'Parentese' may be universal [baby talk]
Oliver Whang, 'Parentese' is Truly a Lingua Franca, Global Study Finds, NYTimes, July 24, 2022.
Regardless of whether it helps to know it, researchers recently determined that this sing-songy baby talk - more technically known as "parentese" - seems to be nearly universal to humans around the world. In the most wide-ranging study of its kind, more than 40 scientists helped to gather and analyze 1,615 voice recordings from 410 parents on six continents, in 18 languages from diverse communities: rural and urban, isolated and cosmopolitan, internet savvy and off the grid, from hunter gatherers in Tanzania to ...