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Term Definition
Babbling Babbling is the stage in a child’s speech and language development when the infant is experimenting with uttering sounds, but not yet producing any intelligible words. Babbling follows cooing and has three stages.

  • Marginal Babbling (Precanonical) – a series of sounds without well formed syllables.
  • Reduplicated Babbling (Canonical) – a series of consonant-vowel syllables in which the consonant is the same. (babababa or gagagaga)
  • Non-replicated (Canonical) – a series of consonant-vowel and vowel-consonant-vowel syllables in which the consonants and the vowels are different from one syllable to another. (MeMaMa or GaDaDa)
Link 1: Kidmunicate Speech and Language Milestones
Link 2: VocalDevelopment.com Stages of Development – Recorded examples.
Link 3: Parental Attentiveness to Infant Babbling Speeds up Language Development. (University of Indiana and University of Iowa Study)
Link 4: Wikipedia – Babbling
Backing See Phonological Processes – Substitution
Basal Fluency See Fluency
Bilabial Consonant A type of labial sound that is produced by moving the two lips together to constrict or shape the airflow. Bilabial describes the place of articulation (i.e., bi- for two and labial for lips). In English, there are four bilabial consonants:

/m/ as in may
/p/ as in pear
/b/ as in bear
/w/ as in white

See also Labial Consonant, Place of Articulation.
Blend Consonants See Consonants
Block The stop or pause when a stutterer is trying to talk which prevents smooth sound productions. There are two types.

  • Clonic – a block characterized by repetitions.
  • Tonic – a block characterized by prolongations and hesitations.
Link 1: The Suttering Foundation
Link 2: Suttering – Causes, Signs and Symptoms, Diagnosis, Treatment, Prognosis, Products for SLPs and Success Stories
Link 3: Wikipedia – Stuttering
BodyLanguage See Language. See Kinesics
Bound Morpheme See Morphemes
Breath Stream The stream of air from the lungs used to activate the vocal folds or cords and to make sounds.

Link 1: Breath Stream Dymanics by Martin Rothenberg
Broca’s Aphasia A type of expressive (nonfluent) aphasia caused by brain damage to Broca’s area, the speech production center of the brain. Patients speak with grammatically-incomplete utterances, called telegraphic speech or agrammatism, but their receptive language remains intact. Thus, the patient has not lost the ability to understand language, but rather, he or she has lost the ability to combine words into coherent, complete utterances, whether written or verbal.

Characteristics:
• Speaking is difficult to initiate.
• Writing is difficult.
• Intonation (prosody) and stress of speech are affected.
• Vocabulary is limited to common words.
• Disjointed sentence structure and grammar.
• Speakers of all languages may be impaired, including those who used sign language prior to onset of aphasia.
• Language comprehension is not impaired.

Speech sample of patient with Broca’s aphasia:
Clinician: How did you get to therapy today?
Patient: Car. (long pause) Blue.
Clinician: Do you have plans for later today?
Patient: Food store, uh, today.

Also called Motor Aphasia.

See also Broca’s Area, Expressive Aphasia, Agrammatism.
Broca’s Area The region of the brain that controls speech production. Identified by Pierre Paul Broca, who reported expressive language impairments in two patients with injuries to this area of the brain. Broca’s area is located in the inferior frontal gyrus of the frontal lobe of the person’s language-dominant cerebral hemisphere (typically the left lobe).

Also known as Brodmann’s areas 44 and 45.

Link 1: Britannica.com – Definition and Images

Link 2: Wikipedia – Braca’s Area

See also Broca’s Aphasia, Brodmann’s Areas.

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