Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of contributors
- In memory of Miwa Nishimura
- Preface
- Introduction
- Language acquisition
- 1 Ontogeny of language
- 2 Caregivers' speech
- 3 The intrinsic link between gesture and speech at the prelinguistic stage
- 4 Infant speech perception
- 5 Phonological acquisition
- 6 The mechanism of lexical development: implications from Japanese children's word learning
- 7 The acquisition of nouns and verbs in Japanese
- 8 The acquisition of verbal nouns
- 9 The acquisition of Japanese numeral classifiers
- 10 The acquisition of case markers
- 11 The acquisition of tense and aspect
- 12 On the origin of children's errors: the case of Japanese negation and direct passive
- 13 Binding Theory in UG and first-language acquisition of Japanese
- 14 The acquisition of the particles ne, yo, and no
- 15 The acquisition of linguistic politeness in Japanese
- 16 Children's narrative structures
- 17 Memory talk and testimony in children
- 18 Developmental dyslexia
- 19 Japanese Sign Language
- 20 The role of an innate acquisition device in second-language acquisition
- 21 Japanese, the grammar of reflexives, and second-language acquisition
- 22 Processes in L2 Japanese sentence production
- 23 The development of lexical competence among second-language readers
- 24 Reading in Japanese as a second language
- 25 Intrasentential code-switching in Japanese and English
- Part II Language processing
- References
- Name index
- Subject index
3 - The intrinsic link between gesture and speech at the prelinguistic stage
from Language acquisition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of contributors
- In memory of Miwa Nishimura
- Preface
- Introduction
- Language acquisition
- 1 Ontogeny of language
- 2 Caregivers' speech
- 3 The intrinsic link between gesture and speech at the prelinguistic stage
- 4 Infant speech perception
- 5 Phonological acquisition
- 6 The mechanism of lexical development: implications from Japanese children's word learning
- 7 The acquisition of nouns and verbs in Japanese
- 8 The acquisition of verbal nouns
- 9 The acquisition of Japanese numeral classifiers
- 10 The acquisition of case markers
- 11 The acquisition of tense and aspect
- 12 On the origin of children's errors: the case of Japanese negation and direct passive
- 13 Binding Theory in UG and first-language acquisition of Japanese
- 14 The acquisition of the particles ne, yo, and no
- 15 The acquisition of linguistic politeness in Japanese
- 16 Children's narrative structures
- 17 Memory talk and testimony in children
- 18 Developmental dyslexia
- 19 Japanese Sign Language
- 20 The role of an innate acquisition device in second-language acquisition
- 21 Japanese, the grammar of reflexives, and second-language acquisition
- 22 Processes in L2 Japanese sentence production
- 23 The development of lexical competence among second-language readers
- 24 Reading in Japanese as a second language
- 25 Intrasentential code-switching in Japanese and English
- Part II Language processing
- References
- Name index
- Subject index
Summary
Overview
The onset of canonical babbling (CB) marks an important milestone in preverbal infants' vocal development. Unlike the sounds that infants produce before this stage, CB (e.g. “mama,” “bababa”) consists of well-formed, consonant–vowel syllables which have adult-like spectral and temporal properties (Oller, 1986). Much acoustic evidence shows that there is a significant degree of continuity between the sound system of babbling and that of early speech (Vihman et al., 1985). Thus, an understanding of how infants learn to produce CB is important for an understanding of how they acquire spoken language.
Within infant's typical development, CB first occurs around 6–10 months of age. The onset period of CB has been considered to be consistent for all infants, regardless of their language environments (Oller & Eilers, 1988; Koopmans-van Beinum & van der Stelt, 1986). With regard to the onset of CB in Japanese infants, few studies have investigated the period when infants start to produce CB. Recently, Ejiri (1998a) showed, from her longitudinal study of 28 Japanese infants, that the average age of CB onset is 29.6 weeks (range: 21.4 to 38.6 weeks). This result is also consistent with the data reported from the other language environments.
Several researchers have proposed the idea that babbling is one accomplishment in a series of overall developments of the infant's rhythmic behavior (e.g. Eilers et al., 1993; Locke et al., 1995; Meier et al., 1997; Thelen, 1991).
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- Information
- The Handbook of East Asian Psycholinguistics , pp. 26 - 33Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006