Speech acquisition

Speech acquisition focuses on the development of spoken language by a child. Speech consists of an organized set of sounds or phonemes that are used to convey meaning while language is an arbitrary association of symbols used according to prescribed rules to convey meaning.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. There are several models to explain the norms of speech sound or phoneme acquisition in children. Speech acquisition focuses on the development of spoken language by a child. Speech consists of an organized set of sounds or phonemes that are used to convey meaning while language is an arbitrary association of symbols used according to prescribed rules to convey meaning.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. There are several models to explain the norms of speech sound or phoneme acquisition in children. Sensory learning concerning acoustic speech signals already starts during pregnancy. Hepper and Shahidullah (1992) described the progression of fetal response to different pure tone frequencies. They suggested fetuses respond to 500 Hertz (Hz) at 19 weeks gestation, 250 Hz and 500 Hz at 27 weeks gestation and finally respond to 250, 500, 1000, 3000 Hz between 33 and 35 weeks gestation. Lanky and Williams (2005) suggested that fetuses could respond to pure tone stimuli of 500 Hz as early as 16 weeks. 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.