The nature of jargon in the normal and language impaired child

Abstract

The jargon utterances of two groups of two subjects each, group A, children with normal speech and language development, and group B, children with delayed or impaired speech and language development, were recorded and transcribed. The data were divided into meaningful and non-meaningful categories. The former were analysed into morphemes in terms of distinctive features and phonemes. All subjects were, found to have essentially similar distinctive features, phonemes and morpheme structures with minor exceptions. Intonation varied: group A used more sentence intonation, whereas group Β used more word intonation. Word approximations, standard and self-language words were found in all subjects. It was concluded that jargon appears to be a fusion of early phonological development and phonetic attempts, and that no significant difference exists between the two groups.