5 major characteristics:

1. Primarily monosyllabic utterances

2. Frequent use of stop consonants followed by nasals and fricatives

3. Bilabial productions (/p/ /b/ & /m/)

4. Rare use of consonant clusters

5. Frequent use of central, mid-front, and low-front vowels (/ʌ/ /ɛ/ /æ/)

First Word: defined as a relatively stable phonetic form that is produced consistently by a child in a particular context that approximates the adult-form of the word.

For example: if a child says 'baba' for ball that would be considered a first word. However, if they say "dodo" for ball that would not be considered a first word.

Phonetically Consistent Forms:

• Also known as "proto-words", "vocables", and "quasi-words"

• refers to an "invented" word that is consistently used by the child and appears to have meaning but not model and adult-like form

(Bauman-Waengler, 2020)