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Adaptation to language: Evidence from babbling and first words in four languages

Bénédicte de Boysson-Bardies, Marilyn May Vihman·1991·Language

Abstract

Differences among languages offer a way of studying the process of infant adaptation from broad initial capacities to language-specific phonetic production. We designed analyses of the distribution of consonantal place and manner categories in French, English, Japanese, and Swedish to determine (1) whether systematic differences can be found in the babbling and first words of infants from different language backgrounds, and, if so, (2) whether these differences are related to the phonetic structure of the language spoken in the environment. Five infants from each linguistic environment were recorded under similar conditions from babbling only to the production of 25 words in a session. Although all of the infants generally made greater use of labials, dentals, and stops than of other classes of sounds, a clear phonetic selection could already be discerned in babbling, leading to statistically significant differences among the groups. This selection can be seen to arise from phonetic patterns of the ambient language. Comparison of the babbling and infant word repertoires reveals differences reflecting the motoric consequences of sequencing constraints.

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Metadata

Authors
de Boysson-Bardies, B., & Vihman, M. M.
Venue
Language
Publisher
Linguistic Society of America
Published
1991-06-01
Volume
67
Issue
2
Pages
297-319
ISSN
0097-8507 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2015075592
Cited by
440
References
21
FWCI
9.35
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Adaptation to language: Evidence from babbling and first words in four languages. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1353/lan.1991.0045
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de Boysson-Bardies, B., & Vihman, M. M. (1991). Adaptation to language: Evidence from babbling and first words in four languages. Language. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.1991.0045

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