Honorifics in child-directed speech
How are honorifics, which are socially meaningful and socially conditioned, acquired, when their appearance in
child-directed speech cannot replicate their use in adult-directed speech? In this paper, we conduct corpus and experimental
studies aimed at characterizing the use of honorifics in child-directed speech in Korean. We find that the addressee honorific
-yo is present at notable rates in child-directed speech, although the use of -yo in
child-directed utterances is rated less natural than its absence. We further find that while -yo is given lower
ratings for the presence of relevant social meanings when in child-directed speech compared to adult-directed speech, the use of
-yo in child-directed speech is still significantly associated with these meanings. This suggests that while
the presence of honorifics in child-directed speech is somewhat unexpected, such uses of honorifics nonetheless carry relevant
information about the social meaning of honorifics.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Background
- 2.1Korean Honorifics
- 2.2Politeness in child-directed speech
- 2.3This study
- 3.Corpus data
- 3.1Honorifics in child-directed speech
- 3.2Child uses of honorifics
- 4.Interim discussion
- 5.Experiment
- 5.1Method
- 5.1.1Participants
- 5.1.2Stimuli
- 5.1.3Procedure
- 5.2Results
- 5.2.1Naturalness block
- 5.2.2Social meaning block
- 5.2.3Written responses and comments
- 6.Discussion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References