Chapter I introduction background

Stages and Strategy for Language Acquisition.


Stages in first language acquisition

1. 
   Pre-speech
   

Much of importance goes on even before the child utters his first word: infants learn to pay attention to speech, pays attention to intonation and the rhythm of speech long before they begin to speak. Infants respond to speech more keenly than to other sounds. Speech elicits greater electrical activity in the left side of the 2 month old infant's brain than do other sounds.

2. 
   Babbling stage.
   

Babbling stage begins at several months of age. In this stage, these vocalizations do not contain meaning or refer to anything specific. Human infants are not excited or upset when babbling, but instead they will babble spontaneously and incessantly only when emotionally calm. The sounds and expressions of babbling are produced before an infant begins to construct recognizable words. This is mainly due to the immaturity of the vocal tract and neuromusculature at this age in life.
Infants first begin vocalizing by crying, followed by cooing and then vocal play. These first forms of sound production are the easiest for children to use. When reaching an age of 6 months, infants are finally able to control the opening and closing of the vocal tract, and upon obtaining this ability, infants begin to distinguish between the different sounds of vowels and consonants. This period is known as the beginning of the canonical stage. During the canonical stage, the babbling involves reduplicated sounds containing alternations of vowels and consonants (e.g.; baba or bobo). By the time an infant reaches 8–9 months, they display productions of more advanced sounds known as variegated babbling. Variegated babbling differs greatly from reduplicated babbling. This stage includes more complex combinations of consonant and vowel syllables (e.g.; babadoobe)

3.