On NPR this A.M. I heard the results of a study showing that babies tend to cry in a manner that mimics the sound patterns of the native language of their parents.  The study, published in the Journal That Publishes Such Things, involved recording the newborn howls of 100 French and German houserats and listening to them to discern patterns…sort of like being on the airplane from screeching hell but being paid for it.  The howls of the French screechers tended to inflect upwards towards the end, with the German howlers inflecting downwards as per their respective languages.  In a related study, the same researchers are looking at the nascent crawling habits of the same groups of batrastards.  Seems that while the French tots tend to move about at random as per the classic “drunkard’s walk”, the German tyros almost inevitably begin moving towards the east.