The phonetic and phonologic continuity
in first language acquisition studies
María Ramírez Cruz
Máster en estudios fónicos CSIC-UIMP
Research Presentation
 D. K Oller (1980):
 Infant vocalizations have long been studied on the
assumption that their form reveal aspects of a
developing capacity for speech. However, we can
difference two sounds types:
- Vocalization types whose physical form differs too
from mature linguistic utterances (non speech-like).
- Infant sounds in the second half of first year of life
which are adult speech-like.
Research presentation
Aims
The purposes of this research respond to both different
wide stages :
1. To analyze methaphonological features (Oller, 1980)
between internal stages of non speech-like from 0-6
months, to show there is a continuity as it ‘s been
demonstrated by some authors (Oller, 1980). The
acoustic parameters to analyze are:
Research presentation
2. To analyze phonetic and prosody parameters from
prelinguistic stages to the first linguistic stage (first
words stage) and see if there is or not a lack of prosody
continuity between these particular stages as it’s been
postulated by some authors (Rory A. DePaolisa,,Marilyn
M. Vihman and Sari Kunnari, 2008). The parameters to
analyze are:
- Syllable duration.
- Intensity.
Research Presentation
Methodology
 Longitudinal study of three Spanish children, two boys
and a girl, with Spanish as a first language, since 1
months to one year and a half.
 Weekly recordings of three children’s productions in
different but constant familiar setting.
 Only audio record not video (even video is more
informative but also more complex).
Research Presentation
 We recorder with a Marantz PMD 620 in PCDM or *wav
formant . The sample frequency is 41KHz .
 To export meaningful segments, syllabes and words for
our acoustic and phonological study.
 The validation of these categories by trained
investigators (acoustic).
 Compilation for creating three corpora (one per baby)
with PHON software.
Non speech-like
The vocalizations continuity in the first half of year (Oller,
1980).
 These occurs in a more frequent way until 6 months.
 The stages of these vocalizations can be defined taking
in account relative frequency of occurrence of sound
types at each stage:
- The phonation stage (0-1 month): QRNs “Quasiresonant Nuclei include normal phonation but not
involve any contrast between opening an closure of
the vocal tract and do not make use of the full
potential of the vocal cavity to fuction as a
resonatingf tube.
Non speech-like
- The GOO stage (2-4 month): QRN and a tendency
for velar closure.
- The expansion stage (4-6 month): FRNs “Full
Resonant Nuclei”, or vowel-like elements; SQ
“Squealing” or a highly tense pithc register; Growling
or very low-pitch; Yelling: high amplitude
nondistresss vocalization; IES: ingressive-egressive
sequences.
* Marginal babbling: consisting of sequences
in which a closure of the vocal tract is
opposed with an FRN, (Doyle, 1976, Oller,
1976).
Non speech-like
Specific methodology
 These kinds of infant sounds that differ substantially
from speech, are impossible to describe in terms of
concrete phonology (plosive, fricative, high vowel…) so
we need another type of phonology and this is Oller’s
“metaphonology”, (Oller, 1980).
 The “metaphonological features” to analyse are:
Non speech-like
- picht.
- phonation type (voice quality).
- resonance pattern.
- timing (syllabicity) .
- amplitude .
Selection criteria: Oller’s and Suneeti criteria in “Beyond
ba-ba and gu-gu: challenges and strategies in coding
infant vocalizations”, Behaviour Research Methods,
Instruments and Conmputers, 2001.
Acoustic programs CSpeech (TF32 2000), PRAAT or
Glotex for an oscillographic, spectographic, and F0
analysis to analyze Specific Aim the metaphonological
control continuity between these stages .
Non speech-like
 For the study of these stages it makes no sense to use
PHON because:
- We study metaphonological objects which can be
studied only with acoustic programs to let us
describe them ( pitch, amplitude resonance).
- It’d be really hard, complex and usefulness to make
corpora with these kind of sounds and between other
reason is they have not phonological features but
metaphonological so we can’t transcribe them with
phonetic and phonologic symbols-diacritics of adult
speech-like.
Non speech-like
 Bibliography
 Murai, J. (1963): “The sounds of infants: their Phonemicization and
symbolization” Studia Phoonologica, 3, 18-34.
 Oller, D. K. (1976): “Infant vocalizations: a linguistic and speech
scientific perspective” Miniseminar for the American Speech and
Hearing Association, Houston.
 Oller, D. K (1991).: “Computational approaches to trasncription and
analysis in child phonology”, Journal for computer users in speech and
hearing, 7, 44-59
 Doyle, W. J. (1976): “On the verge of meaningful speech”, Master’s
Thesis, university of Washington, Seattle.
 Zlatin, M. A. (1975): “Preliminary descriptive model of infant
vocalization during the first 24 weeks: Primitive syllabification and
phonetic exploratory behavior” Final Report, Project No. 3-4014,
Grant NE-G00-3-0077.
Speech-like
The phonetic and prosody continuity between prelinguistic stages and first linguist stage.
 It’s true that the adult-like production of prosody is a
difficult task for the prelinguistic infant, “requiring that
their perceptual sensitivity to elements of prosody be
translated into fine motor adjustments affecting
fundamental frequency, timing, and intensity over more
than one syllable” (Rory A. DePaolisa, Marilyn M.
Vihmanb, Sari Kunnaric, 2008).
 These authors see the first control of prosody when
infants produce their first words. However, we’ll analyze
