An overview of the babbling stage in child language acquisition, which occurs normally at age six months to one year, looks at research on this period. The babbling stage is preceded by arbitrary infant vocalization and is succeeded by production of simple but recognizable words. Babbling represents a period of increasing pattern and articulatory control, but without real words. The review of literature addresses the reasons babbling does not occur until about six months, the characteristics of this developmental stage, its benefits to the baby's language development, and several theories of babbling behavior. (Contains nine references.) (MSE)