A Comparative Study of the Speech Development of Japanese and American Children (Part Six) : Preparation for the Developmental Interrelation among Phonemicization, Symbolization and Syntacticization Processes

Abstract

We recorded the speech sounds of nine Japanese and three American infants in Japan and two American infants in the U.S.A. Most of them were between the ages of ten to twenty months. We then compared the developmental process of the speech sounds up to the beginning of the phonemicization, the symbolization, and the syntacticization processes of the three groups. At about twelve months of age the infant begins to use a few conventional words and sounds which he makes up himself. Then he utters some chains consisting of two, three or more sound clusters, which are made up of the conventional or the self made words as well as some other meaningless sounds. From about the middle of the second year phonemes and words uttered by the infant increase in number. Through the first several months of the phonemicization and the symbolization processes, 1) he begins to articulate stops, nasals, and front vowels in one- or two-syllable-words fairly correctly, 2) and he begins to use two different expressions to describe the same objetc, e.g. he sees a cup of coffee and sometimes calls it "Coffee" and sometimes calls it "Hot", and also he begins to use the same word to describe other objects, e.g. he uses the word "Tea" for both a tea cup and a tea kettle. Then he begins to put two or three words together. We do not find significant differences between the there groups, except that the group of American infants in Japan shows as do other bilinguals a slower developmental process.