Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Simplified speech similar to child-directed speech, used by adults when speaking to others besides children, as to display affection or to belittle the intelligence of the listener.
- noun Speech produced by young children that displays the syntactic, morphological, and phonetic imperfections typical of young children learning language.
- noun Oversimplified speech or writing.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The form of
speech used byadults intalking to veryyoung children .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the developing speech of a young child
- noun an adult's imitation of the speech of a young child
Etymologies
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Examples
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treeseed commented on the word baby talk
Baby talk is a long-established and universally understood traditional term. Baby talk, motherese, parentese or child-directed speech (CDS) is a nonstandard form of speech used by adults in talking to toddlers and infants. It is usually delivered with a "cooing" pattern of intonation different from that of normal adult speech: high in pitch, with many glissando variations that are more pronounced than those of normal speech. Baby talk is also characterized by the shortening and simplifying of words. Baby talk is also used by people when talking to their pets, and between adults as a form of affection, intimacy, bullying or patronizing.
_Wikipedia
February 5, 2008