Study Shows 'Babytalk' Sets Agenda for Language

 By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Babies may have invented the very earliest forms of language
 with their babble, and listening to them coo may open a window onto the distant linguistic
 past, researchers said Thursday.

 Some of the most persistent sounds found in languages happen to be very easy for babies to
 make, and that is no accident, reported Peter MacNeilage and Barbara Davis of the University
 of Texas.

 MacNeilage and Davis studied the babbling of babies around the world and found universal
 patterns, then compared them to the structure of a group of ``proto-words,'' which linguists
 have deduced to be possible words from extinct languages.

                    The two researchers found the same patterns.

                    Writing in the journal Science, they said these sounds seem to be very
                    easy for babies to make and may reflect a natural physiological
                    tendency -- one that has formed the basis for human language.

                    The sounds would be familiar to anyone -- a pattern of a consonant
 followed by a vowel.

 ``That is what babies are famous for. If you don't move anything else, and bunch the tongue up
 in the front of the mouth -- which they do naturally for feeding -- then they are going to get
 sounds like 'da-da' ... 'ta-ta' ... 'na-na' or 'ya-ya','' said John Locke, an expert in infant language
 and linguistics at Cambridge University in England.

 ``Those sounds make up the majority of sounds made by babies who babble. It just turns out
 that those sounds are also said more accurately by children and they are more likely to be
 included in the various languages of the world.''

 Locke said babies, in many ways, teach their parents to speak. ``The first assumption is that
 infants are imitating adults but it is, in fact, the opposite,'' Locke, who wrote a commentary on
 the study, said in a telephone interview.

 ``Adults imitate the baby. Babies finally develop the physiological ability to make imitations,''
 Locke said.

 Other researchers have noted that the words for ``mother'' and ``father'' are similar in
 languages the world over.

 Locke cited classical linguistic theory about how baby words for mothers or other female
 relatives use nasal vowels because the babies first make them while nursing.

 ``The speculation was that the baby, when sucking at the mother's breast, can only make a nasal
 sound because its lips are sealed. It's kind of like a 'mmmmm mmmm' sound,'' Locke said.

 ``It is true that 80 percent of names for mothers have nasal vowels and 80 percent of names for
 fathers have oral vowels.''

 Locke said it makes sense that babies would quickly learn words that use sounds they can
 make naturally.

 ``The moment he hears people say 'bye bye', it is not like he has to say to himself 'What am I
 going to do to reproduce that?','' Locke said.

 The study shows that babies make sounds that just come naturally.

 ``Really, all of this begins with these risings and falls, elevations and depression of the lower
 jaw while babies are vocalizing, and that gives you that open-closed 'wa wa' sort of
 movement,'' Locke said.