Babbling Stage
Definition
The babbling stage is a period in a child's development, usually between 6 to 9 months old, where they experiment with uttering articulate sounds but do not yet produce any recognizable words.
Analogy
Think of the babbling stage as a baby's version of freestyle rap. They're experimenting with different sounds and rhythms, but the lyrics (or in this case, actual words) aren't quite there yet.
Related terms
Phoneme: The smallest unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
Holophrastic Speech: This is when a child uses one word to communicate a whole sentence or idea. For example, saying "juice" could mean "I want juice."
Language Acquisition Device (LAD): A hypothetical module of the human mind posited by Noam Chomsky that is responsible for children's innate predisposition for language acquisition.
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