The Null Device

Do patterns in the babbling of infants hold hints to the origins of language? A professor at the University of Texas thinks so; others say it's nonsense. (via rebeccablood.com)

Finally, the investigators found that the patterns of the babies' sounds were similar to those in words that other researchers have suggested might have been "ancestor" words. These are words that often mean similar things in different languages, such as "mano," for man or "mena," for think. Since they are common across languages, they may have been the earliest words spoken, historical linguists suggest.

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