This research disputes the traditional position on babbling by showing that the phonetic content of babbled utterances exhibits many of the same preferences for certain kinds of phonetic elements and sequences that have been found in the production of meaningful speech by children in later stages of language development. (Author/RM)

Fourteen two-year-olds were presented with minimal word pairs in a new and efficient experimental perception paradigm. Data provide a view of relative difficulty of various minimal phonological contrasts for children. (CHK)