The episodic structure of maternal speech to young children

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Abstract
An investigation was made of the episodic structure of maternal speech to young children during a free-play session. The findings indicate that maternal speech was organized so as to provide a high degree of redundancy with regard to the referential component of speech. The beginning of episodes, in which the same object was repeatedly referred to, was clearly marked; furthermore speech inside episodes with a common referent was highly repetitive. All this suggests that maternal speech is organized in a way that increases the predictability in the child's language environment.