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In Brief
- As young children learn to talk, they progress through stages of imperfect grammar, such as speaking in one-word sentences or dropping articles and word endings (“Mommy get bowl”).
- Scientists have long questioned whether these stages exist because a toddler’s brains cannot handle complex grammar or whether they are necessary stepping-stones in language development at any age.
- By studying international adoptees of varying ages, researchers found evidence that the stages of language usage are essential and not dependent on mental development.
Editor's Note: This article was adapted from Mind Matters, www.ScientificAmerican.com/MindMatters, a column edited by Gareth Cook, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist at the Boston Globe, and Jonah Lehrer, the science writer behind the blog The Frontal Cortex, http://scienceblogs.com/cortex
The setting: a nursery. A baby speaks directly to the camera: “Look at this. I’m a free man. I go anywhere I want now.” He describes his stock-buying activities, but then his phone interrupts. “Relentless! Hang on a second.” He answers his phone. “Hey, girl, can I hit you back?”
This article was originally published with the title Why Don't Babies Talk Like Adults?.
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9 Comments
Add CommentWhos babbling?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJoshua Hartshorne argues in the article, Why Dont Babies Talk Like Adults? , that behaviourisms theory of language learning cannot explain why children are not as fluent speakers as adults. That might be true, but at the same time its beside the intention of behaviourism. Behaviourism tries to explain how the funny sounds we call words convey meaning, and gives rise to different kinds of actions. What Hartshorne basically reveals to us is that the capacity to build a sentence depends on the size of the vocabulary. Thats more or less the same as saying that it is easier to build a house if you have more than one brick.
Still it seems that the behaviourist model of association classical conditioning is the best way to explain how a brain would establish a stabile relation between a sound and a series of events: i.e. a baby babbling milk and a father getting up from his chair, opening the fridge, taking out the milk, returning to the table and pouring the milk. Having a lot of bricks does not enable one to build a house. Being able to convey sounds and tie them together is not the same as conveying meaning. Therefore there is no contradiction between Hartshornes points and the behaviouristic approach. On the contrary, for anyone learning a new language, no matter the age, its necessary to learn to associate between new sounds and phenomenons and event chains. Here some kind of conditioning seems to prevail as a prototypic model.
Lars Andreassen, Denmark
Baby-waby getty screwy-wooie input from daddy-waddy and mummy-wummy, so hims widdle cutie-pootie has no chance to learn speech patterns and how to string words together until much later than they would if not fed baby-babble by parents and doting aunties.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn 1957, B.F. Skinner published "Verbal Behavior," which probably can be regarded as the acme of attempts to explain language based upon association and "conditioning." The descent began two years later, spurred largely by this devastating critique by Noam Chomsky of the book and the entire behaviorist enterprise on which it was based: http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1967----.htm
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBehaviorism, as an attempt to explain -- as opposed to mimic -- higher mental processes has never recovered.
I've been learning Spanish, and now approaching bi-lingual- but when I started my Spanish sounded just like baby talk! [I suppose native speakers still might make the case:-)]
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks, Silverhairdevil, I couldn't have put it better. Baby talk was never used or permitted in our household. Consequently, our kid always has talked like an adult, since before she could walk. I also spoke to her every day in the womb...with a low pitched adult voice. The delivery nurses were blown away that she responded to me and recognized me immediatly. Stay cool.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps someone might offer me an explanation of how it happened that my first words, at the age of nine months, were a complete sentence ("What['s] that?").
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thismauims -- "whatsthat" is, to a baby, one word. And if the baby constantly hears "whatsthat?" over and over, particularly when a caregiver is paying close attention to that baby, chances are high that these syllables will be repeated.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI spoke in complete sentences from the beginning, and I started speaking early too, at least according to my mother. I was a peculiar child, though. I used to point at everything in order to get my parents to tell me each things name. They also mostly spoke to me like an adult. I think this still fits in with the theory that a certain vocabulary must be built up before children can speak like adults, I just think some children speak while they're collecting, and some wait until they have it all before they start talking.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMost interesting, considering that I was pointing to the chandelier in my grandmother's bedroom (from the vantage point of my tall aunt's shoulder) when I made the comment!
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