Speech-like
the syllabe structure, intensity and duration, as acoustic
parameters of prosody features, before the first words
stadium, in order to see if there is some kind of
continuity between these stages.
 The pre-linguistic stages to analyse are:
- Canonical Babbling (6-10 months):
- Rigid timing characteristics of syllabification .
- Reduplicated babbling: syllables with an important
negative characteristic: its lack of substantial
variation.
Speech-like
- Variegated Babbling (10-12):
- Different consonantal and vocalic elements.
- Contrasts of syllabic stress.
- Proto-words (from 10 months): “stable child phonetic
forms with a referential meaning emerging from the
context, not a symbolic one” (Menyuk and Menn, 1979).
Others: “call sounds” (Werner and Kaplan 1984),
“prewords” (Ferguson, 1978).
First linguistic stage
 First words (from 12 months)
-
-
Adult-word-based forms which reflect at least
partial awareness or understanding of the adult
meaning.
Referential and symbolic meaning in a consistent
phonetic form.
Prelinguistic-linguistic
Specific methodology
 To prove the last results which confirm how phonetic and
phonologic tendencies in early speech can be seen in
babbling ( Oller, Doyle, Wieman, Ross 1976, 1980 and
Locke, 1980) we need acoustic analysis of:
- Syllable duration.
- Intensity.
Selection criteria:
 Disyllables were considered candidates for inclusion if
they were separated from surrounding utterances by at
least 400 ms (following Branigan, 1979).
Prelinguistic-linguistic
 Disyllables separated by less than 400ms were included if
there were clear prosodic breaks with the surrounding
speech (such as a clear inhalation to start a new breath
group).
 Disyllables were included if they minimally contained
two open (vocalic) phases separated by a closed
(consonantal) phase.
 Words were separated from babble following Vihman
and McCune (1994).
 Disyllables that showed excessive shifts ofregister,
excessive vocal effort, creaky voice, or whisper were also
excluded.
Prelinguistic-linguistic
For the analysis we need acoustic programs like CSpeech
(TF32 2000), PRAAT or Glotex for an oscillographic,
spectographic, to analyze the prosody control continuity
between these stages .
PHON is not useful in the specific acoustic analysis but it
can help in making projects, counting different segments
and in others analysis like:
PHON utilities
1. To create three digitized corpora, one per child,
following RETAHME methodology which allow us to
record, transcribe and analyze spontaneous peech
samples in the project of a computerized database with
another investigators’s corpora.
PHON utilities (modificar)
2.
It’s the only software which gives us phonetic transcription in an
universal code, IPA, so once our corpora are ready and upload ed to
PHON database, everyone in the world can access and study them
(not whit DIME or PERLA).
PHON utilities
3. For baby’s speech transcriptions is an useful resource
the fact that PHON configuration/tools let us have the
phonetic transcription aligned with audio files and
always with the option of modify phonetic transcription
if in a new listening of the audio we think there is
another transcription ([e]> [ɛ])
PHON utilities
4. Multi-blind mode is an important PHON function for our
research.
 The fact that different transcribers can listen the same
fragment and then transcribe it without other
transcriptions are available for them, give us different
approximations to babbling phonetic segments.
PHON utilities
PHON utilities
 Having different transcriptions of the same babbling fragment ,
facilitate the creation of a research group where everyone can
transcribe what he considers and then the transcriptor manager by a
systematic comparation can choose the best option after having
debating.
PHON utilities
5.
The Phon function of calculating inventories of different
categories is highly useful to show us the degree of
continuity in the universal categories of language
development:
- phones.
- syllabes.
- stress patterns
It spares us the hard, tedious and time-consuming job of
counting every phone, syllabe and stress pattern, stage
by stage.
(linguistic annotation and syntax known by linguistic researches)
PHON utilities
 Phone type:
PHON utilities
 Syllabe type:
 A phone's syllable constituent type can be specified
PHON utilities
 Stress patterns:
- Unstressed vs stressed.
- Continuity of trocaic foot from babbling and in first
words.
- Which type of syllabic structure has the stress (which
phones and which possition)
PHON utilities
6. PHON search options are completely necessary for
studying the degree of continuity in baby’s linguistic
development.
PHON utilities
 PHON searches (simple and complex queries) allow us to
know which segments are more frequent in syllabe
structure in every stage and in which position.
Consequently we can set comparisons between stages.
Data tiers searches
PHON utilities
- Syllabe types search show us the frequent syllabic
structure in each stage.
PHON utilities
- PhonEx:
Segmtents:
{Coronal, Stop}: this will match all cornal stops
transcribed in teh selected session.
Syllabe stress information searches
Example phonEx query ; Oral expression
{Vowel}:NoStress ;
vowels in unstressed syllabes
Phon utilities
 Aligned Phones - queries stress patterns and/or aligned
phones on the Syllable Alignment tier, useful for
comparing target and actual data.
PHON utilities
- Aligned Groups- queries two tiers of choice, useful for
comparing aligned Word Groups on any tier.
- Harmony- compares target and actual utterances for
instances of vowel or consonant harmony.
- Epenthesis.
PHOn utilities
- Deletion:

