Volume 21, Number 2 · February 21, 1974
Baby Talk
By Peter Farb
A First Language: The Early Stages
by Roger Brown
Harvard, 437 pp., $15.00
Psycholinguistics
by Dan I. Slobin
Scott, Foresman, 148 pp., $3.40 (paper)
Language Acquisition and Communicative Choice
by Susan M. Ervin-Tripp
Stanford, 398 pp., $10.95
Fittingly enough, Joyce began Portrait of the Artist with a bedtime story in baby talk. But the process by which we learn to speak ('we' refers to all human beings, speaking every language on earth) is considerably more complex than baby talk. Among the mistaken notions about baby talk are that it represents some 'natural,' instinctive way children begin to speak and that it is an adult imitation of childish speech. The truth is that baby talk is simply a variant of the adult language, taught to children by adults who then, after a few years, encourage the children to stop using it.
Review, 2663 words
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