Je krijgt dan njamnjam, eh, van t vrouwke

“Je krijgt dan njamnjam, eh, van ’t vrouwke” A Study of Differences in Dog-Directed Speech according to a Dog’s Age

Thisbe De Rijcke

Promotor: Dr. Kristof Baten

Faculteit Letteren & Wijsbegeerte

Masterproef voorgelegd tot het behalen

Vakgroep Algemene Taalwetenschap

van de graad van Master of Arts in de

Academiejaar 2014–2015

Taal- en Letterkunde: Engels

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For my dogs, Billy, Titus and Sam, who will forever understand everything I say.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Some things in life one has to do alone: find a job or a house, recover from a loss, find a purpose in life or read a book. For other things, one can count on the help of people who believe in you and will never let you down. Yes, for this work I have been alone many hours, days, even weeks, but I could always count on others for help, support and encouragement. First and foremost, I would like to thank Dr. Kristof Baten (Algemene taalwetenschap), who has given advice and guidance in forming this master dissertation. Together with Liv Persson (Algemene taalwetenschap) he has given ideas and methods on how to handle a research. Secondly, a big thanks to participants Ann, Evelyne, Ann D. and Anne and of course their canine companions Noah, Orfi, Ona and Prutske. Without them there would simply have been nothing to research. In this way I would also like to give a hug to my mom; her supporting vibes were felt over a great distance. Thank you for believing. And to my grandparents, who did not cut the grass unless they knew I was not busy writing, who would whisper so loudly in the hall telling each other to be quiet and always stood at the ready with home-made soup in case I would get hungry. They are in my heart. Another source of encouragement were my colleagues at work. They continuously asked (annoying) questions and gave heartfelt words of sympathy. I am relieved that, finally, they will shut up about this. I love them all a great deal. The most thanks and hugs go out to my dearest and closest friend, Sam Beke. He was there for me in every word I wrote, every hopeless hour and every triumphant new page. There are not enough words in the English language to express my gratitude. Nor in any other language. I can only hope to thank him by saying with the words of Led Zeppelin: “An inspiration is what you are to me, inspiration, look…see.” (Led Zeppelin, Thank You, 1969). All remaining errors of any kind in this research paper are of course my own responsibility. Thisbe De Rijcke 2 August 2015

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... 4 List of Tables .............................................................................................................................. 6 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 7 2. Literature Review .................................................................................................................. 9 2.1 Child-Directed Speech ................................................................................................ 9 2.2 Pet-Directed Speech .................................................................................................. 11 2.3 Child-Directed Speech vs. Pet-Directed Speech....................................................... 12 3. Aims and Predictions ........................................................................................................... 14 4. Methodology........................................................................................................................ 15 4.1 Participants ................................................................................................................. 15 4.2 Procedure .................................................................................................................... 16 4.3 Discussion of Features ............................................................................................... 17 5. Results ................................................................................................................................. 23 5.1 Puppies (-1 year) ........................................................................................................ 23 5.2 Adult Dogs (2+ years) ................................................................................................ 26 5.3 Comparison and Conclusions ..................................................................................... 29 6. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 35 References ................................................................................................................................ 38 Appendix A .............................................................................................................................. 40 Appendix B .............................................................................................................................. 41 Appendix C .............................................................................................................................. 45 Appendix D .............................................................................................................................. 48 Appendix E ............................................................................................................................... 50 Appendix F ............................................................................................................................... 52

Total amount of words (without appendices): 14 552 Total amount of words (with appendices): 20 101

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LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Absolute and relative frequencies of features of dog-directed speech applied to test subject’s recording……………………………………………………………………………………..17 Table 2: Features’ absolute and relative frequencies of use in participants with puppies...…24 Table 3: Common features of participants in puppy-directed speech…………………………...26 Table 4: Features’ absolute and relative frequencies of use in participants with adult dogs..27 Table 5: Common features of participants in adult-dog-directed speech.………………….......29 Table 6: Comparison of averages per feature and age group of dog……………………………30 Table 7: Features of dog-directed speech applied to Ann’s recording………………………….41 Table 8: Features of dog-directed speech applied to Evelyne’s recording……………………..42 Table 9: Features of dog-directed speech applied to Ann D.’s recording …………………......43 Table 10: Features of dog-directed speech applied to Anne’s recording ………………………44

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1. INTRODUCTION In the domain of diaphasic linguistic variation, awareness has grown since the 1960s that linguistic interaction does not always take place between two prototypical interlocutors, which are typically seen as fully linguistically competent adults sharing the same mother tongue. More specifically, scholars began to take an interest in communicative situations in which the addressee does not (yet) possess full linguistic competence (a few examples of scholars can be found in the literature review of this master dissertation). They observed that in cases of such non-prototypical address, speakers – albeit consciously or unconsciously – tend to adjust their speech register in order to ensure at least a certain linguistic interaction. The well-known variant used in conversations with (not fully linguistically competent) foreigners constitutes a straightforward example of this linguistic adjustment (see, among others, Uther et al. 2007), but studies also have been carried out about other, even more non-prototypical discussion partners. For instance, Kriz et al. (2010) investigated the variant of “robot-directed speech”, for which they observed that “participants spoke more loudly, raised their pitch, and hyperarticulated their messages when they spoke to the robot, suggesting that they viewed the robot as having low linguistic competence” (Kriz et al. 2010:267). The most outspoken and daily visible form of this adaptation towards the interlocutor, however, can be observed in the speech register used to address (young) children, and is usually referred to as “child-directed speech”, “infant-directed speech” or “motherese”. The characteristics and functions of motherese will be discussed more closely in the literature part of this master dissertation. Motherese has often constituted a point of reference in the domain of non-prototypical address. Uther et al. (2007) for instance, observed that the speech registers used in addressing first language learners (i.e. infants) and second language learners (i.e. adult foreigners), both have a highly didactic function. Since the 1970s, insight in the characteristics of motherese has led to the exploration of another speech variant which was shown to be very similar to infant-directed speech, namely “pet-directed speech” or “animalese” in general and “dog-directed speech” in particular, as they both serve an emotional and (certain) didactic function. The linguistic variant used in addressing dogs will be the focus of the present master dissertation. Studies have been carried out for speech registers directed towards different kinds of pets: for example parrots, which possess a capacity to learn and produce human utterances, or cats – although only in relation to dogs – and dogs, which both have no language producing ability at all. Important scholars in the field of pet-directed speech are Burnham and HirshPasek Treiman. Burnham (1998, 2002) most engaged in co-authored and comparative studies between infant- and pet-directed speech. Hirsh-Pasek & Treiman (1982) did not compare speech registers, but focussed on a specific pet-directed speech, namely dog-directed speech or, as they call it, “doggerel”. They established a typology of features occurring in dog-directed speech, of which a large amount also can be found in child-directed speech. The available literature, however, does not provide an answer to two pertinent questions. Firstly, so far only the English variant of dog-directed speech has been under investigation, so that it remains unclear whether these features are typical for the speech register of English7

speaking dog owners, or, on the contrary, they occur in the dog-directed speech register of other languages as well. Secondly, scholars in the field of pet-directed speech oppose with good reason different animal species and the respective speech registers used to address them, but they limit themselves to providing monolithic descriptions for these species as a whole. It is, however, most likely that variation also occurs within the speech register directed towards one specific species, under influence of animal-related parameters like size, age, sex, impairment, etc. The present master dissertation is aimed at shedding more light on these questions by zooming in on dog-directed speech used in (Flemish) Dutch and more particularly by investigating how the presence and frequency of pertinent features relate to the parameter of a dog’s age. Thus, it will be investigated if Dutch-speaking participants (in casu women) speak differently to a puppy dog than to an adult dog. This dissertation consists of two main parts, which respectively will discuss former scholarly literature (chapter 2: literature overview) and the methodology and results of the research (chapters 4 and 5). More specifically, chapter 2 will first focus on the speech variant that is closely linked to pet-directed speech, namely child-directed speech or “motherese” (§2.1). Next, the focus will be on pet-directed speech literature in general and dog-directed speech literature in particular (§2.2) and thirdly, studies that compared both registers will be discussed (§2.3),. An informational table can be found in Appendix A. Next, chapters 3, 4 and 5 will discuss the aims, methodology and results of the research, which is based on transcriptions of the participants’ recordings. Absolute and relative numbers and the transcriptions per test subject can be found in Appendix B, C, D, E and F.

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2. LITERATURE REVIEW This section will give a brief overview of a few important studies concerning child-directed speech (§2.1), pet-directed speech (§2.2) and comparisons between these two speech registers (§2.3).

2.1 Child-Directed Speech In the field of language variants used to address non-prototypical or even non-human “interlocutors”, the term motherese refers to a form of language used by adults – mostly women or “mothers” – which is directed to infants.1 Other denominations found in literature are childdirected speech (CDS), also known as infant-directed speech (IDS) and most often applied in modern research, or the ambiguous and rather childish term baby talk as introduced in 1964 by Ferguson in “Baby Talk in Six Languages”.2 This work will serve as an introduction to motherese; it provides the reader with a concise overview of the notion of motherese, which constitutes the starting point of this literature review.3 Ferguson formulates following definition: By the term baby talk is meant here any special form of a language which is regarded by a speech community as being primarily appropriate for talking to young children and which is generally regarded as not the normal adult use of language. (Ferguson 1964: 103)

Ferguson carries out a cross-language study in which he compares several baby-talk phenomena in six languages (i.e. Arabic, Marathi, Comanche, Gilyak, English and Spanish) from which he concludes several general characteristics. Three major linguistic areas are taken into focus: (i) prosody (“intonational” phenomena) and phonology, (ii) lexical items and (iii) word constructs or grammatical material. Ferguson convincingly demonstrates that baby talk (in the sense of motherese) makes modifications on normal language in these areas. He goes on with an enumeration of the different characteristics of baby talk from the aforementioned linguistic areas. Only several of these will be taken into account in this master thesis about the similar yet slightly different concept of animalese (for a complete overview of Ferguson’s characteristics of motherese, see figure 1 in Appendix A). A few characteristics that Ferguson mentions and that will reoccur here are for instance exaggeration or prolongation of vowels, the use of diminutives and kin names and the greater use of nouns instead of pronouns. Ferguson also sums up the functions of baby talk (1964: 110-112). Firstly, he states that it has a didactic purpose: the mother uses her special form of language to teach her infant a The term motherese was first introduced in 1975 in E. L Newport’s doctoral dissertation. CDS and IDS are widely spread and therefore cannot be traced to a primary author. The term baby talk is ambiguous to the extent that it can comprise both child-directed and child-produced language. 3 It can be said that one (dated) article does not suffice for a general enough overview on the research about motherese. However, this only provides the reader with an acquaintance of motherese and therefore functions as merely introductory. For a recent publication providing an exhaustive overview of studies concerning motherese, see Saint-Georges et al. (2013). 1 2

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basic understanding of the mother tongue. Secondly, he believes that the user of baby talk wants to “evoke […] a situation in which the primary use of baby talk occurs” (Ferguson, 1964: 111). Ferguson then gives the example that a child could use baby talk to get its mothers attention and wants to be treated as an infant again. However, this is not what he claims to be the primary function of baby talk (namely didactic). A last function, according to Ferguson, can be to show affection and protectiveness to the hearer, which is also seen in lovers’ speech register. A last remark in his article is that both English and Arabic speakers find it “more appropriate for women than for men” (Ferguson 1964: 112) to use baby talk. This is a purely sociological and cultural issue, but is nevertheless interesting for further research. Ferguson gives the basis, be it unknowingly, for sociological research in gender differences when speaking motherese. This, then, gives a starting point for the same research in animalese. PratoPervide (2006) indeed examines if men and women talk differently to (their) dogs. The fact that this is the case (cf. infra) can be linked to Ferguson’s sociological and cultural observation. In later studies, the CDS feature of repetition or reduplication in particular has received wider attention, since it has been proven a great didactic instrument for accelerating language acquisition by infants (see among others Hoff-Ginsberg 1985, Küntay & Slobin 1996 and Waterfall 2006). Surprisingly, repetitions also occur in dog-directed speech (Hirsh-Pasek & Treiman 1982; see below), even though in this case it evidently cannot serve any didactic function, given a dog’s incapability to acquire human language. Waterfall conducted an experiment (2006) with twelve parent-child couples, in which the children were fourteen months old and balanced for their gender and birth order. The educational level of the mother was an indication of their socio-economic status. The parents and their child were videotaped at home for 90 minutes every four months until the child was 30 months old. The data used by Waterfall come from transcripts made from these videotapes. Waterfall examined if and to which extent manipulation of variation sets occurred in childdirected speech, and if it correlates with an increase in occurrence of these features in children’s speech. It was observed that a child benefits greatly from repetitions in a mother’s utterance. Every person who has been in contact with infants and their parents or their guardians can observe that child-directed speech is characterized by different intonation, which Gauthier & Shi describe as “higher pitch level, expanded pitch range and longer duration at the syllable level” (2011: 381). They hypothesize that (i) a more pronounced pitch provides infants with better models of lexical categories, i.e. to facilitate language acquisition, and that (ii) pitch is an important acoustic parameter for attention, affect and social exchanges during verbal interactions. They zoomed in on IDS in the tonal language of Mandarin Chinese. To determine the potential effects of IDS exaggerated pitch, Gauthier & Shi used an artificial network (the self-organizing-map, or SOM), which allowed them to remove effects as attention and affect, so as to be able to focus on purely linguistic functions first. After simulations, results indicate that the different pitch of IDS does not improve infants’ ability to recognize words and it might even be detrimental for their discrimination of high-pitch vowels. In other words, Gauthier & Shi found that higher pitch does not facilitate language learning relative to adult-directed speech. They conclude from this that IDS pitch must primarily serve attentional and affective purposes, i.e. non-linguistic functions. Obviously, this

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hypothesis is all the more the case in dog-directed speech, given a dog’s incapability of learning human language.

