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Aspects of infant speech development in the first year of life*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

John B. Delack
John B. Delack*
Affiliation:
The University of British Columbia
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Extract

Introduction. Despite a rather extensive literature on the subject, most research on the nature of infant speech can be characterized as impressionistically descriptive, or anecdotal, or speculative, or some combination thereof. Such studies have by and large ignored the structure, function and natural history of early vocal behaviour, an empirically adequate specification of which is a necessary prerequisite to an understanding of the development of infant vocalizations and of their relationship to later linguistic usage. Likewise, reports have generally failed to recognize the dynamic interactions within the developing organism as a whole, eschewing discussion of concomitant neurophysiological maturation and cognitive growth. While detailed consideration falls beyond the scope of the present paper, some insight into the issues involved may be gained from recent treatises dealing with brain development (Jacobson, 1975), myelogenesis (Lecours, 1975) and the ontogeny of cerebral dominance (Zangwill, 1975). Problems relating to speech input and output requirements in acquisition have been treated by Mattingly (1973), and the interplay of physiological-cognitive factors with respect to early speech perception and production has been critically overviewed by Gilbert (1975). Suffice it to say that until experimental evidence can be adduced, interpreted and properly interwoven into a coherent description, definitive theories on the acquisition and development of speech and language must perforce remain only as desiderata.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , Spring 1976 , pp. 17 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1976

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Footnotes

*

The research reported Herein was supported in part by the Department of National Health and Welfare (Canada), under Federal Public Health Project No. 609-7-324 and Medical Research Council Grant No. MA-5369. The author would like to thank those who contributed most substantially to this project: Judith Davis for data collection and collation; Dale Stevenson for computer programming and graphic illustration; John Nicol for computer programming; Patricia Fowlow and Dale Stevenson for data analysis and interpretation; and, most importantly, the families involved in this study whose budding ‘child linguists’ have tried to tell us something.

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