first words

[Deborah Gibson]

I’m interested in the definition of ‘word’ in a child’s first word,  
as I’m researching my autistic son’s delayed language acquisition.   
He had many unconventional early ‘words’; for example, intentional  
vocalisations, such as squeaks and growls, and lexical signs (taught  
and invented), that were consistent in form and meaning but which did  
not contain speech sounds.  His first word (at 3.1.25) with speech  
sounds was “Daddy’ [d«d«d«d«], which was whispered as were all his  
early words that contained speech sounds.  I am unsure of the  
criteria for determining word status in both his signs and his early  
productions, and in differentiating ‘real’ words from what are  
variously termed as phonetically under-specified sound patterns,  
phonetically consistent forms, protowords, non-words, marginal words,  
performatives, pre-lexical terms, situational words, indices of  
meaning etc!   I have a few questions that will help me to establish  
which of his early words qualify as real words, in order to compare  
his lexical development in terms of rate, vocabulary count,  
compilations of early semantic categories, and the timing of his word  
spurt to those of studies of typical children.

  My questions are:  Is the definition of a ‘word’ in child language  
acquisition determined by form or consistent meaning, or both?  If by  
form, how close to adult pronunciation does it have to be to be a  
word?  Can a ‘word’ include an unconventional non-speech  
vocalization, like an imitation of an animal sound, or a gesture, or  
must it fall within the speech sounds of the native language and be a  
recognizable approximation of adult pronunciation, subject to the  
motor articulation skills and emerging phonological rules of the  
child?  To be a ‘word’, can it be comprehensible to the only the  
child’s intimates, or understandable to more than the child’s  
immediate circle?

If being a ‘word’ depends on having a regular extension of the word’s  
meaning, will an intentional non-speech sound or gesture with  
consistent context-bound meaning that is understood by the child’s  
intimates qualify?  Or, at the other end of the spectrum, must the  
‘word’ have conventional adult extensions of meaning to be considered  
a ‘real word’? Will possessing some extensions of the adult meaning,  
even if irregular and underextended, suffice?   My question boils  
down to this:  What are the various criteria for determining where on  
the continuum, between the two milestones of the onset of intentional  
vocalizations and the word spurt, do researchers distinguish  
vocalization from word?

I’m sorry this is such a long post, and I hope it doesn’t go beyond  
the limits of this board!

Deborah Gibson
Ph.D student
Dept of Language and Literacy
Faculty of Education
UBC
debgibson at telus.net