Native speakers recorded utterances in three role-play contexts: speech to presyllabic infants, foreign language instruction, and adult conversation. For babytalk, speakers neglected, reduced, or modified lexical tonal information in favor of simplified and clarified intonation contours. The implications regarding tone acquisition in children and…

Cultural stereotypes that interpret girls as less forceful or less assertive than boys in pursuing their own agendas, particularly during conflict episodes, are questioned. A theory of double-voice discourse is proposed to characterize a type of conflict talk that has a dual orientation, and examples for three- and four-year-old girls' talk are…