Mother-Child Interaction and Language Development of a Hausa Child: A Phonological Study

Article Citation: Okoronkwo Eyinnaya, Joshua Sarah Kwari & Mshelia Halilu Emmanuel (2020). Mother-Child Interaction and Language Development of a Hausa Child: A Phonological Study. DEGEL: The Journal of the Faculty of Arts and Islamic Studies, Vol. 18, No. 1. ISSN 0794-9316

MOTHER-CHILD INTERACTION AND LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT OF A HAUSA CHILD: A PHONOLOGICAL STUDY

By

Okoronkwo Eyinnaya, Joshua Sarah Kwari & Mshelia Halilu Emmanuel

Abstract

Language acquisition and child development can be seen as running parallel throughout childhood stage of humans. In this research, the researcher observed language development of a female child between 18 to 24 months of age, whose mother tongue is Hausa language, with a view to ascertain whether the child's language at two-word stage goes through a fixed pattern. The research paid close attention to word order pattern and to phonological changes in utterances. The study carefully followed the subject’s level of lexical development at 18 months. The study discovered the word classes that dominate the child's vocabulary at the stated age. The result of this study showed that mother’s choice of single and simplified constructions facilitates the child’s level of language growth. The study also observed that there is an omission of inflexions, articles, prepositions, and auxiliary verbs in the child's production words. The study also shows the decisive effect of a mother in promoting the acquisition and expansion of speech in her children.

Introduction

Language is one characteristic that is unique to humans Language is extremely complex. Yet every normal child before the age of five already knows the grammar of his/her first language. Before they can add 2+2, children are conjoining sentences, asking questions, using appropriate pronouns, negating sentences, forming relative clauses, and inflecting verbs and nouns and in general have the creative capacity to produce and understand a limitless number of sentences. Child language development is studied mainly as an aspect of developmental psycholinguistics that deals generally with language acquisition and language learning (Franklin, Rodman, & Hyams, 2009).The indispensability of language has led parents look forward with keen expectation towards the emergence of the speech of their infants. In cultures around the world, children are engaged in conversations with adults from the start (from birth). Parents often treat their babies noise as opening to conversations, they are socialized into interactional routines of turn-taking, where their burps, hiccups and sneezes are regarded as opening turns to which parents responds (Finegan, 2012). Mothers are closed to their infants and as such, they interact more with their infants than any other member of their family does in order to meet their infant’s basic needs. Out of excitement of having a newborn baby, a mother begins talk with the baby whether or not he/she understands; thereby providing a language environment well before the child starts using language. A mother talks to her infant especially when the child is the first born of the couple, giving example as when the infant is crying, the mother asks short and simple questions like 'Hungry?' 'Wet?' 'Are you hot?’ Even though verbal responses are not usually expected from the child (Onyenobi, 1997).

The paper seeks to examine the mother-child linguistic interaction and language development of an 18-24 months Hausa child. First, however, it reviews some theories of language acquisition.

Theories of Language Acquisition

Language acquisition and development for a long time have been an area of study to researchers and psycholinguists alike. It is an area which has continued to engage the attention of scholars to date. Language consists of sounds, morphemes, words and the rules for combining them. The knowledge of these elements enables humans to understand and produce sentences or language they may never have heard or uttered before. This is what a normal child typically accomplishes in the first few years of life. The ease with which children accomplish the task of acquiring language challenges linguists and psychologists as not everyone agrees to the nature of the child's task (Ingram, 1989).

There are various theories which seek to explain the uniformity and rapidity at which a child accomplishes the task of language acquisition. The theories include Behaviorist, Innatist, Cognitive, Social Interactionist theories.

According to the Behaviorists, the most crucial factor in language acquisition is environment, they perceived the infant as a pure mind which has not been polluted or influenced by any external impression. This classic statement of the Behaviorists approach to language acquisition, was informed by Skinner's (1957) work on verbal behaviour, where he postulated that language is a behavior and could be treated as any other kind of cognitive behavior, stating that language was acquired by the same mechanism of conditioning and reinforcement that were thought at the time to govern all other aspects of animal and human behavior (Herley, 2005). Behaviorists sees language development within the context of reward and punishment, negative and positive sanctions; where children learn to speak by copying the utterances heard around them and by having their responses strengthened by the repetitions, corrections and other reactions that adults provide (Field, 2004).

