It may be baby talk, but ‘parentese’ is an infant’s pathway to learning the language, international study shows
跨国研究表明：“妈妈语”虽然萌萌哒，但却是婴儿学习语言的必经之路
Parentese, the exaggerated, drawn-out form of speech that people use to communicate with babies, apparently is universal and plays a vital role in helping infants to analyze and absorb the phonetic elements of their parents’ language. An international study shows that infants are so good at analyzing this speech that by the age of 20 weeks they are beginning to produce the three vowel sounds common to all human languages — “ee,” “ah” and “uu.”
妈妈语，指的是人们在和幼儿交流时使用的那种夸张、拖长的说话方式。它似乎是普天下皆有的现象，而且在帮助婴儿分析和掌握父母语言的语音要素方面发挥着关键作用。一项跨国研究表明，婴儿分析这种说话方式的能力极高，以至于他们在20周那么大时就开始发出所有人类语言都共有的三个元音，即ee，ah和uu。
“Parentese has a melody to it. And inside this melody is a tutorial for the baby that contains exceptionally well-formed versions of the building blocks of language,” explains Patricia Kuhl, a University of Washington neuroscientist. Kuhl recently headed a team of nine researchers from the United States, Russia and Sweden investigating how infants master the complex task of acquiring speech. Their findings are being published in tomorrow’s issue (Aug. 1) of the journal Science.
“妈妈语具有内在的韵律。对幼儿的辅导就藏在这一韵律之中，其内容包括了语言基本材料的极为成熟的形式”，华盛顿大学神经系统科学家Patricia Kuhl如此解释道。Kuhl近来带领一个9人团队对婴儿如何得以完成学会说话这种复杂任务进行了研究，研究者分别来自美国、俄罗斯和瑞典。他们的发现将于明天（8月1日）发表于《科学》杂志上。【编注：注意本文发表于1997年。】
The new study examined differences in how American, Russian and Swedish mothers speak to their infants and to other adults. The study shows that parentese is characterized by over- articulation that exaggerates the sounds contained in words. Mothers in the study were, in effect, sounding out “super-vowels” to help their infants learn the phonetic elements of language, says Kuhl, who is the chair of speech and hearing sciences and the William P. and Ruth Gerberding professor at the UW.
这项新研究考察了美国、俄罗斯和瑞典的妈妈们在和她们的婴儿说话时跟她们和其他成人说话时的区别。研究表明，妈妈语的特征是夸张发音，对词语中的音素进行夸张。Kuhl说，实际上，被研究的妈妈们都会发出“超级元音”来帮助她们的孩子学习语言中的语音要素。Kuhl在华盛顿大学担任言语及听觉学院主席，同时还是该校的“盖博丁夫妇”讲席教授。
“In normal, everyday speech adults generally race along at a very fast pace,” Kuhl says. “But we know it is easier to understand a speaker when they stretch out sounds. That’s why we tend to speak more slowly and carefully to increase understanding when we teach in the classroom or talk to strangers. We also do this unconsciously with babies, giving them an improved verbal signal they can capitalize on by slowing down and over articulating.”
“在正常的日常交谈中，成年人一般都会以非常快的速度放连珠炮”，Kuhl说。“但我们知道，如果说话者拉长声音，就更容易被人听懂。这就是为什么我们在进行课堂教学或和陌生人说话时会把话说得更慢更仔细，这是为了增进理解。面对幼儿时，我们也会下意识地这么做。通过放慢语速、夸张发音，我们向幼儿提供了一种改良过的语言信号，以便他们利用。”
The mothers in the study were not aware of what they were doing, she says, and so parentese was produced unconsciously and automatically. “When women across three different cultures, speaking three different languages, show the same pattern when speaking to their infants, biology is telling us something about it’s necessity and value to their babies. It’s our job to figure out why they do it and what it’s good for,” Kuhl adds.
她还说，被研究的妈妈们对于自己的作为并没有自觉意识，因此妈妈语是无意识、不经意产生的。“来自三种不同文化、使用三种不同语言的妇女在和她们的婴儿交谈时都呈现出同一种模式，这是生物学在向我们透露某些东西，关乎其必要性及其对幼儿的价值。我们的任务就是要搞清她们为什么要这么做以及这么做的好处”，Kuhl补充说。
To explore differences in the way people communicate with infants and adults, 10 women from each of the three countries were first recorded talking for 20 minutes to their infants, ranging in age from two to five months. Then they were recorded in conversation with an adult.
为了查明人们与婴儿及他们与成人交流时的区别，研究者首先对分别来自上述三国的各10位妇女与其婴儿的交谈进行了20分钟的录音，婴儿年龄从2至5个月不等。然后又录制了她们与某一成人的谈话。
In both cases, the mothers were told to talk naturally and were given a small list of target words containing the three common vowel sounds and asked to include them in the conversations.. The selected English words were “bead” for the “ee” sound, “pot” for “ah” and “boot” for “uu.” Similar common words were selected in Russian and Swedish. The three languages were chosen because they represent substantially different vowel systems occurring in human languages: Russian has five vowels, English has nine vowels and Swedish has16.
