MATERNAL ADDRESSMENTS AND VOCAL PRODUCTION IN THE INFANS: THE SUBJECT IN CONSTRUCTION

ABSTRACT:

This study aimed to analyze the function of maternal addressing in the psychic constitution, considering the primary inscriptions that act on the infans and evidence the place of the scandid voice on the psychism. Based on Freud’s and Lacan’s studies, the article addresses the diachronic timing of the vocal production of babies, linking them to the synchronic moments of the constitution of the subject in psychoanalysis. This was an exploratory descriptive case study, and the participants were two babies and their mothers. Cases were longitudinally followed up; from the time the babies were one to 11 months old. The results reflect the primary nature of rhythm in the infans; the prosodic features of infant vocalizations; the onset of the voice of appeal and the articulate voice. We conclude that the body of the subject echoes the temporality of maternal speech from the very first addressments, as evidenced by the vocal manifestations of the infant.

Keywords:
Voice; language; psychoanalysis

RESUMO:

Este estudo analisa a função dos endereçamentos maternos nos primórdios da constituição psíquica com base nas inscrições primárias que fazem corpo no infanseevidenciam o lugar da voz escandida no psiquismo. Embasado na leitura da obra de Freud e de Lacan, o artigo aborda os tempos diacrônicos das produções vocais dos bebês, vinculando-os aos momentos sincrônicos da constituição do sujeito na psicanálise. A pesquisa realizada foi um estudo de caso exploratório-descritivo, do qual participaram dois bebês e suas mães. Os casos foram acompanhados longitudinalmente durante o período de um a 11 meses de idade dos bebês. Os resultados apontados atestam: a primariedade rítmica incidente no infans; os contornos prosódicos vocais nos bebês; a instauração da voz apelativa e a voz que ressoa articulada. Conclui-se que o sujeito ressoa, em seu corpo, a temporalidade do andamento materno desde os primeiros endereçamentos, o que se evidencia nas manifestações vocais do bebê.

Palavras-chave:
Voz; linguagem; psicanálise

RESUMEN:

En este estudio se analiza la función de los direccionamientos maternos en los principios de la constitución psíquica con base en las inscripciones primarias que hacen el cuerpo del infansy evidencian el lugar de la voz escandida en el psiquismo. Basado en la lectura de la obra de Freud y Lacan, el artículo aborda los tiempos diacrónicos de las producciones vocales de los bebés, vinculándolos a los momentos sincrónicos de la constitución del sujeto en el Psicoanálisis. La investigación realizada ha sido un estudio de caso exploratorio-descriptivo, en el que participaron dos bebés y sus madres. Los casos han sido acompañados longitudinalmente durante el período de uno a once meses de edad de los bebés. Los resultados obtenidos señalan: la primariedad rítmica incidente en el infans; los contornos prosódicos vocales en los bebés; la instauración de la voz apelativa y la voz que resuena articulada. Se concluye que el sujeto resuena, en su cuerpo, la temporalidad del andamiento materno desde los primeros direccionamientos, lo que se evidencia en las manifestaciones vocales del bebé.

Palabrasclave:
Voz; lenguaje; psicoanálisis

Introduction

This study aims to analyze the function of the voice at the beginning of the subject’s constitution. In its origin, the subject is the assumption of those who receive them into this world and offer them signifiers capable of inscribing themselves in a body. Such assumptions are accessible through the perception of maternal addressments to the infants and its initial vocalizations.

Psychoanalytic studies relate the preference of babies for motherese, emphasizing their features, their specific musicality and paying attention to the symbolic fondness of the infans at birth. (Catão, 2009; Laznik, 2004). However, the support of this study is that, to be considered a symbolic appetite, the infans should have a desire for their own voice, as the one capable of forming a bond with the other.

To this end, in addition to linking to the sonority of motherese prosody, the presence-absence authenticated by the specific musicality in which the voice appears and disappears and gives rise to the primary nature allows the production of the voice as an appeal, in which the infans endeavors to embody the melodious characteristics, which is outlined in the first babblings of the babies in this study. In these first movements of relationship with the language, it appears warned of the symbolic function of the constitutive structure of the subject by language (Pereira, Vorcaro, & Keske-Soares, 2018).

