Work: Some aspects of sounds characteristics of the first year old infants St.Petersburg State University.

E-mail: allaspw@mail.ru.

Main results: Subjects were 4 full-term, healthy infants in Saint Petersburg. The children were recorded longitudinally during first year of life. The audio recording sessions were made of 15-20 min of vocalization from each of the four infants in the home conditions. To test the peculiarity of infant` vowel the corresponding sound of 4 adult volunteers, aged 18-25 years, were recorded. The acoustic analyze was done using the Cool96 computer program package based on fast Fourier transformation. The phonetic analyze was made using the IPA. If the utterances have the components with different types of dynamic spectra and phonetic transcription the segmentation was performed: each vocalization analyzed in total and fragments. Vegetative sounds, laughing, and crying are not taken into account. It is shown that although low formants in different vowel-like sounds are overlapped, there is statistical difference between different vowel-like sounds in frequency location of spectral maxima and their amplitude relations. Analyses demonstrate the [a]- and [u]-like vowels of first words have some acoustic (F0 and formants) parameters in accordance with the vowels of preverbal vocalizations. These dates support one of the views of relationship between preverbal sounds and early words (McCathern et al., 1999). Moreover, the vowels of first words have the specific frequency location of spectral maxima and amplitude relations some as corresponded vowels of vocalization, adult`, singers and talking bird.