2.2 Pet-Directed Speech Not many authors have tackled the subject of animalese in se. As seen above, the origin of the study of animalese, i.e. the study of motherese, has been discussed repeatedly, and the comparison of this speech register with animalese was regularly a research topic, yet rarely has the latter been researched separately. The two articles following can be seen as introductory to the methodology of this master thesis. The first article – gender differences in pet owners (PratoPervide 2006) – will determine the participants used for this research; the second article – Doggerel (Hirsh-Pasek & Treiman 1982) – will provide some of the discussed characteristics of dog-directed speech. Prato-Pervide et al. (2006) examined the differences between male and female pet owners during interactions with their dogs and investigated attachment in vocal and non-vocal interactions. The authors adopt the idea of Askew (1996) when saying that people’s behaviour towards pet dogs can be seen as parental. Pet dogs are seen as children with whom we can play, talk to, hold and cuddle. People – especially pet owners – believe dogs can understand our basic vocabulary. In Prato-Pervide et al.’s study, the authors hold a short questionnaire in order to establish the affection rate of the owner towards their dog; this was according to Holcomb’s et al.’s pet attachment survey (1985). Next, responses of men and women to reunion with their dogs were observed, focussing on play, comforting and vocal behaviour. In their study, Prato-Pervide et al. used 25 owner-dog pairs, from which 15 were female and 10 were male dog owners, all within the age limits of 19 to 61. They also mention that all 25 dog owners had their dog merely for companionship (and not for hunting, guarding or sport). The dog-owner pairs were observed in an unfamiliar environment at the university of Milan with a video camera. The only present attributes in the room were two chairs, a few dog toys and a water bowl. Two occasions were taken into account in this research: firstly, when owner and dog were reunited after a short separation, and secondly, when they had been separated for a longer period of time. Many different features were measured, for example the total number of utterances, the total number of words per “conversation” and the total number of commands. Also, many aspects typical of baby talk, for instance repetitions, frequency of question tags and self-answers, diminutives, endearments and pet names. Results of these measurements were not unexpected. Prato-Pervide et al. found that women talked longer to pets than men and were quicker to talk to them. They also produced more utterances, used more words, more repetitions, had a higher frequency of diminutives, and used more endearments and pet names (according to Prato-Pervide’s P-value; for exact data, see Prato-Pervide et al. 2006: 69). This suggests that the verbal aspect of communication is more relevant for women than for men. However, the authors did not find in any owner a difference in level of attachment towards their pet. Prato-Pervide et al. correctly criticize their own research when mentioning that it could be biased because of the use of a video camera. They note, namely, that men – in being filmed or watched – did not want to seem foolish or childish by talking in that manner to their dog. As

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mentioned above, this can be linked to Ferguson’s observation about the cultural and sociological difference between men and women, namely that it is not accepted of men to talk motherese, or in this case, animalese. Hirsh-Pasek & Treiman (1982) named the speech register talked to dogs in particular doggerel. They investigated this register via four female participants between twenty-five and thirty-two years old; two of the women had children, two did not. The four women were brought separately to a waiting room and told that the dog would undergo a dog intelligence test. They had to prepare him for twenty minutes. Unknowingly, the women were recorded during these twenty minutes of speaking to the dog. A follow-up session was held at home with an investigator and further samples were collected. Results of these twenty-minute utterances were gathered in two lists of, in sum, ten doggerel characteristics. The first seven features are very similar to motherese: (i) short utterances and their repetitions (either exactly or in part), (ii) many imperatives and questions, (iii) few declarative sentences (iv) the use of the present tense, (v) grammaticality, (vi) simple sentences with few embedded clauses or conjunctions, and (vii) relatively many tag questions. The second list consists of three characteristics and is noted informally by the authors: (i) the use of diminutives, (ii) phonological deformations and (iii) a high-pitch voice with extreme intonational markings. Hirsh-Pasek & Treiman conclude that motherese – and in the same line animalese or doggerel – is triggered by the social responsiveness of the listener; however, it is not initially tailored to the linguistic or cognitive level of the listener, be it dog or child. This is in contrast to both Burnham et al.’s (1998 and 2002) and Xu et al.’s (2013) conclusion that speakers adjust their speech register to the emotional but also linguistic need and potential of the audience. Both Burnham et al.’s articles and the different conclusions in their study show the incongruence in the literature and previous studies of animalese in se. There is a deficient literature about this subject, which explains the briefness of this literature overview; mostly animalese is compared to motherese or other species-directed speech and the research is seldom extensive. Additionally, animalese within one species and with different variables has not yet been studied, which gives added value to this research (cf. infra).

2.3 Child-Directed Speech vs. Pet-Directed Speech As seen above, parallels are often drawn in literature between motherese and animalese. Motherese was a starting point for research in animalese due to the many found similarities. A small portion of this literature discusses these resemblances. Burnham et al. did research on this front: they wrote two short related articles. In Burnham et al. (1998) and Burnham et al. (2002) they state that mothers automatically develop a special speech register when talking to their ‘young’. The authors then describe three characteristics of this register that are similar to those of Ferguson, namely elevated pitch, exaggerated intonation and vowel hyperarticulation. Burnham et al., like Ferguson, state that this has a didactic function and that it will “facilitate infants’ linguistic development” (Burnham 2002: 1435). Due to the automatic nature of the use of infant-directed speech - “[I]t appears to be elicited automatically” (Burnham et al., 2002: 1) - , the researchers wanted to change the nature of the recipients to pet animals and therefore

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compare IDS, pet-directed speech (PDS) and adult-directed speech (ADS) on acoustic, phonetic and affective levels. They state three issues at the beginning of their study: (i) Does the similarity between PDS and IDS imply vowel hyperarticulation in the former? (ii) Are PDS speakers trying to make the animals comprehend their language? (iii) Is vowel hyperarticulation purely emotional towards babies and pets? To answer these questions, Burnham et al. compared twelve mothers and their IDS, PDS and ADS in pitch (acoustics), affection and vowel hyperarticulation (phonetics). These mothers were provided with three toys of which the name had a clear vowel (sheep, shoe and shark), and they were asked to interact ten to fifteen minutes at home with each recipient, namely an infant, a pet (dog) and an adult. For the acoustic part, the use of sheep, shoe and shark in ten to fifteen minute interactions was digitised and the three variables’ meanF0, minimum and maximum F0 , and duration were measured. For the phonetic part of the research, the same words were used and the value of their vowels (/i/, /u/ and /a/) was studied, albeit for only four of the twelve participants. Burnham states that this is a “very timeconsuming process” (1998: 1) and further research is needed. Lastly, affection was measured in the digitized first 30 seconds of continuous speech in all three speech registers by rating on a scale. The conclusions showed a contradiction. In pitch, IDS and PDS are equivalent, but higher than ADS. Also, words tend to have a longer duration in IDS and PDS compared to ADS. This serves as function to attract attention. The same counts for affect, which is higher in IDS and PDS than in ADS. However, concerning vowel hyperarticulation, Burnham et al. state two different conclusions: in 1998 they declare vowel hyperarticulation in both IDS and PDS, but not in ADS. In 2002, however, PDS is similar to ADS, namely that vowels are not hyperarticulated; this would occur only in IDS. Burnham et al. ascribe this latter characteristic to the speaker’s perception of emotional and linguistic needs of his audience and he therefore adjusts his speech register. According to the latest article (2002), vowel hyperarticulation has an educational function only in IDS. According to the former article (1998), both IDS and PDS have these functions; we also try to make our pets understand us, it attracts their attention and accompanies high affect. Consequently, a critical note needs to be added to both studies. Not only do Burnham et al. communicate their findings in very brief and non-exhaustive articles, but their conclusions do not correspond either. Since both undersized articles cover the same research, it is unclear why both conclusions differ and which one should be preferred. In a more recent article Xu et al. (2013) compare motherese – here: infant-directed speech – with animalese, and more specifically dog-directed speech and parrot-directed speech. The subject of comparison is more specified to vowel hyperarticulation in all three speech registers. Similarly to Burnham et al., Xu et al. examine if the hyperarticulation of vowels has a didactic function and in addition if it is related to the actual or expected linguistic competence of the audience. The authors recorded eleven mothers in a university building, in contrast to the home-made records used by Burnham et al. The participants include one 6-month-old female baby, a one-year-old Maltese Terrier dog and a one-year-old parrot. It is important to note, however, that none of these “recipients” had a link to any of the participants. As in the

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aforementioned studies of Burnham et al., three toys (a sheep, a shoe and a shark) were used to instigate communication with the recipients (infant, dog and parrot). There were two sessions at the university and the recordings were transferred to a computer for analysis by the “Praat”program. Results of this research were as expected. There was a linear increase in vowel hyperarticulation, namely the least in adult-directed speech, to dog-directed speech, to parrotdirected speech and lastly the most in infant-directed speech. Xu et al. suggest that vowel hyperarticulation depends on the listener’s potential to produce and understand language. They state that there is no vowel hyperarticulation in pet-directed speech due to the fact that pets (most often cats and dogs) are unable to understand and produce speech or give feedback to the speaker. The fact that vowel hyperarticulation is increased in parrot-directed speech can be connected to a parrot’s well-known linguistic capacities. However, the methodology of this study is not free from discussion. The methodologically chosen distance between speaker and recipient (the speaker is not familiar with either child, dog or parrot) might positively provide a more objective manner of researching: speakers are not familiar with their listeners and their speech register may thus be more neutral and objective. On the other hand, due to this lack of a link between speaker and listener (child, dog and parrot) the speaker may be withheld in talking to the receiver. It is already proven indeed that motherese and animalese are a result of affection towards the listener, but Xu et al. appear to disregard this important function.

3. AIMS AND PREDICTIONS As the discussion above of the existing literature on animalese and the related motherese has shown, previous studies have always observed dogs as one single group: they have been opposed to other species like parrots, but most often (baby) humans. Physical differences within this group, like height, age and sex, and their potential influences on characteristics of animalese have so far not been taken into account. The present study, however, will do so, zooming in on the effect of the parameter of age, i.e. puppy dogs vs. adult dogs, on animalese spoken by Flemish Dutch-speaking dog owners. Predictions of this research are that puppy-addressed language consists of more investigated features and, moreover, these will occur more frequently than in adult-dogaddressed language. Indeed, child-directed speech and dog-directed speech (in general) differ precisely from adult-directed speech in that they are characterized by “childish” and affectionate features. Because of their cute and disproportionate puppy-like exterior, people may be inclined to treat young dogs more as human infants, and thus tend to exploit even more the features of dog-directed speech towards puppies. Note that these tendencies presumably occur independently of a puppy’s size (i.e. breed). For example, no major differences are expected between the puppy of a Great Dane and one of a Chihuahua, because they both possess the “puppy factor”. Therefore, the parameter of

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height has not been taken into account.4 This assumption can be illustrated by, for example, a baby giraffe, of which the average height of 1.80m cannot be considered a likely explanation for the sentiment of endearment evoked when witnessing its manner of moving. Expectations per feature will be given below. By dividing a group of receivers of animalese (i.e. pets) not only by classification of species – for example parrots or dogs – but also dividing one species in different groups – in this case, different age groups – this study would like to encourage other researchers to investigate this specific part of the field.

4. METHODOLOGY This section will first discuss the participants to this research (§4.1). Next, it will describe the procedure that was followed when carrying out the study (§4.2) and it will end with the discussion per feature of pet-directed speech that was taken into account (§4.3). 4.1 Participants Dog owners Four dog owners were used in this study. All were addressed at their dog training school and participated purely for the sake of science, i.e. they were not promised any sum of money or other way of payment. Participants were selected by their own age and that of the dog. All dog owners confirmed that they keep their dog only as a companion and not as a guard dog, breeding dog or for competition. This way it was certain that they had a familiar and affectionate bond with their dog, allowed him to spend time with the family and that he is seen as a companion. In order to create a homogeneous group, these dog owners were all women, aged between 30 and 55 years old. It has already been observed in previous literature that women talk differently to pets than men: women spend more time talking to their pets and their utterances resemble more closely infant-directed speech or motherese (Prato-Pervide et al. 2006: 69). In addition, excluding children and elderly people restricts the scope of the study to the most prototypical and common age group of adults, so that the presence of certain linguistic features as will be investigated in the present research is less likely to be influenced by the age of the participants. Children for instance seem to use for instance a higher number of diminutives than adults, regardless of the spoken to interlocutor. Dogs In addition to the aforementioned selection conditions on the dog owners, the dogs were subject to age-determined selection constraints. Each owner’s dog was divided into one of two Theoretically, it would still be possible to categorize the investigated participants according to both the dog’s age and height on the basis of the tables in the section Results. Originally this was indeed the purpose of this master dissertation. However, given the considerable number of deficient recordings received from the participants, not all of four categories (young-small, young-big, adult-small and adult-big) would have been sufficiently represented. 4

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categories according to the variable of age, so that each category contains two members. The first category is that of puppy dogs, i.e. baby dogs younger than one year old. The second category consists only of adult dogs, i.e. dogs older than two years. One year was kept between the maximum age of the first category (puppy’s) and the minimum age of the second one (adult dogs) in order to keep a big enough contrast between the two categories. There were four dogs involved in this research: (i) Noah, a Great Dane puppy of 8 months old (owner: Ann), (ii) Orfi, a Bouvier de Flandres puppy of 4 months old (owner: Evelyne), (iii) Ona, a mix of a German Shorthaired Pointer and a Beagle of 2,5 years old (owner: Ann D.) and (iv) Prutske, a Jack Russel Terrier of 10,5 years old (owner: Anne). 4.2 Procedure Audio recordings were collected by the participants themselves via a voice recorder or mobile phone. They recorded at home in a familiar environment, which is important so that they feel comfortable using as normal to them a language as possible (see also Burnham et al. 1998 and 2002 for an analogous setting). All four participants were asked for fifteen minutes recording while bonding with their dog by cuddling and playing with him/her. These activities have been chosen because it is expected that during this kind of interaction with a dog there is most chance for normal speech, i.e. fewer commands or single words and more full sentences. Note that the recordings collected are in (West- and East-)Flemish Dutch and its analysis will be in English. After a brief encounter at the dog training school, an e-mail was sent to the participants to explain the assignment, without mentioning the actual goal of the research. Participants were unaware of the exact purpose of the data collection in order to influence their recordings as little as possible. They were told they would be participating in a study about living with dogs. A list of phonological, morphological, lexical and grammatical features of animalese was composed. Four features were adopted from Hirsh-Pasek & Treiman’s article Doggerel (1982), namely the use of questions, use of imperatives, sentence or word repetition and the use of interjections. The features of use of nick or pet names, the replacement of pronouns with nouns and the use of diminutives were taken from Ferguson’s article Baby Talk in Six Languages (1964). The remaining features (exaggeration of vowels and consonants, the use of nonsense words, neologisms and onomatopoeic sound sequences, and the use of self-answers) in the list were added from own experience. After receiving all audio recordings from the participants via e-mail, the recordings were transcribed until each test subject reached a total amount of approximately one thousand words. Transcriptions were made on a computer and each utterance (i.e. words, sounds, word groups) were typed. Specific attention was payed to the features that are to be examined; for example, vowel and consonant exaggerations were also typed literally. Next, each feature was taken into account separately and its usage was tallied via the transcriptions.

