Linguistic Perspective on Baby Talk

From this MetaFilter thread on the subjunctive tense is this analysis of baby talk (that is, the means by which parents talk to babies). There’re some amusing bits on the whumsicality of baby talk:

A third parental tool for “keeping the conversation going” with very young children is to assume the role of both speaker and hearer by asking the question, presuming the response, and continuing the discourse (“Would you like me to burp you? Yes? I thought that was the problem. There, that's better”). […]

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