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Vocalization

The term vocalization, in the broadest sense, refers to sound produced by the vocal system. Vocalizations are an essential part of communication for a large set of animals including amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Among these species, vocal productions depend upon three components: a respiratory system with lungs, a larynx, and a supralaryngeal vocal tract. The types of vocalizations that can be produced have been examined in a wide variety of animals, ranging from Norway rats to elephant seals, from wolves to baboons, and from dolphins to macaques, with a substantial diversity of vocal types, but a limited set of communicative messages. By comparison, human vocalizations are diverse in both form and function, from grunts, cries, and coughs, to words and phrases produced with a wide range of articulatory features. This entry provides an overview of the types of vocalizations in humans, as well as the stages of development in infants and toddlers and in children at risk of vocal disorders.

Types of Vocalizations in Humans

Humans are capable of producing a wide array of vocal types including vegetative or reflexive vocalizations that are produced by both human and nonhuman primates. Among humans, these productions are present shortly after birth and remain part of the vocal repertoire throughout the life span. Vegetative utterances include coughs, burps, hiccups, and sneezes; in the early stages, they are considered to be involuntary as they are associated with bodily functions. In addition to vegetative productions, vocalizations classified as cry and laughter occur in the first few months. These two vocal types occur throughout life. Vegetative vocalizations, cries, and laughter are not considered to be speechlike and cannot be transcribed using traditional phonetic symbols associated with consonants and vowels (CV). Although not speechlike, these vocalizations, especially cries and laughter, have important communicative functions: Cry productions signal sadness and/or distress, whereas laughter is associated with a happy state.

Additional categories of infant vocalizations include high-pitched squeals and low-pitched growls, which enter the vocal repertoire around 2 months of age, and nasalized vowellike sounds (sometimes called vocants). With typical development (TD), speechlike vocalizations formed using CV sequences (e.g., [baba] or [didi]) do not appear until infants are 6–7 months of age. Utterances having CV syllables are classified as canonical and have received considerable attention by linguists and phoneticians because the syllables resemble meaningful speech in terms of syllable structure and segmental content. In some cases, at 7 months of age, an infant’s utterance resembles a word (e.g., [mama]). Unless there is evidence that the baby is consistently linking a production to an external referent, the utterance should be categorized as a (nonmeaningful) vocalization, not a verbalization. To be considered a verbalization, productions must have an identifiable word referent.

Ages and Stages of Vocal Development in Infants and Toddlers

Vocal development in the prespeech period has been described as a series of stages, wherein a new stage is heralded by the appearance of vocal types not present in the previous stage. The appearance of a new stage does not mean earlier vocal types disappear; rather, the new types are added to the repertoire of previous vocal behaviors. Although ages are assigned to the onset of each stage, there is a good deal of variation in the appearance of new vocal behaviors, and the age-stage relationships described are estimates. The early stages are universal and have been documented in infants with TD regardless of the language community in which they are raised. Toward the latter stages of prelinguistic development, there is some evidence of babbling drift (i.e., the infant productions become more like the phonological patterns of language community). At all stages, productions may contain speechlike sounds that are not part of the repertoire of the maternal language; for example, American babies may produce velar fricatives (i.e., consonants produced at the back of the mouth) or trilled r’s, although these are not target phonemes (i.e., speech sounds) of English.

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