Baby Talk - Universality and Differences By Region

Universality and Differences By Region

Researchers Bryant and Barrett (2007) have suggested (as have others before them, e.g., Fernald, 1992) that baby talk exists universally across all cultures and is a species-specific adaptation. Other researchers contend that it is not universal among the world's cultures, and argue that its role in helping children learn grammar has been overestimated. As evidence they point out that in some societies (such as certain Samoan tribes), adults do not speak to their children at all until the children reach a certain age. Furthermore, even where baby-talk is used, it is full of complicated grammatical constructs, and mispronounced or non-existent words. Other evidence suggests that baby talk is not a universal phenomenon. Schieffelin & Ochs (1983), for example, describe the Kaluli tribe of Papua New Guinea who do not typically employ infant-directed speech. Language acquisition in Kaluli children was not found to be significantly impaired. In other societies, it is more common to speak to children as one would to an adult, but with simplifications in grammar and vocabulary, with the belief that it will help them learn words as they are known in the standard form.

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 them. 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, wawa for water, or din-din for dinner, where the child seizes on a stressed syllable of the input, and simply repeats it to form a word.

Although child directed speech proves to be a concept recognized cross culturally, the extent to which caregivers rely on and use this method of communication differs based on cultural differences. Mothers in regions that display predominately introverted cultures are less likely to display a great deal of child directed speech, although it is still utilized. Further, the personality of each child experiencing child directed from a caregiver deeply impacts the extent to which a caregiver will use this method of communication. Infant directed speech has been seen in a wide variety of languages such as Japanese, Italian, Mandarin, English, and German. This illustrates the universality of the practice and serves as an indication that infant directed speech is an necessary aspect of social development for children. Although it is found in many cultures it is far from universal in terms of style and amount it is used. What is found to be a factor in the way adults communicate with children is the way the culture views children, if for example they view children as helpless and unable to understand, adults tend to interact with children less than if the belief is that children are capable of learning and understanding. Often cultures lacking a form of CDS make up for it in other ways like involving the children more in everyday activities.

For example, research suggests that in a tonal language, such as Mandarin, the use of child directed speech is beneficial to development. Specifically, Mandarin features lexical tones that must be used with every syllable which in turn convey meaning. It has been seen that in tonal languages such as in this example mothers use child directed speech by heightening the pitch of speaking making the product easier for infants to understand. The raising of pitch in speech associated with child directed speech is present cross culturally and occurs regardless of the language being spoken. Psychoacoustic studies on intonation have been used to further determine the effect of higher pitch and exaggerated syllables used in child directed speech. These tests have determined that the properties of child directed speech do not create additional difficulty for infants when attempting to distinguish speech. Instead, the raised pitch and elongated style of child directed speech allow for more effective communication. Further, Mandarin speaking mothers who emphasized changes between phonemes had children with higher successes in language discrimination tests. These findings also occur cross culturally, and present themselves clearly in the English language. Ultimately, regardless of geographic region, the use of child directed speech allows infants to develop the capacity for language more quickly due to its distinct qualities.