Prelinguistic Stage
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This is the period before an infant can speak his/her first meaning word.
Infants have the ability to discriminate among the sounds that could be used in any human language in this stage.
It is not until 6 to 12 months of age that the ability to perceive distinctions that are not used in the native language declines
Characteristics in this stage include:
Cooing(2-5m)
It is the tone uttered with the neck stretched up and the throat blown out.
These tones are usually low vowels
Babies coo without consonants-once consonants are included: it is babbling
Babbling(5-12m）
It is the tone with a consonant vowel construction
It can be further divided into two types
Reduplicated babbling
repeating the same consonant-vowel sequences
Eg: babababa
Variegated babbling
repeating a mix of different consonant-vowel sequences with a sentence
Eg: badadomi
Research has shown that infants differ in their babbling depending on the language environment
e.i. in english-speaking infants
a.u.i in cantonese-speaking infants
By around 7 months old , deaf infants tend to stop babbling