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4.3 Discussion of Features The following Table 1 shows how each test subject has been studied; the four filled in tables are given and in Appendix B. A variation of this table in which both participants of an age group are included can be found in the Results: Table 2 is for the puppy dogs and Table 3 is for the adult dogs. Dog Owner Dog Name

Breed

Age (puppy/adult)

Absolute frequency

% of total amount

Total amount of words Feature

Example from data

Exaggeration of a consonant Exaggeration of a vowel Use of diminutives

Nonsense words, neologisms and onomatopoeic sound sequences Pet/nick/kin names

Use of interjections, e.g. awel, eh (e.g. as “question tag”) and stock phrases Sentence or word repetition Use of nouns i.s.o pronouns

Use of imperatives Use of questions Use of self-answers

Table 1: Absolute and relative frequencies of features of dog-directed speech applied to test subject’s recording

17

This table shows the name of the dog owner, the name, breed and age of the dog, and the different features that are being examined.5 Next to each feature, the absolute frequency and the percentage of the total amount can be found. With absolute frequency is meant the concrete number of usage of that particular feature. The percentage of the total amount is the relative frequency of a feature obtained by dividing the absolute frequency of occurrence by the total amount of words.6 Additionally, an example of each feature will be given as an illustration (see Appendix B). Logically, these examples come from the received data. The examples have been colour-coded in the transcriptions of the recordings (Appendix C, D, E and F). Each of the eleven features – or characteristics – will be discussed separately: it will be explained what is meant and why it has been added to the list. The features can be divided into four linguistic levels and an extra category, respectively phonological, lexical, morphological, syntactical and ‘other’. Exaggeration of a consonant and exaggeration of a vowel In the phonological domain two features will be focussed on and discussed together, namely the exaggeration of a specific consonant and the exaggeration or prolongation of vowels. In these cases, a person will pronounce a consonant or vowel longer than one could expect in “normal”, adult-directed speech, or in other words the common speech register of the test subject. In the investigated recordings the exaggeration of a consonant most often occurs when the speaker wants to stress the word without having to change his intonation or pitch (for instance “Ona [name of the dog], liggg”). Exaggeration or prolongation of vowels could be the case in outcries of anger or happiness or merely denoting affection towards the listener (e.g. “jaaa, goed zooo”). This was also observed by Burnham: Are we (perhaps unconsciously) trying to teach our animals how to speak or at least understand our language? Or maybe vowel hyperarticulation [or prolongation, TDR] is simply a by-product of the highly emotional speech we use to both our infants and pets. (Burnham 2002: 1435)

Both exaggerations could be expected more frequently in puppy-directed speech, namely because puppies still need to learn different aspects of human life and behaviour and owners will want to make this as clear as possible for the baby dogs. Adult dogs are expected to already be familiar with commands and everyday life, so there should be no need to stress different words by exaggerating their vowels or consonants. Additionally, these exaggerations may also transfer affection, so that they can be expected to be used more frequently towards puppies. Note that, for the following features a comparable reasoning can be made: when a feature is likely to express more affection, it is expected to be observed more frequently in puppy-directed speech than in adult-dog-directed speech.

5

For privacy reasons, only the first name of the participants will be given. Two women asked explicitly for this and this was therefore applied to all participants. 6 Repetitions of words or sentences are only counted once for the total amount of words. 18

Use of diminutives The use of diminutives is a morphological feature. In Dutch, diminutives are formed by adding a diminutive suffix (-(e)(t)je, -pje, -kje) to the word stem: examples are bloemetje, treintje, hondje, boompje, koninkje. Next to the evident function of diminutivization, diminutives cover a wide range of denotative and connotative meanings, of which the expression of endearment is particularly interesting with respect to dog-directed speech.7 An example: (1) We gaan uw potje wegdoen eh. Eh, we gaan ’t potje wegdoen eh. (Orfi, line 60, Appendix C) (2) Mag’k een zoentje hebben? Ooooh, zo lief. Eh. Zo lief. Ja, Noah, eh, hoe is’t jongen? Zo mooi kijken. Eh, met je mooie oogjes. Noah met de mooie oogjes. (Noah, lines 2-4, Appendix C) In Tables 7, 8, 9 and 10, this percentage has two figures: the first one in brackets is the percentage of the total amount of words. The second, most important, percentage shows how much diminutives are formed in relation to the total amount of nouns, including nouns found in repetitions, for the reason that in the repeated word or word group the diminutive suffix does not necessarily need to be repeated as illustrated in the example below: (3) Eh, ’t is een kleine boeboe eh. Eh? Mijn klein boeboeke. (Prutske, line 31, Appendix F) Diminutives can most probably be found more often in puppy-directed speech than in adultdog-directed speech. First, the higher affection-inducing rate of puppies has already been discussed. Secondly, not only the dog is smaller, but everything surrounding it (toys, biscuits, sleeping facilities, leash, etc.) is as well. Both connotative (in casu affection) and denotative (in casu smallness) meanings of diminutives may thus be linked to young dogs. Nonsense words, neologisms and onomatopoeic sound sequences On the lexical level, three features can be distinguished. Firstly, nonsense words, neologisms and onomatopoeic sound sequences are put together as one characteristic. They are closely related and, moreover, no well-established boundaries can be drawn between these categories. They all involve a great deal of lexical creativity, as the speaker makes up words or sounds when speaking to his dog. For example: (4) “Eh, een geeuwke doen eh? […] Was’t zo leuk? Da je al je pootjes moet rekje strekje doen”. (Orfi, lines 7-9, Appendix D) Perhaps these manifestations of lexical creativity will be found more in puppy-directed speech, since in child-directed language, too, creative uses like “tsjoetsjoetrein” or well-known morphological reduplications as “mama, papa, pipi, kaka, etc.” occur abundantly. On the other 7

For an overview of semantic functions of the Dutch diminutive, see Bakema, Defour & Geeraerts (1993). 19

hand, this feature does not have to be distinctive with respect to the variable of dog age. Each use of a creative word or sound has been noted, so also those used twice or thrice. The use of pet, nick or kin names Secondly in the lexical domain, the use of pet, nick or kin names is an often examined characteristic of child-directed speech and will indeed appear rather frequently in the collected data. When addressing their dog – most often during affectionate pet or play time – people tend to use a kin name as a term of endearment instead of the given name of the dog. These are merely forms of address towards the dog other than his name. It is, however, different when a dog receives a name which can already be viewed as a kin name, for example “Sloeber” or “Kastaarke”.8 As the split cells in the table column of “% of total amount” indicate, the feature of pet/nick/kin names also has two calculated percentages: the first (top) percentage is of the total amount of words, the second (bottom) is the percentage of the total amount of forms of address. The top percentage will not be used in the analysis, but has been added for completeness.9 In this case, expectations are ambivalent. With puppies, on the one hand, it is possible that more kin names appear given their small(er) and cute(r) physical appearance. On the other hand, this feature may also be found more in speech of dog owners with older dogs, since they have been part of the family for a longer time period. Due to this fact, more nick names may have arisen with time and thus increased attachment.10 The use of interjections and stock phrases Last on the level of lexicon is the use of interjections as “awel”, “eh” or “allez”. Putting “eh” after a sentence is a common feature in Dutch11: it attenuates the content of the utterance (cf. the parting formula “Salut!” which becomes “Salut eh!”), asks for an affirmative reaction (“Je komt morgen toch eh?” or “Het was een goede film eh?”), reinforces an order (“Braaf zijn eh!”), etc. Some examples extracted from the transcriptions are: (5) Allez Noahtje, eh, mooi op’t matje liggen bij ’t haarrrdvuur eh. (Noah, line 1, Appendix C) (6) Allez, nu Ona op je kussen. Ona, op je kussen, nu. Goed gedaan, flinke meid. Eh, flinke meid met je zus Rensje. Ja, mooie honden eh. (Ona, lines 31-33, Appendix E) Hirsh-Pasek & Treiman (1982: 233) also count stock phrases (such as “good boy”) as an interjection. This point of view will be adopted here too, so that the feature of interjection includes expressions like “flinke jongen” or “flinke hond”. Expectations are that there will be no significant difference between the two age groups. Indeed, the use of interjections seems to depend more on personal preferences than on 8

These names do not appear in the recordings, but are encountered frequently in Flanders. This will also be applied to the feature of self-answers. 10 A distinction has been made here between “affection” and “attachment”: the former arises independently from time by physical appearance traits like smallness and cuteness; the latter refers to positive feelings towards the dog that normally would increase with time. 11 For a detailed discussion about the use of final adverbs in Dutch, see Van der Wouden (2009) 9

20

characteristics of the dog. The use of stock phrases might increase with time among nonexperienced dog owners by talking to their dog or by observing other pet owners talking to their pet, but animal friends in general and experienced dog owners in particular might in contrast already possess a whole set of stock phrases which they apply to every pet, independently of its age. Sentence or word repetition The grammatical level consists of four features. Firstly, the repetition of a word (group) or sentence constitutes a prominent feature, which has been broadly studied in child-directed speech (see Brodsky, Waterfall & Edelman 2007 above). The example sentences above (1, 2 and 3) illustrate this phenomenon. Unlike Hirsch-Pasek & Treiman (1982), both partial and complete repetitions have been put under this same category, comparable to the “variation sets” in Brodsky et al, since they are different instantiations of the same phenomenon. When one word is repeated once or several times in one utterance – e.g. “dikke dikke dikke bil” (Noah, line 44, Appendix C)– then the repeated element has been counted only once. No straightforward predictions can be made about the impact of dog age on the word repetition feature. Use of nouns instead of pronouns Secondly on the grammatical level the use of nouns instead of pronouns will be investigated. This feature implies a speaker replacing a pronoun with a (proper) noun. This is mostly when referring to oneself, in which case the speaker will use “mama” or “vrouwke” instead of I or me. (7) Je hebt lekkere snoepjes gekregen eh van mama? (Noah, lines 9-10, Appendix C) Here, too, there are two percentages and the bottom one is the most important, namely because this takes into account the total amount of both pronounced pronouns and replaced pronouns. In child-directed speech this feature probably occurs for the reason that pronouns are more difficult to learn since they are of a deictic nature and therefore vary according to the context of enunciation, whereas (proper) nouns such as “Anna, vrouwke, moeder” invariably refer to the same respective entity.12 It is difficult to point out why this feature is heard in dog-directed speech. First of all it could simply be a mirroring of this behaviour towards children. Secondly, the substitution of a purely deictic element (i.e. a pronoun) by a noun expressing both deixis and a content (e.g. “het vrouwke”) adds a relational component to the utterance. Indeed, when a dog owner refers to herself with “mama” (see example 7 above), she does not only refer to herself but she also communicates a content, in casu the way in which she is or wants to be conceived of by the dog (i.e. as a mother). It is, however, difficult to foresee how this feature relates to the variable of age. 12

Note, however, that this statement applies only to the restricted environment of the infant. The notion of “mother” for instance could refer to any mother, but is unambiguous within the context of one household. 21

Use of imperatives Thirdly, the use of imperatives is measured. Probably, this is a feature rather frequently used in dog-directed speech, or even in pet-directed speech in general. A reason for this would be that pet owners want to teach their pet a new trick or (do not) want him to do something. For this reason it will be included in the list of features, yet it will probably not be a decisive feature with respect to the age difference among dogs. Use of questions The fourth and last feature on the grammatical level is the use of questions. Put into this category are questions to the dog of different types. They comprise for instance sincere open questions (8), yes/no questions (9), suggestive questions (10), and simple remarks formulated as a question (11). In fact, all questions can be classified as rhetorical because of a dog’s incapability to answer (or even to understand), and therefore it would not be surprising to find that suggestive questions and simple remarks outnumber the former categories. The establishment of a typology of interrogatives, however, will not be aimed at here. (8) Was’t een leuke dag vandaag? (Orfi, line 5, Appendix D) (9) Moe’k nog wrijven, moe’k nog strelen? (Noah, line 28, Appendix C) (10) Zelfgebakken hondenkoekskes. Da’s veel gezonder eh dan die dingen uit de winkel. Eh? (Noah, line 11) (11) Oei oei oei, een gaapje doen? Eh, een geeuwke doen eh? (Orfi, line 7) It can reasonably be presumed that dog owners will ask questions equally often to both puppies and grown-up dogs, because a request for information cannot be straightforwardly linked to a dog’s age. Perhaps questions are slightly more asked to adult dogs, because they might be supposed to understand more than their younger counterparts. On the other hand, within the universe of the imaginary dialogue puppies may be equally considered a valuable interlocutor. Use of self-answers Belonging to a final category of “other” and relating to the former feature of (rhetorical) question occurrence is the feature of self-answers. This label refers to the phenomenon whereby the dog owner provides an answer to questions raised by himself and by doing so he overcomes the verbal impairment of the dog. In the table, this feature also consists of two percentages. The first (top) percentage is from the total amount of words, and the second (bottom) percentage is from the absolute frequency of the feature “use of questions”. In other words, the second percentage shows how often the test subject answers his own questions. Here expectations are similar but not equal to the ones mentioned above concerning the use of questions: if dogs would already be considered a valuable interlocutor, this is less the

22

case for puppies, so that their dog owners would answer more questions themselves in the imaginary dialogue. Note that intonation has not been taken into account in this study. It has already been proven that raised pitch occurs with pets in general and dogs specifically (see among others Burnham et al. 2002; Xu et al. 2013; Hirsh-Pasek & Treiman 1982; Prato-Pervide 2006). Due to methodological deficiencies, no examination could take place to study this in enough detail so as to give a reliable result.

5. RESULTS The objective of this study is to document if certain features seen in motherese and dog-directed speech are present in the participants examined here, and, if this is the case, how frequently it occurs in an at home recording of approximately fifteen minutes. The presence of these features on the one hand is immediately observable; the frequency of a feature, on the other hand, will require a quantitative approach. In the discussion of the results, the participants will be discussed according to their groups stipulated in the methodology, i.e. puppy dogs (-1 years old) and adult dogs (2+ years old). These groups will be discussed respectively in paragraphs 5.1 and 5.2. More precisely, the participants will each be summarized into a table and approached individually and contrastively. Subsequently the two age groups will be compared and conclusions will be formed per feature (§5.3). 5.1 Puppies (-1 year) Firstly, as mentioned above, it is expected that the examined features will all occur in a puppyaddressed language register, and, furthermore, that they will occur more frequently than in adult-dog-directed speech. Table 2 below displays the data from the first two participants. A concise discussion of frequencies of both women will be given after the following comparative table. Note that in this table only the speech profiles of both women are compared, which provides a good image of the puppy group on its own, but it will be later on that their average will allow to draw conclusions concerning frequency differences between both dog age groups (see §5.3). It should be noted that Ann and her dog Noah had sufficient recording time in a cuddle context. Therefore, the feature of imperatives could be underused in relation to Evelyne and Orfi (also puppy, see Table 3). The percentage of imperatives in Evelyne’s speech (2.98%) will thus be the guide number for imperatives used in puppy-directed speech. Ann and Noah will from now on be called puppy1, and Evelyne and Orfi are puppy2. As an analysis of puppy-directed speech every feature will shortly be discussed. An important remark in general is that the absolute frequencies and percentages among features can be, for example, low, but for a feature separately it is possible that these frequencies are, for example, high. An example will follow the exaggeration of vowels.

