Baby crying and its role in the language acquisition

Résumé

The objective of this work is to identify, based on the collection of crying data from babies in their incipient phase of development (very early childhood), language patterns. This data was collected in the form of videos available on YouTube. This article represents the result of the analysis of part of that study, which was guided by the assumptions of Tomasello (2003) in his approach to human development and language acquisition. According to this author, human knowledge is not only a genetic fruit that has been propagated throughout the time of development (ontogenic), but it also reverberates, in its essence, cultural marks (phylogeny). We will also discuss with Vygotsky (2000 [1934]), among other relevant authors, regarding the role of language and the historical-social process in the development of the individual. According to this Russian author, the acquisition of knowledge occurs through the interaction of the subject with the environment, as it is in the exchange with other subjects that knowledge and social functions are assimilated. Since language is an integral part of everyday life in which we transmit desires and needs, thoughts, concerns and plans (Clark, 2009), we bring to the table Damásio (2009) and Ekman (2011) to deal with the possible implication of feelings and emotions. For this work, we cut out two language patterns represented in the baby's crying.