First 50 Words

Babbling and the first 50 words

• Babbling and early words share a lot of characteristics

• During this stage children mainly use monosyllabic utterances, use many stops, nasals and fricatives, and rarely use consonant clusters. In addition, they most frequently use the central, mid-front, and low-front vowels. Bilabial and apical productions are common.

First 50 Words

• The first word is typically produced around the first birthday.

• The first word is defined as "An entity of relatively stable phonetic form that is produced consistently by a child and is recognizably related to the adult-like word form of a particular language" (Bauman-Waengler, 2020).

• A proto-word is a word that is used consistently by the child but is not related to the adult form of the word. Proto-words are also known as phonetically consistent forms, vocables, and quasi-words.

  • Example: If a child says "cu" consistently for "cup," it would be considered a word. However, if the child says "na" consistently for bottle, it is considered a proto-word because it is not related to the adult form of the word. Similarly, if a child says "cu" for everything in sight and happens to name a cup it is not considered a word because it is not consistent.

(Bauman-Waengler, 2020)