATTINO, HOGAN: Father's Speech Analysis 527
tional company. He has completed some college education although he has earned no degree. He has been an active participant in J's care and upbringing since she was born. He enjoys spending time in various activities with his daughter. Every evening and weekend he spends time with her, averaging 22 hours in a normal working week. During the period of this investigation, the father spent an average of an additional three hours per week with his child. This was because J's mother was attending graduate school and taking courses in the evening. T h e mother's absence necessitated only a small change in the additional time the father spent with his child. Observation of this family constellation both before and after the period of this investigation indicated that the communication occurring between this father and child was typical of their ongoing interaction in both quality and quantity. In general, J's parents assume stereotyped roles: mother is homemaker and cares for J daily; father is breadwinner. J's mother, at the time of this study, was completing her master's degree. According to the socioeconomic scales of Labor (1966), the family is representative of middle class. COLLECTION OF THE CORPUS
The speech of the father and the child was recorded on a Sony solid-state stereo tape recorder (Model TC-252D). All taping was done during periods of free play, and all conversations took place indoors in a family room-playroom. This is the area where the subjects most often engage in their periods of free play. T h e lengths of each daily session varied and were determined when J terminated the play session. Taping was done over a two-week period during every evening and weekend play period. T h e father turned on the tape recorder at the start of each session. No other persons were ever present during the father-child sessions. Both father and child had had practice taping sessions and had become at ease with the tape recorder on. T h e subjects were given no directions regarding required behavior or responses. They were encouraged to do whatever they wished and to ignore the presence of the tape. As in most studies involving tape recordings, the inherent problem is the participants' awareness that they are being recorded. Both subjects knew they were being recorded but seemed unconcerned about it. There was no conscious effort, especially on the father's part, to modify normal, spontaneous behavior. While tape samples were being collected, the father believed that the mother was also involved in the study. He thought that midday recordings of the mother's speech were being made, in addition to his own evening sessions. Upon completion of the study, the father was told that his wife's speech had not been recorded. He stated that he had been less concerned about his own behavior during the taping sessions because he believed that both parents were being recorded and studied. During the play periods, J had freedom of choice of all her toys. A sample of these included dolls, doll clothes, doll house, furniture, utensils, games (such as Candyland), merry-go-round, puppets, cars, trains, blocks, puzzles, records,
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record player, and books. Father and child engaged in spontaneous play with toys selected by the child. Occasionally the father read a story to the child. His reading was the only aspect of his output which was not considered in the analysis of the tapes. ANALYSIS OF THE DATA
Speech samples were obtained from recording sessions which took place every day for a 14-day period. A total of 18 hours of speech was collected: approximately one hour each weekday and four hours over both weekends. Both the father's and child's utterances were transcribed in order to compare the father-child interactions of each session. The authors transcribed the speech from the tapes and recorded each subject's response on an index card. The adult subject of the experiment was consulted when there was a question regarding intelligibility of an utterance. Responses of the subjects were analyzed by the numbers of communicative units produced. A communicative unit (CU) was measured from the onset of an utterance by one subject to the onset of an utterance by the other subject. Thus, a CU could be one word, one sentence, or several sentences depending upon when the second subject began speaking. For example, each of the following is one CU produced by the father indicating the nature of communicative units. "Sure" is a CU of one word. "I don't know much" is a CU of one sentence. "We did them. Let's put Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater together. All those pieces. O.K.?" is a CU of several sentences. In the total sample, the lengths of the communicative units varied from one word to 56 words in eight sentences. The first 50 CUs of each of the 14 sessions were transcribed. Twenty-five CUs of each session were made up of the father's utterances, 25 were the child's. A total of 700 CUs was evaluated: 350 from each subject. In order to determine if similar linguistic behavior was occurring during the period of the investigation, a comparison was made of the first 50 CUs from each session to the second, third, fourth, fifth, and last set of 50 CUs arbitrarily taken from the seventh recording session. The first 50 CUs of each session proved to be representative of the total father-child interaction. Table 1 reports the occurrence of different sentence types in six segments of the seventh session. Percentages show that a difference of no more than 9% occurs between the CUs of any one category of the samples selected for comparison, indicating that the first 50 CUs of each session were similar to other portions of the sample. The final sample of CUs used for analysis consisted of the first 50 CUs of each session, 25 CUs for each subject for each of the 14 sessions. The initial way of organizing the CUs was to identify each of the father's sentences as falling into the sentence categories to be analyzed: declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory. The actual distribution of utterances led to further subdivision of categories and development of new categories: one-word declarative sentence, repetition, expansion, grammatically incom-
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GIATTINO, HOGAN: Father's Speech Analysis 529 TABLE 1. Percentage of sentence types used by the father in the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and last set of 50 communicative units taken from the seventh recording session.
