Re: The Origins of Zürich...


"Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1167954437.808915.124670@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Heidi Graw wrote:

For example: In the beginning was the Word and the Work was Moo.

Moo was the first word my son spoke.

Peter wrote:
No, it was not.

Peter, I know what my son's first sounds where. I was there, you were not!


(a) It's not a word -- as you acknowledge below when
you say it has no meaning.

(b) Unless you were with your son and awake 24/7, you don't know that
that was his first utterance. In fact, it is highly unlikely that it
was, unless your son is _very_ abnormal, because babies babble for
several months before producing something as short as a CV syllable;
and because it is vastly more likely that the first
intentionally-produced vowel is /a/, not /u/. That's why /mama/ and
/papa/ tend to be the words for "daddy" and "mommy" in so many
languages.

According to the Hanen Early Language Parent Guide book (1985), the first
vowels one can expect to hear are:

ee as in feet
a as in father
oo as in who.

The oo was the first vowel sound my son chose to make.

First consonant sounds one can expect:

p, b, m, n, w. t, d, k, g, h, ng as in sing.

For my son, he chose m, d, g.

m was first, d second and g next. He could make three sounds moo, doo, goo.

For the second step in speech devolopment, one can expect the following
vowel sounds:

aw as in fall.
e as in get.

My son skipped this step, didn't say either of those, and went onto the
third step as you will see later.

Consonants: f , s, l, y (as in yellow), sh as in ship, v, z, r, ch as in
chew, dg as in juice.

For this second step, my son chose f.

For the third stage in speech development, one can expect the following
vowel sounds:

ai as in pie
au as in cow
oi as in toy
ei as in play.

My son chose ai, au and ei.

As for the third stage consonants, one can expect th as in thing, th as in
this, s as in measure.

At that stage my son chose th as in this.

Granted, since 1985 there were probably some other discoveries regarding
baby talk. If revisions had been made, this would still not have impacted
on what my own son actually sounded out which I heard and recorded.
Revisions would not have affected *his own* history of speech development.

Anyway, I've given you information of what one can expect of a *typical*
baby and the three stages they go through. So, while my own son could only
matter *some* of those sounds, he did *eventually* master them all.

Heidi


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