Phonological Dev stages

• Vegetive stage: 0-4 months

  • Crying, coughing, burping

  Cooling: 4-7 months

  • Laughing, making consonant vowel sounds, changing pitch, volume

  Babbling: 6-12 months

  • repeated patterns, extended sounds & syllables, reduplicating sounds

  Protowords: 9-12 months

  • word-like vocalisations

  Holophrastic: 12-18 months

  • Conveys range of meanings in one word ' ball', 'milk'
• Mehler - 1988


  French newborn babies are able to distinguish French from other languages

  • Found babies as young as 4 days old sucked harder on dummies listening to French over English or Italian
• Vegetive stage

  Between ages 0-4 months

  • Child expresses itself vocally through crying
  • Signals hunger, distress or satisfaction
  • Instinctive noises (Screaming, crying)
• Cooling stage


  Between ages 4-7 months

  • Also known as 'gurgling' or 'mewing'
  • 'coo', 'ga', 'goo'
  • Child develops increasing control over vocal chords
• Babbling Stage


  Between ages 6-12 months

  • Consonant sound combinations - 'da de'
  • Bilabial sounds more common (using lips)
  • Reduplicated monosyllable - repeating sounds (e.g. baba, mama, etc.)
  • Experiments with articulators (part of body that produces sounds) - blowing bubbles and spluttering

  Babies change pitch depending on who they talk to

  • Mum - High pitch
  • Dad - low pitch
• Phonetic development happens during the first years of a child's life

  • Crying
  • Cooing
  • babbling
  • phonetic expansion
  • phonetic contraction
• General trends of phonological development stages:

  • Age 2.5: all vowels and 2/3 of consonants are mastered
  • Age 4: difficulty with only a few consonants
  • Age 6-7: confident use
• Phonemes 


  Smallest element of sound in a language that can display contrast and hence, change meanings or function of a word

  • 'ba' in 'ban'
  • 'Da' in 'Dan'
• Phonemic expansion


  Number of phonemes produced is increased

  • Typically before 9 months old
• Phonemic contraction


  Usually around 9-10 months old

  • Number of phonemes produced is reduced to those found in native language of speakers around them
  • Number of phonemes contracts
  • Baby discards the sounds that are not required to speak

  Evidence for this:

  • noises made by children of different nationalities starts to sound different

  Experiments:

  • native adults have successfully identified babies from their own language
• Usual order for children to learn phonemes (groups of 8)


  • Age 3 (early 8) : m, b, d, (y), p, h,
  • Age 4-5 (middle 8): t, (ng), g, (ch)
  • Age 6 (late 8): (sh), (th), (zh), z, s, r, l
• Intonation


  Rise and fall in pitch and tone when speaking - common in Cantonese, Chinese, Korean, etc.
• Intonation in phonological development


  Intonation patterns start to resemble speech

  • Common: rising intonation at end of utterance
  • Variations in rhythm/emphasis may suggest greeting or calling
• Gesture


  Child starts developing desire to communicate

  • Can be indicated through gesture

  e.g. pointing at object with face expression to signal 'what's that?'

  • Beginnings of pragmatic development

  e.g. recognising that social context affects meanings
• Understanding of language


  May not begin to speak but understand meanings of certain words

  • Word recognition: usually evident by end of first year
  • Common phrases: 'no', 'bye-bye'
• The first words

  • Usually around 12 months of age
  • Consonants typically first used correctly at beginning of words
  • Consonants at end of word present difficulty (e.g. 'push', 'rip')
  • Frequency: sounds that occur more frequently in large number of words will be acquired before sounds that occur less frequently
• Jean Berko & Roger Brown - 1960



  • Fis/Fish study
  • Child who refers to a plastic inflatable fish as 'fis'
  • Child substitute 's' sound for 'sh'
  • Child couldn't distinguish meaning of 'fis' from 'fish'

  Child: fis

  Adult: This is your fis?

  Child: no my fis

  Adult: Oh, this is your fish?

  Child: yes, my fis
• Active vocab


  understand and produce word
• Passive vocab


  can only produce/pronounce word
• Two word stage


  18 months old

  • Child put together 2 words to convey meaning
  • "Mummy sit"
  • Potential meanings are narrowed

  Estimated kid

  • Acquires 50-100 words
  • Age 2: 300 words
• Examples of two word stage

  Lauren: sit down

  • Could be commanding
  • May be asking permission

  Adult: Can you draw a smiley face?

  Lauren: two eyes

  • Learning to quantify nouns
  • commenting facial features in association with faces
• Telegraphic stage


  From age 2

  • Produces linger and complete utterances
  • includes key content words - vital to convey meaning
  • May omit grammatical words and structure accuracy - not necessary to convey meaning
• Examples of telegraphic stage


  • "Me going on trip"

  opposed to

  • "I'm going on a trip"

  Child uses object pronoun "me" than subject pronoun "I"
• Post telegraphic 


  around Age 3

  • Grammatical features start appearing alongside content words
  • Considered by 4 years, largely grammatically accurate and complete sentences