Swings + Roundabouts Autumn 2021

Mama, nanananana, dadda… parents and early childhood teachers often delight in having conversations with a babbling child who is trying out intonations and sound combinations. Babbling is fun and all humans do it, seemingly without effort or plan. However, there is a lot of systematic work going on as the child is putting together the building blocks of language. Speech development in infants is fascinating to observe. From the earliest days, the child displays an aptitude to soak up environmental impressions. Research has found that whilst children do not need explicit language instruction to learn how to speak, they do need exposure to language to develop and thrive linguistically. All human languages use a finite set of sounds or gestures, which are combined in meaningful ways to allow us to communicate effectively. Chomsky’s language acquisition theory posits that human language capabilities are innate and happen automatically. However, research into the vast diversity of how children master language suggests there are further and more complex explanations. The development of language acquisition is largely understood as a number of specific stages the child goes through, which are thought to be possibly universal and regardless of cultural or social circumstances. One of these stages is ‘babbling’, after which the child begins to put words together and form sentences. Fromkin, Rodman, Hyams, Collins and Amberber (2009) argue that babbling is an early linguistic function and plays a vital role in the critical period of language acquisition. Infants proceed from a pre-linguistic stage, during which they indulge in cooing and grunting, on to babbling, the first stage in language acquisition (Nixon and Gould, 2005). Approximately at two months, babies may gaze at you and emit cute ‘oooo’ sounds. Generally, adults will respond by cooing right back, speaking in a high-pitched voice, smiling and making eye contact. The adult’s intent is mostly to encourage the infant to continue to communicate and interact, with the result that the child is both entertained as well as being exposed to sounds, pitch, language patterns such as pauses, turn-taking, and many more linguistic expressions. From about six months on, the infant begins to babble, initially incorporating and producing sounds that may not necessarily reflect the language spoken in the family. This changes gradually until the child’s babbles begin to use only those sound combinations used in the household. THE SCIENCE OF BABBLING BY KATINA BEAUCHAMP March 2021 { 30 }