Percentage per set o150 CUs 2nd 3rd 4th 5th
Sentence Type
1st
Last
Declarative
35
32
30
26
38
34
Interrogative Repetition Exclamation Imperative Grammatically incomplete response Completion* Expansion
34 9 9 6
30 14 10 6
33 9 16 7
36 12 14 4
29 0 11 5
36 10 6 5
5 1.5
8 0
5 1
6 1
11 4
7 1
0.5
0
0
1
2
1
*Completion sentence refers to the intentional omission of a word by the
father in anticipation of its immediate utterance by the child. plete sentence, and completion sentence. T h e term c o m p l e t i o n s e n t e n c e refers to the intentional omission of a word by the father in anticipation of its immediate utterance by the child. T h e child's utterances were organized into four sentence categories: interrogative, one-word sentence, immediate imitation, and all other sentences and phrases that did not fall into these categories, such as imperative, exclamatory, and declarative sentences of two words or more, and incomplete sentences. Sentences produced by each subject could sometimes be placed into more than one sentence category. Each sentence was classified into only one category. Sentence classification was based on frequency of occurrence of the sentence types in the actual data. For example, a one-word question was classified only as a question, not a one-word sentence; whereas an expanded question was categorized as an expansion, not a question. Classification of the father's sentences into categories in order of priority was: repetition and expansion, interrogative, one-word declarative, declarative, imperative, exclamatory, grammatically incomplete, and completion sentence. T h e order of priority used for analysis of the child's sentence categories was: immediate imitation, interrogative, one-word sentence, and all other responses. Sentences which could be categorized in more than one way were always placed in the category which was highest on the above list of priorities for each subject. Semantically and syntactically complete units a n d / o r pauses of two seconds or more between utterances were used to mark the end of one utterance and the beginning of another and for categorizing utterances into the different sentence types. R ES U L T S
W i t h i n the 700 communicative units constituting the speech samples, the father produced a total of 563 sentences in his 350 CUs (271 during the first week, 292 during the second week). J produced 503 sentences in her 350 CUs
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(212 the first week, 291 the second week). T h e mean length of utterance (MLU) of the father in his interactions with J was 5.2 words; J's M L U was 4.5 words. An interesting similarity is noted between the father's and the child's MLU. Although the father's M L U was 5.2 words in his speech directed to J, it was 9.7 words as measured in 50 consecutive utterances in adult-to-adult conversation. T h e father is obviously influenced by the child's level of language development and adjusts his language directed to her by producing shorter sentences which seem to be within her comprehension abilities. T h e numerical analysis of the data obtained from the father, based on percentages of sentence types he produced, is shown in T a b l e 2. T h e results of the TABLE 2. Number and percentage of sentence types used by the father to his child. (N = 563 sentences in 350 communicative units.) Number o/ Sentences
Sentence Type
Declarative sentences (including one-word statements) Interrogative sentences (excluding repetitions and expansions) Repetitions Exclamatory sentences Imperative sentences Grammatically incomplete responses Completion sentences Expansions
Percent o/Total Sentences
195
35
190 51 50 37
34 9 9 6
28 9 3
5 1.5 0.5
analysis of each sentence type are discussed below and compared to previously reported investigations on mother-to-child speech where possible. THE FATHER'S SPEECH D e c l a r a t i v e Sentences
Thirty-five percent of all sentences produced by the father were declarative. One-third (65 sentences) of the declarative sentences were single-word utterances. T h e remaining 130 declarative sentences contained two or more words. T h e declarative sentences of this father varied in length from one word, "Dinosaurs."; "Right." to 17 words, "Jeanne, those are very delicate a n d you have to play nicely with them otherwise they will break." Other examples of this father's declarative sentences included: "This looks like a corner piece." 'Tll be patient." "I need more than one triangle."
