BLANK SLATE OR NOT?

HOW DO INFANTS PERCEIVE AND

PRODUCE SOUNDS?
• Tests show that they can respond to speech stimuli
1st year of life
The infant “uncovers the sounds of the ambient language”
From around six months
He begins to lose the phonemic sounds that are not
phonemic in his language.
e.g. /r/ and /l/ for Japanese infant
BABBLING
• At around 6 months, the infant begins to babble. Babbling is not linguistic chaos. the
twelve most frequent consonants in the world’s languages make up 95% of the
consonants infants use in their babbling. See video clip
• By the end of the first year, the child’s babbles come to include only those sounds and
sound combination that occurs in the target language. Babbles began to sound like
words, although the may not have any specific meaning attached to them.
• Deaf infants produce babbling sounds that are different from those of hearing children.
Babbling is related to auditory input and is linguistic in nature. See video clip
• Babbling is linguistic ability related to the kind of language input the child receives.
• Babbling illustrates the reading of the human mind to respond to linguistic input from
a very early stage.
• Babbling is the earliest stage in language acquisition.
FIRST WORDS
• After the age of one, children figure out that sounds are related to
meanings and start to produce their first words.
• Usually children go through a holophrastic stage where their one-
word utterances may convey more meaning.

CHILD’S ERRORS IN PRONUNCIATION

• Consonant Cluster Simplification
• Devoicing of Final Consonants
• Voicing of Initial Consonants
• Consonant Harmony