I should add some thoughts to my recent post, Dogs, Teddy Bears, and Airconditioners, the part about talking to babies who are too young to understand language.
I was observing a lady cradling a baby in her arms, looking into his eyes, and talking to him. Just talking and talking to him.
Of course she knew that the baby couldn’t understand a word, but that didn’t deter her from acting like he did.
And that isn’t an uncommon scene - I’ve often witnessed women carry on conversations with babies. Some men do that too, but that seems more uncommon.
Admittedly, I’ve tried to do that myself. I enjoy carrying babies (provided they don’t puke or pee on me), and there was a time when I tried to talk to that adorable little thing, but, I found it really awkward, and it was only marginally easier than talking to, say, a dog or teddy bear or maybe an airconditioner.
I didn’t explain why I tried to talk to babies.
No, I wasn’t trying to be like a woman.
The only reason was that I believed that speaking to babies is important for their language development, that babies learn the sounds of language very early. I owe these ideas to Steve Pinker in The Language Instinct, a very important book on language. I read it quite a while ago, so I don’t remember a lot of details, but go read it if you’re into language/linguistics - some parts are quite technical, but at least two-thirds of it is quite readable.
