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Dr. Mitsuhiko Ota, a linguist in the University of Edinburgh Language Sciences department, was the lead researcher in a 2018 study (Ota, Davies-Jenkins, and Skarabela 2018) examining infant-directed speech, a.k.a. baby talk. Across languages, lexical items specific to infant-directed speech (i.e., 'baby-talk words') are characterized by three major features: 1. onomatopoeia incorporated into non-arbitrary, "highly iconic" words, e.g. "quack", "bow wow" 2. diminutives, e.g. "daddy", "tummy" 3. reduplication, e.g. "din din", "easy peasy" These three lexical characteristics may help infants discover the referential nature of words, identify word referents, and segment fluent speech into words. If so, the amount of lexical input containing these properties should predict infants' rate of vocabulary growth. To test this prediction, Ota's team tracked the vocabulary size in 47 English-learning infants from 9 to 21 months and examined whether vocabulary growth was related to measures of iconicity, diminutives, and reduplication in the lexical input at 9 months. The team's analyses showed that both diminutives and reduplication in the input were associated with vocabulary growth, although measures of iconicity were not. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that phonological properties typical of lexical input in infant-directed speech play a role in early vocabulary growth.

In 2016, linguist Mark Forsyth tasted internet fame this week when a passage from a book he wrote went viral, talking about adjective word order in English. In this BBC article, Forsyth explains more language secrets that L1 English speakers know without knowing.

This article discusses the differences between speech and written language and the interplay between the two. It discusses how speech and written language can and have been separate from each other, like how written language has evolved to convey certain things that speech doesn't. The article then goes on to discuss the internet and texting language, or "Live internet vernacular English" as they call it, focusing on specific aspects, such as emojis, reduplication, and purposeful typos, and making a connection between internet language and speech.