The Innateness theory developed from the idea of rationalist such as Plato and Descartes who rejected the doctrine that knowledge is entirely derived from experience. The proponents of this theory argued that certain fundamental ideas are innate, that language capacity is present from birth (Harley, 2000). The most plausible explanation for the uniformity and rapidity of first language acquisition is to posit that the cause for acquisition is determined by a biologically endowed innate language faculty within the human brain that provides children with a genetically transmitted set of procedures for developing a grammar which enabled them to produce and understand sentences in the language they acquired. They further explained what constitute the child's linguistic experience as the observation of language used around and the set of expressions in the language (Radford et al, 2009). This theory addresses the question of why many elements of language are universal, providing useful explanations to the similarities in language development of children from different backgrounds.

According to the cognitivists, an adequate theory of language acquisition must have a concrete link between the ‘internal’ (capacity within a child) and the ‘external’ (experiences from the outside) without placing one above the other or relegating either to the background. This is so because according to them “…experiences from the outside and a capacity within the child … must both mesh for language to occur”. In short, the cognitive theory addresses the issue of the relationship between thinking and language. That thought proceeds language in a child, but that is when the child begins to acquire languages, it enables her/him to form or acquire various concepts, stating that growth of language can be predicted from an understanding of the child's cognitive skill (Bergman & Ross, 2007).

Social Interactionist theory is an explanation of language development emphasizing the role of social interaction between a developing child and linguistically knowledgeable adults. Speech to infants is marked by a slower rate, exaggerated intonation, high frequency, repetition, simple syntax and concrete vocabulary. This tailored articulation used by caregivers to young children to maximize phonemic contrasts and pronunciation of correct forms is known as Child-Directed Speech (CDS). Social Interactionist believe that the way adults speak to children and interact with them is crucial to acquiring language (Williamson, 2008).

Vygotsky (1986) developed the concept of private speech, which examines when and how children speak to themselves in a self-guiding and directing way- initially aloud and later internally, and the zone of proximal development which refers to the tasks a child is unable to complete alone, but is able to complete with the assistance of an adult. The attention and time that a mother spends talking about topics that the child is already focused on highly correlates with early vocabulary size.

In the early stages of a child`s life this is usually done through Motherese or “baby talk”, which may allow children to “bootstrap” their progress in language acquisition (Wittgenstein, 1953). There is no single theory that has been capable of providing the answers to how a child becomes competent to produce and understand language, select the proper processing strategies and achieve language milestones effortlessly (Nwankwo, 2003).

In child language development, the natural movements of our mouth in certain ways have us generate the sounds of the language we speak. The babbles that babies produce which later grows into words and further into conversation is the wonder of language development. The development of language has been reported to be rapid. During acquisition, children progress from babbling sounds to their first real words. From the beginning, children make what are known as vegetative sounds. They cry, burp, make sucking noises and around 6 weeks they start cooing, laughing, engage in vocal play, which involve making speech-like sounds, all of these, precedes babbling. From about the age of 6–9 months, infants start babbling which has the presence of true syllables (consonants & vowels), often repeated (Atkinson, 1982).

Studies on language development have shown that there are many sounds infants produce before they say their first word. The beginning of babbling in the pulmonic lingual articulations is more commonly continuant than plosive. (e.g. /v/ rather than /b/ predominates). In any language, the period before the first words is said to be predominated by consonants that are used in the first phenolic distinction, consonants such as /b, g, m, n, / are dominant (Brown, 1973).

Cattell (2000, p.20) outlined five stages of language development as follows:

1. Crying - Babies starts crying and that is the baby's main vocal accomplishment. Thus, cry for babies is an important thing since a baby is not capable of making many movements, or even anything for itself. They cry to complain about their discomfort that will be responded to by an adult. This of course, is a vocal communication.

2. Cooing - At about two months, babies start to make cooing sounds - which starts with a variable consonant-like sound, followed by a variable vowel-like sound (Cattell, 2000). Cooing does not have the same distress quality as cries often have, but rather seems a plausible activity, in which the baby adds little chuckles and laugh. Cooing sounds are more speech-like though, the sound does not belong to any specific language (Awoniyi, 1982).

