I first posted about this subject a couple of years ago but it’s so fascinating to me I’m writing about it again. I happened to run across this study containing some amazing information. It’s from a publication called The Journal of Voice. The link is to the abstract — the complete article is behind a paywall but I can get it for anybody who’s interested in reading the whole study in detail.
Its title is “Fundamental frequency variation in crying of Mandarin and German neonates.” I have always assumed, like most people I suspect, that babies cry the same the world over. When they’re uncomfortable or hungry they let us know by crying. It turns out this may not be the case. If so, then language development is pushed to the very first days of life — even before that, perhaps. There is actually previous work of a similar nature that studies what the authors termed the melody of an infant’s cry and how it varies with the mother’s native language. It’s long been known that from birth infants have a particular recognition of their mother’s voice, something that appears to be associated with the melodic contours of how the mother modulates her voice.
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