French Chattering Toddlers Reveal 'Baby Talk' is More Advanced Than We Thought

Toddlers chatter when they first learn how to speak, forming nonsense words as they try to express themselves. Yet this speech may be more advanced than we once though. Scientists have found that toddlers are using grammar far sooner than expected.

In order to examine speech in children, researchers looked at 50 French-speaking children between the ages of 23 and 37 months. They captured tens of thousands of their utterances, recording their childish chatter as they went about their day. In order to make sure that the sounds they recorded were precise, the scientists used highly sensitive hidden microphones that were placed close to the children. The researchers then spent years analyzing every sound that the toddlers made and the context in which it was produced.

After listening to these sounds, the researchers found that most of the children used "little words," which formed the skeleton of sentences, such as "a," "an," "can" and "is." In fact, they found a clear pattern of sounds and puffs of air, which consistently replaced grammatical words in many of the toddlers' sentences.

"The fact that this sound was always produced in the correct place in the sentence leads us to believe that young children are knowledgeable of grammatical words," said Cristina Dye, a lecturer in child language development, in a news release. "They are far more sophisticated in their grammatical competence than we ever understood."

Although the study focused on French-speaking children, the same findings most likely apply to children that speak other languages, as well. The research overturns the theory that developmental specialists had for decades--that children's early word combinations are devoid of any grammatical words.

The findings don't just reveal a little bit more about language development, though. They also may help children who are slower to learn language.

"There are also implications for understanding language delay in children," said Dye. "When children don't learn to speak normally, it can lead to serious issues later in life. For example, those who have it are more likely to suffer from mental illness or be unemployed later in life. If we can understand what is 'normal' as early as possible then we can intervene sooner and help those children."

The findings are published in the Journal of Linguistics.