The rate at which young children are directly spoken to varies due to many factors, including (a) caregiver ideas about children as conversational partners and (b) the organization of everyday life. Prior work suggests cross-cultural variation in rates of child-directed speech is due to the former factor, but has been fraught with confounds in comparing postindustrial and subsistence farming communities. We investigate the daylong language environments of children (0;0–3;0) on Rossel Island, Papua New Guinea, a small-scale traditional community where prior ethnographic study demonstrated contingency-seeking child interaction styles. In fact, children were infrequently directly addressed and linguistic input rate was primarily affected by situational factors, though children's vocalization maturity showed no developmental delay. We compare the input characteristics between this community and a Tseltal Mayan one in which near-parallel methods produced comparable results, then briefly discuss the models and mechanisms for learning best supported by our findings.

中文翻译：

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巴布亚社区的早期语言经验

直接与幼儿交谈的比率因许多因素而异，包括 (a) 照顾者将儿童视为对话伙伴的想法和 (b) 日常生活的组织。先前的工作表明，针对儿童的演讲率的跨文化差异是由于前一个因素造成的，但在比较后工业和自给农业社区时却充满了困惑。我们调查了巴布亚新几内亚罗塞尔岛儿童 (0;0–3;0) 一整天的语言环境，这是一个小规模的传统社区，之前的民族志研究证明了寻求应急的儿童互动方式。事实上，儿童很少被直接解决，语言输入率主要受情境因素的影响，尽管儿童的发声成熟度没有显示发育迟缓。