Our understanding of the relationships between lexical and phonological development has been enhanced in recent years by increased interest in this area from language scientists, psychologists and phonologists. This review article provides a summary of research, highlighting similarities and differences across studies. It is suggested that the research falls into two categories with different goals and different methodological approaches: (1) child-centered studies that examine the influences active in the prelinguistic and early-word period, emphasizing individual developmental patterns and the active role played by the child; and (2) studies inspired by research on word processing in adults; these focus on the effects of the phonological and lexical characteristics of the ambient language on underlying representations and word learning in children. The article concludes with suggestions for integrating the findings from the two approaches and for future research.

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Longitudinal samples of meaningful speech of 34 normally developing children were analyzed to determine the range and types of consonantal phones produced at 15, 18, 21, and 24 months. Separate inventories for word-initial and word-final consonants were constructed for each child at each age level. Group analyses showed that early inventories in initial position were composed primarily of voiced anterior stops, nasals, and glides; by 24 months, voiceless stops, velars, and a few fricatives were also included. In final position, inventories consisted primarily of voiceless stops and alveolar consonants. There was a strong tendency for the voiced stops to appear first in initial position and for [t] and [r] to appear first in word-final. Individual analyses of place and manner of articulation revealed highly similar patterns across subjects. The findings are related to other longitudinal research in early phonological development and to studies of babbling of younger subjects and correct productions of older subjects.

Speech samples of 34 children were analysed to determine patterns of babbling and early word productions from 9 to 24 months. The present study focuses on the vocal and verbal development of two 'late talkers' in the group who did not meet the criterion for achieving the Meaningful Speech Stage until 24 months. Analysis of these subjects' prespeech utterances revealed that one of them produced few canonical babbles from 9 to 21 months; the other displayed an unusual pattern of sound preference in his babbles. At 24 months, word productions of both late talkers evidenced more limited phonetic repertoires and simpler syllable shapes than those used by their peers. These findings suggest that atypical babbling may be associated with delays in the acquisition of meaningful speech.