Non-segmental features in prelinguistic communications: an analysis of some types of infant cry and non-cry vocalizations

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Abstract
Four Italian infants' cry and non-cry vocalizations were recorded during laboratory sessions and grouped into different categories in relation to different situational contexts. Narrow-band spectrograms were taken of all infants' vocalizations in order to determine their non-segmental features. The results give evidence of differentiation of cry vocalization produced in different contexts, and similarity of cry and non-cry vocalization produced in the same context. The problem of assigning communicative intentions to prelinguistic children is discussed in a Piagetian perspective, assuming that infant vocalizations are schemes of interactions with the social world, developing in a similar way to sensorimotor schemes of action.