23

Exaggeration of a consonant is minimal in both puppy1 and puppy2’s data. Puppy1 only exaggerates the consonant /r/ once, and puppy2 only does this five times with for example consonants /b/ and /m/. For the exaggeration of a vowel, there is a small difference between the two women. Puppy1 prolongs a vowel four times (i.e. 0.36% of her total amount of words), whereas puppy2 does this twenty-four times (i.e. 2.31%), which is almost six times more. As noted above, it is possible that this occurrence can just as well be quite high for these features. In relation to other features or if accounted for another feature it could seem a low quantity, but for these phonological features it is possible that the occurrence of – for instance in puppy2’s case – 24 prolonged vowels on a total of 1041 words is a high frequency. Indeed, a higher percentage of for example 10% would imply that every other 10 words there would occur a vowel exaggeration, which is hardly imaginable. It is nog unreasonable to assume that a relative amount of for instance 3% already can be seen as a high frequency. The same remark can be made for all feature frequencies. The relative amounts of diminutives is higher in both participants: puppy1 makes a diminutive of 33.81% of her nouns, of which the total amount was 139, and puppy2 of 18.97% of hers with a total amount of 116 nouns. Diminutives in puppy2’s utterances are almost half than those of puppy1. Lexical creativity (i.e. nonsense words, neologisms and onomatopoeic sounds) is only rarely the case with both dog owners. Seven instances for puppy1 (0.63%) and ten for puppy2 (0.96%) can be seen as a very small amount (and comparable to both phonological features). The use of pet names for the dog was 56.52% in puppy1’s data and 35.71% in puppy2’s data. Here, as with the feature of diminutives, the total absolute amount of addresses to the dog is not added to the table. With puppy1, this was 41 addresses, with puppy2 this was 28 addresses. Interjections and stock phrases are similar in both women’s data. Puppy1 uses them 8.61% of her total amount of words and puppy2 does this 7.88% of her total amount. Sentences and words are repeated 1.81% by puppy1, and 1.54% by puppy2. The use of nouns instead of pronouns is 8.05% with puppy1 (of a total amount of 87 pronouns) and 32.73% with puppy2 (of a total amount of 55 pronouns). As mentioned above, imperatives are most probably underused by puppy1. Puppy2’s number of imperatives, namely 31 (i.e. 2.98%), will be seen as more accurate. 78 questions are asked by puppy1, of which 3 (3.85%) were answered by herself, and 28 questions were asked by puppy2, of which 4 (14.29%) were answered by herself.

24

Feature Exaggeration of a consonant Exaggeration of a vowel

ANN & NOAH (PUPPY1)

EVELYNE & ORFI (PUPPY2)

Total amount of words: 1104 Absolute % of total amount frequency 1 0.09

Total amount of words: 1041 Absolute % of total amount frequency 5 0.48

4

Use of diminutives

7

2.31 (2.11)

22

33.81 0.63

10

(2.08) 23

Use of interjections, e.g. awel, eh (e.g. as “question tag”) and stock phrases Sentence or word repetition

24

(4.26) 47

Nonsense words, neologisms and onomatopoeic sound sequences Pet/nick/kin names

0.36

18.97 0.96 (0.96)

10

56.52

35.71

95

8.61

82

7.88

20

1.81

16

1.54

Use of nouns i.s.o pronouns

(0.63) 7

(1.73) 18

8.05

32.73

Use of imperatives

10

0.91

31

2.98

Use of questions

78

7.07

28

2.69

Use of self-answers

(0.27) 3

(0.38) 4

3.85

Table 2: Features’ absolute and relative frequencies of use in participants with puppies

25

14.29

In the following Table 3 is an overview of what both participants with puppies have in common, albeit minimal usage or high usage: Pet/nick/kin names Noah 56.52% Orfi 35.71% Nonsense words, neologisms and onomatopoeic sound sequences Noah 0.63%

Orfi 0.96%

Use of interjections and stock phrases Noah 8.61%

Orfi 7.88%

Sentence or word repetition Noah 1.81%

Orfi 1.54%

Table 3: Percentage of common features of participants in puppy-directed speech Keeping in mind that the given percentages are estimated high or low depending on which feature they represent, a few resemblances can be found among both participants in the age group of puppy dogs. The first similarity is, on the one hand, the rather high usage of kin names, and on the other hand a rather low frequency of creative lexical items. Both participants tend towards the same frequency and in this study they will represent female dog owners with puppies. Interjections and stock phrases occur about the same amount of times in both puppy1’s and puppy2’s recordings, and their frequency is – of course relatively speaking – neither high nor low. A rather low percentage however is that of sentence or word repetition. Based on these numbers and for this research paper it is possible to say that owners of puppies frequently use kin names and have a low frequency of inventing and using nonsense words, neologisms or imitating sounds. Furthermore, there is a non-remarkable usage of interjections and stock phrases and a somewhat lower tendency to repeat sentences or words. These conclusions are based on a relative approach towards the features among each other and not per feature in se. 5.2 Adult Dogs (2+ years) A similar test subject frequency table (Table 4) can be found below for the participants with adult dogs. A short overview of both participants in the age group of adult dogs will be given first, followed by a comparative table (Table 5). Ann D. and Ona will be called adult1 and Anne and Prutske will be called adult2. Firstly, for the exaggeration of consonants only two have been noted with adult1 and none with adult2. Exaggerations of vowels are somewhat more present: 0.84% in adult1’s speech and 1.09% in adult2’s speech. Next, the use of diminutives was counted. From the 220 nouns uttered by adult1, only five had a diminutive suffix (2.27%); from the 102 nouns said by adult2, 21 were diminutives (20.59%). It is important to note that the name Prutske is already a diminutive (and therefore a kin name); consequently it has not been counted when calculating the percentage of diminutives in adult2’s speech; this way, no dispute is possible. However, because of this, the resulting number can be lower than it should be as it is difficult to tell when 26

she uses his name diminutively or normally. No nonsense words, neologisms or onomatopoetic sounds were voiced by adult1, but 8 (0.73%) were voiced by adult2. In this age group as well was first counted how many forms of address were expressed, and how many of those were kin names. Adult1 used 80 forms of address, of which 8 (10.00%) were a kin name; adult2 expressed 34 forms of address, of which 12 (35.29%) were kin names. Interjections and stock phrases were 6.55% with adult1 and 15.77% with adult2. Even though these percentages do not seem high at first, they are nevertheless a startling number for both parties. Sentence or word repetition was seen 43 times in adult1’s discourse (i.e. 3.61%) and 38 times in adult2’s discourse (i.e. 3.46%). From the latter’s total amount of 125 pronouns, 17 were replaced by a noun, so 13.60%. From the first’s (adult1) total amount of 119 pronouns 21 were replaced by a noun, which is 17.65%. Next, the frequency of imperatives was 128 with adult1 and 40 with adult2. Here it should be noted that – based purely on the received data – adult1 seemed to have less of an influence on her dog than one might expect from an owner. As a consequence, imperatives were used quite frequently, unnecessarily and without any luck. Next, a similar amount of questions was uttered by both participants (i.e. 37) of which two were self-answered by adult1 and 1 was self-answered by adult2.

27

Feature Exaggeration of a consonant Exaggeration of a vowel

ANN D. & ONA (ADULT1)

ANNE & PRUTSKE (ADULT2)

Total amount of words: 1190 Absolute % of total amount frequency 2 0.17

Total amount of words: 1097 Absolute % of total amount frequency 0 0

10

Use of diminutives

0

1.09 (1.91)

21

2.27 0

8

(0.67) 8

Use of interjections, e.g. awel, eh (e.g. as “question tag”) and stock phrases Sentence or word repetition

12

(0.42) 5

Nonsense words, neologisms and onomatopoeic sound sequences Pet/nick/kin names

0.84

20.59 0.73 (1.09)

12

10.00

36.00

78

6.55

173

15.77

43

3.61

38

3.46

Use of nouns i.s.o pronouns

(1.76) 21

(1.55) 17

17.65

13.60

Use of imperatives

128

10.76

40

3.65

Use of questions

37

3.11

37

3.37

Use of self-answers

(0.17) 2

(0.09) 1

5.41

Table 4: Features’ absolute and relative frequencies of use in participants with adult dogs 28

2.70

Table 5 show similarities in pet-directed speech features by the adult-dog owners: Exaggeration of a consonant Ona 0.17% Prutske 0 Exaggeration of a vowel Ona 0.84%

Prutske 1.09%

Nonsense words, neologisms and onomatopoeic sound sequences Ona 0

Prutske 0.73%

Sentence or word repetition Ona 3.61%

Prutske 3.46%

Use of nouns i.s.o pronouns Ona 17.65%

Prutske 13.60%

Use of questions Ona 3.11%

Prutske 3.37%

Use of self-answers Ona 5.41%

Prutske 2.70%

Table 5: Percentage of common features of participants in adult-dog-directed speech As can be seen above, exaggeration of a consonant appears almost never with the two participants. Exaggeration of a vowel, in relation to that of a consonant, appears either five times more or twelve times more. Therefore, for this feature it is possible that the given percentages (0.84% and 1.09%) are quite high. In any case, they are similar and significant here. It can also be observed that both adult1 and adult2 do not often use creative lexical items. Even though adult2 uses them eight times more than adult1 (i.e. zero times by adult1 and 8 times by adult2), her repeated nonsense words were also counted. Sentence or word repetition frequency of both women lies very close to each other as well, just as their use of nouns instead of pronouns. Their use of questions has the same absolute frequency (i.e. 37 questions) but, due to a different total word count (adult1 with 1190 words in total and adult2 with 1097 words) has a minor difference in percentage, respectively 3.11% and 3.37%. Because of this small difference in word count and the identical absolute frequency of questions, the self-answer frequency has also been seen as similar, even though it could be argued that adult1 does this twice as often as adult2 (respectively 5.41% and 2.70%). 5.3 Comparison and Conclusions In order to be able to draw conclusions about the difference in speech register dependant on the age group of the dog, the average was taken per feature and per age group. This can be seen in Table 6, where frequencies for puppies and adult dogs are compared. A discussion per feature will be given after the table.

29

Feature

Exaggeration of a consonant Exaggeration of a vowel Use of diminutives Nonsense words, neologisms and onomatopoeic sound sequences Pet/nick/kin names Use of interjections, e.g. awel, eh (e.g. as “question tag”) and stock phrases Sentence or word repetition Use of nouns i.s.o pronouns Use of imperatives Use of questions Use of self-answers

Average relative frequency: puppies (%) 0.29 1.34 (3.19) 26.39 0.80

Average relative frequency: adults (%) 0.09 0.97 (1.17) 11.43 0.37

(1.52) 44.12 8.25

(0.88) 22.65 11.16

1.68 (1.18) 20.39 2.98* 4.88 (0.33) 9.48

3.54 (1.66) 15.63 7.21 3.24 (0.13) 4.06

Table 6: Comparison of averages per feature and age group of dog Exaggeration of a consonant This feature occurs three times as often in language addressing puppies (0.29%) than in that addressing adult dogs (0.09%). Exaggeration of a consonant allows dog owners to pronounce the word better without raising their voice. This consonantal highlighting can be helpful for teaching the puppy a command or word and to involve it in everyday life, which is less of a necessity with adult dogs, but these can be reprimanded this way when disobeying. It therefore is not unreasonable to assume that the first mentioned (didactic) context occurs more often than the latter, which might explain the above mentioned difference in frequency. An example of the didactic use towards puppies is “mmmat” or “bbbal”, in which the owner wants to teach her dog the command “mat” and the word for his toy “bal” and, in general, get acquainted with everyday life and behaviour in the house. An attestation of a reprimand in adult-dog-directed speech is “liggg”, where the owner has to repeat the already learned command. Exaggeration of a vowel As presumed in the discussion per feature (see §4.3) and in line with the results for and explanations of consonantal exaggeration, the exaggeration of a vowel occurs more frequently in puppy-directed speech (1.34%) than in adult-dog directed speech (0.97%). Vowel exaggeration, however, seems to be applied more to utterances other than commands, adding not seldom an affectionate rather than an authoritative tone, in contrast with consonantal exaggeration. The fact that consonantal exaggeration occurs more often in commands or at nonaffectionate times could be explained phonologically. Consonants in general and obstruents (i.e. 30

plosives and fricatives) in particular produce a rougher sound than vowels. Hence, they are ideally suited for reinforcing commands. Vowels, on the other hand, are gliding and smooth and have no articulatory obstacles when pronounced, so that they are found more in affectionate-tinted utterances. Examples of this loving undertone of vowel exaggeration are “slaapweeeel” or “kleeeeine zot”. In addition to this positive connotation, vowel exaggerations can also appear when there is a verbal rewarding, for instance, “jaaa” or “goed zoooo”. Since positive reinforcement is a crucial factor in teaching (cf. Thorndike’s well-known “laws of learning”), this function of vowel exaggeration may have attributed to the higher frequency found in puppy-directed speech.13 Use of diminutives As expected and anticipated before, diminutives occur more than double in puppy-directed speech (26.39%) than in adult-dog-directed speech (11.43%). As a possible explanation for this it was pointed out that on the denotative level they can be linked to smallness – not only are they physically small themselves, but their surroundings are as well (toys, leash, etc.). Examples illustrating this are “matje”, “oogjes”, “potje” and “lijntje”. On the connotative level, in addition, puppies most likely induce more affection than adult dogs. These two functions of the diminutive and their straightforward link to puppies may not only explain the proportion of diminutives found in puppy-directed speech vs. adult-dog-directed speech, but they also clarify why puppy-directed-speech, considered alone, abounds with diminutives – no less than one in four nouns in puppy-directed speech are marked with a diminutive suffix. The lower yet still high number of diminutives found in adult-dog-directed speech can be explained by the same functions of the diminutive. Adult dogs, being physically grown-up, nevertheless seem small in relation to human length, and on the affectionate level they obviously still induce feelings of endearment and remain a part of the family. Moreover, it should be repeated that dogs in general are treated like infants – independently of their size or age – but that this is even more the case with puppies, as expected. Nonsense words, neologisms and onomatopoeic sound sequences Manifestations of nonsense words, neologisms and onomatopoeic sound sequences also occur more in speech to puppies (0.80%) than in speech to adult dogs (0.37%). Examples of lexical creativity towards puppies are the food-related terms “njamnjam” or “njammie” and the affectionate form of address “boebeloe”. It was unclear beforehand how the parameter of difference in age would relate to this feature. Puppies might be more likely to inspire dog owners to use imaginary terms, but dog owners of adult dogs on the other hand can be expected to have developed their dog-directed vocabulary more over time. If these expectations are true, the percentages suggest that owners of adult dogs may have abandoned a certain number of these made-up terms, most likely due to their (too) juvenile character, or their imaginary vocabulary is more developed in width (i.e. type frequency or number of different terms) rather

