Marilyn Vihman

From Babbling to Speech: A Re-Assessment of the Continuity Issue

Controversy exists over whether there is any connection between childrens 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 childs sound system. Jakobsons 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.*

Phonological Development from Babbling to Speech: Common Tendencies and Individual Differences.

Taking as a point of departure Lockes biological model for the origins of phonological development, this study encompasses analyses of phonetic tendencies, consonant use in babbling and early words, and phonological word-selection patterns. Data from 10 children aged 9 to 16 months are drawn from four lexically defined points covering the period from no word use to a cumulative vocabulary of 50 words. Individual differences are found to prevail from the start in all three domains analyzed, with some increase in uniformity across subjects with increasing knowledge of language. Furthermore, the phonological processes typical of development from age 1 to 3 or 4 years are found to be rooted in the phonetic tendencies of the prelinguistic period.

Language differentiation by the bilingual infant

This paper traces the process involved in the bilingual infants gradual differentiation of his two languages, beginning with the acquisition of a dual lexicon. Word combination is at first based indiscriminately on this dual language source; function words account for a disproportionately large number of tokens used in mixed-language utterances. Universal principles of child syntax are at first applied; later, rules specific to each of the languages are developed separately. The development of self-awareness and sensitivity to standards in the second year provides the essential cognitive underpinning for the child to begin to avoid mixed-language utterances and to choose his language according to his interlocutor. At a still later point the bilingual older child may begin to make use of code-switching strategies appropriate to his or her bilingual community.

Phonological development: Toward a 'radical' templatic phonology

Abstract “Radical” templatic phonology is a template-based approach to segmental phonological representation. The central hypothesis is that the segmental phonological structure of words is represented as language-specific phonotactic templates, in the sense used in the developmental literature. Template-based organization of the early lexicon has been identified in children acquiring several different languages. It is the result of a usage-based abstracting or “induction” process based on both babbling practice (phonetic production) and input experience with specific adult phonological patterns. The resulting templates thus constitute patterns that reconcile (or “adapt”) the model provided by target words with the childs own phonetic repertoire of syllables or word shapes — typically extending or building on the forms initially “selected” for first word production, in which adult and child forms show a close match. In adult phonology segment categories — natural classes, or features — are best defined in terms of their occurrence in positions in the templates in individual languages, not as independent universal categories. After reviewing the status of segment categories and their phonetic basis in contemporary phonological theory we present crosslinguistic evidence of pervasive variation in both phonetic realization and phonological distribution patterns, evidence that supports the template construct.

Beginnings of Prosodic Organization: Intonation and Duration Patterns of Disyllables Produced by Japanese and French Infants:

In this study, some prosodic aspects of the disyllabic vocalizations (both babbling and words) produced by four French and four Japanese children of about 18 months of age, are examined. F0 contour and vowel durations in disyllables are found to be clearly language-specific. For French infants, rising F0 contours and final syllable lengthening are the rule, whereas falling F0 contours and absence of final lengthening are the rule for Japanese children. These results are congruent with adult prosody in the two languages. They hold for both babbling and utterances identified as words. The disyllables produced by the Japanese infants reflect adult forms not only in terms of global intonation patterns, but also in terms of tone and duration characteristics at the lexical level.

Phonology and the development of the lexicon: evidence from children's errors

Various kinds of childrens lexical errors, mostly based on similarity in sound, are presented and classified. At the earliest stage some children are found to pursue a HOMONYM STRATEGY, actively seeking to combine adult word-patterns to limit their output repertoire. The associations between words underlying these productive homonyms, together with perception-based errors, blends, and other word-substitutions, are compared with malapropisms from a slightly older group of children as well as with data from adults. Analysis of these data makes it possible to chart developmental changes in the phonological links which form one substructure of the lexicon.

Familiar words capture the attention of 11-month-olds in less than 250 ms.

The capacity of human infants to discriminate contrasting speech sounds specializes to the native language by the end of the first year of life, when the first signs of word recognition have also been found, using behavioural measures. The extent of voluntary attentional involvement in such word recognition has not been explored, however, nor do we know what its neural time-course may be. Here we demonstrate that 11-month-old children shift their attention automatically to familiar words within 250 ms of presentation onset by measuring event-related potentials elicited by familiar and unfamiliar words. A significant modulation of the first negative peak (N200), known to index implicit change detection in adults, was induced by word familiarity in the infants.

The Construction of a First Phonology

Although it is generally accepted that phonological development is grounded in phonetic learning, there is less agreement for the proposition supported here, that the first phonological structuring constitutes a developmental discontinuity. Data from the phonetic and lexical learning of Finnish consonant duration are presented to illustrate the role of (1) child selection of adult words for early context-supported production based on phonetic learning and (2) child adaptation of adult words to an idiosyncratic template for later production as part of an incipient system. We argue that the latter, but not the former, reflects the construction of a first phonology.

Phonological Reorganization: A Case Study

Various types of phonological behavior have been identified as evidence of the systematization which is said to occur in the course of the transition from early, “whole-word” phonology to later, segment-based phonology. However, we have a limited understanding of the role of such early phonological behavior in facilitating — or initiating — the emergence of segmental phonology. Furthermore, there has been little acoustic verification of such changes in childrens phonological systems. in this study, the lexical production of one child is analyzed in detail from the onset of word use at 10 months to 16 months, when she had a cumulative lexicon of over 70 words. A period of phonological experimentation and the emergence of productive “word recipes” are documented, using both perceptual and acoustic analysis. Implications of such systematization for the later development of segmental phonology are discussed.

Onset of word form recognition in English, Welsh, and English-Welsh bilingual infants

Children raised in the home as English or Welsh monolinguals or English–Welsh bilinguals were tested on untrained word form recognition using both behavioral and neurophysiological procedures. Behavioral measures confirmed the onset of a familiarity effect at 11 months in English but failed to identify it in monolingual Welsh infants between 9 and 12 months. In the neurophysiological procedure the familiarity effect was detected as early as 10 months in English but did not reach significance in monolingual Welsh. Bilingual children showed word form familiarity effects by 11 months in both languages and also revealed an online time course for word recognition that combined effects found for monolingual English and Welsh. To account for the findings, accentual, grammatical, and sociolinguistic differences between English and Welsh are considered.