Developing sensitivity to the sources of information: Early use of the Japanese quotative particles tte and to in mother–child conversation

The ability of infants and toddlers to imitate words they hear promotes early word learning. Their imitation of words gradually grows into proper quotation of words and utterances, in which the original source of the utterance is formally acknowledged. Little is known, however, about the development of children's ability to quote a variety of linguistic inputs. On the basis of previous findings in theory-of-mind research and cognitive pragmatics, we adopted the following working hypotheses: children will (a) quote onomatopoeia and words earlier and more frequently than utterances; (b) first quote utterances concerning desires and emotions and later quote utterances expressing thoughts; and (c) base early quotations on resemblance in form rather than resemblance in meaning. These hypotheses were tested in a study of Japanese quotative particles in recorded conversations between a mother and her child. The data are intensive and longitudinal, and detailed analyses of their conversational content generally support the hypotheses, with one important difference. Contrary to our first hypothesis, the child quoted utterances as often as onomatopoeia and words, the majority of which were imagined utterances attributed to the child's non-human companions.