Baby talk follows the same musical pattern in almost every language

Across cultures as different as English, Mandarin, and Xhosa, adults instinctively raise their pitch, slow down, and exaggerate their intonation when speaking to infants. Psychologist Anne Fernald found babies pay more attention to this "parentese" than to normal adult speech, and the pattern shows up even in languages with wildly different grammars.

— Anne Fernald, Baby talk — Developmental linguistics research, 1980s