Language Attitudes Regarding Communication with Young Children and the Use of Diminutives

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The main question addressed by this research is what kind of language attitude Estonian parents have when they communicate with young children. The research also looks into how socioeconomic status of the parents may influence their attitude.

According to the authors, parents’ language attitudes towards communication with younger children have been under-researched in Eastern-Europe, and this research fills the gap. I this regard, this research is original and relevant to the field.

The authors gathered data by survey using Google forms. Questions included open-ended ones. It could have been better if the authors conducted interviews with survey participants—those who have agreed to be interviewed--in order to have more detailed qualitative analyses of language attitudes of the participants.

Out of 246 participants only 7 (2.86%) were male, i.e. fathers. Therefore, the research focuses on the language attitudes of mothers participating in the survey. It could have been better if more fathers have participated in the survey.

The conclusions are consistent with the survey data and they address the main question of this research: there two different attitudes toward communication with young children; socioeconomic factors does not seem to make difference in the attitudes.

References are appropriate.

Please find more detailed comments below. 

1) On lines 473-475, you mentioned "68% for urban participants responded positively, while 64% of rural participants provided a negative response." Although the difference between the two groups was not significant (p=0.7210) as you stated, I would like you to elaborate this difference.

2) About the comments given for open-ended questions, I would like to know "who said what". For example, who said "[o]ne does not need to speak to a three-year-old as if they are a child"?

3) In Section 3.3, I would like to know what kind of "negative comments" were given. I wonder why you did not ask for such comments.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is a well-written and structured text. The results are not always surprising, but in my opinion they are still worth describing.

My only major comment concerns the statistics. The authors use chi-square tests and test the possible sociological influences one after the other. Such an approach (many statistical tests) carries the risk of achieving significance by chance. As long as nothing significant comes out of it, I don't think that's a problem. However, with such an approach, it is also impossible to control the extent to which the independent variables are interrelated (e.g., there may be more older people in rural areas). Thirdly, with regard to age and number of known languages, it would be good not to treat these variables as categorical ones, but as metric/numeric or at least as ordinal ones (then the results might look different: the younger you are, the less you seem to agree with the question ‘Is it necessary to speak differently with pre-verbal children?’). A better approach would be logistic regression. I leave it to the editors to decide on this.

Furthermore, I cannot always understand the statistics, e.g. 473 ‘Regarding the use of diminutives with children, 68% of urban participants responded positively, while 64% of rural participants provided a negative response. The difference between the two groups was also not significant (p = 0.721).’ When I replicate this using the numbers of urban (163) and rural (82) participants, I get 30 vs. 52 among rural respondents, but 111 vs. 52 among urban respondents. This corresponds to a Chi2 value of 22.2, with p < 0.001.

The authors should definitely check all the statistics again.

Minor comments:

161: “However, there is a notable lack of data regarding attitudes within specific cultural contexts, such as the East European culture represented by Estonian families.’ ‘East European culture’ sounds too monolithic to me here.

193: Was it really random sampling? That would mean that the group is representative of all Estonian parents? That does not seem to be the case to me. Was it rather a process in which volunteers were sought through various channels?

Table 1: Mean age -> age

Table 1 / line 205: Is this about the number of known languages (table) or about known languages besides Estonian (text)?

197: mother language: -> mother tongue / native language.

The paragraph starting at 358 repeats the paragraph starting at 346. (In the former, the quotations are not translated).

Not all numbers are visible in Figure 3.

I hope the authors find my comments helpful!

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for considering my comments, and congratulations on this interesting paper. I believe it makes a valuable contribution to the study of language ideologies, parental attitudes, and child-directed speech, particularly in under-researched cultural contexts. However, there are several points that, I think, need improvement. 

General points

1. Theoretical framing: While the topic is timely and promising, the conceptual and analytical contribution is currently limited by imprecise theoretical framing. The paper uses the terms "attitudes" and "ideologies" interchangeably, although these are conceptually distinct. As this distinction is central to the research questions and interpretations, I recommend clarifying which construct is being examined, how you define it, and what theoretical implications follow from that choice.

2. Focus and coherence: The manuscript partly loses focus. The theoretical background devotes substantial attention to diminutives, but this focus is not consistently mirrored in the research design or framing. For instance, RQ3 refers to “features of CDS (e.g., diminutives),” but only diminutives are subsequently examined. Since diminutives play a central role in both your theoretical rationale and your analysis, I suggest rephrasing the research question accordingly to better reflect the actual focus of the study.

3. Interpretation of results: Several parts of the discussion rely on speculative interpretations that are not clearly supported by the data. For example, in lines 562–564, the authors suggest that parents may focus on vocabulary and phonology rather than morphology, but this claim is not empirically grounded. I recommend either supporting such claims with additional evidence or removing them.

4. Integration with previous research: The study would benefit from closer alignment between the empirical results and the theoretical literature discussed earlier in the paper. Which findings confirm existing studies? Which diverge and why? 

5. Broader implications: The relevance of the study, potentially beyond the Estonian context, should be more explicitly articulated. What are the broader takeaways for scholars, caregivers, or educators? A more substantial discussion of your study’s implications would help underline its significance.

Specific Points

• Lines 346–356 read as if preliminary text was mistakenly left in the final version. Please revise or remove.

• Line 197: I suggest replacing “mother tongue” with “L1” or another neutral term.

• Lines 197–198: I agree with your focus on Estonian speakers and do not see the lack of balance between Estonian and russian respondents as a problem. Even with a more balanced sample, generalizability would remain limited, but this is not a weakness per se.

• Figures: Graphs are currently hard to read due to similar shading. Please consider using patterns, color contrasts, or labels.

• Statistical analyses: While the chi-square tests are appropriate, some of the tested variables appear unmotivated. For instance, it is unclear why the number of languages spoken by a parent would influence their use of diminutives. If these analyses are exploratory, this should be stated clearly.

• Data protection: The use of Google Forms raises questions about data protection and participant confidentiality. Please briefly explain how these concerns were addressed, particularly in line with ethical standards.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The English is largely appropriate and understandable. Occasional phrasing or article use could be smoothed out, but these are minor and do not impede comprehension. Some editorial polishing may help.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for taking into account my suggestions. I think the paper has now improved very much.

Two minor points:

• Lines 40–44: Is there a subject missing in the sentence?
  Also, “Divorced” should probably be replaced with “Separated.”
• Regarding Figure 2: the similar shading of the segments still makes it difficult to read (at least for me). Perhaps you could add to the table descriptions that the order of the elements in the legend matches the order in the graph?

Author Response

• Lines 40–44: The sentence has been corrected by adding the missing subject.

• “Divorced” has been replaced with “Separated.”

• Regarding Figure 2: All figures have been revised to improve readability, and the legend order has been clarified in the descriptions.