Americans' Talk to Dogs: Similarities and Differences With Talk to Infants

Common knowledge tells us that people talk "baby talk" to dogs, but how similar talk to dogs and infants is remains unexplored. In this study, people's talk to dogs during 46 play interactions was coded and compared with previous studies about talk to infants. Talk to dogs and infants shared numerous features, including a high-pitch register, a low mean length of utterance, high frequencies of grammatically acceptable utterances, present-tense verbs, repetitiveness, and attention-getting devices. Differences were also present. Talk to dogs contained shorter sentences and more imperatives and exact repetitions; talk to infants had more questions, declaratives, and deictic utterances. Reasons for the similarities and differences are elaborated on. Both forms involve communicating with a limited and inattentive addressee, controlling the addressee's attention and behavior by focusing on an object or activity, and expressing friendliness and affection. They differ in that talk to infants is more likely to treat the other as a conversant and, especially, to tutor the other in naming.