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.

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.