13

For an overview of his main didactic principles, see Thorndike 1932. 31

than in depth (i.e. token frequency or overall frequency). Further research is needed to elucidate the observed tendencies. The use of pet, nick or kin names The use of pet or kin names, again, is double in puppy-directed speech (44.12%) than in adultdog-directed speech (22.65%). In both age groups this is a high frequency: almost half towards the puppy dogs is a kin name, and still one in five forms of address towards the adult dog. It is not surprising to observe such high frequencies for both categories, since lovers for instance seldom address their beloved with their proper name, and children as well are commonly addressed with terms like “jongen”, “kapoen”, “vriend”, “schat(je)”, and so on. Examples of dog-directed speech include attestations overlapping with the already discussed groups of diminutives (e.g. “Orfietje”, “Noahtje”) or neologisms (e.g. “boebeloe”, “keppeloe”), and other, more general affection-expressing terms of address (“vriend”, “jongen”, “kapoentje”). Nevertheless, there is a notable difference between both groups, by which it is possible to assume that puppies evoke (even) more affectionate forms of address from humans. This is most likely due to their small(er) and cute(r) physical appearance, as discussed above. Use of interjections and stock phrases In the frequency of interjections there is no notable difference between the two age groups – 8.25% towards puppies vs. 11.16% towards grown-up dogs. The slightly higher percentage for adult dogs presumably relates to the use of stock phrases rather than to a difference in use of interjections. Indeed, it is probable that a stock phrase or interjection is set into the way a person talks to (in this case) her dog and that adult-dog-directed speech consists of more of these words due to the fact that an adult dog has been with the family for a longer period of time and it has therefore had the time to set into the owner’s speech. It can however be argued (see §4.3) that previous dog owners who have a new puppy would then use the same interjections and stock phrases as they did with their previous dogs. Frequent interjections are “allez”, “awel” and “eh”; some common stock phrases are “flinke jongen”, “lieve jongen” and “flinke hond”. Sentence or word repetition Rather surprisingly, sentence or word repetition is more often found in adult-dog-directed speech (3.54%) than in puppy-directed speech (1.68%), although at first it was thought to be an age-neutral feature of dog-directed speech. In an attempt to explain this difference nevertheless, it can be assumed that owners of adult dogs have created a speech pattern of which repetition has become part, analogous to the use of stock phrases (cf. supra). Further research is needed to shed more light on variation sets and their function as they are found in dog-directed speech, in line with the already discussed study from Brodsky, Waterfall & Edelman (2007) about variation sets occurring in child-directed speech (see §2.1).

32

Use of nouns instead of pronouns The replacement of pronouns with (proper) nouns is seen 5% more in puppy-directed speech (20.39%) than in adult-dog-directed speech (15.63%). Both high frequencies can be explained by the observation that a pet in general and a dog in particular is – ideally – seen as part of the family; thus, relational nouns such as “mama”, “papa” or “kindjes” are used when referring to members of the family. This can be illustrated with examples from all four transcriptions, which show that these owners see themselves as the mother of the dog and they consequently refer to themselves as such. For instance, three out of four participants call themselves “mama” and one is “vrouwke”. Nevertheless the divergence between both frequencies is high enough to presume an influence of age. First, it was remarked that the use of this feature may be a mirroring of comparable behaviour with didactic purpose seen in child-directed speech, so that here the younger the dog is, the more the nominal substitution of pronouns can be found (see §4.3). Second, the use of a noun could allow the dog owner to add an affectionate layer next to the deictic element in addressing the dog. In child-directed speech, this substitution probably becomes less acceptable as a child becomes older. Consider the following (self-constructed) sentences in each of which a certain Sarah is addressed: a. Do you want a strawberry? b. Does Sarah want a strawberry? c. Does my precious want a strawberry? The utterance in (a) is of a neutral nature, and no hierarchy between the interlocutors can be established. Utterances (b) and (c), in contrast, presuppose a situation in which a hierarchically superordinate or older person addresses Sarah in a familiar manner. Indeed, by using a (proper) noun instead of a pronoun, the speaker creates a distance between himself and the addressee: the latter is no longer considered as a valuable interlocutor which preferably is addressed via deixis (i.e. pronouns), and instead is reduced to a merely static referential entity with no possibility to interact. In other words, the addresser creates a network of presuppositions as a consequence of which the addressee seems the lose his identity and possibility to participate in the conversation. Hence the examples in (b) and (c) are acceptable if Sarah is a child of five years old, but becomes insulting if she is a teenager of 16 years old. If this reasoning applies to dogs as well, it can explain why the percentage of this feature is higher in the speech directed towards puppy dogs. Use of imperatives Imperatives are more frequently used in adult-dog-directed (7.21%) speech than in puppydirected speech (2.98%). No expectations were given for this feature as it is a common feature in dog-directed speech, and if one had to make an assumption, one could perhaps invoke the fact that humans always want – and undoubtedly have – to learn tricks or habits to their dog. When the dog is young of age, this has to be taught and repeated extensively: maybe because of this, one would expect more imperatives in speech directed to puppies. The results however 33

contradict this intuitively possible tendency, so no straightforward explanation can be given for the difference in frequency. In any case, these figures need to be treated with caution, since in the recordings for one of the puppies, namely Noah, no play time was taken into account due to insufficient data.14 Therefore underuse of imperatives can be expected in the transcription of this puppy. Use of questions Concerning the use of questions, both age groups show an almost equal distribution: 4.88% in puppy-directed speech and 3.24% in adult-dog-directed speech. Although this mathematical difference is equally small as the one found for the feature of interjections and stock phrases (cf. supra), both are interpreted differently. In the latter case it was possible to put forward a reasonable explanation for the slight difference in frequency, while in the present case, i.e. the use of questions, no straightforward hypotheses are available to interpret the minimal difference in frequency. As a consequence, the present feature seems to be neutral vis-à-vis the parameter of age. Use of self-answers Responding to a self-posed question happened more than twice as much among the women with a puppy (9.48%) than among those with an adult dog (4.06%). As hypothesized previously, this could be the case because puppies are less seen as a valuable interlocutor and therefore humans expect an answer from them to a lesser extent than from grown-up dogs. Of course, adult dogs are just as little physically capable of answering (and fully understanding) as puppy dogs, but nevertheless they are treated by their owners as if they were mentally more advanced than their younger counterparts.

14

This unreliable number has been marked by an asterisk in Table 6. 34

6. CONCLUSION This study aimed at making a contribution to the field of dog-directed speech (i) by extending the scope of previous research to include other languages, in casu Dutch, and (ii) by investigating the possible effects on dog-directed speech from differences within the canine group, and more particularly the influence of a dog’s age. This parameter has been chosen for instead of e.g. dog size or sex, since juvenile dogs are likely to evoke even more feelings of affection than their grown-up counterparts due to their smallness and cuteness, and therefore most variation in dog-directed speech can be expected with respect to the parameter of age. In addition, the variable of size is in fact partially included in the parameter of age, since juvenile dogs obviously are smaller than adult dogs. A set of features was compiled on the basis of features found in literature about childdirected speech, dog-directed speech and based on own experience. Even if some features could not immediately be linked to possible effects according to the parameter of age, they were nevertheless added to the checklist, as it is easy to oversee potential effects, and even if there is no effect at all, that has to be proven as well. The results showed that the features of English dog-directed speech with a grammatically correct counterpart in Dutch (e.g. diminutives and word repetition) also occur in Dutch dog-directed speech. Question tags for instance obviously do not occur in Dutch, since the Dutch language does not have a straightforward grammatical counterpart for this structure (*Je bent een goede jongen, ben je niet?); speakers of Dutch would rather prefer the use of particles or interjections in this case (Je bent een geode jongen, niet? or Je bent een goede jongen eh?). The overall high frequencies for the features in Dutch dog-directed speech, i.e. abstraction made of the parameter of age, may be an indication that the canine group as a whole indeed can be looked at as childlike, or, in other words, both juvenile and adult dogs seem to possess characteristics which can be linked to those of children, and therefore a similar speech register is used in both child-directed and dog-directed speech; as a consequence, all features under investigation are present in both dog age groups. Interestingly, it has been demonstrated that the majority of these features occur even more towards juvenile dogs than towards adult dogs. Firstly, features which allow the dog owner to express feelings of affection and endearment (i.e. diminutives; nonsense words, neologisms and onomatopoeias; pet, nick or kin names) are on average twice as much present in puppy-directed speech than in adult-dogdirected speech. Most likely this is due a puppy’s typical smallness, disproportionateness and cuteness in comparison to the bigger size, adult proportion and therefore slightly reduced cuteness of grown-up dogs. Secondly, the rather surprisingly higher frequencies in puppy-directed speech for the “language-didactic” features of phonological exaggeration, sentence or word repetition and substitution of pronouns for nouns suggest that within the context of verbal interaction with the dog a young dog is treated like, for instance, an infant, whereas grown-up dogs receive less linguistic support, as if their linguistic mastering was already comparable to that of an older child. This is of course true to a certain extent, since puppies indeed have to learn some basic terms or commands like “sit”, “come”, etc. Nevertheless, a dog’s understanding of human

35

language is rather limited, so that they will never (have to) understand utterances like “Prutske heeft een gemakkelijk leven”; as a consequence, the repetition of this utterance cannot possibly serve any didactic function. Most probably, the higher frequency of these “didactic” features in puppy-directed speech primarily is a simple mirroring of the higher occurrence in speech directed to the youngest infants, and most likely a lot of the attested occurrences are merely a request for attention and/or an expression of affection (cf. vowel exaggeration “goed zooo” or nominal substitution “mama gaat eerst de oogjes kuisen”), rather than tools in a process of language learning. A third and last group of features occurring more in puppy-directed speech is that of questions and self-answers. Although questions are only slightly more asked to puppies (4.88%) than to adult dogs (3.24%), the amount of self-answers in puppy-directed speech (9.48%) outnumbers the one found in adult-dog-directed speech (4.06%). Once again, young dogs seem to be treated even more like not-understanding beings than adult dogs, although dogs of both age groups obviously do not possess the physical abilities needed for (full) language comprehension and language production. The behaviour of the dog owner may again be a mirroring of the behaviour towards children of different age groups. There were only two features for which the percentages in adult-dog-directed speech surpass those of the ones found in puppy-directed speech, namely the use of interjections and stock phrases and the use of imperatives. However, the differences are very small for the former feature (8.25% vs. 11.16%), and the numbers are not completely reliable for the latter one. It should of course be stressed that the results of this research are of a preliminary nature, given the restricted number of participants. Hence, the percentages in puppy-directed speech vs. adult-dog-directed speech have not been tested on statistical significance, and the discussion of results therefore provides a description of global tendencies rather than a fully quantitatively accurate analysis. I leave it to further research to corroborate these findings with larger-scale research on a representative amount of participants. This does not alter the fact that the present research can serve as a starting point to other investigations into variation within the domain of pet-directed speech in general and dogdirected speech in particular. It could for instance be interesting to look at variation within the class of parrots, animals of which learning capabilities even more closely border to those of children. Their linguistic potency most likely entails a significantly higher frequency of language learning features (e.g. sentence repetition or phonological exaggeration) in the speech directed to young parrots than in that of already adult parrots. In addition, previous studies (e.g. Prato-Pervide 2006) have shown that there is a difference in dog-directed speech according to the gender of the speaker/dog owner, but literature lacks a sociological investigation into differences related to other sociological parameters like education, socio-economic status or age. Focussing on variation in dog-directed speech, it has to be shown that the age-related tendencies discussed in this master dissertation also occur in other languages, similar to what Ferguson (1964) or Burnham (1998) did for child-directed speech. Finally, the present data could serve as a basis for in-depth research on grammatical structures occurring in Dutch dogdirected speech. Indeed, if the use of question tags is a typical English feature, Dutch seems to

36

have its own typical structures as well. Examples extracted from the recordings are the use of the adjective mooi as in “mooi zitten”, “mooi kijken” or “mooi wachten”, by which the occurrence of mooi seems to alter the interpretation of the verb, so that the dyadic utterance as a whole can be interpreted as an attenuated command. Another example is the substitution of a (di)transitive verb for a verb phrase comprising a noun derived from the original verb, mostly marked by a diminutive, and a semantically non-specific verb like do, make or give: “een keppeke doen”, “een likje geven”, “een kusje geven”. In any case, this master dissertation wants to serve as a stepping stone for a closer study of pet-directed speech in general and dog-directed speech in particular.