This article investigated the interval patterns and the temporal discontinuity of the speech addressed to the baby, in which the chaining lag is found, which raises the sounds to the scansion value, thus highlighting them. In this, it aimed to distinguish the usufruct transmitted by the prosodic characteristics of the motherese from the temporal scans that silence it, demarcating the function of the scandid voice, as a voiceless, properly drive object. The drive (Trieb) will be a theoretical scope based on Freud’s work and Lacanian developments.

The methodological path and the results of the analysis of phenomenological incidences of maternal addressments on the baby’s body approach the diachronic times of their vocal productions, relating them to the synchronicity of the constituents of the psyche.

Infant production and constitution of the subject

At first, the infans emits sounds and is constantly exposed to the productions of sounds of those who welcome them, since both are located in the symbolic field that determines them. This field is called the Other, because it is the place from which language, in its synchronous structure, promotes, through referral carried out by the maternal agent, the diachronic function of the discourse chain. Providing the first vocal addressments to babies, by offering the first signifiers of the subject, this agent of language, through its Other place, is the one capable of transcribing the world on the body of the infans (Lacan, 1998a).

Everything that is offered at the level of the Other to the infans, is shaped by language. It is through a more than accidental relationship that language is linked to a sonority. However, any relationship with two, for it to assume symbolic value, implies a third dimension with a mediating function. Speech mediates what is possible between two subjects, making the subject’s relationship with the object to be sustained at a distance (Lacan, 2005a).

From a very early age, the baby recognizes speech as a path, a pass through which the manifestations of needs must lower themselves in order to be satisfied. This is because “[…] the baby addresses a subject that he/she knows to be a speaker, that he/she saw speaking, that penetrated him/her with reports from the beginning” (Lacan, 2016, p. 21).

The newborn, in his/her early days, is a helpless being, affected by stimuli that reach and excite his/her nervous substance. A first differentiation implies the distinction, on the one hand, of external stimuli that initially tend to be removed by any action and, on the other, the insistence of internal, drive stimuli, which in turn are constant, whose characteristics are: come from within the organism and act as a constant force, a force of impregnable character. Before them, only a specific action can produce the change in the external world capable of satisfying the drive. The drive is a borderline concept between the soul and the somatic, it is “[…] a measure of the work requirement imposed on the soul as a result of its relationship with the body” (Freud, 2015, p. 25).

The description of the drive concept requires distinguishing its elements: impulse (drang), target (ziel), object (objekt) and source (quelle). The impulse is what gives the measure of the work requirement. In that sense, every drive is active. The target, the goal, is always the satisfaction that, even if partial, is achieved through the object. In its origin, the object is not linked to the drive, it is only linked to it by the ability to lead to satisfaction. Therefore, it is the most variable term among the four (Freud, 2015).

While animal instincts have fixed patterns of conduct linking object and objective and have the function of reproduction that denote the preservation of the species, in the drive, the pattern of connection between object and satisfaction is fixed during the subject’s history. This specifies the object variety of the drive, so that it is independent of its object. The drive object appears as a substitute for the lost primordial object and reinscribes its differential status towards the mythical satisfaction that gave rise to the series (Freud, 2016a).

The source, on the other hand, is a somatic process, a part of the body that is only linked to soul life by the goal of satisfaction, so that the drives can be inferred retrospectively - reaching the target. For Freud (2016a, 2015), it is the stimulation of that part of the body, the source, which is likely to be represented by the drive. The sources are bodily holes that open to the world, places of mediation with the other, such as the mouth, anus and eyes. These erogenous zones located by Freud establish three objects of the drive: breast, excrement and gaze; to which Lacan (2016) adds the ‘voice’. This psychoanalyst distinguishes the object of the drive as “[…] an object external to any possible definition of objectivity” (Lacan, 2005b, p. 99) clarifying that it is neither in the subject nor in the organ, but in the space that separates them and that is why it connects them, it is the sign of lack and loss. It is amboceptor, it is not even there, in the mother; nor here. It is what Lacan calls object a, something that the subject, in order to constitute, separated as an organ, which is worth missing (Lacan, 2005b; 1998a).

