A Child's First Year & Consonant Acquisition

English Language: AQA A Level, topic 2.1.5

Phonology - A Child's First Year

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

From around seventeen 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.

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.

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

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

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’.

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.

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.

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’.

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.

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.

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.

From what age can a foetus can hear sounds in utero?
The Key Stages of the ‘Pre-Lingual’ Stage
At what stage is tone developed?
According to Pamela Grunwell’s research, at what age do children generally learn the /p, b m, d, t, w, n/ phonemes?
When did Pamela Grunwell conduct her research into the age children learn phonemes?