Baby talk, motherese, parentese or child-directed speech (CDS) is a nonstandard form of speech used by adults in talking to toddlers and infants. It is usually delivered with a "cooing" pattern of intonation different from that of normal adult speech: high in pitch, with many glissando variations that are more pronounced than those of normal speech. Baby talk is also characterized by the shortening and simplifying of words. Baby talk is also used by people when talking to their pets, and between adults as a form of affection, intimacy, bullying or patronizing. Baby talk is a child-oriented form of speech. ... Intonation, in linguistics, is the variation of pitch when speaking. ... Pitch is the perceived fundamental frequency of a sound. ... Glissando (plural: glissandi) is a musical term that refers to either a continuous sliding from one pitch to another (a true glissando), or an incidental scale played while moving from one melodic note to another (an effective glissando). ...

Terminology

• Baby talk is a long-established and universally understood traditional term.
• Motherese and parentese are more precise terms than baby talk, and perhaps more amenable to computer searches, but are not the terms of choice among child development professionals (and by critics of gender stereotyping with respect to the term motherese) because all caregivers, not only parents, use distinct speech patterns and vocabulary when talking to young children. Motherese can also refer to English spoken in a higher, gentler manner, which is otherwise correct English, as opposed to the non-standard, shortened word forms.
• Child-directed speech or CDS is the term preferred by researchers, psychologists and child development professionals.

This article includes a list of works cited or a list of external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations. ... A bagpiper in Scottish military clan-uniform. ...

Possible purposes

Use with infants

Baby talk is more effective than regular speech in getting an infant's attention. Studies have shown that infants actually prefer to listen to this type of speech.^[1] Some researchers, including Rima Shore (1997), believe that baby talk is an important part of the emotional bonding process. For the band, see 1997 (band). ...

Aid to cognitive development

Shore and other researchers believe that baby talk contributes to mental development, as it helps teach the child the basic function and structure of language. Studies have found that responding to an infant's babble with meaningless babble aids the infant's development; while the babble has no logical meaning, the verbal interaction demonstrates to the child the bidirectional nature of speech, and the importance of verbal feedback. Some experts advise that parents should not talk to infants and young children solely in baby talk, but should integrate some normal adult speech as well. The high-pitched sound of motherese gives it special acoustic qualities which may appeal to the infant (Goodluck 1991). Motherese may aid a child in the acquisition and/or comprehension of language-particular rules which are otherwise unpredictable, when utilizing principles of universal grammar (Goodluck 1991). Some feel that parents should refer to the child and others by their names only (no pronouns, i.e., he's, I's, or you's), to avoid confusing infants who have yet to form an identity independent from their parents. Cognitive development procesess and theories Cognitive development refers to ...how a person perceives, thinks, and gains an understanding of his or her world through the interaction and influence of genetic and learned factors (Straughan, 1999) Jean Piaget was a psychologist who believed there are stages of cognitive development that each... Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics Language acquisition is the process by which the language capability develops in a human. ...

Questions regarding universality

Some researchers have pointed out that baby talk is not universal among the world's cultures, and argue that its role in "helping children learn grammar" has been overestimated. In some societies (such as certain Samoan tribes; see first reference) adults do not speak to their children until the children reach a certain age. In other societies, it is more common to speak to children as one would to an adult, but with simplifications in grammar and vocabulary. In order to relate to the child during baby talk, a parent may deliberately slur or fabricate some words, and may pepper the speech with nonverbal utterances. A parent might refer only to objects and events in the immediate vicinity, and will often repeat the child's utterances back to him/her. Since children employ a wide variety of phonological and morphological simplifications (usually distance assimilation or reduplication) in learning speech, such interaction results in the "classic" baby-words like na-na for grandmother or din-din for dinner, where the child seizes on a stressed syllable of the input, and simply repeats it to form a word. Assimilation is a regular and frequent sound change process by which a phoneme changes to match an adjacent phoneme in a word. ... Reduplication, in linguistics, is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word, or only part of it, is repeated. ... In linguistics, stress is the emphasis given to some syllables (often no more than one in each word, but in many languages, long words have a secondary stress a few syllables away from the primary stress, as in the words cóunterfòil or còunterintélligence. ... A syllable (Ancient Greek: ) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. ...

