Some questions on the use of articles

Hello all.

In the following quotations the places where I don't understand why articles are (or are not) used are marked by «(?)». I'd like to ask you to explain them to me.

1. «...physical anthropologist Dean Falk proposes that just as motherese forms the scaffold for(?) language acquisition during (?) child development, so, too, did it underpin the evolution of language.»

2. «... moms did most of the (?) child rearing»

3. «As mothers increasingly relied on vocalization to control the emotions of their babies--and, later, the actions of their mobile juveniles--words precipitated out of the (?) babble and became conventionalized across hominid communities».

The quotatins are derived from:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00044075-BED6-10CF-BCE683414B7F0000&sc=I100322

Thaks in advance,
Anton

1. >>In a paper slated for the August Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Florida State University physical anthropologist Dean Falk proposes that just as motherese forms the scaffold for (?) language acquisition during (?) child development, so, too, did it underpin the evolution of language.<<

It's generalising about "language acquisition" and "child development". With two words bumped together this way, the article >the< is omitted to achieve this.

To generalise using the article "the", they could have been rewritten as "the acquisition of language" and "the development of children".


2. «Assuming, as many anthropologists do, that early humans had chimplike social structures, moms did most of the (?) child rearing.»

"Most of the" is a fixed wording that operates on a collection or idea. eg: "most of the apples on the table", where these apples as a whole are considered.

Most of what? >The< child reading. What child reading? Specifically >the< child rearing practices of these moms of early human societies.


3. «As mothers increasingly relied on vocalization to control the emotions of their babies--and, later, the actions of their mobile juveniles--words precipitated out of the (?) babble and became conventionalized across hominid communities».

What babble? >the< babble of the earlier referred to babies. If there were no article, it would have precipitated out of "babble" in general, from anything and anyone :)

Thanks.
As I understood, the main thing in the cited examples is whether we generalize the noun or not.