Babbling

* Babble for as long as age 2 ½. (Clark, 2003:104)
* Earliest babbling: 6-8 months (MacNeilage, 1980)

* Babbling: Typical infants may evidence “#jargon babbling” until take in the 2nd year, after already 30 words in their vocabulary, and many produce 50% babbling with 50% words (\*consistent with Clark; Blake & Fink 1987) (Lust, B. 2006:152)
* Infants 7 – 53 weeks show more spontaneous babbling when done then with others, suggesting babbling is internally driven (Locke, 1995) (Lust, 2006:152)
	+ \*or does 53 weeks refer to the stage when a person is an infant?

## Marginal Babbling

* Vocal play terminates with long series of sounds (Hoff, 2013) called “#marginal babbling” (Oller, 1977), a mixed vocal play (Yeni-Komshian et al., 1980).
* Long series of segments are found in which consonantal and vocalic elements both occur but they do not resemble syllables of adult speech in their durational aspects or other articulatory features (\*so these elements sound (and ‘act’) like consonants and vowels but aren’t?) (Yeni-Komshian 1980:74)
	+ Consonantal and vocalic elements that were prominent earlier are combined with each other in novel ways

* Decrease in the use of back (velar) stops between early and later babbling: 4-6 month olds – playful production  of isolated consonant and vowel-like sounds (Goodluck, 2001:19)
* Five months – in French + English babbling, compared to babbling at 12 months, acoustic + perceptual analysis revealed differences in fundamental frequency & syllable-timing as well as in length of prosodic utterances (Levitt, 1993:385, Levitt & Utman, 1992, Whaler, L, & Wang, 1991, eg) (Lust, 2006:152)
* **M:** The end of the expansion stage comes with long series of segments where in consonantal and vocalic-like sounds occur. Syllables of this ilk are as of yet undeveloped in terms of their durational qualities or articulatory elements (Yeni-Komshian et al., 1980) such as syllable-timing fundamental frequency, or prosody (Lust, 2006).

## Reduplicated Babbling

### Timing

* 6 – 10 months (Yeni-Komshian, 1980:75)
* 6-9 months (Hoff, 2013)

### Description

* In this babbling, canonical forms are found for the first time. The babbling is characterized by a series of CV syllables in which each syllable is perceived as being similar to every other. It resembles speech much more closely in its timing than the vocal behaviours found in any previous stage (Yeni-Komshian, 1980:75)
* Distinguished by the presence of true syllables, and these syllables are typically produced in reduplicated series of the same consonant and vowel combinations (\*actual consonants and vowels?) (Hoff, 2013)

* Don't necessarily produce it to communicated (Stark, 1986); Babies sit in their cribs or car seats and babble and show no evidence that they expect any reply at all. (Hoff, 2013)
* First development that distinguishes the vocal development or hearing children from at of deaf children (Hoff, 2013)
* Babbling: between early and later, decrease in the use of back (velar) stops: 6 months – production of series of consonant-vowel (CV) syllables in which the individual syllables in each babbled series are identical or very similar (\*”jargon babblers (Hoff, 2013)) (Goodluck, 2001:19)
* 8 months old – French adults could distinguish French babbling from French/Arabic babbling (75.8%) and French/Cantonese babbling (69.8%). Baysson-Bordies, Sagart, & Durand, 1984. (Lust, 2006:152)

