In my presentation, I report on the results of a series of interdisciplinary observations carried out in Hungary, combining the theses of linguistics, psycholinguistics, and educational science. In the study, I asked to what extent and in what quality the linguistic forms of first language use typical of the student’s home language environment appear in schools in the teacher’s communication with the student.

The theoretical basis is that language acquisition is part of socialization, in which parental language plays an important role (Blount, B. G. 1995). For decades, linguistics theses have stressed the importance of first-language education based on linguistic pluralism. The success of institutional native-language education depends on the extent to which teacher-student communication interaction resembles parent-child communication interaction in different linguistic registers (Heath 1983, Réger 1994, Gregory 1997). Agreeing that effective teaching can take place in a pluralistic school, I believe that it is the school’s responsibility to provide a communication bridge between spontaneous first language learning and first-language education in schools. Teachers need to recognise the linguistic diversity in their students’ use of their native language, and be flexible in accommodating this in the teaching process. Since the spontaneous process of native language acquisition lasts until the age of 10-12, the answer to the above question can play a huge role (MABEL at al. 2010). For these reasons, the observations and the psycholinguistic and linguistic analysis were carried out on a verbal corpus of communicative acts with pupils aged 6-10 years in the early stage of school education. The answer will show us whether the teacher’s communication in the school supports the students in successful communication, in the easy understanding and interpreting of the teacher’s communication. In the longer term, these also affect the student’s success in educational progress and motivation to learn.

The linguistic basis of this line of thought is, on the one hand, the nativist weak theory of language acquisition, according to which language acquisition is a so-called language instinct which is based on the activation of “an innate language acquisition processor” in the human brain. This process of activation is better and more effectively supported by a manner of speaking that is specifically addressed to children, as opposed to the manner of speaking used in adult-adult communication (Pinker 1994, MacWhinney 2004, Aitchison 2012). The specific language of parenting for children is called parentese which is a complex way of speaking that involves elements at all levels of language: high pitch, varied intonation, short phrases, many pauses, slow pace. At the upper language levels, there are many diminutives, playful words, themes that adapt to the child’s changes of topic, many imperative and questioning sequences, repetitions. The cultural and linguistic socialization needs of the micro- and macrosocial community—greeting forms, linguistic idioms, and parenting intentions (Garnica 1977, Snow 1977, Cooper at al. 1997, Gogate et al. 2000; Koós 2015)—are included in the elements of parentese. It is particularly important to note that parentese is also maximally adapted to the child’s biological-cognitive-social maturation and the different language acquisition processes that develop in close connection with it. The elements of parentese change as the child’s language competence develops. On the one hand, this adaptation is flexible. The parent’s speech changes with the child’s maturational processes, according to the phenomenon of the so-called zone of closest development. A parents’ main goal with the change that follows a child is always to ensure that their child experiences communicative success and develops their language code system as much as possible at an earlier age. Importantly, this parental aspiration is subordinated to the linguistic socialisation expectations of the cultural community. 

I focused on whether the teacher also uses the same linguistic elements in their communicative interactions with 6-10-year-old students, who are still in a sensitive period of language acquisition, that describe the parental language use with children at home. If they use the same elements: what specific linguistic elements are characteristic of this “teacher parentese”; and it is also characterised by the flexible restructuring of the so-called developmental zone (TOMASELLO 1999; 2003) scaffolding (COLE 1998), adapted to the student’s current language acquisition level. I have been looking for the implementation of the pluralist approach and its factors in linguistic research in first-language education in Hungary. i): in order to support first language acquisition in the 6;0,0-10;0,0 age group, to explore the elements of motherese regarding linguistic structures, on the one hand, in the first language speech corpus used by the mother at home, and, on the other hand, by analysing the communication of the teacher with the student. ii) to determine which linguistic factors support the so-called minimum linguistic input necessary for successful language acquisition and communicative competence through speech production and perception sub-processes. iii) based on the results, to compare the elements of motherese used at home and in-school teacher communication from the perspective of whether teachers in Hungarian school first language education recognise the linguistic diversity in students’ first language use; whether they flexibly consider the diversity in the teaching process; whether they adapt their own communication to their students’ linguistic socialisation level. Recording images and sound with two video cameras during a care activity or a joint play activity or extra-curricular school activity with parent-child and teacher-student pairs. All audio material analysed until January 2022 include: 624 minutes of parent-child interaction; 560 minutes of teacher-student interaction. A written transcript of the recordings was made, followed by syntactic segmentation according to the rules accepted and used in linguistics for oral communication acts. With the resulting linguistic corpus, I carried out a linguistic analysis of phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics in the linguistic structure in order to observe the above objectives. Then, the results of the language sequences from the mother-child and teacher-student corpus were compared according to statistical indicators. A separate analysis was carried out on the categorisation of teachers’ linguistic elements of parentese. As a last step, I analysed the characteristics of “teacher parentese” in the teacher-student communication in schools for each age group of pupils.