3. Babbling - From about 8 months, cooing turns gradually into babbling sounds which involves reduplication. For instance, egagagaga, babababa, tabtabtabtab and what have you. With time, the pattern of babbling sounds becomes more and more complex and more varied, and this does not stop when speech begins (Bello, 2015). Prior to the production of recognizable utterances, children go through a lengthy babbling stage which consists of simple syllable-like sequences of a consonant followed by a vowel, that children's early babbling reveals their preference for voiced stops and nasals [ b, d, g, m, n] and preference for fricatives [ f, v, ð s, z ] and liquids [ l, r, ] (Ferguson, 1964).

4. The First Word - This is the magic moment when the baby says his/her first word...it might not sound much like adult word. However, if the baby makes the same sound sequence under the same conditions repeatedly, it is safe to assume that an attempt is being made to produce a word. A delighted mother then usually smiles and responds so pleasantly that the baby soon manages to do it again (Cattell, 2000). During this period of slow word acquisition, the repertoire of words that the child seems to know varies from time to time (Vorster, 1975).

5. Two Words Utterance - At about 18 months or soon after, children start to make two-word utterances. Two words are said in succession, with a variable but distinct pause between them, so that utterance boundaries were clearly marked... The two words uttered as separate but adjacent utterances soon come together, and are accommodated within the same sentence. Children's word at the two-word stage contains very few inflections. That is, there are usually no plural, genitive or tense ending, and there is the dearth of function words (Whyatt, 1994). Halliday (1975) in Cattell (2000) refers to the two-word stage as the meaning and grammar explosion as well as the transition into the adult linguistic system that is ushered by a very marked increase in the number of meanings.

In mother-child linguistic interaction, adults talk in a simplified way to children, taking care to make their speech easily recognizable. The sentences are to do with the “here and now”; they are phonologically simplified (baby words such as “moo-moo” and “gee-gee”); there are more pauses, the utterances are shorter, there is more redundancy, the speech is slower, and it is clearly segmented. There are fewer word endings than in normal speech, the vocabulary is restricted, sentences are shorter, and prosody is exaggerated (Ibrahim, 2010).

Schaffer (1984, p.93) identified five successive interactive tasks considered critical for the child's socio-communicative development:

1) The first mother-child interactions, from birth to around two months of life, center on the regulation of the infant's basic physiological processes such as feeding, sleeping, and hygienic care.

2) From 2-5 months of age, most interactions deal with maintaining the infant's attentiveness and positive effect in face-to-face exchanges.

3) From this point, during the first two years, joint attention is extended to objects and events beyond the mother and the child.

4) At 8 months of age, the child becomes a competent partner of the mother, participating in intentional interactions and showing reciprocity.

5) Later, after 12 months of age, mother- child interactions progressively integrate the child's utterances and speech into the existing nonverbal modes of effective communication.

Snow (1972) examined the changes in the extension, complexity, and integrity in the production of phrases and sentences by the child as a function of certain facilitating events taking place in social and conversational interactions during the first years of the child's life. He thereby highlighted four aspects of adult-child interactions as follows:

i) "Fine tuning" of the mother's child directed speech in accordance with the complexity of the child's utterances and understanding. This is related to mother’s language, as a way of progressively adjusting the complexity and accuracy of the child's speech to social conventions and circumstances.

ii) "Joint attention" by the mother to the child's orientation and activities, in such a way that the mother's continuous monitoring provides speech appropriate to different specific conditions.

iii) "Feedback" (especially negative or corrective feedback) on morphological and syntactic mistakes is not frequent, but the demands for clarification by adults may help to provide negative feedback to children when their utterances or expressions are initially inadequate.

iv) "Recasting", in the form of an expanded or changed overlapping utterance by the adult may work as an additional negative feedback source for the child's incorrect utterances.

