From babbling to speech: A re-assessment of the continuity issue

Marilyn May Vihman · Marlys A. Macken · Ruth Miller Hazel Simmons · Jim Miller

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Language Development and Disorders Phonetics and Phonology Research Language and cultural evolution

Abstract

Controversy exists over whether there is any connection between children's babbling and the development of the adult sound system. The classic proponent of the discontinuity school is Jakobson 1941/1968, who claimed that the pairing of sound and meaning drastically alters the child's sound system. Jakobson's arguments for discontinuity are here evaluated on the basis of data on the transition from babbling to speech in a single set of children recorded weekly in two contexts: mother-child interaction and solitary play. Using the data from the mother-child context, and comparing the sound system of babbling with that of the early words in terms of the distribution of consonants, vocalization length, and phonotactic structure, we find striking parallelism between babbling and words within each child, across time and within time period. The data constitute strong evidence for continuity.

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References

1975Learning How to Mean 2015The Emergence of Symbols: Cognition and Communication in Infancy 1976Language and context: The acquisition of pragmatics 1973WHAT'S IN A WORD? ON THE CHILD'S ACQUISITION OF SEMANTICS IN HIS FIRST LANGUAGE11This research was supported in part by NSF Grant GS-1880 to the Language Universals Project, Stanford University, and in part by NSF Grant GS-30040 to the author.1977One word at a time : the use of single word utterances before syntax. By Lois Bloom. (Janua linguarum, series minor, 154.) The Hague: Mouton, 1973. Pp. 261. $11.25.1975Assessment in infancy: Ordinal scales of psychological development.1980THE EMERGENCE OF THE SOUNDS OF SPEECH IN INFANCY 2013Words and sounds in early language acquisition

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1991Adaptation to language: Evidence from babbling and first words in four languages 2010Relationships between lexical and phonological development in young children*1995The Articulatory Basis of Babbling 1986Phonological development from babbling to speech: Common tendencies and individual differences 2007

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