Finding Our Tongues Mothers, Infants, and the Origins of Language [Hardcover]

Scientists have long theorized that abstract, symbolic thinking evolved to help humans negotiate such classically male activities as hunting, tool making, and warfare, and eventually developed into spoken language. InFinding Our Tongues, Dean Falk overturns this established idea, offering a daring new theory that springs from a simple observation: parents all over the world, in all cultures, talk to infants by using baby talk or “Motherese.” Falk shows how Motherese developed as a way of reassuring babies when mothers had to put them down in order to do work. The melodic vocalizations of early Motherese not only provided the basis of language but also contributed to the growth of music and art.

Combining cutting-edge neuroscience with classic anthropology, Falk offers a potent challenge to conventional wisdom about the emergence of human language.

Dean Falkis Hale G. Smith Professor of Anthropology at Florida State University. She is the author ofBraindanceandPrimate Diversity, and co-author ofThe Face in the Mirror. Her “putting the baby down” theory, published inBehavioral and Brain Sciences, has been featured in theNew York Times,Washington Post,Scientific American,New Scientist,National Geographic, andNewsweek. She lives in Tallahassee, Florida, and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Franz de Waal, author ofOur Inner Ape
“That language began with melodious vocal exchanges between mother and offspring is a most attractive idea. It connects language with love, reassurance, and early bodily rhythms. Instead of the traditional focus on words and grammar, Dean Falk's refreshing new theory has the added bonus of injecting music, another human universal, into the language debate.”

Publishers Weekly
“Readers interested in language acquisition may find Falk's hypothesis thought provokinl#q