Jucszyk thinks babies distinguish clauses by learning the melody of a language -- the rhythm of sounds and pauses, the varying pitch in the voice, the different pattern of loudness and softness. (Melody, called "prosody" in the linguistic trade, also helps infants distinguish one language from another. At six months, babies will listen just as long to a foreign language as to their own, but at nine months, they prefer their native tongue.)
So how do they actually learn to talk?
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