When context matters more than language: Verb or noun in French and Turkish caregiver speech

Abstract

The main goal of this article is to study the respective role of language typology and context on the noun to verb asymmetry in caregiver speech. The speech of 20 French- and 20 Turkish-speaking mothers addressed to their children in two different situations (book-reading and toy-play) were analysed in terms of noun to verb ratio as well as in terms of object-oriented to action-oriented utterances ratio. Only a tendency to noun orientation was shown in French mothers. Both groups of mothers behave in the same ways in both contexts with more nouns and object-oriented utterances in the book-reading context vs more verbs and action-oriented utterances in toy-play. These results confirm a more important role of context on mothers’ linguistic behaviours than language typology.