Exploring Child-Directed Language of Lebanese Mothers: Analyzing Quality, Quantity, and Pragmatic Functions of Linguistic Input

Maternal linguistic input is critical for a child's language development, yet little is known about how Lebanese mothers communicate with their children. This exploratory study analyzed child-directed speech (CDS) from ten mother-child dyads in Lebanon, recorded in three contexts: (a) playing with toys, (b) reading a wordless picture book, and (c) an activity of the mothers’ choice. The conversations were transcribed and analyzed using CLAN. They were also coded for the pragmatic functions used by mothers. Results from a repeated measures ANOVA revealed that mothers used significantly more diverse words and more words per minute during the book-reading context compared to the other contexts. Labels and attention directives were more frequent in book reading, while action directives were used more during naturalistic interactions. These findings highlight the significance of studying CDS in diverse cultural contexts, contributing to the limited literature on Arabic CDS with research and clinical implications.