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The semantic focus of maternal speech: a comment on Ninio & Bruner (1978)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

M. Goddard ,
K. Durkin  and
D. R. Rutter
M. Goddard
Affiliation:
University of Kent
K. Durkin
Affiliation:
University of Kent
D. R. Rutter
Affiliation:
University of Kent
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Extract

Ninio & Bruner (1978) added an important dimension to the study of early lexical acquisition by drawing attention to the dialogue-like nature of the mother-child interactions where presumably much language-learning takes place. The authors pointed to the well-established findings that much of the child's early speech consists of names for people and objects (Leopold 1949, Werner & Kaplan 1963, Nelson 1973, Greenfield & Smith 1976). They went on to show that in one familiar type of parent–child interaction, joint picture-book reading, labels are used extensively by the adult and are inserted skilfully into a structured interactional sequence that has the texture of a dialogue (Ninio & Bruner 1978: 6). This dialogue, they suggested, ‘seems… to be a format well suited to the teaching of labelling’ (1978: 12). Subsequent research has also been interpreted as pointing to the teaching potential of joint picture-book reading (Wheeler 1983, Ninio 1983) and the opportunities it affords for situation-specific routines (Snow & Goldfield 1983).

Type
Notes and discussion
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , February 1985 , pp. 209 - 213
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

REFERENCES

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