Infant Speech

This is Volume XV of a series of thirty-two on Developmental Psychology. Originally published in 1936, this study looks at when speech begins in children. The sounds that a child makes during his first few months are so elusive and apparently so remote from anything that might be called language that any observer however interested in speech might well be pardoned for waiting until the noises become, at any rate, a little more obviously human. To persist in making observations one must be interested in the variety of human sounds merely as sounds, one must have faith in the continuity of growth, and in addition, perhaps, one must have something of that insensitiveness to ridicule which is found at its highest in the truly devoted parent. I Introduction Object of the work. Sources of the data. Arrangement of the work. II Some Characteristics of Language SECTION I. THE BEGINNINGS III Early Utterance IV Early Response to Speech SECTION II. TWO IMPORTANT FEATURES OF THE CHILD S SPEECH V Babbling VI Limitation SECTION III THE FIRST ACQUISITION OF CONVENTIONAL SPEECH VII The Beginning of Comprehension of Conventional Speech VIII The Beginning of Meaning of Conventional Speech IX The Nature of This Progress SECTION IV. THE APPROACH TO THE CONCEPTUAL USE OF SPEECH X The Mastery of Conventional Forms XI The Expansion of Meaning XII Further Progress in Conventional Use