I ran across this poem last week printed in the Financial Times, of all places. An English poet in the Renaissance observes a toddler babbling ("rocking a word in mouth yet undefiled") and playing with speech sounds. It is spooky to peer through this 400 year old window at language development in a child! Things haven't changed much.
Methinks 'tis pretty sport to hear a child
Rocking a word in mouth yet undefiled;
The tender racket rudely plays the sound,
Which, weakly bandied, cannot back rebound.
And the soft air the softer roof doth kiss,
With a sweet dying and a pretty miss,
Which hears no answer yet from the white rank
Of teeth, not risen from their coral bank.
The alphabet is searched for letters soft,
To try a word before it can be wrought;
And, when it slideth forth, it goes as nice
As when a man doth walk upon the ice.
Thomas Bastard (1566-1618)
From Ode to Childhood: Poetry to Celebrate the Child