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GIATTINO, HOGAN: Father's Speech Analysis 531 Mothers in Broen's (1972) study averaged 30.4% declarative sentences in their speech to their children aged 18-26 months. Despite slight age differences in the children, mothers and this father show great similarity in frequency of usage of declarative sentences. Interrogative Sentences Four types of questions were collected in this study: wh- questions (including who, which, what, how, where, and why), tag questions, questions formed by inverting the complete subject noun phrase and the first element of the auxiliary verb, and questions indicated by a rise in intonation at the end of the sentence. Thirty-four percent of the father's sentences were questions. Of these, 56% were wh- questions, 19% were tag questions, 17% were indicated by rising intonation, and 8% were noun phrase inversion. Excluded from this category were questions formed by expanding or repeating the child's utterance. Examples of questions used by the father in each interrogative category included: "What are you doing?" "Where is it?" "Which one do you want?" "She's different from the other witch, isn't she?" "Daddy has a lot of stuff, doesn't he?" "You'll be the doctor?" "I won't believe it?" "Do you know his name?" "Would you like to go to the park?" "Are you getting the baby undressed?" This father's use of questions is similar to that of mothers as reported in the literature. Ervin-Tripp (1971) found that one-quarter to one-half of the utterances of a mother to her child were questions. An average of 37% of the mother's sentences in Broen's (1972) study were questions. Wojick (1973) noted that a mother's questions to her son decreased from 50% at 15 months to 36% at 30 months. It is difficult to assess the true intent of some of this father's questions. Some questions were posed to obtain an answer as yet unknown to the father, as when father says, "Is that the barrette I was looking for the other night, or is it the barrette from today?" Other questions were asked to determine if the child knew the answer to a question already known to the father, as in: Father: Who's this? Child: Fred. Father: Who's this one? Child: Pebbles.
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For some questions a response was not expected, and the father supplied the answer immediately after completing the question, as in: Father: "Do you know his name? His name is Jughead." Here the father was aware that the child did not, or could not, know the answer. Some of the father's questions appeared to provide a means of conversing with the child, although most were appropriate to the situation and required a response from the child. Repetitions
Repetitions constituted only 9% of all utterances of the father. He never produced the same sentence twice in a row and all repetitions refer to the exact reproduction of the child's utterances, not his own, as in the following example: Father: What was that? Child: Ear. Father: Ear. What's that? Child: Foot. Father: Foot. You got it. Almost 25% of the father's repetitions were questions posed by him, repeating the child's utterances, as in the following examples: Father: Who's this? Child: Pebbles. Father: Pebbles? Child: Yeah, Pebbles. Child: Captain Hook with no feet. Father: Captain Hook with no feet? T h e remaining 75% of his repetitions were declarative sentences and exclamations. T h e type of repetitions this father produced differs from that previously reported for mothers. Broen (1972) noted that mothers repeat themselves both sequentially and nonsequentially. T h i s father's repetitions were mainly sequential, that is, he repeated the child's immediately preceding response. However, he did not repeat his own utterances, either immediately or later on in father-to-child CUs, as is indicated in the literature for mother-to-child speech. Exclamatory Sentences
Exclamatory remarks, such as "Wow! . . . . Good! . . . . Right!" and " O h no!" represented 9% of the father's utterances. Almost all exclamations were positive and were followed by a short declarative remark, such as " T h a t ' s good" or "You do nice work." No results are available to compare this father to mothers' use of exclamatory sentences.
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GIATTINO, HOGAN: Father'sSpeechAnalysis 533 Imperative Sentences T h i s father used imperative constructions such as " H o l d it." " D o n ' t push." "Wait." and "Stop it." for only 6% of his utterances. T h i s is less than one-third the n u m b e r reported in Broen's (1972) study. She h a d found that 24.3% of mothers' sentences to both younger and 61der children were imperatives. T h u s , this father is seen to use substantially fewer directives in his speech to his child.
Grammatically Incomplete Responses Only 5% or 28 sentences of this father were grammatically incomplete. Most of these involved deletion of some word(s), usually in sentence initial position, as in " a spaceman." Other examples of his deletion patterns, in both sentence initial and sentence final position included: " cause we have to make a long, long trip." " ~ m y hand." "A castle and a _ _ " "If you poke them like this ." T h i s result again differs from data on mother-to-child speech. T h e mothers in Broen's (1972) study used sentences that were grammatically incomplete 15.2% of the time. Other reports in the literature have noted that mothers' speech to children is often ungrammatical and grammatically incomplete. T h i s was not found to be the case with this father.
