ABSTRACT
We pose the following question here: What factors underlie the emergence of the developmental milestones of language acquisition? Because this question is vast, we must limit our scope; in this chapter, we examine one particular milestone—the emergence of babbling in prelinguistic children. In the course of this discussion, we present preliminary results from an ongoing longitudinal study of prelinguistic development in deaf and hearing children. We also suggest that an understanding of the psychological literature on motor development in children is crucial to our understanding of prelinguistic gestures and vocalizations, including babbling.
