Child-Directed Speech of Turkish Mothers and Fathers: A Comparison Based on the Dimorphous Verbal Expression Use

The differing Child-Directed Speech (CDS) features of mothers and fathers have been gaining attention of researchers since thirty years. This study also tries to describe mother and father CDSs from the framework of addressing terms to children. The dimorphous verbal expressions uttered by Turkish mothers and fathers are compared on the basis of a data base created from interviews with fifty parent pairs (a hundred participants in total). Qualitative results from those parent interviews are described. According to the results, both mothers and fathers use positive verbal expressions which convey positive emotions to their children. Parents from two genders also use nicknames which can be considered as swearwords. Thirty mothers and fourteen fathers used dimorphous verbal expressions in their CDS; this can be interpreted that when compared to fathers, mothers reflect positive emotions to children in a reverse manner more often. Keywords: Child-directed speech, dimorphous verbal expression, mother-father difference