In any case, the normal child will eventually acquire the local language without difficulty, regardless of the degree of exposure to baby talk. However, the use of motherese could have an important role in affecting the rate and quality of language acquisition.

Use with non-infants

The use of baby talk is not limited to interactions between adults and infants, as it may be used among adults, or by adults to animals. In these instances, the outward style of the language may be that of baby talk, but is not considered actual parentese, as it serves a different linguistic function (see pragmatics). Pragmatics is the study of the ability of natural language speakers to communicate more than that which is explicitly stated. ...

Patronizing/derogatory baby talk

Baby talk may be used by one noninfant to another as a form of verbal abuse, in which the talk is intended to infantalize the victim. This can occur during bullying, when the bully uses baby talk to assert that the victim is weak, cowardly, overemotional, or otherwise submissive. An insult is a statement or action which affronts or demeans someone. ... Bullying is the tormenting of others through verbal harassment, physical assault, or other more subtle methods of coercion such as manipulation. ...

Flirtatious baby talk

Baby talk may be used as a form of flirtation between sex partners. In this instance, the baby talk may be an expression of tender intimacy, and may form part of affectionate role play in which one partner speaks and behaves childishly, while the other acts motherly or fatherly, responding in parentese. Or both partners might perform the child role. Flirting is alleged to be a form of human interaction, usually expressing a sexual or romantic interest in the other person. ... Sexual roleplaying is a sexual behavior between two or more people in which they take on erotic roles to carry out a sexual fantasy. ...

Baby talk with pets

Many people use falsetto, glissando and repetitive speech similar to baby talk when addressing their pets. Such talk is not commonly used by professionals who train working animals, but is very common among owners of companion pets. This style of speech is different from baby talk, despite intonal similarities, especially if the speaker uses rapid rhythms and forced breathiness which may mimic the animal's utterances. Pets often learn to respond well to the emotional states and specific commands of their owners who use baby talk, especially if the owner's intonations are very distinct from ambient noise. For example, a dog may recognize baby talk as his owner's invitation to play (as is a dog's natural "play bow"); a cat may learn to come when addressed with the the high-pitched utterance, "Heeeeere kitty- kitty-kitty-kitty- kitty- kitty!" It has been suggested that Residential pets be merged into this article or section. ... A working animal is a (semi-)domesticated animal that is kept by humans and often trained to perform various tasks, regardless whether they are also used for consumption of meat and milk or for other products (such as leather). ... A dog might stretch after standing up, just as people do, or might drop into a stretch to lead into a play bow or to calm a person or other dog. ...

Vocabulary

As noted above, baby talk often involves shortening and simplifying words, with the possible addition of slurred words and nonverbal utterances, and can invoke a vocabulary of its own. Some utterances are invented by parents within a particular family unit, or passed down from parent to parent over generations, while others are quite widely known.

A fair number of baby talk and nursery words refer to bodily functions or private parts, partly because the words are relatively easy to pronounce. Moreover, such words reduce adults' discomfort with the subject matter, and make it possible for children to discuss such things without breaking adult taboos. Private Parts, a 1997 movie about Howard Stern. ... This article is about cultural prohibitions in general, for other uses, see Taboo (disambiguation). ...

Some examples of widely-used baby talk words and phrases in English, many of which are not found within standard dictionaries, include: The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

• baba (bottle)
• beddy-bye (go to bed, sleeping, bedtime)
• binkie (pacifier or blanket)
• blankie (blanket)
• boo-boo (wound or bruise)
• bubby (brother)
• dada (dad, daddy)
• didee (diaper)
• nappy (diaper - diaper is not used in British English: nappy is the correct word)
• din-din (dinner)
• num nums( food/dinner)
• ickle (little (chiefly British))
• icky (disgusting)
• jammies (pajamas)
• nana (grandmother)
• oopsie-daisy (small accident)
• owie (wound or bruise)
• pee-pee (urinate)
• poo-poo or doo-doo (defecation)
• potty (toilet)
• sissy (sister)
• sleepy-bye (go to bed, sleeping, bedtime)
• stinky (defecation)
• wawa (water)
• wee-wee (urination or penis)
• widdle (urine (chiefly British))
• widdle (little (chiefly American))
• wuv (love)
• yucky (disgusting)
• yum-yum (meal time)
• mama (mom, mommy)
• uppie ( wanting to be picked up)

