this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
1634 points (99.2% liked)

Science Memes

10923 readers
1948 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.

Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
1634
Get good. (mander.xyz)
submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
137 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Is it really universal though? I don't recall that from my linguistics masters at all, in fact I think I recall pretty much the opposite...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago

I'm fairly sure that studies have shown that even birds do baby talk but it's been a while since i read that

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I thought the universal part was the tone and cadence people use when talking to small children, and not the actual words or grammar changes.

It's why you can listen to a recording of a language you don't know and tell if they're talking to a baby, but there are also cultures that essentially don't talk to them at all until they have language.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I just wonder if it's true. It's certainly true for many indo-european languages, but I wonder if there's been a typological study with a representative sample of languages done for it. I'm not sure I buy it being a language univeral.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

우리 애기 너어어무 이쁘으찌이이이

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

우리 애기 너어어무 이쁘으찌이이이

Tillykke med dit smukke barn!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)31114-4?xid=PS_smithsonian

I know I've read a handful of things roughly a long these line, that basically it's probably not universal that humans simplify language for infants, but that we likely do shift how we vocalize to them.

Seems like a reasonably plausible hypothesis to me.