Speech acquisition

Speech acquisition or early language acquisition focuses on the development of spoken language by a child. While grammatical and syntactic learning can be seen as a part of language acquisition, speech acquisition focuses on the development of speech perception and speech production over the first years of a child's lifetime.

Development of speech perception

Sensory learning concerning acoustic speech signals already starts during pregnancy. The newborn is already capable of discerning many phonetic contrasts. This capability may be innate. Speech perception becomes language-specific for vowels at around 6 months, for sound combinations at around 9 months and for language-specific consonants at around 11 months.

It is also important that a newborn is already capable of detecting typical word stress patterns around the age of 8 months.

See also

• Auditory processing disorder
• Developmental verbal dyspraxia
• Infantile speech
• Origin of speech
• Speech and language pathology
• Speech processing
• Speech repetition

External links

• Cracking the speech code: Language and the infant brain