Moreover, many words can be derived into baby talk following certain rules of transformation, in English adding a terminal /i/ sound is a common way to form a diminutive which is used as part of baby talk, examples include:

• horsey (from horse)
• kitty (from cat or kitten)
• potty (originally from pot now equivalent to modern toilet)
• puppy (from pup)
• doggy (from dog)

Other transformations mimic the way infants mistake certain consonants which in English can include turning /l/ into /w/ as in wuv from love or widdo from little or in pronouncing /v/ as /b/ and /ð/ or /t/ as /d/.

Examples

• The novelist Booth Tarkington, in Seventeen (1917), gives this example of baby talk, in this case, from a pet owner speaking to her dog:

...pressing her cheek to Flopit's, she changed her tone. "Izzum's ickle heart a-beatin' so floppity! Um's own mumsy make ums all right, um's p'eshus Flopit!"

• George Orwell, in Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), gives us another example addressed to a pet dog:

"A Peke, the ickle angel pet, wiv his gweat big soulful eyes and his ickle black nosie — oh so ducky-duck!"

• Punch, April 23, 1919, in a humorous piece purporting to pose examination questions on "the interesting language known as Bablingo", quizzes the examinee on items such as "Wasums and didums, then? Was it a ickle birdie, then?" "Did he woz-a-woz, then; a Mum's own woz-man?" and "Did she try to hit her ickle bruzzer on his nosie-posie wiz a mug? Did she want to break him up into bitsy-witsies?"
• At early points in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter's cousin, Dudley, is the subject of frequent baby talk by Harry's "non-magic" relatives, while Harry is always spoken to sternly and seriously. This technique is used to show how much that part of the family dotes on "Ickle Duddykins".
• At the end of The Miracle Worker, when Helen and her teacher are at a water well with their hands under the faucet, Helen begins to say wa-wa, her baby-talk word for water.

Time magazine, December 21, 1925 Newton Booth Tarkington (July 29, 1869 _ May 19, 1946) was an American novelist and dramatist. ... Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 [1] [2] – 21 January 1950), better known by the pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist. ... Punch was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire published from 1841 to 1992 and from 1996 to 2002. ... is the 113th day of the year (114th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1919 (MCMXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar). ... This article is about the Harry Potter series of novels. ... The Miracle Worker is a cycle of 20th-century dramatic works ultimately derived from Helen Kellers autobiography, The Story of My Life. ...

See also

• Mama and papa
• Babbling

In linguistics, mama and papa refers to the sequences of sounds , and similar ones are known to correspond to the word for mother and father in many languages of the world, often completely unrelated among themselves. ... Babbling is a stage in child language acquisition, during which an infant appears to be experimenting with making the sounds of language, but not yet producing any recognizable words. ...

References

1. ^ Kathy L. Reschke, Ph.D.(2002), Ohio State University, "Baby Talk"

• Ochs, Elinor and Bambi Schieffelin. (1984). "Language acquisition and socialization: Three developmental stories." Culture Theory Eds. R. Shweder and R. LeVine. 276-320.
• Shore, Rima. (1997). Rethinking the brain: New insights into early development. New York: Families and Work Institute.
• Evans, Chris ([1196-200]) Use on British Channel 4 program TFI Friday. e.g. the ickle drum kit.
• Jennifer Lynch, University of Massachusetts Amherst. http://www.umass.edu/writprog/willing/lynch.htm

Also see: 2002 (number). ... This article is about the year. ... For the band, see 1997 (band). ...

External links

• Ba-Ba-Ba. Baby Talk: Perfect! by Karen Blaha
• The Uses of Baby Talk by Naomi S. Baron of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics
• Beyond Baby Talk: Child Development Tips (and More!) for Your Infant and Toddler by Jill C. Johnson, M.S. -CCC/SLP.