•Vocalizations are longer. Consist of CV syllables whose timing approximates adult speech.

• The ability to combine syllables is an important step toward the production of words and sentences.

Reduplicated Babbling cont.

•This skill usually develops in the form of duplicated CV combinations such as baba, dada.

• More definable consonant and vowel sounds appear.

• Repertoire of phones is relatively limited with stops, nasals, and glides the most common consonantal sounds,

Reduplicated Babbling cont.

and lax vowels, the most frequent vocalic types.

a) Place of articulation shifts as the frequency of velars declines sharply; alveolars become predominant; labial consonants increase in frequency but do not supersede alveolars.

Babbling

Babbling - prespeech behavior characterized by syllables that may be initiated or terminated by consonant-like sounds.

Research has repeatedly documented:

1. Babbling behavior is not random

2. Not all sounds are produced

Babbling cont.

•3. Transition between babbling and first words is not abrupt but continuous

• Also appears that children's perceptual abilities are developed before meaningful utterances

• Example: some word comprehension is evident at approximately 9 months.

Babbling cont.

•Babbling is initially partly reinforced by tactile and kinesthetic sensation.

• At approx. 8 mos., the child begins to imitate the vocal play of adults. Also likely to repeat their own CV sequences.

Babbling cont.

•Gradually the phonemes used by adults will become more prevalent.

• At about this time, deaf children may fall behind hearing children in their amount of babbling.

Forms of babbling

•Babbling usually begins around 6 months and extends until words appear at age 10-13 months.

• Initially hear reduplicated babbling - basically similar strings of consonant- vowel productions. Consonants usually stay the same; some variation with vowels.

Babbling

•At approximately 9 months, nonreduplicated or variegated babbling begins.

• Consonants and vowels may vary from syllable to syllable. These two types have often been collapsed into canonical babbling.

Babbling

•Vocoids - production that is vowel-like but not a true vowel.

• Contoids - not yet a true consonant

• Review handout!

• Open syllables still most frequent in later babbling stages (V, CV, VCV, CVCV)

Segmental vs. suprasegmental

•Segmental - "what we say". Refers to the vowels and consonants which combine to produce syllables, words, and sentences.

• Suprasegmental - "how we say it". Refers to elements of speech that include pitch and loudness variables.

Suprasegmentals

•Gained considerable importance recently.

• Several researchers support viewpoint of close interaction between prosodic features, early child-directed speech (motherese), and early language dev.

• 6 months - intonation, rhythm and pausing.

•These prosodic patterns continue to diversify toward the end of the babbling period - becomes "expressive/prelinguistic jargon".

Jargon

Jargon - nonmeaningful sequences of phonemes having intonation and stress patterns that sound appropriate for meaningful speech.

b) Child sounds as though he is saying something meaningful, but it cannot be understood.

Jargon cont.

•Jargon develops out of babbling at about 10 months and continues after the child begins to use meaningful words.

• They seem to be using a gestalt strategy for producing large chunks of speech, but they don't have the meaningful words or the syntax.

Jargon cont.

•Some children use very little jargon. They use single words or combinations of words to get their point across until they are able to put meaningful words into sentences.

• Babbling and jargon can be viewed as the child's prespeech sound practice.

• Children produce babbling and jargon with adults, toys, in bed, etc….