37

REFERENCES Askew, Henry R. “Treatment of behavior problems in dogs and cats: a guide for the small animal veterinarian.” Treatment of behavior problems in dogs and cats: a guide for the small animal veterinarian. (1996). Bakema, Peter, Patricia Defour & Dirk Geeraerts. “De semantische structuur van het diminutief”. Forum der letteren jaargang (1993): 121-137. Brodsky, Peter, H. R. Waterfall & Shimon Edelman. “Characterizing motherese: On the computational structure of child-directed language.” Proceedings of the 29th Cognitive Science Society Conference, ed. DS McNamara & JG Trafton (2007): 833-838. Burnham Denis, Elizabeth Francis, Ute Vollmer-Conna, Christine Kitamura, Vicky Averkiou, Amanda Olley, Mary Nguyen & Cal Paterson. “Are you my little pussy-cat? Acoustic, phonetic and affective qualities of infant-and pet-directed speech.” (1998) ICSLP. Burnham, Denis. “Special speech registers: talking to australian and Thai infants, and to pets.” (1998) ICSLP. Burnham, Denis, Christine Kitamura & Uté Vollmer-Conna. “What's new, pussycat? On talking to babies and animals.” Science 296.5572 (2002): 1435-1435. Ferguson, Charles A. “Baby talk in six languages.” American anthropologist 66.6_Part 2 (1964): 103-114. Gauthier, Bruno & Rushen Shi. “A connectionist study on the role of pitch in infant-directed speech.” The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America130.6 (2011): 380-EL386. Hirsh-Pasek, Kathy & Rebecca Treiman. “Doggerel: Motherese in a new context.” Journal of Child Language 9.01 (1982): 229-237. Holcomb, Ralph, R. Craig Williams & P. Scott Richards. “The elements of attachment: relationship maintenance and intimacy.” Journal of the Delta Society (1985). Hoff-Ginsberg, E. “Relations between discourse properties of mothers’ speech and their children’s syntactic growth.” Journal of Child Language, 12, (1985): 367-385. Kriz, Sarah, Gregory Anderson & J. Gregory Trafton. “Robot-directed speech: using language to assess first-time users' conceptualizations of a robot.” Proceedings of the 5th ACM/IEEE international conference on Human-robot interaction. IEEE Press, 2010. Küntay, A. & Slobin, D. “Listening to a Turkish mother: Some puzzles for acquisition.” Social interaction, social context, and language: Essays in honor of Susan Ervin-Tripp ed. D. Slobin & J. Gerhardt, (1996): 265-286. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

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Newport, Elissa L. Motherese: The speech of mothers to young children. Diss. ProQuest Information & Learning, 1975. Prato‐Previde, Emanuela, Gaia Fallani & Paola Valsecchi. “Gender differences in owners interacting with pet dogs: an observational study.” Ethology 112.1 (2006): 64-73. Saint-Georges, Catherine, Mohamed Chetouani, Raquel Cassel, Fabio Apicella, Ammar Mahdhaoui, Filippo Muratori, Marie-Christine Laznik & David Cohen. “Motherese in interaction: at the cross-road of emotion and cognition? A systematic review.” PloS one 8.10 (2013). Thorndike, Edward L. “The fundamentals of learning.” Columbia University Institute of Educational Research, Division of Psychology New York, NY, US: Teachers College Bureau of Publications. 1932. Uther, Maria, Monja A. Knoll & Denis Burnham. “Do you speak E-NG-LI-SH? A comparison of foreigner-and infant-directed speech.” Speech Communication 49.1 (2007): 2-7. Van der Wouden Ton. “Ik zou weleens willen weten waar dat woord staat trouwens. Aantekeningen over zinsfinale bijwoorden.” In: Woorden wisselen. Voor Ariane van Santen bij haar afscheid van de Leidse universiteit. Ed. by Ronny Boogaart, Josien Lalleman, Marijke Mooijaart & Marijke van de Wal. (2009): 143-156. Leiden: SNL. Waterfall, H.R. A little change is a good thing: Feature theory, language acquisition and variation sets. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago. 2006. Xu, Nan, Denis Burnham, Christine Kitamura & Uté Vollmer-Conna. “Vowel hyperarticulation in parrot-, dog- and infant-directed speech.” Anthrozoös 26.3 (2013): 373380.

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APPENDIX A Ferguson’s (1964:105-106;109) characteristics of motherese (figure 1): Phonological simplification of consonant clusters replacement of ‘r’ by another consonant (either a liquid or an apical stop) replacement of velars by apicals some kind of interchange among sibilants, affricates and stops distant nasal assimilation loss of unstressed syllables Lexical kin names nicknames and the like body parts and bodily functions basic qualities like ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘little’, ‘dirty’ names of animals and nursery games Grammatical diminutive or hypocoristic affix greater use of nouns rather than pronouns and verbs

40

APPENDIX B Dog Owner Ann Dog Name Noah

Breed Great Dane

Age (puppy/adult) 8 months (puppy)

% of total amount 0.09

Example from data

Exaggeration of a consonant

Absolute frequency 1

Exaggeration of a vowel

4

0.36

Neeee; slaapweeeel

Use of diminutives

47

(4.26)

Matje; zoentje; oogjes

Total amount of words 1 104 Feature

Haarrrrdvuur

33.81 Nonsense words, neologisms and onomatopoeic sound sequences Pet/nick/kin names

7

0.63

Boebeloe; keppeloe

23

(2.08)

Noahtje; jongen; vriend; ; kapoentje

56.52 Use of interjections, e.g. awel, eh (e.g. as “question tag”) and stock phrases Sentence or word repetition

95

8.61

Eh; allez; lieve jongen; flinke man

20

1.81

Use of nouns i.s.o pronouns

7

(0.63)

Ga Noah een beetje slapen? Ga Noah een beetje slapen?; Beetje vertellen? Ga-t-ie een beetje vertellen? Je hebt lekkere koekjes gekregen, eh, van mama Kom; schoon blijven

8.05 Use of imperatives

10

0.91

Use of questions

78

7.07

Use of self-answers

3

(0.27) 3.85

En was’t leuk gisteren op’t feestje?; Hoe is ‘t jongen? Is dat ook rustig voor u? Ja.

Table 7: Features of dog-directed speech applied to Ann’s recording

41

Dog Owner Evelyne Dog Name Orfi

Breed Bouvier de Flandres

Age (puppy/adult) 4 months (puppy)

% of total amount 0.48

Example from data

Exaggeration of a consonant

Absolute frequency 5

Exaggeration of a vowel

24

2.31

Goed zoo; jaaa

Use of diminutives

22

(2.11)

Potje; lijntje; oogskes

Total amount of words 1 041 Feature

Bbbal; bbbeer; mmmat

18.97 Nonsense words, neologisms and onomatopoeic sound sequences Pet/nick/kin names

10

0.96

10

(0.96)

Njamnjam; njammie; rekje strekje; Vriend; orfke; orfietje

35.71 Use of interjections, e.g. awel, eh (e.g. as “question tag”) and stock phrases Sentence or word repetition

82

7.88

Eh; awel; flinke jongen

16

1.54

Use of nouns i.s.o pronouns

18

(1.73)

Keer buikje wrijven, eh, een keer buikje wrijven; bal bal bal; ‘t Is nu gedaan eh, ‘t is nu gedaan. Vrouwke een keer een zoen geven wè; Breng het naar ‘t vrouwke!; ‘t Is van Orfi eh. Kom; zit(ten); breng

32.73 Use of imperatives

31

2.98

Use of questions

28

2.69

Use of self-answers

4

(0.38)

Was ‘t een leuke dag vandaag?; Waar zijn uw pootjes?; Een gaapje doen? Wat is dat hier? Je bal.

14.29 Table 8: Features of dog-directed speech applied to Evelyne’s recording

42

Dog Owner Ann D. Dog Name Ona

Breed German Shorthaired Pointer/ Beagle

Age (puppy/adult) 2.5 years (adult)

% of total amount 0.17

Example from data

Exaggeration of a consonant

Absolute frequency 2

Exaggeration of a vowel

10

0.84

Jaaa; hondjeee; Onaaa

Use of diminutives

5

(0.42)

Hondjeee; koekjes;

Total amount of words 1 190 Feature

Onnna; liggg

2.27 Nonsense words, neologisms and onomatopoeic sound sequences Pet/nick/kin names

0

0

/

8

(0.67)

Schat; meiske; Onassie; Onaatje

10.00 Use of interjections, e.g. awel, eh (e.g. as “question tag”) and stock phrases Sentence or word repetition

78

6.55

Eh; allez; flinke hond

43

3.61

Use of nouns i.s.o pronouns

21

(1.76)

Lig lig lig; Ona zit, Ona zit, Ona zit; Ze weent, ja, ze weent. Mama moest vertellen; Da’s ook de vriend van mama; Mama gaat eerst de oogjes kuisen; Mama komt. Kom; zit; af; blijf

17.65

Use of imperatives

35

2.94

Use of questions

37

3.11

Wat ga je doen? Gaat ge hem verstoppen?; Moet mama bij u op ‘t kussen?; Wat doet de poes?; Wie is je beste vriend? Use of self-answers 2 (0.17) Mag jij in de zetel? Neen, dat mag niet; 5.41 Waar moet Ona zijn? Maa, Ona, jij moet op je kussen Table 9: Features of dog-directed speech applied to Ann D.’s recording

43

Dog Owner Anne Dog Name Prutske

Breed Age (puppy/adult) Jack Russell 10.5 years (adult)

Total amount of words 1 097 Feature

% of total amount 0

Example from data

Exaggeration of a consonant

Absolute frequency 0

Exaggeration of a vowel

12

1.09

Use of diminutives

21

(1.91) 20.59

Speeelen; kleeeine zot; braaaaf; zooooveel Schatteke; koppeke; lekjes; lekstokje

8

0.73

Boeboe; boebie

12

(1.09)

Kleine jongen; Prutsie; Pruts

Nonsense words, neologisms and onomatopoeic sound sequences Pet/nick/kin names

35.29

/

Use of interjections, e.g. awel, eh (e.g. as “question tag”) and stock phrases Sentence or word repetition

173

15.77

Eh; awel; flinke jongen

38

3.46

Use of nouns i.s.o pronouns

17

(1.55)

Koppeke aaien? Koppeke aaien?; Gij hebt een gemakkelijk leven eh, eh, ons Prutske heeft zo’n gemakkelijk leven; Dikke buik, dikke buik, dikke buik, dikke buik; Mama ziet u graag eh; Zijt ge blij dat mama thuis was vandaag? Pak ze; kom; breng ze; zoek Mag ik u een beetje aaien?; En wat heeft ons Prutske gedaan?; En in zijn mandje gelegen?; Waar is de kip? Waar is de kip? Ze ligt daar!

13.60 Use of imperatives

40

3.65

Use of questions

37

3.37

Use of self-answers

1

(0.09) 2.70

Table 10: Features of dog-directed speech applied to Anne’s recording

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APPENDIX C For the transcriptions per dog owner only a few utterances have been highlighted, merely exemplary. Longer spaces mean a longer pause and different paragraphs are for clarification of the text. Key: Exaggeration of a consonant Exaggeration of a vowel Use of diminutives Nonsense words, neologisms and onomatopoeic sound sequences Pet/nick/kin names USE OF INTERJECTIONS, E.G. AWEL, EH (E.G. AS “QUESTION TAG”) Sentence or word repetition Use of nouns i.s.o pronouns Use of imperatives Use of questions Use of self-answers

Transcription of Ann and Noah: 1 2 3 4 5

ALLEZ Noahtje, EH, mooi op’t matje liggen bij ’t haarrrdvuur eh. En hoe is’t met jou? Eh, lieve jongen. ’t Is hier lekker warm eh, hier is’t lekker warm njeh, eh vriend? Ja eh. Mag’k een zoentje hebben? Ooooh, zo lief. EH. Zo lief. Ja, Noah, EH, hoe is’t jongen? Zo mooi kijken. Eh, met je mooie oogjes. Noah met de mooie oogjes. EH. Ja. Zo een beetje keppe 5doen eh. Ooh, ja, zo ’n grote keppeloe. O grote keppeloe.

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En je buikje grommelt? Je buikje grommelt. Eh. Ja, nog een zoentje? Ah moh zeh, ma gij geeft veel zoentjes vandaag. Ja. Joej. Eh. Doe maar schoon uw koppeke neer, ja. Eh. Ga Noah een beetje slapen? Ga Noah ‘n beetje slapen? Is-t-ie moetjes? Joh seg, flinke man eh. Mmm? En was’t leuk gisteren op’t feestje? Eh, voor Kerstmis? Was’t leuk? Je hebt lekkere snoepjes gekregen eh van mama? Eh? Zelfgebakken koekskes voor u. Hondenkoekjes eh, ja se. Zelfgebakken hondenkoekskes. Da’s veel gezonder eh dan die dingen uit de winkel. Eh? Ge zij moe eh? Ah je-n-oogskes vallen toe. Ja. Vallen uw-n-oogskes toe? *tutututut* Wadde? Wat is dat? Hehehe. Wat is dadde zeg? Da’s iets raars eh. *hapfoepfoepfoe* Boebeloe. Frommelke, eh? Ge zijt een frommelken eh? Neeneen, niet nie op tafel met uw hoofd, allez, kopke ‘d er af. Schoon op de mat. Jaaa, ze. Oh ga je pootjes geven? Ah ma kweet het. Ah ma nee, ’t is nie omdat je pootjes geeft dat je nu met je kop ‘d er op mag eh. Neee. Kijk nu. Jah. *dog makes sound* Oei. Wat was dat? Wat was dat, jongen? Mm?

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Kom, kom een keer hier mooi. Allez, ge rolt vanzelfs van uw matte. Dat is beter, dat is beter ze, ja, en schoon blijven eh. Oh moh, gade gij op mijne schoot zitten? Moh zeh, een beetje

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20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

groot eh daarvoren. Ge zijt een beetje groot eh daarvoor. Ja. En nu op’t matje? Azo, nog een zoentje? En nog een zoentje. Ja. Wat is’t? Woef. Ja. Ja. Hehehe. Ja. Eh? Ma kapoen toch. Njaa eh. Moet ‘ie zo dichte zitten? Eh? Ga je keppe doen? Gaat ‘ie keppe doen? Ja. Wadde? Beetje vertellen? Gaat ‘ie beetje vertellen? Wat is dadde? Wat is dadde? Beetje kopke wrijven? Oortjes wrijven? Eh? Da heb je geiren eh? Ja, aan je oortjes. Oooh, mo dat doet deugd zeg, eh? Ja. Dat doet deugd. En de andere oor; ja. En zijn andere oor. Allez, legt u nu een keer schone neer. Zo, plat, ja ze. *ohzowa* *ohlalala* En gaat ‘ie nu op z’n rugske liggen? Ga Noah op z’n rugske liggen? Joh zeg, met de pootjes in de lucht? Met de pootjes in de lucht? Oh gie sloeber! Jojojaja. Nog!? Moe’k nog wrijven, moe’k nog strelen? Ja? Dat is leuk eh? Eh, dat is leuk! Ja ze. Leg ma pootjes neer, ja. Moh, ja, ma ‘k ga nie weg. ‘k ga blijven ja. Eh, gade mij vast houden, dè? Ja? Gade mij vasthouden? Me ou benen. Moh zeg, wat is dat ier? Allemaal haar van de katte, eh? De poes slaapt ook eh. Joas. Ja, Vlokje ligt daar. Joa, ze, jaja Noah, ma ’t is goed, ’t is goed, ’t is wel. ’t Is zo ne flinke man. Eh? Ja. Zeg ma dat zou gie wel verdragen eh heel de dag. Eh? Kriebele kriebele kriebele. Ja? Oooh, dat doet deugd eh? Eh? Dikke buik. Waar is de dikke buik? Eh? Ja.

