Department of Psychology, University of Milano Bicocca.
Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences, University 'G. d'Annunzio', Chieti-Pescara, Italy.
J Child Lang. 2020 Jan;47(1):22-44. doi: 10.1017/S0305000919000643. Epub 2019 Oct 30.
Infant-directed speech (IDS) is a specific register that adults use to address infants, and it is characterised by prosodic exaggeration and lexical and syntactic simplification. Several authors have underlined that this simplified speech becomes more complex according to the infant's age. However, there is a lack of studies on lexical and syntactic modifications in Italian IDS during the first year of an infant's life. In the present study, 80 mother-infant dyads were longitudinally observed at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months during free-play interactions. Maternal vocal productions were subsequently coded. The results show an overall low lexical variability and syntactic complexity that identify speech to infants as a simplified register; however, the high occurrence of complex items and well-structured utterances suggests that IDS is not simple speech. Moreover, maternal IDS becomes more complex over time, but not linearly, with a maximum simplification in the second half of the first year.
婴儿导向语言（infant-directed speech，IDS）是一种成年人用于与婴儿交流的特殊语域，其特点是韵律夸张、词汇和句法简化。一些作者强调，这种简化的语言会根据婴儿的年龄变得更加复杂。然而，关于意大利婴儿导向语言在婴儿生命的第一年中词汇和句法变化的研究还比较缺乏。在本研究中，80 对母婴对在 3、6、9 和 12 个月大时进行了自由游戏互动的纵向观察。随后对母亲的发声进行了编码。结果表明，整体词汇变化和句法复杂性较低，这表明婴儿的语言是一种简化的语域；然而，复杂项目和结构良好的话语的高频出现表明，婴儿导向语言并非简单的语言。此外，随着时间的推移，母亲的婴儿导向语言变得更加复杂，但不是线性的，在第一年的下半年达到简化的最大值。
