this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
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Science Memes

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submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 184 points 3 weeks ago (46 children)

Baby-talk is a universal human phenomenal and almost certainly plays an important role in helping kids learn language.

The implication that not using baby talk somehow unlocks rapid development of language is simply not true.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 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 3 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 3 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 3 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 3 weeks ago (1 children)

우리 애기 너어어무 이쁘으찌이이이

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

우리 애기 너어어무 이쁘으찌이이이

Tillykke med dit smukke barn!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 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.

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