Nursery World - Babies recognise phrases before they can talk, study finds

One-year-olds can recognise combinations of words, such as ‘clap your hands’, before they have uttered their first word, new research from the University of Edinburgh has revealed.

Babies can understand the subtle differences between phrases, such as 'Clap your hands', and 'Take your hands', before they learn to talk

The study, which involved assessments of 36 11- to- 12 month-olds on the cusp of talking, found that the infants were able to understand multi-word phrases.

Linguists from the University of Edinburgh said that their study is the first to provide evidence that young children can pick up and understand multiword sequences before they can talk, or begin producing such combinations themselves.

Dr Barbora Skarabela, one of the authors of the report from the university’s school of philosophy, psychology and language sciences, said, ‘Previous research has shown that young infants recognise many common words. But this is the first study that shows that infants extract and store more than just single words from everyday speech.

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