Infantile speech, pedolalia, baby talk, infantile perseveration, or infantilism is a speech disorder, persistence of early speech development stage beyond the age when it is normally expected. It is characterized by the omission of some sounds and the substitution of standard speech sounds observed in children in early developmental stages.
Famous quotes containing the words speech and/or infantile:
“When toddlers are unable to speak about urgent matters, they must resort to crying or screaming. This happens even with adults. The voice is the carrier of emotion, and when speech fails us, we need to cry out in whatever form we can to convey our meaning. Often, what passes for negativism is really the toddler’s desperate effort to make herself understood.”
—Alicia F. Lieberman (20th century)
“I dunno what my 23 infantile years in America signify. I left as soon as motion was autarchic—I mean my motion.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)