Children's Language Acquisition

Newborns recognize and prefer their mother's voice and language. They prefer the language of their mother to their mother's voice. They prefer a woman speaking their mother's language (Italian) to their mother's voice speaking Russian.

The pace in which newborns suck on a pacifier lets us know that they recognize the change from Italian and Russian and vice versa.  They suck the hardest when hearing new words and when recognizing the change from the unfamiliar language to the familiar language. 

When a child is between 2-5 months they vocalize mostly when lying down and they begin to develop vocal "games".  They explore manipulations with pitch, practice consonantal features such as friction noises, bilabials adn nasal murmurings.

The child's first vowels begin to appear and they play with their articulators, clicking tounge and opening and shutting mouth. Deaf babies also play these games.

"Gagagagagag" - Single consonant-vowel syllable repeated.

•  "Mamamma-gagagaga" - Combinations of repeated consonant-vowel syllable.

Early in this stage deaf babies also babble but hearing babies can model pitch of vocalization (high with a woman and low with a man).

Babies can still recognize language sounds that are not apart of their language.

Babies begin to babble using sounds from only their language. They begin to lose the ability to distinguish sounds not in their own language.

In English most words begin with consonants so in this stage babies of English speaking parents babble mostly C-V-C.

From this babbling babies develop their first words.

Deaf Children cease vocal babbling.

Mostly concrete words such as "car" and "eat" emerge.

Naming precedes asking during the one-word stage. Example: Pointing and saying "ball" but meaning "can I have the ball?"

Can obey simple verbal commands. Example: "no" ideas such as "don't do that".

this is the process until 1 year of age.