Musings on Baby Talk versus Parentese

     Ever heard this?  "Hewwo, my widdle man."  If you're a baby-less man, I really hope for your sake that you've never been greeted that way.  :)  If you ever are, it might be wise to run far, far away from the speaker, before you hear what they have to say next.  Ahem.  Off topic...okay.  So, when in public with my baby boy, it's amazing how often he's greeted this way, along with comments about his "widdle fingies and toesies" and "gweat big cheeks."  I'm often amused to stand there, observing him with the speakers.

    He doesn't seem particularly amused by it and, I have to admit, I'm not either.  You might be asking, "What's the harm?"  and the answer would have to be that there is no real harm being done and the adults definitely seem to get a kick out of it.  But the point is, there is no real benefit from it, either.

    Baby talk is often used synonymously with parentese, but while some would define both as infant-centered speech, I would tend to disagree.  Parentese is a specific type of infant-centered speech that has specific properties designed to help infants understand individual sounds and words, build vocabulary and teach intonation.  It does the following:

            Slows speech down, while articulating each sound, with pauses        
            between words and sentences.

            Many, many repetitions of common words

            Use of a sing-songy voice, with emphasis on inflections and tone

     The advantages of parentese are that the frequent repetition of common words builds up vocabulary and a budding sense of the grammar of the language; by slowing the speech down and over-articulating the sounds the baby can better understand where one word stops and another begins and imitate the mouth and tongue movements of individual sounds.  The high-pitched, sing-song voice holds the infant's attention and helps to clarify how we can use tonality and inflection to indicate a declaration versus question.  Interestingly, both women and men appear to automatically use higher-pitched voices and slower speech when they encounter an infant - parentese appears to be very natural for most adults.  Baby talk, as I see it, consists of adults imitating the sound substitutions that naturally occur in infant and toddler speech before they can make the full range of sounds in our language.  For example, the sound of "w" is often easier to make than the "l" sound.  Therefore a small child might say "I wove you" instead of "I love you."  It's adorable to hear, no doubt, but why would you purposely feed your child a steady diet of incorrectly articulated words when developing speech is hard enough?  In addition, once children are old enough (around 2 and up), they recognize that you are repeating their sound substitution and can be offended by it.  Given that there are no advantages to using baby talk and it has the potential to upset toddlers, I'm not sure I understand the drive to use it with children at all.
 
   When I talk about this in class, a good question that often comes up is:  "If a child says 'I wove you', then, should you immediately correct them and get them to practice the right sound?"  The answer to that question is generally "no." It's often enough just to model the correct pronounciation in conversation, such as "You Love me?  That's lovely.  I Love you, too"  Once the child's musculature of the mouth and tongue develop further, they will begin to use the adult pronounciation spontaneously.  You can also paraphrase the sentence back.  For example "That wabbit is widdle" could be responded to as "That Rabbit IS really Little, and so cute!"  Children are exceptionally observant and will automatically compare their articulations with yours - you can often hear them practicing in infancy and in the early years.

     I hope this didn't come across as the ramblings of a sleep-deprived mother/educator who is cranky and taking it out on the lovely people at the mall who approach her son with such positivity.  :)  I've never actually spoken to anyone about this outside of class and blog.  It's just a distinction that is often made blurry by the literature available to new parents, and a topic I think is important for language development.  So...nitey-nite, my widdle weaders. I wuv you.  ;P