[Linganth] Re: Is "motherese" universal?

[Paul B. Garrett]

samuels at anthro.umass.edu wrote:

>
> One thing I can say - not in Falk's defense, but to offer the different
> context in which she is operating - is this: questions of whether
> bipdalism, and the morphological results of selection for
> bipedalism, were necessary precursors to the evolution of language is a much
> more important question in paleoanthropology than it is in linguistic
> anthropology. What can we contribute to that dialogue?

I suspect that there's a lot that we can contribute.

One puzzling thing is the assumption that these hairless early mothers were
leaving their babies lying around on the ground (or in the crook of a tree, or
wherever).  Quoting from the CNN article (and again, I acknowledge not having
seen the scholarly article from which it derives):

-----------

...But Falk argues that "motherese" may have its origins in the need for mothers
to maintain contact with their infants at a stage of evolution when a direct
physical link was no longer possible.

...While the offspring of primates can cling to their mother's hair and ride on
her belly or back, human infants had to be carried everywhere by their
increasingly hairless mothers.

Since mothers would have to put their babies down while foraging for food, Falk
suggests they could have started making noises to reassure them.

Those that made the most successful sounds would have had a higher survival rate
because it allowed them to gather more food and prevent their babies from making
noises that might attract predators.

...[says Falk,] "The missing puzzle piece was bipedalism. We stood up; we lost
hair. It was then that babies could no longer hang on to their mothers. Mothers
had to hang on to their babies. That was a eureka moment."

--------------

Not long ago, in a very brief email exchange that I had with Bambi Schieffelin
about another popular press report on Falk's ideas--I think Bambi won't mind me
mentioning this publicly, and expanding it a bit (I assume sole responsibility
for my expansions)--she pointed out that in lots of contemporary groups, mothers
hardly EVER put babies down.  They use netbags, cloth slings, etc. to keep the
babies against their bodies, which leaves them free to move around and to use
both hands.  (Even some "Western" parents have caught on to this idea...check for
such technologies in the baby goods section of your local Kmart or Wal-Mart.)

Or, of course, they can simply have someone else hold the baby for a little
while--mother's sister, mother's mother, baby's older sibling, father, whomever.

Falk is thinking about early hominids, of course.  But even if technologies like
cloth slings and netbags were not yet available, is there any reason to assume
that a mother would NOT have relied on some kind of relatively simple social
arrangement with other adults (and/or older children) in order to avoid putting
her infant down and leaving it vulnerable to predators?  (Surely this hairless
early mother isn't out foraging all by herself?  And for whatever it's worth,
don't some contemporary non-human primates manage to have these kinds of
arrangements?)

Paul




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