Baby talk Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Baby talk - Research Paper Example This paper presents an analysis of Baby talk. In particular, it presents 15 baby talk words from a chosen child named Firas who is aged 2 years and 5 months. Additionally, this paper presents a morphological, phonological and syntactic analysis of the baby talk words in the data list. This section of the research paper is structured with reference to Jones (1986), pages 178 to 180 in the East Cree Baby talk file. Finally, this paper presents a conclusion of the findings with reference to the chapter 11, First language acquisition, of the text book. Firas is Arabic, and is brought up with Arabian parents and caretaker in the Middle East. This baby talk represents the Arabic language which has been applied from the 19th century. The Arabic language is characterised with numerous examples of baby talk items that display pharyngeal spirants. However, these are commonly seen as elements that are acquired late in Arabic. For example, labial categorical are present in Arabic baby talk and could be the primary categorical to be acquired by the Arabic young children. This is regardless of the fact that they are insignificant at the adult stage. Phonology - entails the study of speech construction in a language, which includes the trend of fundamental speech elements and the established rules of how to pronounce words identified as phonology. The least element of sounds that compose a language is referred to phonemes. In particular, the word â€Å"Mbuwa† which is Firas’s Arabic baby talk word that stands for drink, consists of five phonemes, the â€Å"mb† stands for one phoneme /mb/, the â€Å"u† maps to the short sound/Ã… ­/, the â€Å"w† stands for /w/ and finally, â€Å"a† to its fundamental sound /ÄÆ'/. Morphology - is the advanced stage of language that entails the study of tiny elements of meaning –morphemes. Morphemes entail foundational words, such as, â€Å"Food†, â€Å"dog†