TEN EARLY WORDS OF INFANTS AGED TWELVE TO EIGHTEEN MONTHS IN TWI

ABSTRACT

Background: Children imitate, and model adult speech as noted in Skinner’s theory (Skinner, 1957) of language acquisition and so knowing what the children say and for what they say the words are important.

Aim: The aim of the study is to identify ten early words expressed by infants aged 12 to 18 months born to Twi speaking parents.

Method: Survey data was collected from 100 mothers each with her child aged 12 to 18 months, recruited from three towns (Obadan, Abotakye and Atuobikrom, all in the Eastern Region of Ghana) that made observations of their children.

Results: The results indicated that, many of the infants’ early words were nouns (50%) Verbs accounted for 30%, adjective (10%). Interjection accounted for only (10%)., The hypothesis to test the connection between the mothers’ occupation and the early words revealed that there was no influence of the mothers’ occupation on the infants’ words.

Conclusion: Knowing the early words of infants would help stakeholders who work with infants and clinicians become aware of when infants are delaying in language acquisition and provide a means of monitoring the language growth as well as early intervention strategies.

Keywords: Infants, mothers, Twi, occupation, early words.