Baby Talk in Six Languages

TLDR: In this paper, a taxonomic analysis of baby talk in six languages, selected for variety of linguistic structure and sociolinguistic setting within the limits of available material: (Syrian) Arabic, Marathi, Comanche, Gilyak, American English, Spanish.

Abstract: O CCASIONALLY linguists have turned their attention to the description of marginal systems within languages, such as animal calls, hesitation forms, or baby talk. Such phenomena have sometimes been studied because of purely linguistic interest in synchronic description: they often have elements of sound or form which do not occur in the "normal" central system of the language or have unusual arrangements or frequencies of occurrence of elements which do occur in the central system. This kind of study is of particular relevance to the question of the monosystemic nature of languages versus polytypical analyses of "coexistent" systems. These marginal phenomena have also sometimes been studied from a psychological point of view, in relation to questions of language acquisition or language function. The present paper approaches the analysis of baby talk from a rather general taxonomic, linguistic interest. The intention is to initiate cross-language studies of marginal phenomena of this kind which will lead to a general characterization of them and to a framework for the characterization of single-language marginal phenomena in such a way that synchronic classification and historical explanation become possible. By the term baby talk is meant here any special form of a language which is regarded by a speech community as being primarily appropriate for talking to young children and which is generally regarded as not the normal adult use of language. English examples would include choo-choo for adult train, or ittybitty for little. In most cases the baby-talk item can also be used in some other situation with special value; in some cases (e.g., peek-a-boo) the item has no counterpart in normal language since it refers to an activity or object appropriate chiefly for children. The method used here will be the comparison of baby-talk phenomena in six languages, selected for variety of linguistic structure and sociolinguistic setting within the limits of available material: (Syrian) Arabic, Marathi, Comanche, Gilyak, (American) English, Spanish. The first two are major languages of Asia with millions of speakers and strong literary traditions; the second two are of small nonliterate communities, one New World, one Old World; the last two are major European languages. The primary source materials for the first four languages are the articles of Ferguson (1956), Kelkar (1964), Casagrande (1948), and Austerlitz (1956); the material on English and Spanish was compiled from informants for this study."