Before the word: acquiring a phoneme inventory

One of the benchmark questions parents are asked about their child’s language development is ‘Does she already say some words?’. While the first word is very tangible proof that a child’s language development has taken off, that first word is part of a developmental trajectory including babbling, word comprehension and–one of infants’ very first accomplishments on the way to the first word–the acquisition of language-specific sound perception. The current chapter reviews the main experimental findings and theoretical positions on infants’ acquisition of the native phoneme system. In particular, we will discuss how speech perception and production evolve in the early stages of language development and how speech perception shows continuity with later word learning. We first introduce general developments in speech perception and production in the first year of life and present the main theoretical views on the developmental relationship between perception, production and word learning. The second and third parts examine the acquisition of particular contrasts in speech perception, speech production and word learning, highlighting the parallels in development across domains and discussing their potential interplay. The chapter will conclude with avenues for future research.