THE NATURE AND ORIGINS OF AMBIENT LANGUAGE INFLUENCE ON INFANT VOCAL PRODUCTION AND EARLY WORDS

Phonological structure may be seen as emerging in ontogeny from the co mbined effects of performance constraints rooted in the neuromotor and perceptual systems, individual lexical development and the influence of the particular ambient language. We review here the nature and orig ins of the earliest ambient language influences. Global effects within the first year of life include both (I) loss of early appearing phone tic gestures not supported by the ambient language and (2) positive ef fects, reflecting infant attention to prosody and to cues available in the visual as well as the auditory modality. In the course of early l exical development more specific effects become manifest as individual children pursue less common phonetic paths to which the ambient langu age provides 'sufficient exposure'.