Motherese, infant-directed speech (IDS) or child-directed speech (CDS), parentese, mommy talk, or daddy talk is a nonstandard form of speech used by adults in talking to toddlers and infants. All of these terms take into consideration the fact that the child receives input from many sources - mother, father, siblings, relatives, friends; etc (Steinberg, 2001). Motherese is sensitive to the child's comprehension level. Hence, speech intended for children is specially marked in order to make it stand out, and is simplified so that the task of discovering the referents of words and understanding the syntactic structure is easier than it would otherwise be. Child-directed speech actually makes difference to linguistic development in that it simplifies language development. It is usually slow, high-pitched, and repetitive, varied in intonation and comprises short simple sentences. One of the most distinctive characteristics of Motherese is the ‘singy-songy’ nature of the communication, almost as if the speaker were singing rather than speaking (Snow & Ferguson, 1977).

So far, we have provided an insight into the various theories of language acquisition where four theories were selected and reviewed. The viewpoint that has gained ground is the claim that child language development takes place through the child's social interaction with others in relation to the environment (Chomsky, 1965).

Research Methodology

The study involves participant observation, non-participant observation and interactional recording. The researcher takes part in the interactional procedure and sometimes stays out of it and observes. Data were collected from the subject for 6 months, and the words that the subject uttered were written down. Observations towards the subject were conducted to analyze the subject's level or progress in language development. The study involves the child’s interaction mainly with the mother with particular focus on the child’s utterances. The mother-child interaction took place at the subject's home under certain situations that included free play period (interacting with mother, older members of the family and playmates between ages 1-5). The other session involved interaction with mother and members of the family during meal.

The subject of this research is a girl who was born in Sokoto on 22 September 2014. The research was conducted from 30^th of March to 21^st of September 2015. She is the fourth child of the family. The parents live in Mabera area in Sokoto metropolis where most occupants are native Hausa speakers. Therefore, the subject is only exposed to Hausa language. Both parents are educated and work as public servants in different organizations in Sokoto state. The language of communication her parents and other family members use at home is Hausa, therefore she communicates with the family through the language.

Data Analysis Procedure

The data received is categorized into child’s speech, mother’s speech and the speech of few members of the family who interacts with the child more often, for detailed analysis. To manage the data received, dating from when the procedure begins to when it terminates, every new word the subject uttered was jot down on in a tabular form.

Presentation of data

The data that follows are the utterances of the subject as well as those of her mother. It is a verbatim presentation of both single and two-word utterances produced by the subject of the study.

Table 1 Selected Production Words of the Subject between 18 to 19 months

Word No.	Month of Study	Child's age (Months)	Child's Production Words	Conventional Form	English Gloss
1	1	18	Baba	Baba	Daddy
2	1	''	Mama	Mama	Mummy
3	1	''	Gongom	Cingam	Chewing gum (sound change)
4	1	''	Ciji		Anything scary, including darkness (Over-extension)
5	1	''	Bici	Cibi	Spoon (metathesis)
6	1	''	Butta/Mitta	Mussa	Cat (sound change)
7	1	''	Babaya	Madara	Milk (lexical change)
8	1	''	Kakanni	Takalmi	Shoes (sound change)
9	1	''	Anu	Hannu	Hand (aphesis)
10	1	''	Bobo	a banibobo	Give me bobo drink
11	1	''	Waa	Baniruwansha/ nayihitsari	Give me water to drink/I have urinated (Aphesis)
12	1	''	a ' a	a ' a	No
13	1	''	Amici	Abinci	Food (syncope)
14	2	19	Itaayi	Zanyihitsari / nayihitsari	I want to urinate / I have urinated
15	2	''	Babaye	Baye – baye	Bye – bye
16	2	''	Ci	Ci	Eat
17	2	19	Banto	Ba ni so	I do not want. (contraction)
18	2	''	Makaata	Makaranta	School (contraction)
19	2	''	Makwibota	Makullinmota	Car key
20	2	''	takummidawa	Rakumindawa	A type of camel,

Table 2 Child's mothers utterance

Mother's utterances	Child's Verbal and Non-Verbal Responses
Aisha me kike ci?	Bikkit (biscuit)
Aisha inamussangwaggo?	Comes forward, stretches forth her hands with open palm indicating 'I don't know. (Bansani ba)
Ina baba?	Tokoto
Kina zuwaindagwaggo?	a ' a mintagwaggo
Aisha zo nan, me kike yi?	Toh Mama wasa nakeyi

Data Analysis and Interpretation

It was observed that most of the words produced by the subject were words for object, most of which are foods, drinks, body parts, animals, clothing, toys and most frequently people's names. The analyses of the data collected are twofold.

