Analysis on Toddlers' Mean Length of Utterance and Type-Token Ratio by their Gender and Maternal Conversational Style

摘要

The purpose of this study was to analyze the differences of toddlers' utterance features by their gender and maternal conversational style. For this purpose, a total of 20 two - and three-year-old children participated in this study. Mother and toddler dyad were participated in a play session during 20 minutes. The play session was videotaped and the videotaped data were transcribed by CBS(2014). The collected data were analyzed by using an independent t-test. The main results are as follows. First, there are no significant gender differences in toddlers' MLU-e, MLU-w, MLU-m, and type-token ratio. Second, toddlers of conversation-eliciting mothers had longer than those of directive mothers in MLU-e, MLU-w, MLU-m. Implications for the importance of toddlers' spontaneous speech are discussed.