Pick it up: A look at referential devices in Estonian child-directed speech

Abstract

This paper compares the forms of expression of core verbal arguments in estonian child-directed speech (CDS) with those in estonian speech between adults (ADS).The data, consisting of nearly 600 utterances, is taken from a mother speaking to her two-year-old child, and two adult women speaking to each other. The analysis confirms the observation that one-on-one conversation with toddlers includes a reduced number of declarative sentences (43% vs. 62.5% in the ADS sample), in favor of imperatives and interrogatives.Leaving out the unexpressed subjects of imperatives, we find that CDS contains 20% more overt arguments than ADS, and in the object argument role, nearly 30% more. Avoidance of ellipsis and a preference for lexical (rather than pronominal) noun phrases characterises the CDS in our sample,the data analysed support the principles of preferred argument structure, aligning grammatical role, morphosyntactic form and pragmatic prominence, with some peculiarities accounting for the specific character of mother-child interaction.