Analysis of the Subject's Early Lexical Development

The analysis here is based on quantitative aspect of lexical development and qualitative aspect of lexical development with a focus to providing a basic descriptive data on the early level of comprehension, production and early word combination. It is worth mentioning that this study concentrates less on what the subject heard and understood. It concentrates more on the child's production and level of language growth.

Quantitative Aspect of Lexical Development

The subject's lexical development was carefully followed from the age of 18 months through the period of six months, terminating at 24 months of age. Throughout the period of investigation, the subject’s production of words grew from single word meaning to word combination meaning. At the end of the 18th month, through the 19th and 20th month, there was a marked increase in the number of meaning and lexical item used by the subject which grew from about 50 - 150 or thereabout. However, analysis was done by simple index of grammatical development on the list of words the subject produced to determine rate of lexical development from single word to two-word production and the age at which they occur. To achieve this, the mean length of the subject's utterance was calculated at the end of each month of observation.

The result of the analysis is presented in table 1 below.

Table 3: Ages of Attainment and Number of Words Produced

Age in month	Number of Words Produced
18 -19	Approximately 50
20 -22	60 – 100
22 -24	100 -150

Table 4 Aisha's early word combination between age 20 - 24 months.         

Number of words	Utterances	Conventional form	English Gloss
1	Baibigadoo	Zanazabaibi ta a gado	I want to place my baby-toy on the bed
2	Itatti mama	Hijabin mama	Mummy's vail
3	Ina kotai	Ina son kosai	I want bean-cake
4	Ban jayiwa	Ba nijayewa	I won't move
5	Mama, kantiDalawu	Mama gaantyZara'u	Mummy here is aunt Zara'u
6	Ina babbita	Ina baibi ta?	Where is my baby-toy
	Aashababaya	Ina shanmadara	I want to drink milk
8	Abba koko	Abba in dauka	Daddy should I carry?
9	Tana 'juwa	Ina zuwa	I will go with you
10	Abba mani	Abba mummy nakira	Abba mummy is calling
11	Kutti bam-bam-bam	Kuddiyakare	Money is finished
12	Wayyowatti	Wayyoabunayafadi
13	Mama npute	Mama in bude?	Mummy should I open it?
14	Angama a wanke	Na gama a wanke	I have finished, wash me
15	Annuciwo	Hannuna, naciwo	My hand is paining me
16	Mama jayyiitaali	Mama zanyihitsari	Mummy I want to urinate
17	Abu annu	Abburikehannuna	Abu hold my hands
18	Abubabanibunti	Habibabaniminti	Habiba give me sweet
19	Amajiyitokkoto	Almajiriyanasakkwato	Beggers are in Sokoto
20	Yaya kana	Yayayanakwana	Elder brother is sleeping

Table 5: Distribution of Semantic Categories for the Production Words of the Subject

Production Words of the Subject
	No.	Percentage
A. NOMINALS
Specific	5	10.0
General	22	44.0
Animate	7	14.0
Inanimate	13	26.0
Pronouns	2	4.0
Total	49	980
B. ACTION WORDS
Social Action Words	14	28.0
Events	0	0.0
Locatives	3	6.0
General Actions (Inhibitors)	2	4.0
Total	19	38.0
C. MODIFIERS
States	2	4.0
Attributes	2	4.0
Locatives	1	2.0
Possessives	1	2.0
Total	6	12.0
D. PERSONAL SOCIAL WORDS
Assertions	3	6.0
Social Expressive	3	6.0
Total	6	12.0

Table 6 Percentage Change in Distribution of Production Vocabularies by Order of Acquisition

Acquisition Order for Words by Percentage
	50-60	50-70	50-80	50-90	50-100
Nominal	50	45	55	60	98
Action words	40	35	25	30	38
Modifiers	0	10	15	5	12
Personal social	10	10	10	6	12

Table 6 mother's use of certain language constructions when speaking to the child during the period of study (mean frequencies)

Mother's Utterance	Child's age in months
	18 – 20	20 -24
	Frequency	Frequency
Declaratives	23	25
Constructive	20	22
WH-questions	16	19
Yes / No questions	16	19
Word	180	200
Sentence nodes	150	170
Nouns	45	40
Verbs	82	85
Pronouns	10	15
Auxiliaries	23	23
Noun modifiers	20	25
Verb modifiers	15	20
Negatives	10	15
Contractions	20	23
Prepositions	15	19

Discussion

The discussion part primarily focuses on the subject's acquisition rate, the analysis of subject mother’s speech and observation with the various tables above.

