Cell-phone chatter, which is one-sided, disengaged, truncated, and begs for context to make any sense

From How the 'Having It All' Debate Has Changed Over the Last 30 Years by Deborah Fallows.

As a grandmother caring for her grandchild, she has a pleasant commentary on changes in parenting over the past three decades. This nugget caught my eye. I agree with her caution not to make too much out of what may be an inconsequential change. On the other hand, one of things we have learned in the past six decades of research is that small repetitive things at the beginning have potentially immense consequences much later on.

One of the things I love about my academic training in linguistics is that knowing about language often pops up as something useful or revealing. Here's what took me by surprise in this case as I strolled around our neighborhood: Moms and babysitters and nannies, who used to push strollers in pairs and chat between themselves, now push strollers alone and talk into mid-air. Cell phone conversations are prevalent in the stroller-pushing set, and they change the nature of the language and linguistic interaction that babies hear and experience. Just listen to normal "parentese" and you hear slow talk, long drawn-out vowels, repetition, high pitch, simple grammar, and lots of inflection. Many of these elements help babies learn language. This is not cell-phone chatter, which is one-sided, disengaged, truncated, and begs for context to make any sense. That doesn't help babies much. Even two-way conversations between adults, while different from one-on-one talk with small children, offer a relative wealth of information about body language, style, engagement, reinforcement, etc. that are missing in one-sided cell-phone talk.

I don't want to make too much of this; after all, how much of babies' or small children's time is spent in the company of an adult who is in phantom conversation? Nonetheless, it is something to notice. One way of taking a walk with a baby is akin to turning on the TV or background music—it provides relief for the caretaker and some form of distraction or engagement for the child. Another way of taking a walk is to talk to her about the world around her—the planes flying overhead; the raindrops shaking loose from the trees; the bumpy ride along the sidewalk; the shadows from the clouds; the trucks, dogs, other strollers, joggers, workmen, bikes, and on and on.