24
votes
Babies’ brains recognize foreign languages they heard before birth
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- Babies Start Processing Foreign Languages before They Are Born
- Authors
- Meghie Rodrigues
- Word count
- 892 words
The link is to a Scientific American article. The original paper can be found here with the following abstract:
I don't think anyone in the field will be particularly shocked by the results of this study but it is still an interesting data point.
Also: I like the word neonate.
This will likely need to be added to the literature of studies that have found that the '90s obsession with placing headphones against the skin during pregnancy and having the foetuses listen to classical music, such as Bach or Vivaldi, as being incredibly beneficial and not worthless.
A meta question: should articles like this be under ~humanities.languages or ~science? I never know.
It feels wrong to post them under ~humanities, as it feels like promoting the view that linguistics isn't a "real science" but some kind of a softer more philosophical humanist enterprise. Not that there is anything wrong with philosophical humanist study, far from if. But it feels different than what the formal, applied or social science of actual linguistic research is.
But then, it also feels wrong to post these in ~science since we already have a separate language related group. Of course, it is "languages" and not "language", so perhaps this is meant to cover only common language use and language arts, not the study of the nature of language?
Surely, I'm overthinking this. Or am I?
If anyone asserts that, they would have to be ready to have a throw down with Chomsky and the field of Computer Science. Chomsky's work on formal languages and context free grammars are considered foundational to the entire field of parser and compiler design.