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According to Falk, motherese (baby talk and/or musical speech) also known as infant-direct (ID) speech is the only available model of how humans have acquired spoken language. What distinquishes motherese from adult-direct (AD) speech, is namely the prosody, or tone of voice. This, along with visual gestures, i.e. exaggerated facial expressions (raised eyebrows, big smile) may play a critical role in the foundations of protolanguages (ancestry languages) in early Homo. According to Falk, "Few workers have appreciated the important parallel roles of mother-infant interactions in visual, gestural, and tactile domains." Motherese creates a "temporary framework or scaffold" that leads to a baby's eventual comprehension and production of speech.

Motherese or (ID) speech is a universal human trait that babies respond well to. Lullabies and "baby talk" stimulate babies because they are often spoken in a higher-pitched tone, a slower tempo, including the use of exaggerated vowels. This "maternal speech" combined with exaggerated facial expressions stimulate and excite the baby. When babies are stimulated they will kick their feet, coo and gurgle. Through visual and auditory senses combined with stimuli and emotional connection with mother/father, the infant begins to piece, store, and memorize information. Over time, and through repetition and stimulation, the infant is able to recognize and vocalize words. Eventually, they will be able to connect words to objects. Faulk states that "social syntax" begins to develop around 10 months of age as children. Faulk states that infants begin to "babble in rythms" and take turns "speaking." By 17 months, the infant begins to grasp simple single words, usually nouns ("mama,"doggy").Once the child has a basic understanding of nouns, the child is then able to, "Infer the semantic meaning of syntactical categories." Other words, once a child has a basic concept of nouns, they can begin to formulate an understanding of verbage in relation to the subject. This is the early stages of vocabulary/sentence/language structure.

One theory of language development, called “putting the baby down” hypothesis, states that the mother-child relationship was the catalyst to the evolution of language. With the onset of bipedalism and brain growth, parturition (childbirth) happened sooner before the baby’s head got too large for safe delivery. Resulting from this was an underdeveloped baby completely dependent on its mother. Because a hominin baby lacked the ability to hold onto the mother as its ancestors would, the mother would have put it down periodically while she went about her foraging business. This separation brought about increased verbal and gestural communication as to ensure the child’s safety.

Although the selective pressures that caused bipedalism in Australopithecines/early Homo, research shows that advantages to bipedalism included freeing up the hands for foraging, gathering, carrying, hunting, and tool use. This new stature combined with a more efficient use of hands is what eventually led to Faulk's hypothesis of "putting down baby" and the formation of "distal communication." Distal communication included baby crying (distress signal) and distal "motherese" to reassure infant that mother was near. According to Falk hominin mothers needed to be vigilant in tending to their infants and have had the genetic potential to modify both their vocal and gestural repertoires to shape and control the behaviors of thei offspring.

Falk states that the naming of things may have been a precursor to language. Naming things such as food, predators, tools, places, and kinfolk allowed the early hominins to think about the relationships of events and objects which eventually led to articulating complex thought.

The article discusses studies and findings from many different areas of study including psychology, anthropology, primatology and child development. All of this is done in order to create hypotheses regarding the early stages of speech in hominins.

According to Falk, few have considered or appreciated the importance of mother-infant interactions beyond the vocal aspects including things such as visual, gestural and tactile based interactions.


 * IMPORTANT TERMS:**

__Motherese__ - a way in which infants learn the rhythms of speech based on the manner in which they're addressed. Also known as musical speech of infant directed speech. __Fission-Fusion__ (primate definition) - in the process of foraging for food, primates will break off into smaller subgroups, but will later reconnect with the rest of the group. __Didactic__- Designed or intented to teach. __Exaptation__- Refers to a shift in function of a trait during evolution. ex) A bird's feathers evolved for temperature regulation but were later adapted for flying. __Coregulation__-A person's actions are continuously modified by the changing actions of partner. Displaced Reference- Being able to refer to something that is not visually present.