# The birth of a word

- Institution: TED
- Department: TED2011
- Speaker: Deb Roy
- Year: 2011
- Level: For everyone
- Language: English
- Subjects: Psychology and the brain, Languages and linguistics
- Source: [TED](https://www.ted.com/talks/deb_roy_the_birth_of_a_word)
- Licence: [CC BY-NC-ND 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) (Non-commercial use only, and no changed versions.)
- Who can watch: Teens profiles and older (sources give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the source's own words)

MIT researcher Deb Roy wanted to understand how his infant son learned language -- so he wired up his house with videocameras to catch every moment (with exceptions) of his son's life, then parsed 90,000 hours of home video to watch "gaaaa" slowly turn into "water." Astonishing, data-rich research with deep implications for how we learn.

## Lectures

1. [The birth of a word](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/learn/ted/deb_roy_the_birth_of_a_word/d550690b7420), 20 min (TED's player)