2023-07-28 16:16:05
Researchers believe that “baby talk” makes it easier to learn words. But a team has gone further by showing that this hyperarticulation also serves to express our emotions.
It is enough to meet the gaze of a baby or a puppy for our voice to instantly change register: place is then made for high-pitched sounds, soft tones and simplified words that we articulate to excess. It’s the famous “baby talk”, or “mommy”, an instinctive diction which consists in softening one’s speech in front of a “cute” being. Many mothers have experienced it with their children. But why such behavior? Diving into the fascinating world of “baby talk”, a team of American and CNRS researchers reveals the crucial role of the expression of our emotions. The results were published in the Journal of Child Language .
Previous analyzes had suggested that better articulation between parents made it easier for infants to learn language and strengthened the special bond that is forged between a parent and their baby. However, the pedagogical aspect of this hyperarticulation would only be a partial explanation of the usefulness of the “mother”, according to the conclusions of this new study. “Other researchers have shown that motherese was not necessarily more understandable for the child, which does not correspond with the educational hypothesis.“says Alejandrina Cristia, linguistics researcher at the CNRS and co-author of this study. “In particular, the emotional aspect and its effect on pronunciation have often been overlooked.“, she specifies.
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“When we smile, we articulate more”
This is why researchers have looked into the emotional origin of the hyperarticulation of mothers when they address their infants. For this, they recorded the voices of ten American mothers whom they asked to speak in turn to their infant, to a puppy and to an adult. In these three contexts, they were able to extract the pronounced vowels, compare their acoustic characteristics and measure the emotions associated with them. “In psychology, we use a measurement scale that allows us to classify vowels according to their emotional valence, that is, to identify whether the emotions associated with speech are rather positive, neutral or negative.“, explains Alejandrina Cristia. Typically, a positive emotion, such as joy, is associated with an increase in the frequency of the voice which then becomes more acute but also in its intensity, reflecting enthusiasm. In addition to these characteristics, positive emotions can be expressed more subtly through non-verbal sounds, such as laughter or happy exclamations.
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After dissecting all the voice recordings, the researchers found that mothers articulate better when addressing a baby or a puppy because they express more positive emotions in their speech. “When we see a baby or a kitten, we feel joy. And when we smile, which is a consequence of joy, we articulate more, the pronunciation of vowels is clearer and, therefore, speech is clearer too.“, emphasizes Alejandrina Cristia. According to the authors, this could suggest that it is actually the positive emotions associated with motherese that facilitate language learning in children. “Thus the pedagogical function of motherese would not only be linked to the form taken by the discourse but also to the emotions transmitted by its author.“says the researcher.
This way of adapting our speech is present in many cultures, but is not necessarily universal. Alejandrina Cristia explains, for example, that Dutch parents tend to round their lips more; similarly, the results would not apply as in France or the United States. On the other hand, humans would not be the only species to practice “baby talk”. Other animals such as the rhesus macaque or the zebra finch modify their vocalizations in the presence of their young. More recently, scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in the United States have documented the existence of a form of “mommy” in dolphins. By studying the vocalizations of these mammals, which communicate using whistles, the researchers observed that the whistling signature of mothers became higher and lower pitched near their young. The origins of Mamanese could go back to a time much more distant than that of our first ancestors.
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