PHON utilities
7. Colourful syllabic alignment is useful for codified baby’s

speech for two reasons:
To change the automatic syllabic alignment reflexing
the baby’s actual syllabic alignment:
PHON improvements
1. PHON is not sufficient for narrow babies phonetic
transcription, for example for babbling. To the difficulty
we have to use acoustic programs to find out which
segment the baby is articulating, (se suma) adding the
lack of specific symbols for transcribed this particular
phonetic.
PHON disadavantages
 Even IPA PHON map has some combining diacritics
which can help in babbling transcription:
PHON disadvantages
 Specific symbols,as the specific for disordered speech of
ExtIPA symbols for disordered speech (1997), are needed
for babbling transcription (Oller specific for
infraphonology:
PHON disadvantages
 Another option is to include disordered symbols in PHON
IPA map because some of them can be used for babies
segments:
- (¯) for undeterminated sounds.
- (V) for undeterminated vocalic sounds (the
acoustical formants analysis shows is a vocalic sound
but it doesn’t seem to a known vowel).
Thank you so much!
Acknowledgements:
Special thanks to the entire GrEP group,
the subjects, and especially to Phon and
Yvan Rose for all of his continued help.
Bibliography

Boersma, P., & Weenink, D., (2005): Praat: doing phonetics by computer
(Version 4.3.14), retrieved May, 26, 2005.

Cruttenden, A. (1970): “A phonetic study of babbling” British Journal of
Disorders of Communication, 5, 110-118.

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1258–1270.
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
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Bibliography

McCarthy, D. (1952): “Organismic interpretation of infant vocalizations”,
Child Development, 23, 273-80.

MacWhinney, B., & Rose, Y., (2007): “PHON” supported by grant RO1HD051698 from NIH-NICHHD to Brian MacWhinney and Yvan Rose in
CHILDES project, 1995.

Oller, D. K (1980): “The emergence of the sounds of speech in infancy” in
Child phonology, ed. Yeni-Komshian, Grace H:, Kavanahg, James F.,
Ferguson, Charles, Academic Press, London, vol. 1.

Oller, D. K., Wieman, L. A., Doyle, W., and Ross, C. (1975): “Infant babbling
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Robb, M. P., & Tyler, A. A. (1995). Durations of young children’s word and
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Bibliography

Rory A. DePaolisa,,Marilyn M. Vihmanb, Sari Kunnari (2008): ”Prosody in
production at the onset of word use:A cross-linguistic study”, Journal of
phonetics,36, pp. 406-422.

Vihman, M. M., & DePaolis, R. A. (1998). Perception and production in early
vocal development: Evidence from the acquisition of accent. In M. C. Gruber,
D. Higgins, K. S. Olson, & T. Wysocki (Eds.), Chicago Linguistic Society 34,
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