Refining early Basque criteria

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) wrote:

>Once children reach the stage at which they are beginning to have enough
>control over their vocal tracts to produce speech sounds consistently, they
>behave in a highly consistent fashion, as argued by Jakobson as long ago as
>1941. The first vowel they learn to produce is [a] -- the easiest vowel to
>produce, since it requires minimal tongue action.  The first consonants they
>produce are labials -- [m], [b], [p] -- presumably because these require no
>tongue control.  The next consonants they learn are coronals -- [n], [d], [t]
>-- presumably because these require no more than the raising of the tip/blade
>of the tongue.  Velars, which require bending of the tongue, come later, as do
>other consonants.

>From limited personal observation, I'd say that within the
coronals, palatals ([n^], [d^], [t^]) seem to be produced earlier
or more easily than alveolars or dentals, which is somewhat
unexpected given their absence or markedness in most languages.
On the other hand, that would explain their frequent use in
"nursery" or "affective" vocabulary.  Does Jakobson or any other
literature confirm this?

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl