Introduction

We saw in chapters 2 and 3 that newborns must convert a continuous speech stream into units of sound which provide a digital representation of language, and must create a representation of how these units are sequentially and systematically related. This analysis of the speech stream and a “combinatorial principle” which applies to the sound units are necessary for children to both produce and perceive any of an infinite number of possible new words and sentences, e.g., (1).

1. We like to hop on top of pop. Stop. You must not hop on Pop. (Seuss, 1963).

Over the past several decades, research on development of both speech perception and speech production in young children has exploded with new scientific evidence (see 8.5). In this chapter, we will summarize highlights of research results in this area. Appendices 2a, 2b and 3 summarize developmental results for infant speech perception and production. Appendix 7 provides some common notational conventions in this area.

What must children acquire?

Children must:

1. (a) Discover the units required in order to map from the continuous acoustic stimulus to a digital knowledge of language.

2. (b) Make fine distinctions in both perception and production. If they do not distinguish the initial sounds in “bop” and “pop”, for example, “Bop the pop” will be indistinguishable from “Pop the bop.” For this, infants must distinguish specific features of sounds, e.g., the “+/− voice” feature which, in English, makes [p] and [b] discrete. […]