Subject's Acquisition Rate

The analysis of subject's acquisition rate was measured by calculating the total number of words which is believed to be in the cumulative lexicon of the child at the end of each month as observed, as well as the number of new words acquired each month. Aisha's level of words understood was assessed by her response to question by giving the correct answer, response to command by doing what was asked, and response to statement by paying attention and so on.

The Subject's Early Word Combination

It was further observed that the data indicates the subject has developed a number of positional formulae in the surface structure. The subject's early word combination shows a consistent pattern/word order. The list of semantic relation found in Aisha's utterances involves; agent - action, agent -object, action -object, action -locative, demonstrative - entity, possessor - possessed, negation.

Qualitative Aspect of Early Lexical Development (Word Combination)

The findings from the qualitative aspect of analysis strongly suggest that the subject understood words earlier than she produces words, and shows the rate at which these production words progressed through time. Aisha's production words within the period of study, was examined to determine the grammatical categories represented in early word combination. The system of categorization applied in this study was that of Nelson (1973), who categorizes the production words of a young child into:

A. NOMINALS: words that refer to things

1. General nominal: words that refer to all members of a category

a. inanimate objects e.g bici (cibi/spoon), aminci (abinci/food), kakanni (takalmi/shoe), ekuulli (makulli/key), bitta (buta/kettle)

b. Animate object e.g mama (mummy), abba (daddy), ciji (ant), kokgo (kwaggo/granny), kanti (anty/aunt)

c. Pronouns e.g. this, you, me.

2. Specific nominals: words that refer to only one example of a category usually limited to proper names

a. baiyam (maryam), mama (mama), Anunu (Aminu), Afu (afunan)

b. Animals e.g. botta (mussa/cat), lakuni-akuya (rakumi-akuya/camel goat), rago (ram)

c. Objects e.g. baibi-khajija (the name of Aisha's baby toy)

B. ACTION WORDS: Words that elicit specific action from the child or accompany action of the child.

1. Social Action Games: these are words which elicit only one action response in a social game relationship such as dance, laugh.

a. Action Games: This has to do with motor response such as clapping, jumping, running.

b. Verbal Games: games that elicit verbal response: such as imitations of the verbal words of others, or the bleat of a goat, bark of a dog,

2. Event Words: words that elicit an action sequence or an activity such as running errands within the house or obeying order by applying appropriate action

3. Locatives: words that require locating an item or putting something in a specific location

a. Locative search word such as here, where, sees,

b. Locative action - pick, put

4. General Action Words:  

a. Actions that are object related - get, throw, give

b. Actions that are not object related e.g. come, dance

5. Action inhibitors: Words that inhibit actions such as stop, don't

C. MODIFIERS: Words that refer to properties or qualities of things

1. Attributes of things - fine, bad, good

2. The state of a thing - finish, gone, hot

3. Locatives / location - there, here

4. Possessor / possessed - mine, me

D. PERSONAL SOCIAL WORD: expresses affective state and social relationships.

1. Assertions

2. Social expressive actions

In the line of analysis presented above distribution of semantic categories for the production words of the subject, the largest categories in the child's vocabulary of both production and comprehension belong to the group of general nominal, specific nominal and social action words. These categories put together, made up 72 percent of words produced and 80 percent of the words comprehended in the sample of 100 utterances. Personal-social words were a small number. Aisha was further observed not to be gender sensitive at this stage, through her use of personalization and in terms of female referent. For example, the subject refers to her mother as 'mama ta' (my father, indicating feminine), to her father as 'baba ta' (my father, indicating feminine), and to her brother Abdul ta (my brother, still indicating feminine).

