CHILD DIRECTED SPEECH (CDS)

• What is CDS?

  The way an adult uses language differently when talking to a child
• Exaggerating prosodic cues

  using more exaggerated intonation patterns and slightly higher frequencies, greater pitch variations, slower, clearer pronunciation and more pauses
• recasting

  phrasing sentences in different ways such as making it a question
• echoing

  repeating what the child said
• expansion

  restating what the child said in a more linguistically sophisticated form
• expatiation

  expounding further on the word by giving more information
• labelling

  providing the name of objects, using simplified vocabulary
• overarticulating

  using more precise sounds contained in the words, stretching out sounds and sounding out super vowels
• lexis

  frequent use of the child’s name, use of diminutive forms
• grammatical features

  repeated sentence frames, shorter sentences, one word utterances, frequent imperatives, questions and tag questions
• pragmatics

  lot of gestures, body language