Emergence of Syllabic Patterns in Babbling

Abstract

Acquisition of speech sounds during child’s development refers to the gradual mastery of speech sounds within a given language. During the initial stages of the infant’s life, the vocalizations produced are highly varied from the well formed adult speech. The study aims to investigate the appearances of speech patterns during early vocalizations at the pre linguistic period. The participants included in the study comprise of 8 infants, two boys and two girls each in the age range 4-6months and 10-12months. The participants were selected from native Malayalam speaking families. An informed consent was obtained from parents/caregivers for the participation of the children. The researcher carried out the audio recording of the babbling utterances. Analyses of the sample were carried out using IPA transcriptions. The data obtained was classified as singleton vowels and consonants, bisyllabic and multisyllabic utterances containing strings of vowels, variegated and reduplicated multisyllabic utterances. The numbers of utterances were higher and varied in the 10-12 month age group compared to 4-6 month age group. Statistical significance was not attained because of the large variations among the individual participants.