在两种情形中，妈妈们都被要求进行自然交谈，并拿到了一份简短的目标词汇表，这些词汇都包含有常见的三种元音。妈妈们被要求在对话中使用到这些词汇。被选中的英文单词包括bead（含元音ee），pot（含元音ah）和boot（含元音uu）。俄语和瑞典语中也选的是类似的常见词汇。之所以选这三种语言，是因为它们代表着人类语言中存在本质区别的不同元音体系：俄语有5个元音，英语有9个，而瑞典语有16个。
The more than 2,300 recorded target words spoken by the subjects were then isolated and acoustically analyzed by spectrograph. This analysis showed speech directed at infants had more extreme or stretched out vowel sounds than speech with an adult. This was true among all 30 mothers across the three languages, says Kuhl.
然后，研究者把研究对象说过且被录制的2300多个目标词汇单独提取出来，并用声谱仪对之进行声学分析。分析表明，跟对成人说的话相比，对婴儿说的话中包含有更过分或更为拖长的元音发音。Kuhl说，使用三种语言的30位母亲全都如此。
The use of parentese seems to benefit infants in three ways, she believes. It makes the sounds of vowels more distinct from one another, and it produces expanded vowel sounds not produced in ordinary adult conversations. This exaggerated speech allows mothers to produce a greater variety of vowel pronunciations without overlapping other vowels.
Kuhl相信，使用妈妈语似乎会从三种途径有利于婴儿。它能使元音发音彼此之间区分得更为清楚，同时能发出成人们在日常对话中不会发出的拖长元音。这种夸张的说话方式能让妈妈们发出更为多样化的元音读法，且不与其它元音重叠。
To speak, an infant must be able to reproduce the appropriate features of individual phonetic elements using a tiny vocal tract which is about only one-quarter the size and lacks the same frequency range of an adult’s. The exaggeration of parentese helps the infant separate sounds into contrasting categories and helps the baby distinguish between different categories, she believes.
婴儿的小声道在大小上只有成人的大约四分之一，缺乏成人所具备的那种频率范围。为了说话，婴儿必须要用这种声道来再现每个语音要素的恰当特征。Kuhl相信，妈妈语的夸张发音能帮助婴儿将声音分为对比鲜明的类别，并帮助他们区分不同类别。
“What infants are doing with this information is not memorization. Their minds are not working like a tape recorder,” says Kuhl. “Because their mouths and vocal tracts can’t form the same sounds as adults, they have to transform adult sounds to frequencies they can use. So they must be analyzing speech.”
“针对这些信息，婴儿们做的并不是熟记。他们的心智并不像是录音机那样运转”，Kuhl说。“因为他们的小嘴和小声道无法发出成人那样的声音，他们必须将成人的发音转化为他们能够使用的频率。因此，他们必定分析发声。”
Babies’ brains, like their bodies, need to be nourished, she says, and parentese provides them with “essential nuggets” of information about language that their lightning fast brains analyze and absorb.
她说，幼儿的大脑跟他们的身体一样需要滋养，而妈妈语则为他们提供了语言信息的“基本材料”，以便他们能用其闪电般快速运转的大脑进行分析和吸收。
The use of parentese seems to be universal, she says, and parents don’t have to worry about learning it when they take a newborn home from the hospital.
她说，使用妈妈语似乎是普天下共有的现象，父母们把新生儿从医院抱回家后并不需要担心如何学会妈妈语。
“Moms, dads, caretakers, younger siblings and even college students who were handed a baby in the classroom have been observed speaking parentese. Talking that way seems to be a natural communications mode we all use. That means parents don’t have to work hard at this. Just by talking and communicating with their infants they are playing a vital role without being aware of it,” Kuhl says.
“人们已经发现，妈妈、爸爸、保姆、小哥哥小姐姐都会说妈妈语，甚至是在课堂上被塞给了一个小宝宝的大学生也是如此。以这种方式说话似乎是我们所使用的一种自然的交流模式。这就是说，父母们无需在这方面用功。只要和他们的婴儿说话交流，他们就在不自觉的扮演一个关键的角色”，Kuhl说。
Collaborating researchers in the study come from the Early Intervention Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Stockholm University in Sweden. The research was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation.
参与本研究的合作研究者分别来自俄罗斯圣彼得堡的早期介入研究所和瑞典斯德哥尔摩大学。研究得到了美国国立卫生研究院、加拿大社会科学与人文研究委员会及瑞典银行三百年基金会的基金资助。
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