A six-month-old infant initially produces reduplicated babbling (e.g., 'dadada'). If environmental input lacks consistent phonetic reinforcement during the canonical babbling stage, which consequence follows regarding phonetic drift?

💡 Explanation

If consistent phonetic reinforcement from the ambient language is absent, phonetic drift towards that language is reduced, because phonetic stabilization relies on auditory feedback loops that shape articulatory gestures. Therefore, the infant's babbling reflects weaker tuning to environmental sounds, rather than enhanced prosody or syntactic advances.

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