Emergence and patterns of Reduplicated and Variegated Babbling in Hindi and Malayalam: A cross linguistic study

Abstract

The study examined the onset and changes in patterns of reduplicated and variegated babbles in infants observed crossectionally. The babbling samples of infants in the age range of 4 to 12 months were audio recorded. The participants comprised of 80 infants, 5 girls and 5 boys each in the age range 4-6months, 6-8months, 8-10months and 10-12months from native Hindi (A Indo-European language majorly spoken throughout India, precisely in Northern India) and Malayalam (A Dravidian language spoken in Southwest of India) speaking families. The samples were then phonetically transcribed by the researcher using International Phonetic Alphabet (2005). The results indicated the presence of reduplicated and variegated babbling coexisted as early as 4 months and continued to co-exist with the increase in age in both the diverse languages. As age increased, the variegated utterances predominated for the place-manner changes compared to place or manner changes in articulation patterns in both the languages. Hence, the study suggests the emergence in the complexity of utterance with age.