Developmental psycholinguistics examines how infants and children acquire their native language, including the ability to comprehend and speak it. There are several stages of language development, beginning with cooing in contentment as a precursor to babbling. Babbling consists of strings of consonant-vowel syllables that emerges around six months and shows the infant is learning sounds of their mother tongue. Canonical babbling at eight months demonstrates acquisition of the distinct features as the infant begins repeating syllables of their native language.