Prelinguistic Language: The First Year of Communication

Running Head: Prelinguistic

Prelinguistic Language: The First Year of Communication

Abstract

Communication before one is able to speak is referred to as prelinguistic communication. In typically developing infants, this stage is from birth to twelve months. Prelinguistic communication has three major milestones; the first being recognization of sounds and deciphering phonology. Infants then begin to “coo” and babble, using vowel sounds, and occasionally consonant sounds. Gestures also play a role in prelinguistic development because they show that an infant has a sense of symbolization. Research has found that ones’ prelinguistic communication has a positive correlation with ones’ future language development; this is why these three milestones are important.

Prelinguistic Language: The First Year of Communication

Just because an infant is not speaking does not mean that he or she cannot communicate with other individuals. Prelinguistic language is referred to as the period from birth to 12 months, before an infant can speak. An infants’ success or deficit in Prelinguistic communication has shown a positive correlation with ones’ language development in the future. This is a result of three main milestones that take place during the first year of an infants’ life that are important: producing and receiving phonological messages, cooing and babbling, and gesturing.

The most important aspect of an infants’ first year of language is phonological development, both in producing and receiving messages from others. Butako and Daehler state “right from birth, the human infant has a special sensitivity to the sounds other human beings make”(2001, page 229). These sounds, phonemes, are the smallest units of sound that occur in language (Bear, Invernizzi, Johnston & Templeton 2004, page 424). Researchers convey that infants as young as one month old can differentiate between different phonemes, and at the age of two months, are able to distinguish between vowel sounds. At this time, infants are becoming sensitive to prosody. In Child Development: A Thematic Approach, prosody is defined as “patterns of innotation, stress, and rhythm that communicate meaning in speech” (page G-6). Mother-ease is a prosodic feature that infants can distinguish and respond to well. Mother-ease is high-pitched, sing-song talking, often referred to as “baby talk.” This is used constantly by almost everyone who speaks to infants. When I use mother-ease with my nephew, I basically sing every word that I speak.

The next milestone in Prelinguistic communication is “cooing.” In typically developing infants, this occurs between six and eight weeks after birth. “Cooing” is brief, vowel-like, utterances, sometimes accompanied by consonants, and usually produced in the back of the mouth, such as /g/ or /k/ (Butako & Daehler 2001, page 231). I’ve sometimes noticed that it sounds almost like an infant is laughing, when they are in fact “cooing.” In the article, Exploration of vocal tract properties during serial production of vowels by full term and preterm infants, Goldfield states that “vowels are among the first speech sounds, and are produced in sequence (2000, page 421). “Cooing” occurs when infants are happy, in a comfortable state, or when a parent has made an attempt to communicate. Also, according to Butako and Daehler, as “cooing” continues, infants’ vocalizations will become longer, louder, and soon include more consonants, which are formed at the front of the mouth, such as /m/ or /p/ (page 231).

Babbling is the next feature in Prelinguistic communication. According to Ejiri and Masataka, babbling consists of “well-formed consonant-vowel syllables”, which have adult-like properties (2001, page 40). Babbling sounds like an infant is talking and singing with rhythm and random syllables, ba-ba-ga-gee-ma, but they just are not producing any real words yet. Babbling is often accompanied by facial expressions, such as smiles and frowns (Butako & Daehler 2001, page 231). It is evident that there is a significant

degree of continuity between