A quantitative analysis of reduplicated and variegated babbling

Abstract

A number of investigators have made reference to the stages of reduplicated and variegated babbling during the latter half of pre meaningful vocal development. Although these categories of utter ances are widely accepted, there is little quantitative data describing them. The present study investigated this issue by analysing the utter ances of 10 infants who were followed at approximately 4-month intervals from about 6-18 months of age. Although there was a period during which reduplicated utterances were found to occur somewhat more frequently than variegated productions, followed by a period of more frequent occurrence of variegated productions, both types co- occurred throughout the entire age range studied. Specific phonetic characteristics of these two types of vocalizations were also inves tigated to determine whether they provided any information about the development of articulatory motor control.