Playing With Words 365

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What is Babbling?

October 10, 2011 by Katie Filed Under: Articulation & Phonology (aka Speech Sounds), Developmental Milestones 10 Comments

“Babababababa, dadadadadada, gagagagaga”

We are hearing this a LOT around our house lately! My son, Ev, is 9 months old and is quite the “talker.” But he isn’t really talking, right?

What he is doing, is babbling. What is babbling? Babbling is referred to as a prelinguistic skill: meaning a skill that happens prior to the development of language and speech.

There are Three Types of Babbling

Marginal Babbling: This babbling usually happens between 4-6 months of age. You will hear your infant put together consonant-vowel (CV) or vowel-consonant (VC) sound combinations, like “baaaa”, “maaaa”, or “uuuum.” (Sidenote: Before this phase, between 1-4 months, your infant should be cooing. Cooing refers to your infant producing sounds that are vowel like i.e. oooooo and aaaahhhhhh. Often times infants will produce these coo’s when having face-to-face interactions with a caregiver).

Marginal Babbling is considered a type of Precanonical Vocalization along with squeels and cooing. Want to hear what they sound like? Follow THIS LINK to vocal development dot com, a site created by  David J. Ertmer, Ph.D., associate professor in the department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences at Purdue University, to listen to examples of marginal babbling.

In the time period between six and ten months of age, your infant will begin to use more of a variety of sounds and sound combinations referred to as canonical babbling. Canonical babbling is divided into two subtypes: Reduplicated and Nonreduplicated.

My Son Ev, the Babbler

Reduplicated Babbling: This refers to when your infant repeats the same syllable over and over, such as “babababa” or “mamamama” or “gagagagaga” You can listen to an example of this at the site mentioned above by clicking HERE and listening to the “babbling” example.

Nonreduplicated Babbling: In this final stage of babbling, your infant’s sounds are now more varied. Rather than producing the same syllable over and over, he will now start to combine different sounds and syllables like “bama” or “gagameee”.

In the time period of 9-12 months and beyond, your child’s babble will slowly start resemble real adult speech, even though he may not be using “real” words yet. His babble will start to take on the tones and infections of adult speech, even though the “words” still resemble babble. We refer to this as jargon. Jargon can begin as early as 8 months and often continues through the second year. The toddler will slowly replace the jargon for real words, phrases and sentences over the second year of life. You can listen to examples of nonreduplicated babbling and jargon by going HERE and clicking on CVC syllables and Jargon.

Why is babbling Important?

There is evidence that babbling, specifically the canonical babbling (reduplicated and non reduplicated)  is an important precursor to later language development. Some research suggests that delays in canonical babbling (not using canonical babbling by about 10 months of age) can sometimes be a predictor of later disabilities such as speech and language delays or learning disabilities (Oller et al. 1999). However, this is not always the case. Some infants just babble later than others. If you have any concerns about your infant or toddlers development, be sure to bring your concerns to your child’s pediatrician.

Cheers!

***********************************************************************************************
References:

Ertmer, D.J., (2005). www.vocaldevelopment.com. Retrieved 10-10-2011.

McLaughlin, S. (1998). Introduction to language development.  San Diego, CA: Singular Publishing Group, INC.

Oller, D.K., Eilers, R.E., Neal, A.R.,  and Schwartz, H. K. (1999). Precursors to speech in infancy: The prediction of speech and language disorders. Journal of Communication Disorders, 32 (223–245).

About Katie

Katie is a licensed, credentialed and certified pediatric speech-language pathologist and mom to four (8, 6, 3 and 6 months). Her passion for educating, inspiring and empowering parents of children with all abilities led her to start her blog playing with words 365 where she shares information about speech & language development & intervention strategies, parenting, photography and a little about her family life too. Katie has been working in the field of speech pathology for 12 years and is certified in The Hanen Centre’s It Takes Two to Talk ® and Target Word ® programs and holds a certificate in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). In addition to blogging and being a mommy, Katie works part time in her small private practice in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can follow her on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter.

Comments

  1. Christie Kiley says

    September 25, 2012 at 9:22 pm

    Love this, thank you so much!

    Reply
    • Katie says

      September 25, 2012 at 9:35 pm

      Thanks Christie! 🙂

      Reply
  2. Mina Fotuhi says

    April 19, 2014 at 8:39 pm

    Hello, I am so glad to visit your page. This can be very useful for me, because I am speech and language pathologist too, and work with children. My thesis is about Babbling too.
    Thank you again and Good luck!
    Mina Fotuhi (Iran)

    Reply
  3. Samrane Yassine says

    April 30, 2014 at 6:16 pm

    Hello
    please I need to have more Information about children language acquisition what are the mistakes that they do semantically,syntactically, and so on when they want to express their selves, in addition I want to Inform you that I need some books name because It’s going to help me a lot in my paper research.

    thanks in advance

    Reply
  4. Patricia says

    May 2, 2016 at 12:59 pm

    It’s really nice to know about this
    I love it

    Reply
  5. Muhammad says

    September 11, 2016 at 4:51 pm

    Hi my daughter is 18 months and she don’t say anything not even mama baba or dad a.

    But she does reply to question like where is you doll she will point and pickup and pass to the person you will ask.

    Very independent in her things put her dirty clothes in to the laundry.

    Just worried she doesn’t talk

    Reply
  6. Chinwe says

    December 2, 2016 at 10:32 pm

    Please my daughter is 7months 1week now but the only sound she makes is the vowels sounds like oooo ahhh, she’s yet to make the consonant sounds baaa maaa etc. Should I be worried?

    Reply
  7. Stephanie says

    December 22, 2016 at 11:26 am

    I really enjoy your blog! I am a recent speech language pathologist grad and am about to start working with itty bitties in early intervention. Your posts are so easy to read and informative – thanks!

    Reply
  8. Lorin Zelinsky says

    October 9, 2019 at 5:53 pm

    Loved reading this! You really broke the stages of babbling down in a way that made sense!

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. A new type of babbling | Profoundly Strong – Fiona's Journey says:
    August 20, 2014 at 5:40 pm

    […] This type of babbling is called canonical babbling and usually starts at the age of 6 to 10 months of age.  Since Fiona’s hearing age is 5 months then she is right on target for where we would want her to be.  If you’d like to learn more about the types of babbling babies go through here is a good link. […]

    Reply

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