Study of the lexical and morphosyntactic characteristics of a corpus of motherese in Spanish from the city of Córdoba (Argentina)

  • María Patricia Paolantonio IIPSI (CONICET-UNC)
  • Gabriela Di Gregorio Universidad Nacional de Córdoba
  • Alejandra Beatriz Menti Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas Técnicas, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba
  • Laura María Victoria Manoiloff Universidad Nacional de Córdoba
DOI: https://doi.org/10.34096/sys.n45.13662
Keywords: infant-directed speech, oral corpus, Spanish spoken in Córdoba, preverbal infants

Abstract

The aim of this research has been to build a corpora of motherese in Rioplatense Spanish directed at infants between 3-6 months of age from semi-structured laboratory interaction sessions and analyse the lexical and morphosyntactic features of this particular type of discourse. It was observed that in the language directed at 3-month-old infants, the number of morphemes per word, the ratio of distinct words, and lexical diversity are significantly lower compared to other ages. The average duration of maternal utterances increased towards 4 months of infant age and decreased at 5 and 6 months of infant age, with a mean duration between 2.3 (3 months) and 3.5 (4-6 months) morphemes per utterance. Regarding repetitions, a progressive increase was observed, reaching its peak at 5 months of infant age and a slight decrease at 6 months. This study has allowed us to expand our knowledge of the characteristics of the linguistic input that infants receive in the early stages of the prelinguistic period in a little-studied variant of Spanish.  

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Published
2024-10-01
How to Cite
Paolantonio, M. P., Di Gregorio, G., Menti, A. B., & Manoiloff, L. M. V. (2024). Study of the lexical and morphosyntactic characteristics of a corpus of motherese in Spanish from the city of Córdoba (Argentina). Signo & Seña, (45). https://doi.org/10.34096/sys.n45.13662
Issue
No 45 (2024): Enero-Junio
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Articles
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