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submitted 2 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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[-] EvilCartyen@feddit.dk 10 points 2 months ago

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...

[-] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 9 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] EvilCartyen@feddit.dk 7 points 2 months ago

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.

[-] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months 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.