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babbling

 
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World of the Mind: babbling
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The utterance or hearing of incoherent speech sounds. It is thought that the Greeks heard all other languages as 'babble', giving the word an onomatopoeic origin. Indeed unfamiliar languages do sound formless, with no clear demarcation between words. In a familiar language, word units are identified not by breaks in speech but from the continuous 'babble' of speech, much as separate objects are seen from the mosaic pattern of stimulation of the eyes.

It is believed that babies produce all the speech sounds of any language in their babbling, and that speech sounds or phonemes of the language of their environment are gradually selected, according to use (see language development in children).

(Published 1987)

WordNet: babbling
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Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: gibberish resembling the sounds of a baby
  Synonyms: babble, lallation


The adjective babbling has 3 meanings:

Meaning #1: talking idly or incoherently
  Synonyms: blathering, blithering, jabbering, gabbling

Meaning #2: continuous low murmuring sound; as especially of water
  Participle of verb: babble (meaning #3)

Meaning #3: making speech sounds


 
 
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babblative
blatteration
outbabble

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Thesaurus. Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary Copyright © 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
World of the Mind. The Oxford Companion to the Mind. Second Edition. Copyright © Oxford University Press, 2004. All rights reserved.  Read more
WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.  Read more