vocants

Noun

vocant (plural vocants)

1. A vowel-like sound such as uttered by a preverbal infant.
   • At an earlier stage still, during the first few months of life, the vowel-like and consonant-like sounds are usually so far removed from normal speech that even this convention is misleading. We will label these sounds vocants and closants and their transcription will be enclosed within double...[1981, J[ohn] A[ntony] M[ichael] Martin, “Vocal Behaviour and the Origins of Speech” (chapter 4), in Voice, Speech, and Language in the Child: Development and Disorder (Disorders of Human...