## Nonreduplicated babbling

### Description

* Range of consonants and vowels expands further, and infants combine different C + V and C + V + C syllables into series, unlike the repetitive series that characterized the first canonical babbling (Hoff, 2013)
* Prosody becomes particularly noticeable; infants sound as though they're speaking until one listens closely and realizes that the infant is producing the melody of language without the word. (Hoff, 2013)
	+ these wordless sentences are often referred to as jargon
	+ some infants produce more than others and some infants spend much longer in this stage than others
		- those who produce a great deal of jargon and who do so for a long time: "intonation babies", those who produce relatively little jargon and who move quickly on to learning the words to the tune as "word babies" (Dore, 1975) (\*these seem to describe the same thing, especially "to the tune")
* Between early and later, decrease in the use of back (velar) stops: 10 months – that kind of babbling gives way to syllable sequences with more varied members (different consonants and/or vowels) and a wider range of syllable types – VC and CVC in – addition to CV. (Goodluck, 2001:19)
	+ different kinds of Cs and/or Vs in each series or in general?
* Twelve months – in French + English babbling, compared to babbling at 5 months, acoustic + perceptual analysis revealed differences in fundamental frequency & syllable-timing as well as in length of prosodic utterances (Levitt, 1993:385, Levitt & Utman, 1992, Whaler, L, & Wang, 1991, eg) (Lust, 2006:152)
* By the end of the babbling stage: great progress from their first vowels to an increasingly large repertoire of consonants and then to knowing something about the prosody and sound patterns of their language. (Hoff, 2013)
* This babbling (“variegated” (Oller)) is characterized by:
	+ the use of different consonants and vowels within a series
	+ by the use of V, VC, and CVC syllables in addition to the CV syllable types found exclusively in reduplicated babbling.
	+ In addition, a greater variety of stress pattern and of intonation contour is found in this later babbling.
		- The unstressed syllables, like those of adult speech in the case where the language spoken is unknown, are very hard to capture in transcription. This activity may be that referred to by Gessell &Thompson (1934) as “expressive jargon”.  (Yeni-Komshian 1980:75)

## Babbling vs First Words

* Just 11 different consonants, /h, w, j, p, b, m, t, d, n, k, g/ account for 90 percent of consonant sounds produced by 12 month olds learning American English and children learning other languages have similar--though not identical--sound repertoires (J L Locke & Pearson, 1992) (Hoff, 2013)
	+ English learners: consonant clusters are rare
	+ /æ, ʌ, ə/ more frequent than /i/ or /u/ (Vihman, 1988a)
* Another different between children's production and target language : number of syllables. Vocalizations are most frequently single syllables, with some two-syllable productions (Hoff, 2013) (\*but what about reduplicators?)
* Different repertoires of sounds for first words vs babbling, children tend to stop babbling for a short period, typically while learning to walk (\*what vocalizations to they make, then?) (Jakobson, 1968). HOWEVER: first words seem to have sounds from earliest babbles. Babbling lays the foundation, children have figured out which sounds belong to target language and which don’t (Robb, Bower, & Tyler, 1994). (\*why is there so much debate? Because kids don’t seem to remember all that well?) Clark, 2003:104
* Babbling predicts “quite accurately” the number of the most common substitutions and deletions which occur in meaningful speech (Oller et al., 1976 P9) (MacNeilage, 1980:P19)
* Extremely close relationship with first words (MacNeilage, 1980:19; “Sounds and Sequences in (early (only?)) babbling and in first words”)
	+ Initial consonants, unaspirated stops, nasals, glides = common
	+ Consonant clusters and final consonants (especially voiced), aspirated stops, fricatives, and liquids = uncommon

* Many include non-ambient sounds (English babbling, use of velar fricative, eg) (Goodluck, 2001:19)
* Preferences, no matter the languages: stops, nasal, [h] (Locke, 1983:10) (Goodluck, 2001:19)
	+ Fricatives, liquids tend to be avoided
	+ Miyahira: 14:37 didn’t hear are fricatives can’t say I blame her, they /suck.
	+ Stops: voiced are more frequent than voiceless in babbling

Phonetic features of late babbling cohere with those of their first words (BB, Vihman, & Vihman, 1991(?)) (Lust, 2006:152)

* More singleton consonants than clusters, more initial than finals (Oller et al., 1976)
* Distribution of consonants, vocalization length, and phonotactic structure in babbling across languages shows “striking parallelism between babbling and words” (Vihman et al., 1985)

### Silent Period

* Silent period: could just be that the cognitive requirement for walking is too large to walk + babble (Goodluck, Clark). Evidence that they can distinguish minimal pairs as words (not labels) but can’t when minimal pairs /are labels – cognitive load is too much (Hoff or Lust?)
* Post variegated babbling (for pre first words) – silent period in which babbling ceases (Vihman et al., 1985)