Cooing

Timing
Cooing and laughter: 6-8 weeks (laughter around 16 weeks) (Hoff, 2013)

6- 16 weeks (Yeni-Komshian 1980:74)

Description

 * Happy, contented baby sounds (Hoff, 2013)
 * First coos: one long #vowel (Hoff, 2013)
 * First produced in pleasurable interaction but may be subsequently elicited in situations that do not involve interaction (*but doesn’t ‘elicit’ imply interaction?). At the time of onset of cooing, the presence of a smiling, nodding face would appear to be a powerful, if not necessary, eliciting stimulus (Yeni-Komshian 1980:74)
 * Social thing (Hoff, 2013)
 * Increased control over voicing and the vocal tract reflects an integration of previous vocalization types in a first structure allowing a consonant – vowel like configuration of the “coo”. (Lust, 2006:152)
 * These vocalization types are a vocalic mechanism in crying and a consonantal mechanism in vegetative sounds
 * Cooing and gooing, where basic syllable shapes (V, CV) and velar-like #closants are identified during the ages of two to four months (Robb et al., 1994)
 * Continue producing cooing noises for many more months, and the quality changes with age (Hoff, 2013)
 * one change is the variety of different vowel-like sounds  (*what determines quality in a coo?)
 * instead of one sound, a series of different #vowel-like sounds strung together but separated by intakes of breath.
 * Cooing: infant starts and stops #phonotation within a single breath unit, moving beyond #vegetative + #reflective sounds (Oller, 1981; See also, Koopmans-van Beinum and Van der Stelt 1998:122) (Lust, 2006:152)
 * More #features of speech sounds are present in these vocalizations than there were in earlier ones (*specifically which earlier vocalizations? coos? vegetative sounds?) (Hoff, 2013)
 * #Babbling period is introduced in the child by so called cooing period: the tongue maintains approximately its normal position and indeterminate neutral sounds are produced (Jackobson 1968: 68)
 * Neither vowels nor consonants = both at the same time