Under normal circumstances, human infants are certainly helped in their language
acquisition by the typical behavior of older children and adults in the home environment who provide language samples, or input, for the child. Adults such as mom, dad
and the grandparents tend not to address the little creature before them as if they are
involved in normal adult-to-adult conversation. There is not much of this: Well, John
Junior, shall we invest in blue chip industrials, or would grain futures offer better short-
term prospects? However, there does seem to be a lot of this: Oh, goody, now Daddy
push choo-choo? The characteristically simplified speech style adopted by someone
who spends a lot of time interacting with a young child is called caregiver speech.
Salient features of this type of speech (also called “motherese” or “child-directed
speech”) are the frequent use of questions, often using exaggerated intonation, extra
loudness and a slower tempo with longer pauses. In the early stages, this type of speech
also incorporates a lot of forms associated with “babytalk.” These are either simplified
words (tummy, nana) or alternative forms, with repeated simple sounds and syllables,
for things in the child’s environment (choo-choo, poo-poo, pee-pee, wa-wa).