Laz caregivers’ talk to their young children: The importance of context and utterance type in eliciting ancestral language use

Abstract

This study examined play interactions of 15 to 48-month-old children ( n = 59) and their caregivers in Lazuri, a UNESCO-rated endangered South-Caucasian ancestral language, and Turkish, a dominant language supplanting Lazuri usage in the community. Child–caregiver dyads played with two toy sets (animal farm and tea set) that provided different contexts for interaction. Participants’ utterances were coded as instances of distinct functional utterance types (e.g. labels, commands, and questions). Our goal was to analyze the influence of play context on child and caregiver functional utterances in order to identify factors that prompted children to use the ancestral language. The animal farm encouraged dyads to engage in labeling objects, while the tea set encouraged use of social language (e.g. comments). The differing contextual affordances led children to produce many more Lazuri labels than expected when playing with the animal farm. Mixed-effects regression analysis indicated that caregivers’ use of Lazuri and their use of labels predicted children’s use of Lazuri, along with child age. Notably, older children were less likely to use the ancestral language than younger children. The children’s strong preference for speaking Turkish highlights the urgency of interventions to ensure language preservation in Laz communities. Interactions that promote labeling may serve as an effective first step in encouraging children’s use of the Lazuri vocabulary.