"Baby" Robot Learns Language Like The Real Thing

All of which, combined with the anecdotal nature o my comments leads me to wonder why you were addressing me.

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[who?] 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.[clarification needed] 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. (emphasis added)

Responds to an assessment by L. Gleitman et al (see record 1984-22723-001) of the current status of the "motherese" hypothesis which, in large part, responded to an article by the present authors and H. Benedict (see record 1980-23027-001) on both methodological and theoretical grounds. It is argued that Gleitman et al have presented a misleading picture of the research on the role of environmental input in language acquisition and that they have misinterpreted and in some cases misrepresented the present authors and Benedict. Five issues involving the method of Gleitman et al and the relationship between language input and language learning are discussed. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

This study examines the nature of child-directed speech (CDS) from the perspective of functions [M.A.K. Halliday, Learning how to mean: Explorations in the development of language, Elsevier North-Holland, Inc., New York, 1977] and social interactionist theory. It is argued that previous explanations of CDS, often called motherese or caregiver speech, have either minimalized or neglected the functionalist–interactionist dimension of input in language acquisition. Far from being merely a novel way of describing the language caregivers use with infants, CDS is presented as a crucial catalyst in the complex process of L1 acquisition.

At the heart of CDS is negotiation between caregiver(s) and infant. The infant need not always respond with complete or near-complete linguistic units or constituents such as an adult might during a given negotiation, yet the context of the negotiation remains crucial to the infant. As physical maturation increases and the infant begins to produce more adult-like utterances, the negotiation between interlocutors becomes more balanced, syntactically and phonologically, but not necessarily semantically/functionally.

This paper presents the results of a case study which specifically examines the utterances or input which family members direct at a Japanese infant during the early part of his language development. The data generated by the subject and his parents provide an interesting glimpse into one of the ways in which infants absorb language. The results of the data analysis show that while the parents of the subject were seen to use roughly equal amounts of language with the child, the distribution of language functions used by the mother was importantly different from that used by the father; therefore, it is suggested that this difference in CDS aids the language development of the infant by providing more interactive negotiation, which is argued to be the crucial factor in language development.

I've kept infants quiet and completely enthralled for long periods of time by speaking to them in the same way i would to an adult.

They know they're being spoken to seriously, they can tell the difference between that and the goo-goo ga-ga baby talk ****.

If one objects that a small child hasn't the vocabulary to understand, i ask how they are supposed to acquire it.

Is "carers" supposed to mean those who care for infants? The groves of Academe would wither away without jargon.

Setanta asked, just two posts prior: If one objects that a small child hasn't the vocabulary to understand, i ask how they are supposed to acquire it.

I don't know why you're addressing your remarks to me.