Observation on Child’s Language Development

It was observed that the subject understood words earlier than she was able to produce them and this trend had been maintained through the period of this research. The analysis of comprehension test showed that action words also dominated the child's comprehension vocabulary. Moreover, findings of the study showed that the two systems (production and comprehension) do not overlap perfectly and that careful analyses and consideration of the two contributed significantly to our understanding of the developments that occurred during the period. The words she comprehended were proved when she responded to a statement with signal of attention and continuation of the conversation, deliver appropriate feedback when sent on errands within the house. Whereas, the words in her production vocabulary were those she spoke at the appropriate time and place. For instance, the subject had said 'shawuwa', which means 'drink water' when she wanted her mummy to give her (the subject) water to drink. Here, the child merely supplies two aspects, 'water' and 'drink' to represent an entire sentence. This indicates that children use two words to express complex thought. This corresponds to Halliday's (1975) report that child's early language system consists of content and an expression (the meaning and the word) with no intermediate level between meaning and sound.

Analysis of Subject’s Mothers Speech

The subject's mother treats her as an entertaining conversational partner, whatever the child tries to communicate, the mother responds in a way that seems communication is really taking place.

Table 5 gives the mean frequency scores for word types in mother's speech at both phases of study reflecting the child's age. The finding appears to be consistent with those of earlier studies. Here is the last classification scheme, frequency figures of 85 and 82 on number of verbs utterances at age 18-20 and 20-24 months respectively. 15 and 20 for number of verb modifiers per utterances discovered.

Observation on Mother's Utterances

It was observed that 60% of mother's sentence to the subject were well formed but again, the mother sometimes mislabel certain items or names to suit the child's categorization and understanding. Afterwards, the mother uses the correct form to enable the child pick. For example, the subject's mother had mislabeled the word ''tonka' for 'konka', which means 'pepper' and 'Akuya' (goat) for 'Rago' (Ram). The subject's mother moderated other aspects of her language to the child's level of comprehension. Her communication language was clear, slowly enunciated and characterized by exaggerated intonation and clear pauses between utterances. The topic tends to be concrete; the task of figuring out the referents of the word was kept within the scope of the child's inferential ability. Mother's input language was characterized by reduced vocabulary, containing more content words and fewer verbs, modifier, pronouns and function words.

Observations on the Relationships between Mother's Speech and Child’s Utterances

The aspects of motherese (mother's speech to child) which reflect the use of simpler communicative style were positively associated to language growth, while those that reflect the use of a more complex style were associated with relatively slower child language development. The mother's simpler communicative style involved the use of certain constructions that are relatively simple in syntax and semantics, as well as in style. Of all these domains, syntax is the one on which simplicity is most easily defined. In addition to using simple semantic or syntactic constructions, mother's interactions with child included certain characteristics favorable to effective communication. These include mother's sensitivity to the child's attention span, interests and understanding and her sensitivity to the meanings of the child's utterances.

The Benefits of Mother's Speech

The simplification of language task and creation of common ground for communication between mother and child has been observed to be the major benefits of Motherese. From the findings in this research, a mother changes her way of speaking when communicating with her young child so as to make it easier for the child to understand and learn language. The application of this special code appears to be a natural phenomenon. That is, the mother's speech is adjusted in ways that facilitate language growth even though the mother does not do it on purpose. Surakat (2007, p.329) states that baby talk appears to be an almost universally occurring natural phenomenon which serve to reinforce the social solidarity of parent and child.

From the discussion presented above, mother's utterances to the child were analyzed within a number of semantic and syntactic categories. The influence of mother's speech on the child's language growth was assessed.

Conclusion

The research began by highlighting the importance of language to humans an indispensable tool, so much that parents anxiously look forward to their infants' acquisition of language. This study, which is an attempt to assess effects of Motherese on the child's language acquisition also attempted to obtain data on the developmental changes in a basic process of early language acquisition precisely between 18-24 months by the subject. Research into these areas have been marked by uncertainties as one cannot categorically state the influence of Motherese on child language acquisition; the actual word classes that dominate the child's production vocabularies, and the quantitative levels of progression in terms of production.

It is clear from the research that there is uniformity in the child's pattern of two-word utterance. This research further emphasizes the important influence baby talk (Motherese) has on the child's language development. Therefore, in order to facilitate the child's task of achieving language milestone the need for simplification of mother's speech to her child becomes imperative. It is also interesting here, to refer to Halliday (1973) who believes that the language of children has much to tell us about what language is all about and the role it plays in our development as humans.

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