The analysis of the language corpus of teacher speakers shows that the older the student, the more the teacher’s communication breaks away from the linguistic features of parentese used at home, and the less the teacher uses elements of so-called teacher parentese. While in schools, teachers dealing with children aged 6;0,0-8;0,0 use parentese characteristics of home communication at a syntactic, semantic-pragmatic level in interpersonal communication with students, when communicating with children aged 8;0,0-10;0,0, the slower pace of speech and the high number of repetitions are the most common. However, the use of parentese in parent-child communication does not stop at any language level until the age of 10;0.0 years. The so-called zone of closest development and its “scaffolding” supporting language acquisition are thus characteristic of parentese, which flexibly supports the first language acquisition of those in the 6;0,0-10;0,0 age group in the manner of speaking of both parents and teachers. However, it is not present in the same quality and to the same extent in school and home communication, but is disconnected and separated, especially from the age of 8;0,0. This warns the representatives of educational science that although the new National Core Curriculum 2020 of Hungary emphasises the importance of individual treatment adapted to the socialisation level of the student at home, teachers in schools have not yet been able to make it into intrinsic motivation in their own language use. The motherese used at home and the teacher’s communication at school can only form a bridge between the language socialisation arenas of home and school when they are in full harmony with each other. This language use bridge could best support the development of the student’s communicative competence and progress in school.

AITCHISON, J. 2012. Words in the mind: An introduction to the mental lexicon. Wiley– Blackwell, Oxford BLOUNT, B. G. 1995. Language, culture, and society: A book of readings. Waveland Press, Prospect Heights, Illinois COLE, M. 1998. Cultural Psychology. Harward University Press COOPER, R. P. – ABRAHAM, J. – BERMAN, S. – STASKA, M. 1997. The development of infants’ preference for motherese. Infant Behavior and Development 20(4), 477-488.p. GARNICA, O. K. 1977. Some prosodic and paralinguistic featenes of speech to young children. In: FERGUSON, C. A. – SNOW, C. E. (eds.) Talking to children. Language input and acquisition Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 63-88.p. GOGATE, L. J. – BAHRICK, L. E. – WATSON, J. D. 2000. A study of multimodal motherese: The role of temporal synchrony between verbal labels and gestures. Child Development 71(4), 878-894.p. GREGORY, E. (ed.)1997. One child, many world. Early learning in multicultural communities. David Fulton Publishers, London HEATH, S. B. 1983. Ways with words. Language, life, and work in communities and classrooms. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge London New York SNOW, E. (ed.) 1977: Talking to children: Language input and acquisition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge KOÓS I. 2015. First Language Acquisition: the Temperament of the Mother and Preverbal Communication. Training &Practice, Journal of Educational Scinces. 13/1-2. MACWHINNEY, B. 2004. An unified model of language acquisition. In: KROLL, J. F. – DE GROOT, A. M. B. (eds.): Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 49–67 MABEL, L. R. – SMOLIK, F. – PERPICH, D. – THOMPSON, T. – RYTTING, N. – BLOSSOM, M. 2010. Mean length of utterance levels in 6-month intervals for children 3 to 9 years with and without language impairments. Journal of Speech Language, and Hearing Research 53. 333–349. TOMASELLO, M. 1999 The cultural origins of human cognition. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England TOMASELLO, M. 2003. Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts PINKER, S. 1994. The Language Instinct. How the Mind Creates Language. HarperParennial ModernClassics, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney RÉGER, Zita 1994. "Social differences in Hungarian mothers’ speech an overview and preliminary results", Folia Linguistica vol. 24, no. 3-4, pp. 377-388.