babbling

adjective

Emitting a murmuring sound felt to resemble a laugh: bubbling, burbling, gurgling, laughing, rippling. See laughter, sounds/pleasant sounds/unpleasant sounds/neutral sounds or silence.

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)

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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

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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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