Steven Elmlinger

Learning to speak takes place during a prolonged period of immaturity, which confers advantages for communicative development. Social partners, required for survival in early development, afford feedback for immature vocalizations like babbling and early speech. Feedback, in the form of changes to the linguistic structure of adult speech in response to infant vocalizations, may guide the earliest stages of language acquisition. In a cross-linguistic study of 1,586 transcripts, spanning 13 languages from 5 language families, we investigated whether caregiver talk was consistently influenced by children’s (aged 5–30 months) immature speech. Across languages, we found that most caregivers significantly simplified their linguistic structure in response to children’s immature speech, resulting in reduced lexical diversity, shorter utterance lengths, and higher likelihoods of single-word utterances. Children’s vocalizations elicited learnable language from caregivers, highlighting a potentially widespread feature of language use that is catalyzed by immature behavior. Thus, altriciality allows for immature speech to be a social tool, creating opportunities for learning during social interaction.

Cool new paper in @currentbiology.bsky.social — adults simplify their speech specifically in response to immature vocalizations. Seems like an important mechanism for how infant-directed vocalizations work, with a role for language learning

www.cell.com/current-biol...

Whale song shows language-like statistical structure Humpback whale song is a culturally transmitted behavior. Human language, which is also culturally transmitted, has statistically coherent parts whose frequency distribution follows a power law. These...

SO very excited about new paper with @simonkirby.bsky.social and @ellengarland.bsky.social: We used infant-inspired tools to analyze eight years of humpback whale song, finding recurring parts with a Zipfian frequency distribution. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

We found a non-obvious pathway to robust language learnability across cultures & languages. Future work will assess just how widespread this pathway is across the world’s languages, and the role that contingent simplification plays in language development. 9/9

Languages don't only become learnable over evolution, they’re also learnable at precise moments during language development. Children actively shape their own learning input, eliciting learnable speech during vocal turn-taking, the central context of language use. 8/9

Languages must be learnable by the next generation, otherwise they would not exist. Here we show the simplification effect is robust across languages, contexts, and types of social interaction. Contingent simplified speech may be a cross-linguistic key to language learnability. 7/9

What this cross-cultural robustness implies is that the simplification effect of contingent speech is likely to be present in many more language than the 13 we studied in this paper. 6/9

A language we studied in this paper—Tseltal Mayan—was a particularly useful test case because Tseltal caregivers don’t use exaggerated child-directed speech typically found in industrialized societies. Despite this, we found a robust simplification in Tseltal caregiver speech. 5/9

Only parental speech that was contingent (produced immediately following their children’s vocalizations) was simplified, even though both contingent and non-contingent speech were similar in child-directed exaggerated pitch. 4/9

In response to their child’s immature speech, caregivers produce fewer unique words, shorter utterances and more single-word utterances compared to caregivers’ baseline speech complexity. We call this the simplification effect of contingent speech. 3/9

w/ @mikehgoldstein.bsky.social & Jacob Levy we show that children’s immature vocalizations & speech actively elicit language from caregivers that is linguistically simplified & more learnable. We find this in 13 languages, showing a robust social pathway for making language learning easier to do 2/9

Immature vocalizations elicit simplified adult speech across multiple languages Altriciality, or extended early immaturity, creates opportunities for learning. Across languages, Elmlinger et al. show that parents simplify their speech in response to children’s early vocalizations...

How do languages become learnable for young children? Our new paper in Current Biology shows how “Immature vocalizations elicit simplified adult speech across multiple languages.” 🧵 of our findings below: www.cell.com/current-biol... 1/9

We found a non-obvious pathway to robust language learnability across cultures & languages. Future work will assess just how widespread this pathway is across the world’s languages, and the role that contingent simplification plays in language development. 9/9

Languages don't only become learnable over evolution, they’re also learnable at precise moments during language development. Children actively shape their own learning input, eliciting learnable speech during vocal turn-taking, the central context of language use. 8/9

Languages must be learnable by the next generation, otherwise they would not exist. Here we show the simplification effect is robust across languages, contexts, and types of social interaction. Contingent simplified speech may be a cross-linguistic key to language learnability. 7/9

What this cross-cultural robustness implies is that the simplification effect of contingent speech is likely to be present in many more language than the 13 we studied in this paper. 6/9

A language we studied in this paper—Tseltal Mayan—was a particularly useful test case because Tseltal caregivers don’t use exaggerated child-directed speech typically found in industrialized societies. Despite this, we found a robust simplification in Tseltal caregiver speech. 5/9

Only parental speech that was contingent (produced immediately following their children’s vocalizations) was simplified, even though both contingent and non-contingent speech were similar in child-directed exaggerated pitch. 4/9

In response to their child’s immature speech, caregivers produce fewer unique words, shorter utterances and more single-word utterances compared to caregivers’ baseline speech complexity. We call this the simplification effect of contingent speech. 3/9

w/ @mikehgoldstein.bsky.social & Jacob Levy we show that children’s immature vocalizations & speech actively elicit language from caregivers that is linguistically simplified & more learnable. We find this in 13 languages, showing a robust social pathway for making language learning easier to do 2/9