A Child's First Year & Consonant Acquisition

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Phonology - A Child's First Year

Even before a child is born, they can start to ‘hear’ sounds.

17-week-old-foetus

From around 17 weeks, a foetus can hear sounds in utero. This is often shown when a child reacts more when they hear a certain voice or when they hear a certain piece of music.
This is often shown again after birth.

Mehler

In 1988, Mehler found that French babies had a stronger reaction to French sounds at four days old than they did to English, Spanish or Italian.
- This proved that babies become accustomed to their native language before birth.

Phonology - Pre-Lingual Stage

Before a child can pronounce words, they go through what is known as the ‘pre-lingual’ stage. This is formed of six key stages.

Word of warning

As a word of warning, all theories/concepts mentioned in this module are rough guides and all children are subject to individual variation.

Stage 1: Biological noises – 0-2 months

This involves a lot of crying (which usually takes the form of the long a sound (/a:/)).
The child begins to gain control of their air stream.
This is universal – parents of all nationalities can recognise the different types of crying. As a result, this isn’t really a ‘language’.

Stage 2: Cooing and laughing – 2-5 months

We begin to see a control of vocal chords, but the sounds are meaningless, like ‘coo’,’ hoo’ and ‘ga’.
Tongue control is evident when coos get strung together.

Stage 3: Vocal play – 5-8 months

The child begins to experiment with different vowel and consonant sounds.
The child begins to play with pitch.
There is no meaning behind these noises – they are playing.
Parents may respond very positively to certain sounds and as a result, the child may produce these again and again.

Stage 4: Babbling – 6-12 months

After starting, babbling happens for a long time, permeating even into the holophrastic stage.
Consonants begin to get linked to vowels. There is still no meaning to these sounds.
Parents will react if ‘da’ or ‘ma’ is formed (coincidently).
There are two types of babbling – reduplicated and variegated.
- Reduplicated babbling happens when the sound is repeated. For example, ‘mamama’.
- Variegated babbling happens when the sound is differed, like ‘dabama’.

Stage 4: Babbling (cont.)

To start with, a child will try as many new sounds as they can – this is called phonemic expansion.
At roughly 9/10 months, the child narrows their range to those found in their native language. This is called phonemic contraction.
At this point, a parent can recognise a child of the same nationality.

Stage 4: Babbling (cont.)

A child gains more control over their body and face at this point, and so paralinguistic features develop (gesturing and facial expressions).
A child also develops intonation as of real speech. This includes rising intonation at the end of the interrogative mood.

Stage 5: Melodic utterances – 9-18 months

A child lets out utterances containing rhythm.
Tone is developed.

Stage 6: protowords – around a year

A child starts to use protowords. These are utterances which resemble words and are word-like ‘dap’ for a phone. These protowords would not make sense outside of the context of primary caregivers.

1Children's Language Development

1.1Stages of Development

1.1.1A Child's First Year & Consonant Acquisition

1.1.2Consonant Acquisition

1.1.3Beginning Stages of Language

1.1.4Lexical Development

1.1.5Stages of Development

1.1.6Grammatical Constructions

1.2Theories of Language Development

1.2.1Behaviourism

1.2.2Interactionism

1.2.3Interactionism 2

1.2.4Nativism

1.2.5Chomsky

1.2.6Cognitivism

1.2.7Social Constructionism

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