Rock-A-Bye Baby

Language as innate and universal? (Think Chomsky's Universal Grammar)

"Motherese" : baby talk i.e. the singsong way non-infants talk to infants

• cross-cultural (cognitive psychologist Greg Bryant of the University of California, Los Angeles, discovered that the Shuar people of South America - non English-speaking - got the gist of what North American mothers were trying to say 75 percent of the time when the latter spoke in motherese)
  
• across species? - resembles special vocalisations (grunts and girneys) used by rhesus monkeys around their infants (as demonstrated by University of Chicago biologists Dario Maestripieri and Jessica Whitham)

Thanks to: Leitzell, K. (2007). "Understanding Baby Talk". Scientific American Mind, 18:6. New York: Scientific American.

Bah-Baah Bah Baah Bah-Baah Baaaaah

Translation: Mary had a little lamb.

Moo.