babbling

[Marilyn Vihman]

>Someone has asked me whether it is true that babies' first word is 
>Daddy and whether this is because the articulation position of D is 
>easiest?  not sure either is true but would appreciated comments 
>from those who study this area.  Are the words for Daddy/Papa etc. 
>and Mummy/Maman etc. easier because there is no change of place of 
>articulation?  All thoughts on the topic most appreciated.
>thanks
>Annette K-S

Several brief things to say in response:

1. Yes, [d] is used the most in babbling, at least in 
English-learning babies, but not by ALL babies learning English, just 
most; this is not the case for Welsh, for example, so it's safer not 
to generalise to all languages.

2. babies' first word is not by any means always or even often 
'daddy', although a fond parent hearing 'dadada' may choose to 
interpret the baby that way.

3. Yes, 'daddy', 'papa', and 'mama' are definitely easier because of 
the use of only one C across the word.

4. John Locke has a JCL paper on the use of 'mama' and 'papa' as 
early words in many languages - following up on a much earlier paper 
by Jakobson. The Locke paper was in the mid-1990s, I think.

-marilyn

>
>
>--
>________________________________________________________________
>Professor A.Karmiloff-Smith, CBE, FBA, FMedSci,
>Head, Neurocognitive Development Unit,
>Institute of Child Health,
>30 Guilford Street,
>London WC1N 1EH, U.K.
>tel: 0207 905 2754
>sec: 0207 905 2334
>http://www.ich.ucl.ac.uk/ich/html/academicunits/neurocog_dev/n_d_unit.html


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   Marilyn M. Vihman		       |
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