The Discovery of Spoken Language

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July 2000ISBN 0-262-60036-6328 pp., 6 illus.$30.00/£19.95 (PAPER)

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Cloth (1997)

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Bradford BooksLanguage, Speech, andCommunication

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The Discovery of Spoken Language

Peter W. JusczykAcknowledgments1 Surveying the Terrain2 A Brief Historical Perspective on Language Acquisition

Research

3 Early Research on Speech Perception4 How Speech Perception Develops during the First Year5 The Role of Memory and Attentional Processes in theDevelopment of Speech Perception6 How Attention to Sound Properties May Facilitate LearningOther Elements of Linguistic Organization7 Relating Perception to Production8 Wrapping Things UpAppendix Methodology Used in Studies of Infant Speech

PerceptionNotesReferences

Name IndexSubject Index

Chapter 1Surveying the Terrain

Language involves a duality of patterning, as Hockett (1954) has noted.On the one hand, there are patterns that pertain to the way that soundsare organized; on the other, there are patterns that relate to how meaningsare organized. Although language use involves dealing with patterns atboth levels, it often seems as though the two are studied in relative isolation of one another. This seems especially true with respect to the study of language acquisition. Peruse a typical textbook in the field, and you areapt to find that only a relatively small portion of the book is concernedwith the development of speech perception and speech production. Thereare several possible reasons for this. It could be the case that there issimply a lot less known about the way speech perception and productioncapacities develop. Another possibility is that research on perception andproduction makes relatively little contact with the rest of the research onlanguage acquisition.Historically, there is support for both of these contentions. Althoughinvestigations documenting the growth of speech production have a relatively long history in diary studies (Ament 1899; Gregoire 1933, 1937;Leopold 1939, 1947; Scupin and Scupin 1907; Stern and Stern 1928),extensive research on infant speech perception had its inception duringthe last quarter century. Thus, with respect to how the receptive side of speech processing develops, there really was not a great deal of information available until fairly recently. However, the same cannot be said fordevelopmental studies of speech production. Even the early diarists took pains to record some of the changes in pronunciation that occurred inthe child's early words, although to be sure, the accuracy and reliability of phonetic transcriptions have improved enormously with the advent of thetape recorder and more sophisticated technology for analyzing speechproduction. Hence, to fully explain the separation between speech and the

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