Completion Sentences T h e development of the category of completion sentences was necessitated by the analysis of the data and referred to the intentional omission of a word(s) by the father in anticipation of its immediate utterance by the child. T h i s p h e n o m e n o n usually occurred in sentence final position. If the child did not respond to the deletion, the father then questioned the child more directly. For example, the father said, " T h i s i s " to which J replied, "BamBam." T h e father's pitch remained level in these completion sentences b u t in the above example, the ]z] on is was abnormally lengthened. Other examples of completion sentences included: Father: That was a pretty Child: Dinosaur. Father: Dinosaur. That was silly. Father: That's Child: a bear. Father: That's right. A bear.
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Completion sentences comprised 1.5% of the sentences used by this father. No data are available on use of this type of sentence by mothers. Expansions
Although Brown and Bellugi (1964) noted that mothers in their study responded to their children with expansions 30% of the time, this phenomenon was barely apparent in this father's speech. A total of three utterances (0.5%) of this father were expansions. T h e three expansions found in the father-child CUs were: Child: A mother. Father: This is a mother. Father: How are they different? Child: Their coats. Father: Their coats are different. Yes. Father: What's this? Child: A square. Father: This is a square. T h e ages of the children in the Brown and Bellugi (1964) study and the child in the present study were similar and they were in similar stages of language development as measured by MLU. This father is significantly different from mothers in his use of expansions providing a notable difference in linguistic input to his child. It is possible that this difference between mothers and this father may be attributed to the fact that very few of J's utterances were reduced or incomplete. This factor would eliminate the need for the father to expand the child's utterance. THE CHILD'S SPEECH
Although this study was concerned with the father's speech, some analysis was done of the child's speech for comparative purposes. J's speech sample consisted of 503 utterances. Distribution of sentences in J's speech is shown on Table~3. Questions of all types constituted 13% or 66 utterances. Examples of question types she produced included: "Is it going too fast?" "You need people too?" "What are you doing that for?" "Where do you put this square?" Thirty-five percent (178 utterances) were single-word sentences, such as: "Door." "Yeah." "Wrong." "Okay." "Red." Only two percent (nine utterances) were immediate imitations of the father. T h e remaining 250 utterances were
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GIATTINO, HOGAN: Father's Speech Analysis 535 TABLE 3. N u m b e r and percentage of sentence types used by a three-year-old child to h e r father. (N = 503 sentences in 350 communicative units.)
Sentence Type Single-word sentences Interrogative sentences I m m e d i a t e imitations All o t h e r responses
N u m b e r of Sentences
Percent o I Total Sentences
178 66 9 250
35 13 2 50
imperative, exclamatory, and declarative sentences of two words or more. Examples of these included: "Yes, it goes right here." "I don't see Ernie's nose." "We never ever did this puzzle, or this puzzle, or this puzzle, or this puzzle." "This is the house." "I'm taking lots of care for her." "I will try doing it." An interesting phenomenon is noted when father's and child's speech are compared. J's samples had fewer than 50% of her father's number of questions but more than 200% of the amount of his single-word declarative sentences. From this we might infer that this father and child had little or no difficulty in understanding each other since neither needed to further question or interpret the other's single-word utterances. T h e importance of the context in which the utterances are produced and the situational cues which help define utterance meaning become apparent in this analysis of the interaction between this father and daughter. DISCUSSION
T h e results of this preliminary analysis of father-to-child speech indicated that similarities and differences exist when this father's output is compared to the previous investigations of mother-to-child speech. Striking similarity was shown in the sentence types most often used. Declarative and interrogative sentences were used most frequently both by this father and by the mothers as reported in previous studies. However, this father rarely imitated or expanded his child's utterances. Mothers in previous research were found to imitate and expand their children's utterances with considerably greater frequency than did this father. This father rarely repeated his own utterances and generally used grammatically complete sentences. Mothers had been shown to frequently repeat their own utterances and to use grammatically incomplete sentences. This father's pattern of word or phrase deletion described above did not appear to interfere with communication as shown by the appropriateness of the child's immediately succeeding response. This
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536
JOURNAL OF SPEECH AND HEARING DISORDERS
XL
524-537
1975
