Intelligibility of children's speech

[marilyn vihman]

Dear Mats Andrén,

I don't know what your source may have been, but I would say that it  
is very difficult to distinguish babbling from words in the period of  
transition to speech (age 9-18 mos or so). Lorraine McCune and I wrote  
about this in J of Child language (1994), giving our criteria for  
identifying a word: The criteria relate to word form, in part, but  
also to the situational context, what the child is doing/looking at at  
the time, etc., so video is a very important aid to identifying words  
in that early word production period. It is no doubt less critical  
later.

-marilyn vihman

On 3 Feb 2010, at 20:41, Mats Andrén wrote:

> Dear list members,
>
> A few years ago I read an article or a book where it was stated that  
> X percent (a large number) of children's utterances became more or  
> less completely unitelligible when the video is taken away. That is,  
> removing the visible context and action/gesture et cetera and  
> relying only on the audio signal as a source of interpretation. I  
> can't recall who wrote it (it *could* have been Eve Clark or Jana  
> Iverson). Neither am I able to remember whether it was a result of  
> an experimental study of some kind, or some more sweeping  
> approximation. I also do not remember the age of the children  
> involved, but it should have been some time during their second year  
> of life (maybe earlier). Precisely due to all this uncertainity, I  
> would be most grateful if any of you would be able to point me to  
> information about these matters. Any publication that deals with  
> this question is of interest.
>
> Have a nice day!
>
> Best regards,
> Mats Andrén,
> PhD student in General Linguistics,
> Centre for Languages and Literature/Centre for Cognitive Semiotics,
> Lund University,
> Sweden
>
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Marilyn VIhman
Professor, Language and Linguistic Science
V/C/210, 2nd Floor, Block C, Vanbrugh College
University of York
Heslington
York YO10 5DD
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