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Ja wat is er? Mm? Allez, pootje neer. Ja. Da weegt zwaar wè jongne, uwe poot. Mm, zo op mijne nekke. Dat weegt zwaar eh? Moet ‘ie slapen, dè? Ooh, z’n oogskes vallen toe. Oef. ’t Is zo lastig. Ma gast seg, gij hebt een lastig leven eh. Eh? Efkes in de warmte liggen, eh, ja ze. Braaf eh, schoon blijven. Nee, kapoentje, schoon blijven, ‘k ga in de zetel zitten.

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Wat? Neenee, ‘k ben nie weg. ‘k ben nie weg, wè. Moet ‘ie kijken waar da’k ben? Jaj eh. Ja. Eh. Legt u maar schoon neer op uw gemakskes wè. Ja se. Wat is dat, Noah? Mm? Wat doen ze daar? Mwa, ’t is niks, blijf maar mooi slapen. Ja. Nee, ma ’t is goed, blijf maar schoon liggen, jongen, eh. ’t Zijn de zusjes in de keuken. Mm?

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Noah? Elaba. Zijde aan’t slapen, kapoen? Nee, toch nie? Ai. Ah, ge doet alsof. Ge slaapt gelijk de muizen in’t meel. Eh? Met zijn dikke dikke dikke bil. Eh, Noah met de dikke poep. ’t Is nie waar eh, Noah is niet dik eh. Mm? Noah is mooi eh, vriend, zo een mooie hond. Mooie jongen eh. Mm? We gaan een beetje televisie aanzetten. Ga je meekijken naar tv? Waar is’t bakske? Ah, hier. Jaja. ’t Is goed. Wacht, ‘k ga eerst de rolluik een beetje toe doen, Noah. Voila se, da’s beter eh, eh, da’s rustig eh nu? Is da ook rustig voor u? Ja. Oh, ga je u uitrekken eh vent? Ah, gie lang ??? als je dat doet. ja. ’t is goed Noah’tje, ja, zucht. *tv program plays in background*

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Wat is dat Noah? Eh? Mm.

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Noah. Wadde? Kom een keer hier, kom. Mooie mooie dichte. Jaa. En ze koppeke leggen eh. Gaat ‘ie mooi z’n koppeke leggen? Flinke man wè, eh, gaan we een beetje daaizeke doen? Nja, doe maar schoon je-n-oogskes toe. *ssshhhttutut* eh, ja. Ga maar slapen eh, eh, Noah’tje. Da’s flinke man. Oep, zo’n lange staart. Eh? Ja.

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Ben je aan’t kijken naar de vlammekes daar, Noah, in de haard? Eh, zij je aan’t kijken naar de vlammekes? Da’s mooi eh. Dat doe je graag eh? Slapen bij de haard. Da’s zo een beetje ’t liefste da je doet, denk ik. Eh? Jah. En buiten spelen eh met Sammeke en Rex, dat doe je ook graag eh? We gaan dan straks een beetje gaan spelen. Ma nu eerst een beetje slaapeke doen eh. Oooh, zo moe. ‘ie is zo moe.

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Eh, kapoen? Ge zijt een kapoen eh van mama. Eh, ne kapoen eh van mama. Eh, Noah? Ge zijt ne kapoen van mama. Wat is ‘d er, dè? Zo mooi kijken? Eh? Moet ‘ie zo mooi kijken. Ja. Ie is 46

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zo’n lieve man. Moh zeg, maar gij zijt lief. Mm. Azo een keppe eh van mama. Jaj eh. Eh, Noah’tje. Jaje eh. Hij is zo’n lieve man. Wadde? Ah, krijg’k ik nu nog een zoentje? Ah moh zeg, ma gij zijt lief. Mmm. Ja. Allez, leg maar schoon u koppeke neer weer en uw pootje, pootjes op de grond laten eh, ja ze. Mm? Pootjes op de grond. Allez, slaap maar wè, Noah. Slaapweeel. Slaapweeel. Slaapweeel. Ja. Eh.

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APPENDIX D Transcription of Evelyne and Orfi: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Awel, Orfke, zijde moetjes, vriend? EH? Flinke wandeling gedaan eh vanmiddag, eh? Keer de pootjes gestrekt, ja. Ge zij zo’n lieve snoete. Ej. AWEL. AWEL. Keer buikje wrijven. Eh, ne keer buikje wrijven. Ne keer goe buikje wrijven eh. Eh, ne keer goe buikje. Gohgohgoh. Maar Orfke toch. Ah, je’n oogskes vallen toe, vriend. Eh, eh je’n oogjes vallen toe. Moh ja. EH? Was’t een leuke dag vandaag? Eh? Vele buiten geweest eh. EH, je hebt vele buiten gespeeld eh. Een flinke jongen ze. Mo Orfi’tje toch. Ge zij zulk een keppebolle. Eh, zijt een keppebolle eh zeg. Oei oei oei, een gaapje doen? Eh, een geeuwke doen eh? Eh, waar zijn uw pootjes? Wadde? Hej. Oei oei oei oei oei, een rekje strekje. Was’t zo leuk? Da je al je pootjes moet rekje strekje doen. Wel wel wel. EH, ma ’t is ne flinke jongen, eh. Eh. Vrouwke ne keer ne zoen geven wè. Vrouwke ne keer ne zoen geven. Oe poep oep oep oep. En gij geeft ook een zoen aan mij! Eh, je geeft ook een zoen, binst da ik een zoen geef. Oei oei oei toch. Eh, ’t is leuk eh, dat op de buik wrijven, goh goh goh. Allez, ’t is nu gedaan eh, eh, ’t is gedaan. Flinke jongen, wè. Dikke zoen. Nah, eh?

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*Shtsht* We gaan ne keer spelen éh Orfi. Waar is je bal? Zoekt een keer je bal. Waar is je bal, gow. Bal bal bal. Ej, kijkt een keer hier. Wat is dat hier? Je bal. Oooh, goed zoo. Jaa, pak het maar vast wè. Pak het maar wè. Hee, pak het, ja, pak het, jaa, goed zoo. Oooh. Ja, grr. Eh, we gaan ne keer vechten eh, eh, we gaan ne keer vechten eh met de bal. Brrrrrrrr. Jaa, pak maar, allez, loopt er maar mee rond. Kom, loop maar, jaa, goed zo, flinke jongen. Flinken apport, kom, breng het naar ’t vrouwke, kom. Goed zoo. We gaan ne keer spelen weer eh, oooooh, keer vechten eh, jaa, goed zooo; jaaa, ooeee, eeh. En breng het aan ’t vrouwkee, jaa, breng het, kom. Goed zoo. Kom hier, jaaa, flinke jongen! Heeee. Awel? Awel? Pak het maar wè. Jaa, goed zo. Eeh. Jah. Goed zo. Flinke Orfi, kom. Kom hier, vriend, jaaa! Jaa, eej. Eh, kom. Goed zo. Eh. Allez, geef ’t keer aan ’t vrouwke. Geef het een keer. Geef wè. Oooh, ’t is van Orfi wè. Jaa. Éh, kom hier. Kom, vriend. Eh, wat heb je daar? Geef het een keer. Geef het een keer aan ’t vrouwke. Eh? Geef het een keer. Jaaa, goed zo. Jaa, wat heb jij daar? Eh, je bal, zeg. Is’t weer leuk? Is’t weer leuk? Ja. Ja. Hier, nog een bal, wè. Pakt een keer die bal. Pakt hem, hup! Is de andere beter? En hier, nog een bal, hup! Jaa. Vrouwke ga ook een keer spelen met de bal. Eh? Hup. Ahaa. Ja, Orfi, je kan geen drie ballen hebben eh, da ga nie eh. Hup. Eeh. *psspsspsspss* Kijkt een keer hier wat dat ik heb. Oooh, kijkt een keer hier. Aaah, is dat interessant? Eh. Hupla, goed zooo! En brengen, hup. Jaaa. Jaaa, goed zoo. Oei, hehe, Orfiii. Allez, wacht. Je bal zit hier vast eh? ’t Vrouwke zal hem een keer pakken, hoeplaa. *psspsspsspss* Jaa, pakt hem maar wè! Hop hop hop hop hop! Jaa, goed zo! En brengen, hop. Kom! Jaa! Da’s flink komen, goed zo! Ja, ’t is de bal van Orfi eh. Joa. Hopla. En pak het; jaa! Kom een keer hier. Kom een keer hier. Kom een keer hier. Brengt een keer je bal. Geef hem een keer aan’t vrouwke. Geef hem een keer. Kom een keer. Kom een keer. Kom een keer hier. Kom een keer hier. Kom een keer hier. Hier. Hier. Ja. Kom een keer hier, hier. Zit. Kom een keer hier, zit wè. Sshtshtshtsht. Kom een keer hier. Zit. ‘k ga ’t een keer vasthouden eh. Zitten. Zit. Orfi’tje, zit. Ja, en ’t vrouwke gaat de bal werpen en gij gaat hem pakken als ‘k zeg pak. Pak! Jaa! Goed zo! Kom! Kom! Jaaa. Eeh. Waar is je bal? Eh, waar is je bbbal? Kom maar wè, kom maar hier. Goed zoooo! Pak het. Is dat een nieuw speeltje? Jaa, doe het zo. Flink geven eh aan ’t vrouwke. Eeh. Ssshhttt. Brrrrrr. Brrrr. Brrrrrr, ze. Brrrrrrr. Goed zoo! Jaa, ela, hupla. Kijk een keer hier, je bbbeer. Oooee, wat is dat hier met de beer? Is 48

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da leuk? Keer spelen eh, spelen eh met ’t vrouwke. Jaa, spelen. Brrrr, ze. Brrrrrrrrrr. Goed zo. Hej. Orffi! Jah. Is da weer leuk? Hier, pak het. Huplaa! Kijk een keer hier! Pssssss.

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Goed zo, Orfi, flink gewerkt. Eh, je mag dan njamnjam doen eh. Ja. Goed gewerkt voor je njamnjam. Goed zo. Orfi, zit. He, eerst zitten. Orfi, zit. Kom hier, Orfi. Opnieuw. Zit. Orfi, kom. Orfi, zit. Eh. Jaa, dat is zit, goed zo! En zit eh. En kom, kom hier. Jaa, da’s hier. Goed zo. Flinke jongen eh zeg. Orfi, zit. Orfffi, kijkt een keer hier! Ja. Zit. Goed. We gaan je lijntje af doen eh. Goed zo. Eh, je mag dan njammie doen hoor van ’t vrouwke. Je krijgt dan njammie wè van ’t vrouwke. Eerst een keer de jas uitdoen, eh. Orfi, mmmat. Mmat! Hej. Da’s zit. Da’s nie mat. Opnieuw. Dat is zit. Maar je moet mat doen. Kom, mat. Orfi, mat. Jaa, dat is mat, goed zoo. Mat. Flinke mat. Dat is mat. Goed zoo! Dat is mat. Jaa. Flinke mat. Gooed. Neen, niet rechtstaan, mat zegt vrouwtje, kom, terug op je mat. En wachten totdat m’n jas uit is. Eh. Mat. Orfi, mat. Jaa, goed zo. Neen, kom hier, opnieuw, kom hier. Jaa, flinke kom, en mat. Mmmat. Jaa, da’s mat, goed zo. Mmat. Mmmmat. Mmmat. Mmmat. Ja, da’s mat, goed zo. Flinke mat. Ja-aa. Flinke mat. Dat is mat, goed zo. Flink.

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Ssshht. Flink zitten, dat is mooi, da’s goed. Allez, Orfi, bench. Orfi, bench. Goed zo, da’s bench. Mooi zit. Goed zoo. Allez, doe maar njamnjam wè, goed zo, vriend. Eh.

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Is’t op vriend? Eeh, was’t een lekkertje? Ja, is’t een lekkertje? ’t Vrouwke ga ne keer zien wè. Jaa, ’t is allemaal op eh. We gaan uw potje wegdoen eh. Eh, we gaan ’t potje wegdoen eh. Was’t lekker, ja? Ah, flinke jongen, goed zo. Allez, ga maar nog een keer naar buiten. Kom, keer pipi doen. Orfi, neen, kom. Kom. Allez, ga doe maar een keer pipi wè, ga kijk maar een keer. Pipi gedaan? Flinke jongen. Kom maar binnen hoor. Goed zo. Pootjes af. Neen. Goed zo.

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APPENDIX E Transcription of Ann D. and Ona: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Da’s goed gedaan eh, Ona. Kom een keer hier, kom een keer hier. Ona dikke kus. Ona dikke kus. Kom hier kom hier kom hier. Dikke vriend eh, dikke vriend van moeder eh. Ona. Da’s goed zo. Ona, kom. En zit. En af. Ona, af. Dat moet je nog leren eh, schat. Ona, af. Ona, lig. EH. Rustig. *tututut* rustig. Jaaa, da’s goed zo. Nog nog, Ona, af. Ona, af. Mooi. Kom hier, kom hier. Ona. Ona kom. Nu. Kom. Kom hier, schat. Ona, kom. Ona, zit. Da’s goed. En Ona af. Af. Af. Ja, goed zo goed zo. Nee, oooh, bijna bijna. Ona Ona toch. Ona zit. Ona zit. Ona, zit. En af. Goed zo, schat. Nog nog. Af. Poep naar beneden, poep naar beneden. Oooh, Onnnaa. Kom bij, mama, kom terug kom terug. Kom, we gaan het nog een keer proberen. Ona, mama, nu. Ona, kom. Ona, kom. Nu. Ona. Kom. Da’s flink. Ona, zit. Ona, zit. Goed zo, FLINKE HOND. Jij bent een flinke Ona. Ona, lig. Ja. Lig. Af. Ona, af, Ona af. Af. Neee, rustig rustig rustig. Ssht ssht. Ona, mooi. Ona zit. Ona, zit, nu. Ona. Ona. Zit. Flink zo. En Ona, af. Ona, lig. Ona, lig. Kom, hier is je snoep. Lig, lig, lig. Ja, ja, ja, nog nog nog, komaan. Ona, kom. Eeen Ona liggg. Neem je snoep, komaan. Kom kom kom kom. Lig. Ona? Ona, kom. Lig. Ooona. Ona, lig. Je bent flink, je kan het eh. Ona kan EH.