father, like mothers, does seem influenced by the needs of the child and the feedback he gets from his child, as shown by his modification of his mean length of utterance in language directed to his daughter. Ill listening to the tapes of this father-child pair, we had the subjective impression that this father was "talking with" his child. His goals in terms of communication seemed to be to interact with her, not to teach her language, although we can assume that language learning was occurring on some level. This father did little linguistic correction of his daughter's output. His interaction with her was mainly describing, explaining, and questioning her about ongoing events and activities. These conclusions must of necessity be extremely tentative because we analyzed only one father-child pair. Comparisons of the present results to previous studies is limited by differences in terms of age of the children, parent variables, home environment, and procedures used for data collection and analysis. Our findings can only be considered representative of this one father-child pair and cannot be extended to the linguistic behavior of fathers to children. These preliminary results do, however, suggest areas for future thought and investigation. Several recent investigations have focused on differences in children's style of language acquisition. Dore (1973), for example, points out that, " . . . it seems likely that differences in linguistic style are greatly influenced (if not determined) by environmental influences" (p.. 629). He further states, " . . . there is a strong possibility that a mother's attitude toward language learning will have some influence on her child's style of speech act development" (Dore, 1973, p. 629). Results of his pilot study indicated that a mother's attitude toward language development did, in fact, influence the specific quality of language used by the child. What are a father's attitudes toward language development? It is possible that fathers' attitudes toward language acquisition differ from that of mothers, and hence influence the language-learning process of children. If, as in the present study, the father is a major influence in the child's life in terms of hours spent with the child, how will hls approach to language development alter the child's sequence and style of le/tt'ning? Because of the changing role of women in our society, fathers are spending more time with their children, and we must consider the capabilities of fathers as language teachers. T h e recent study of McDonald et al. (1974) on a parentassisted treatment program for language-impaired Children focused only on mothers and found that mothers could be trained to be effective language teachers. If the fathers of these children had also beefi trained in this program, the children would have had the benefit of those additional hours of language training given by the other significant figure in the child's life. It would also have given us additional information about the fathers' ability to deal with a language-impaired child. T h e role of the father in the management of the language-impaired child has been given almost as little attention as his role with the normal child. T h e influence of adult language output on the rate, sequence, and style of
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GIATTINO, HOGAN: Father's Speech Analysis 537 l a n g u a g e d e v e l o p m e n t needs f u r t h e r investigation in b o t h n o r m a l a n d abn o r m a l child l a n g u a g e . Specification of the characteristics of the linguistic env i r o n m e n t p r o v i d e d for the child d e v e l o p i n g l a n g u a g e n o r m a l l y can isolate those factors w h i c h e n h a n c e l a n g u a g e acquisition. I s o l a t i n g the significant e n v i r o n m e n t a l variables can assist in o u r t r a i n i n g of the l a n g u a g e - i m p a i r e d child by i n d i c a t i n g how, when, what, a n d by w h o m the most effective m e a n s of r e m e d i a t i o n can be achieved.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT This research was based on Jeanne G. Hogan's master's thesis completed at Herbert H. Lehman College, CUNY, under the direction of Jill Giattino. The authors wish to thank Donna Geffner and Lawrence Raphael for their assistance on this project. Portions of this paper were presented at the Annual Convention of the American Speech and Hearing Association, Las Vegas, Nevada, 1974. Requests for reprints should be directed to Jill Giattino, Department of Speech and Theatre, Speech and Hearing Center, Herbert H. Lehman College, CUNY, Bronx, New York 10468.
REFERENCES BERRY, M. F., Language Disorders o/Children. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts (1969). BIDDLE, B. J., and THOMAS, E. J. (Eds.), Role Theory: Concepts and Research. New York: Wiley (1966). BROEN, P. A., The Verbal Environment of the Language-Learning Child: ASHA Monograph 17, Washington, D.C.: American Speech and Hearing Association (1972). BROWN, R., and BELLUGI,U., Three processes in the child's acquisition of syntax. Harv. Educ. Rev., 34, 133-151 (1964). CAZDEN,C. B., Child Language and Education. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston (1972). DoPaL J., A developmental theory of speech act production. Trans. N. Y. Acad. Sci., 11:35, 623-630 (1973). ERVIN-TmPP, S., An overview of theories of grammatical development. In D. Slobin (Ed.), The Ontogenesis of Grammar. New York: Academic, 134-166 (1971). I.~nov, W., The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics (1966). MACDONALD,J. D., BLOTT,J. P., GORDON,K., SPIEGEL, B., and HARTMANN,M., An experimental parent-assisted treatment program for preschool language-delayed children. J. Speech Hearing Dis., 39, 395-415 (1974). SNOW, C. E., Mother's speech to children learning language. Child Dew., 43, 549-565 (1972) WOJICK, K. R., Changes in a mother's speech to her language-learning child. Master's thesis, Herbert H. Lehman College, CUNY (1973).
Received July 24, 1974. Accepted April 5, 1975.
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