Durations of young children's word and nonword vocalizations

The duration of word (W) and nonword (NW) forms was examined in the monthly vocalizations of seven children between 8 and 26 months of age. The W (i.e., glossable "adultlike") forms and NW (i.e., nonglossable but phonetically transcribable) forms occurring in each child's consonant+vowel (CV) vocalizations were measured. The results were that W durations significantly decreased as a function of increasing chronological age. On the other hand, NW durations were not correlated with increasing age. The meaningfulness corresponding to W forms is hypothesized to account for the results.