The ethologic model of phonetic development: I. Phonetic contrast estimators

This study defines phonetic product estimators of an ethologic model of phonetic contrast development and introduces some of their properties with the use of simulations. The model of phonetic development is presented in the behavioural biology tradition of ethology that includes a series of naturalistic and computational studies of children's phonetic development. Six children interacting with their mothers were studied from one to two years of age to discover patterns of emergence in phonetic and language development.Phonetic contrast is a key concept in the model and studies. Phonetic contrast refers to the ability to use different articulatory movements variably in time, a necessary skill for language acquisition. Children are hypothesized to have limited expressive resources for this ability to produce phonetically contrastive utterances which emerge into later language skills.The aim of these studies is to state and test different phonetic product model estimators of the role of phonetic contrast in language development. These two resultant phonetic product estimators are calculated from observations of different place/position sound segments produced in a minute (PPtime) or utterance (PPutterance)