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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.1. Background of the Study
Children growth can be marked by their physical development: on their weight and height. They are definitely getting heavier and taller. However, the growth is not only occurred in their physicality, but also in their language development. They are still learning to speak and produce words. Therefore, they may only have several vocabularies to communicate with others.
Those vocabularies are the result of their language acquisition. A successful child acquisition can be influenced by internal factors (such as the children ability itself) and also influenced by external factor which is the people around them. According to Harris (1990), adult speech supports for language acquisition. As the environment takes part on the children’s successful in acquiring the language, the parent should pay attention on this case.
In relation to that environment, mother (mostly as a housewife) is a person who plays the important role in children language acquisition. She has much time in accompanying the children. She becomes a model for her children to provide language data and also to help them to acquire it because as stated by Bochner & Jones (2005), children cannot acquire language alone.
2 Clark and Clark (1997) maintain that the reason for studying adult speech to children is to find out what model of language young children are exposed to, because what adults say to children provides them with information about the structure and function of the language they are to acquire, and provides an indirect measure of how much children understand. Therefore, how mother converse to her children, called child-directed speech (later, called CDS) then becomes very important for the writer to study more, especially the characteristics of CDS. Some linguistic theories highlight several CDS’ characteristics as a strategy to help the children acquire their first language. Harris (1990) gives such examples of them commonly used by a mother as talking employ shorter sentence, producing more pronounced pauses, familiar vocabularies, and high frequency of self-repetitions.
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1.2. Research Problem
In children language acquisition process, adult (their parents or care takers) actually contribute to a successful acquisition. They are as language models for them. A mother is one of the influential adults, who plays this role. She commonly guides her children step by step in acquiring language until they are able to use a language correctly after long time and unconsciously conducted process.
This phenomenon is predicted to be part of the conversation between the subject and her daughter. The subject’s speech might display certain characteristics.
Therefore, there is a question raised as the central problem of this research, namely: what are the characteristics of CDS produced by the subject in her communication to her two-year-old daughter.
1.3. Research Objectives
The objective of this study is to find out the characteristics of the CDS produced by the subject in her communication to her two-year-old daughter as a care taker to help her daughter in first language acquisition process.
1.4. Scope of the Study
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1.5. Explanation of Term
The term considered to be important to explain in this study is CDS. Yule (2008) defines CDS as the simplified speech style adopted by someone who spends a lot of time interacting with a young child, in this case is a mother. CDS is also known in various terms such as motherese language, Baby Talk, or care giver speech.
1.6. Significance of the Study
By conducting this study, the writer’s skill can be developed and practiced in
