Tuning in to the baby

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33251, 14 June 1973, Page 7

Tuning in to the baby

t By

PATRICIA LEWIS)

LONDON. ' How long was it before you began to understand what your ibaby was saying? Prujbably about 12 to 18 I months, when it was forming the first intelligible words.

After a year’s pilot study, a ißritish linguistic professor says that it is actually possible to work out what an infant is saying when he is six months old. Even more important, the experiments carried out by Dr David Crystal, reader in linguistic science at Reading Univeristy, are bringing new hope of repairing hearing defects and even curing some forms of deafness. “A baby’s burbling, shrieking and murmuring might seem pretty meaningless,” he explains, “but there is a way to translate it, and that’s by studying the way you and your husband talk to him. Keep your ears open and you’ll begin to discern verydefinite similarities between some of your child’s baby talk and the intonation of your own voices.” NEW GROUND What the infant is doing is copying the rise and fall of your voice when, as parents do, you unconsciously repeat certain things to him. Recognise the expression and emphasis in your voice,) therefore, and you are morel than half-way there. Forget the actual noises j your baby is emitting and just concentrate on the sound patterns, says Dr Crystal. Then compare these with your own and translate—by mentally writing down the words, phrases or sentences you yourself put to the various intonations. Breaking new ground—it is the first time a study of this kind has concentrated on the first year of a baby’s life— Dr Crystal has been taperecording the baby talk of infants in a local hospital. From these, he and his team have concluded that the “scribble talk” of a baby as young as two months is actually a perfect conversation with his mother.

One tape Dr Crystal has of | a seven-month-old sounds; '(totally meaningless. But after i playing it several times, he! • realised that the child was uttering varying depths of! sound. ' “It became clear,” he said.! ; “that he was actually carrying on a two-way conversation with his toys. He first ) talked to his rabbit, then used ,)a falsetto voice for reply., ! | Next, came a deep chesty (tone and he was in fact ■ answering for his panda.” ij On another tape, an 11-j jmonth-old was producing, to’ "all intents and purposes, a series of throaty noises. “After a while,” Dr Crystal ' told me, “it was possible to . recognise the word ‘aagh- ; aagh’. It was actually an ’ early attempt to say 'Da'dda’.”) EARLY DETECTION When studying another seven-month-old. Dr Crystal noticed that, at the end of each meal, the baby would ! say, “Ah-thagh.” “This foxed me for a while.” he recalls. “Then I • deduced he was saying ‘All, gone.’ Later the child’s parents confirmed that they al-) ways said, 'All gone,’ to him at the end of each meal.” How can the mechanics of I understanding baby talk help) tto cure deafness? Dr Crystal explains: "Normally, > you can’t tell whether a child has a serious hearing deficiency' until he’s between 18 months and two years of age. “But on the evidence unearthed by our pilot study, it ishould be possible to detect problems of this nature much ! earlier. If a baby doesn’t respond to his parents’ voices and fails to mimic the intonations early on, it could well be that there is something wrong with his hearing. EAGER TO LEARN “At least, it could be taken i as sufficient grounds to sus-| pect trouble and begin inves- ' tigation. And the earlier you’ can diagnose and start treating disorders of this kind, the better the chances of putting ■ it right.” Dr Crystal, who is planning to spend two more years I of concentrated study on his! baby talk project, is also urging education authorities to’ teach children their native! language by a process of in- ■ tonation. There is too much em-l phasis, he insists, on vocabu-l

lary, syntax and pronunciation of “correct.” “By shifting the emphasis to the different ways a word !is said — it can be given a I totally different meaning, 'merely by changing the pitch of your voice — I am convinced youngsters would pick up language much quicker,” he says. “Their voices would have more expression, too.” But perhaps the most remarkable thing about intonation — particularly in the cases of six-months-old babies mimicking the rise and fall of their parents voices — is, as Dr Crystal points out, that it shows the learning process starts a great deal earlier than most people realise. “If a baby of that age can copy intonations, then he must have been storing up the knowledge to do so over several weeks,” he says. —Features International.