Question: have you found out any of your questions on how babies do things?

Nayeli Gonzalez-Gomez answered on 25 Sep 2017:

Hi Frankieflinstone,

Thank you for your question. Yes, I have found that babies start by learning the rhythmic properties of their language, such as stress patterns and intonation, then they learn the repertoire of sounds that their language uses. Then, babies learn the rules applying to those sounds, for example, which sounds can be combined together and which ones can’t. I also found that all these knowledge will help them, later on, to find and learn new words.

Finding what is and what is not a word might seem trivial; however, we found that this is a very challenging task, since there are no pauses between words when we speak. For example, have a look at this video:

Just try to tell how many words is the tv presenter saying,

That’s very hard, right? And we are not even trying to identify the words, just to count them.

Although, we know now lots of things about how babies start learning there are still many more that we do not know, for example why some babies learn quicker than others? how bilingual babies manage to learn multiple languages at the same time? what are the mechanisms underlying language development?… …. ….

P.S. Remember that you can meet me and the other researchers at the Living Library event this Friday (29th), and that you can get free tickets for the IAR Live Final!