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ALLEZ, kom een keer hier. Kom keer hier. Ona, kom, Ona, mama, Ona, mama. Ja, kom hier, kom hier. Jij zotte mie. Kom hier. Ona, mama. Ja, Ona, mama. Kom een keer hier jong, dikke knuffel! Dikke knuffel! Ja ja ja, dikke knuffel! Wie is je beste vriend? Wie is je beste vriend? Ona, wie is je beste vriend? Wie is je beste vriend? Kom hier. Rustig eh, rustig. Flink zo. Kom een keer hier. Ona, kom. Ona, mama? EH? Ona, mama? Allez, kom een keer hier. Kom een keer op m’n schoot. Eh? Kom een keer op m’n schoot. Allez, kom hier, kom kom kom. Ona beste vriend? Ona beste vriend? Allez kom hier, kom hier. Jaaa, je bent m’n beste vriend eh. Ooni Ona, Oni Ona. Ik heb een hondjeee, ALLEZ kom, ik heb een hondjeee, dat is Onassie. Wie is mijn vriend? Wie is mijn dikke vriend? Kom een keer hier eh, dikke knuffel eh. Dikke knuffel eh. Da’s flink. Ona. Hej Onaaa, je zit in de zetel, mag dat? Mag jij in de zetel? Neen, dat mag niet. Waar moet Ona zijn? Eh, waar moet Ona zijn? Maa, Ona, jij moet op je kussen. Ona, op je kussen. Ja, je mag met je staart wel slaan, maar je moet op je kussen eh. Da’s niet flink eh. Da’s nie flink eh. Nee nee nee nee nee. Ona is nie flink eh nu. Ona moet op haar kussen. Wacht, mama gaat eerst de oogjes kuisen. Eh, oogjes kuisen? Blijf eh. Mama komt. Jaa, oogjes kuisen. Goed zo. Ona, blijf. Mooi, da’s flink. Da’s een FLINKE HOND. Da’s een goeie hond. Onnna. Een dikke vriend, Ona. Ona, mooi. Eh. Ona mooie meid. Jaaa, laat een keer zien. Maa, nu ben je mooi. Nu ben jij mooie Ona. Eh? Is’t gedaan? ALLEZ, nu Ona op je kussen. Ona, op je kussen, nu. Goed gedaan, flinke meid. Eh, flinke meid met je zus Rensje. Ja, mooie honden eh. Flinke meiden, ja. En blijf eh, laat de poes gerust eh. Rustig, ja. Da’s ook de vriend van mama. Eh, da’s ook mijn vriend eh. Ja, Ona, blijf. En flink. Da’s goed gedaan. Eh, de poes is ook de vriend van mama eh. Ona en Rensje en de poezen. En blijf, en blijf. Da’s flink. Goed zo! Ona, boos? Eh, je kijkt zo boos. Mag de poes niet bij mama komen? Eh, mag de poes niet komen? Jawel eh, eh? Kom, Ona ook. Kom, kom, je mag ook komen. Kom, kom, Ona, kom. Ona, kom, nu. Kom je niet? Kom je niet? Kom. Da’s nie flink eh, Ona. Allez kom een keer bij de poes. Ooona, kom. Kom. Kom je? Nee? Allez, Ona, de poes is weg, zou je nu komen? Kom je nu? Oooh, nog niet? Kom je niet? Kom een keer bij mama, kom. Onaaa. Onaatje, kom een keer hier. Ona, kom. Ona, mee? Ga je mee Ona? Ga je mee? Kijk, Rensje is er al. Rensje is er al. Ona ook. Kom, kom naar hier. Ona, kom. 50

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En nu ga Ona rap komen. Eh? Hoort ze de koekjes? Hoor je koekjes in de kast Ona? Jaaa, lekkere koek. Ona, kom. Ona koek? Jaaa, hmmm? Nu kom je wel eh? Nu kom je wel eh? Wat ga je doen? Gaat ge hem verstoppen? Ona, wat doe je nu? De koek verstoppen in de bench? Eh? Nog een koek? Allez kom. Kom hier. Koom hier. Jaaa. En zit. Da’s flink. Da’s een flinke grote eh. Mm?

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Ooona, kom hier. Allez kom een keer hier, allez kom, nu mag jij een keer in de zetel. Nu mag jij in de zetel. Kom hier bij mama. Ona, kom maar, kom maar. Maar neen, je moet nie blijven zitten. Ona, kom, kom maar, je mag. Ona, kom hier. Ona mag. Kom. ’t Is een beetje verwarrend eh, meiske. Allez kom. Kom hier, mama zal het je vertellen. Hier, neen, kom je mag komen, kom. Kom, je mag komen. Nu mag het wel, eh, nu mag het wel. Nee, ah, ge moet nie weglopen, jij zotte meid. Allez kom. Kom. Rustig rustig. Wil je niet? Moet mama bij u op ’t kussen? Eh? Zeg, moet ik bij u op het kussen? Da’s wel lastiger ze. Je mocht in de zetel en je wou niet. Je mag in de zetel en je wou niet. Mama moest vertellen, mama moest u vertellen. Ah, hier wil je wel een knuffel. Rustig. Zachtjes, zachtjes. Zachtjes. Ja, dikke vriend. Eh. Wil je spelen? Eh, wil je spelen? Eh, mama op je kussen eh. Mama is op je kussen eh. Dikke vriend. Diiikke vriend. Eh? Wat doet de poes? Wat doet die zotte poes? Eh? Ze weent. Ja, ze weent. Waar is mijn vriend Ona? Mooh, ja, je knuffelt toch zo graag eh. Jij knuffelt toch zo graag eh, Ona, mijn lieve hond. Eh. Wat heeft Ona vandaag gedaan? Eh? Ben je zot geweest? Ben je zotte Ona geweest? Zachtjes, zachtjes met je dikke poten. Zachtjes met je dikke poot. Rustig. Ona, rustig. Flink zo, flink zo. Eh. Flinke Ona. Neen, nie likken eh, dat heeft mama niet graag. Niet likken eh. Da’s een dikke vriend. En was jij alleen? EH? Moeder was gaan werken eh. En papa is gaan werken. En de kindjes slapen nog. En Lien die moet studeren eh nu. Ja, die ga nie zo veel komen eh. Nu kan ze niet zo veel bij Ona zijn eh. Dan moet Ona een beetje alleen zijn eh. Eh. Ona is een beetje alleen geweest. Ma da’s niet erg eh. Rensje is erbij. Eh? Je dikke zus Rensje is erbij. Ja. En mama is ook rap terug gekomen eh. Eh. Mama is ook rap terug gekomen bij de lieve hond Ona.

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APPENDIX F Transcription of Anne and Prutske: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Dag klein Prutske. AWEL. Dag kleine jongen. EH? Mag ik u een beetje aaien? Eh, mag ik ons Prutske een beetje aaien? Eh, kleine jongen. Eh. Dag klein Prutske. Eh. Mwwa, lieve jongen. Eh. Beetje aaien? Een klein zoeteke eh. Ooh, ge zij zo een klein schatteke. Eh. Ooooh. Dag kleine jongen. Dag kleine jongen. EH, ge zijt zo een schatteke. Ge zij zo een schatteke. Eh. Koppeke aaien? Koppeke aaien? Eh. Ge zij zo lieve lekjes aan’t geven. Eh. Ge zij zo lekjes aan’t geven. Eh. Ge zij zo een klein lekstokje eh. Eh. Klein lekstokje. Eh. En wat heeft ons Prutske gedaan? Eh? Ons Prutske heeft hier mogen thuis zitten. Eh. Terwijl dat ik gaan werken was. Eh, ge hebt een gemakkelijk leven eh. Eh, ons Prutske heeft zo’n gemakkelijk leven. eh? een beetje in uw mandje zitten. eh. en ik een beetje werken. en Lisa mag ook een beetje werken. EH. Ah ja eh. En wat heeft ons Prutske gedaan? Beetje geblaft naar de vogeltjes? Eh, beetje naar de vogeltjes geblaft? EH? En in zijn mandje gelegen? En een beetje spelen. Eh, en een beetje speeelen. Kleine zot. Kleine zot! Eh, kleeeiine zot. Oooooh, z’n dikke buik! Dikke buik! Dikke buik. Dikke buik. Oooh, kleine jongen. Eh. Zijde een beetje wild? Ge zijt een beetje wild. Eh? *rarararar* *rararar* eh, kleine jongen.

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Prutske, gaan we es met de kip spelen? Gaan we es met de kip spelen? Kijk, hier. Kijk een keer hier de kip. Allez, pak ze, ze. Allez, de kip. Eh. Zit! Jaa! Kom ze! Allez, kom de kip brengen! Kom, Prutsie, kom. Waar is de kip? ALLEZ, moe’k ze pakken? Moe’k ze pakken? Eh? ‘k ga ze pakken ze! EH. Waar is de kip? Allez kom ze, breng ze hier! Prutsie! Allez kom. Moe ‘k ze pakken? Prutske, kom! Kom hier met de kip. Prutsie! Ah ma zo ga ik nie meer spelen eh, als ge het nie brengt. Waar is de kip? Waar is de kip? Pak ze! Eh? Allez kom! ‘k ga het pakken ze. ‘k ga het pakken ze! ‘k ga het pakken ze! Allez kom, Prutske! Breng de kip! Eh? Breng de kip! Jaaa, flinke jongen. ‘k ga ze gooien ze! Zit! Zit, jaaa. FLINKE JONGEN! ALLEZ, breng ze, ze. Allez kom, Pruts, breng ze hier. Ja, ma, moe ‘k ze pakken? Moe ‘k ze pakken? Ja, bijna. Eh. Waar is de kip? Waar is de kip? Breng ze hier, eh. Waar is de kip, Prutske? Waar is de kip? ‘k ga ze pakken ze! ‘k ga ze pakken ze! EH? Allez kom, kom een keer. Eh? Jaa, flinke jongen! *rrrrrrrrrrrr* Af! Af, Prutske! Jaaaa. Pak ze, ze! FLINKE JONGEN. Eh? FLINKE JONGEN.

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Awel boeboe. AWEL mijne kleinen boeboe. Eh. AWEL awel awel awel. Eh. Klein snottebelleke. Eh. Klein sloeberke. Eh? Hoe is ’t met u? Eh? Hoe is ’t met u? Krijg ik een lekje? Eh? Zo ’n lieve jongen. Eh? Zo een lieve jongen. Eh. Ahja, hij is zo braaf. Eh. Ah, hij is zo braaf. Eh, ’t is een kleine boeboe eh. EH? Mijn klein boeboeke. Eh. AWEL awel awel. Eh. Zijde blij dat mama thuis was vandaag? Eh? Ma ja eh. Eh. Ma ja eh, dat hebde gij graag eh. Eh. Lieveke. Eh. Ma ja, zo ne lieve jongen. Eh? Krijg ik een lekje van u? eh? Eh? Klein sloeberke. Mama ziet u graag eh. Eh? Mama ziet u graag eh. EH? Eh, en hij is zo braaaf. En hij ligt hier zo braaf in zijn mandje. Eh? Zijde gij een beetje aan ’t rusten? Eh? Zijde gij een beetje aan ’t rusten? Eh. Kleeeine boebie. Kleeeine boebie. Eh. Lieve jongen. Eh. Zo nen brave jongen eh. Maa ja. Maaa ja. Eh. Maaa ja. Klein sloeberke. Eh. Zo braaf eh. Hij ziet mij graag eh. Prutske ziet mij graag eh. EH. Maar ik zie Prutske ook graag ze. Eh. Ik zie Prutske ook graag ze. Eh. Ma ja, zo veel lekjes dat ik krijg van u. eh. Zoooveel lekjes. Eh. Zo ne FLINKE JONGEN. Eh. Zooo ne flinke jongen. Eh.

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Allez Prutske, waar is de kip? EH? Gaan we met de kip spelen? Eh? Allez, waar is uw kip? Pak de kip! Allez, zoek ze! ALLEZ, zoek de kip. Waar is de kip? Waar is de kip? Ze ligt daar! Allez, pak ze! Daar, daar is de kip. Hiiiier is de kip. Jaa. De kip pakken? Wacht ze. Jjjaa! Allez. Jaaa, flinke jongen. Eh. ALLEZ ze, flink hoor. Flink. Eh. Allez, los. Los. Los. Los. Allez, Prutske, los. Laat de kip los. Allez. Af. Jaa. Allez, pak ze, ze. Jaaaa! Flinke jongen! Flinke jongen! EH. Waar is de kip? Eh. Hier eh. Eh. Ja. Allez. Oh. Oh. Oei. Jaaa, flinke jongen, flinke jongen, eh. Kom, we gaan nog es gooien. Los. Jaaa, flinke Pruts. Eh. FLINKE JONGEN. Ja. Jaaa, flink. Jaaaa. Eh. Allez, los. Ja. Kom, hier, breng ze hier. Breng ze hier, de kip. Allez kom, Prutske, breng ze hier. Allez, pak de kip! Allez! Allez, pak de kip! Allez, breng ze hier! Waar is de kip? Allez, kga ze pakken ze, de kip. Kga ze pakken ze. Ja. Oei, waar is de kip nu? Oh, waar is de kip nu? Eh, waar is ze nu, de kip? Oei, ha ja! Prutske heeft ze gepakt! Prutske heeft ze gevonden! Flink eh. Eh. Allez, los. Los. Los. Jaaa. Oei, waar is ze nu, de kip? Eh, kip is weg. Kip is weg. Ja. Ja! Flink! Eh, ge hebt ze gevonden! EH? Prutske heeft ze gevonden. Eh. Daaank u. Af. Af. Af. ALLEZ, af. Allez. ‘k ga ze pakken ze. Eh, ‘k ga ze pakken ze, de kip. ALLEZ, los. Hehe, ja, ik heb de kip! Ik heb ze. Waar is ze? Ge moet ze pakken eh. Jaa, flinke jongen. Prutske heeft ze gepakt. Eh? Allez. Los! Los! Ja. Oei. Ja! Flinke jongen. Eh. Flink. Los! Los! Jaa, FLINKE JONGEN. Allez. Jaa, flinke jongen. Allez, kom, geef ze hier. Hier, kom, hier. Allez, pak ze. Allez, pak ze! Hier, Prutske, hier moet de kip. Allez, pak de kip. Moe ‘k ze pakken? Moe’k ze kik pakken? Moe’k ze kik pakken? Allez, pak ze. Jaa, flink. Jaa, jaa, Prutske heeft ze gepakt!

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Prutske, niet springen. Strakjes. Allez, in uw mand. ALLEZ! Af. Af. Af. Allez, Prutske. Af! Ja. Ja ma! Af, af, Prutske af. Nu mag Prutske zijn eten hebben. Zit! Af! Op! Jaa, FLINKE JONGEN. ALLEZ ze. Lieve bobbie. Boebie. Hmm? Is ’t lekker? EH, is ’t lekker?

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Voila, ’t is allemaal op. Voila, aaaallemaal op. Prutske, ’t is aaallemaal op. Heb je er dorst van gekregen? Nu een boerke. Ja.

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