| Random Character |
|---|
|
| Baby Speak |
|
|
|
|
Why is it that when a baby comes into the room, every sensible speaking adult breaks into koochi koochi koo and goo goo ga ga? This foreign language, familiar to all of us, is commonly known as baby speak or motherese. It’s been around as long as humans can remember but does it actually help children learn to speak? Researchers at the University of Western Sydney are studying this phenomenon and have made some interesting discoveries. Nan Xu is a PhD student at the University of Western Sydney, she says baby speak has been around for ages, "It's been a great way for parents to show infants how they feel, it often carried a lot of emotion. Mothers also tend to stress vowels which is linked to language development in infants." In the past decade a lot more studies have been conducted into baby speak, but they've only looked at it in Anglo or English speaking cultures. "I'm studying how Cantonese mothers communicate with their infants. Cantonese is what we call a tonal language, where the different meanings of words is distinguished by tone rather than spelling. Take Mandarin for example, it has four tones for one word, so that each word has a different meaning." In lingistics, pitch and tone is the same thing. She says that adults tend to increase their pitch when speaking to babies, "It may be to catch the attention of the child, or it could be that the infant ears of a child haven't been developed yet. Their vocal tract hasn't been properly formed either, so they can't form out words like adults." Ms Xu says baby speak seems to be an instinctual emotional form of communication to form a bond with the child. But interestingly enough, baby speak isn't only relegated to mother and child, "I've seen siblings as young as four speaking to their brother and sister in baby speak." She says that baby speak even spans across cultures around the world, it's prevalent in even the most isolated communities. There have been concerns that baby speak hinders language development in children, "This is a myth that has been carried on for some time. Baby speak is vitally important in helping infants sound out words and it helps them develop socially, emotionally and linguistically." Nan Xu has also been involved in an honours thesis, studying the way humans speak to dogs and parots. It seems we don't speak to dogs in quite the same way as we do to children, "We don't stress vowels when we speak to dogs, but we do increase the pitch and emotionality of our words. You need to train dogs to respond to your voice and commands." Infants it seems just have to mimic us. Source: www.abc.net Nov 2, 05 |
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|