The drive only reaches its target by returning to its source, Lacan (1998a) clarifies that the drive only bypasses its object without apprehending it, redoing its circuit. The drive circularity had been referred by Freud (2016a) to the grammatical reasons of inversion of the subject and the object, using the language resource, the active and passive poles of the verb to locate the fundamental reversal in which the drive path circulated. Among the Freudian ‘see/be seen’ poles, Lacan (1998a) discerns reflective time, arguing that Freud had addressed a third time, referring to the time of ‘a new subject’. Fundamentally, the third stage is that in which the subject appears when making him/herself.

Regarding the target object of this study, the voice, Vivès (2012) specifies its times. The first time, to be listened, corresponds to the cry of the newborn, in which the subject does not yet exist. Its active position will only be perceived in the ‘only after’ meeting with the Other’s agent, who can make its cry a demand. The second time, listen, corresponds to the appearance of this agent, who responds to the cry; and the third, making oneself listened, is the time when the subject is about to become, takes on his own voice in search of the other’s ear, to get an answer from him/her.

Making oneself listened “[...] that Freud does not even speaktous [...]” and that, for a structural reason, goes to the other; unlike the arrow of making oneself to see that returns to the other (Lacan, 1998a, p. 184). The entryin to the drive game implies the third time in which the subject is the other, not deaf, capable of listening. In na act of invocation there is the advent of anotherness. Thus, it is the time when the subject on the way to becoming takes on his/her own voice, going in search of the other’s ear (Vivès, 2012).

According to Catão (2015), at first them other speaks to the baby and also for him/her. It is in response to this invocation that the baby calls, is called and makes him/herself called, implying the jouissance of the Other - maternal jouissance. It is witht his implication that the invocative drive circuit is established, the primordial for the structuring of the unconscious as a language.

For Laznik (2004), Catão (2009) and Jerusalinsky (2011), the call to the invocative drive link occurs through the mother’s voice. Since the baby is born, them other makes use of prosody, at a time when the baby still does not understand whats he says, as the phonetic, syntactic and grammatic allaws of the language are not yet inscribed. In her musicality, the mother produces na eroticization in the act of listening, before the selection of the phonemes of the language is organized or there is na understandingof its meaning. Thus, at first the infans experience pleasure in the rhythm.

Given that a baby is not born with the language inscribed, he/she is taken over by the functioning of the language, linked to the prosodic modulation of motherese, the usual way that mother stalk to their babies. This type of speech directed at babies is a privileged way of engaging the infans in dialogue and the first vehicle for the organization of linguistic phonetic forms (Scarpa & Fernandes-Svartman, 2012).

As soon as a baby begins to produce their own vocalization, he/she can articulate, in its babbling, a number of sounds that never assembled in a language, he/she has no limits on his/her phonic ability to babble (Gorenberg, 2016). These limits are established as the erogenous game with the other is established. The first vocal productions coincide with the period in which the first movements of the third drive time are seen, in which the baby offers him/herself to jouissance of the other. It is also the erogenous game that causes vocal productions to vary in intensity, rhythm and intonation.

Lacan (1992) distinguishes, in the baby, an anteriority to the incorporation of the language structure, in which the child enjoys the sound of their emissions that distort what has been said. It is the time when language is reduced to the ‘affection’ of language. Using the equivocity inherent in the lallation, sustained in rhymes and alliterations, Lacan (2020) situates the effect that the ambiguity of each word produces. Writing the language with the term lalangue, referring to lallation, he asserts: “[…] very early the human being makes lallations and for that there is nothing but to see a baby, to hear him/her [...] there is a person, the mother [...] who transmits lalangue to them” (Lacan, 2020, p. 05).

Thus, what is said resonates in the baby’s body, allowing, in what he/she hears, the production of his/her first babbling. This establishes the difference that locates the equivocality matrix of each subject when inhabiting a language.

Maternal speech and the scandid voice

For the first inscriptions on the infans body, the register of the maternal compass prints, on the child’s real body, a temporality of cuts, whose progress shows the mark of the bodily affection of displacement, implying time. In the psychic constitution, there is the temporal movement that opens up segments based on the progress printed in maternal care. Before a subject comes, the mother care for the baby’s body articulates a matrix structured in a temporal calculation. It is through progress that scans are printed on the organism, establishing a regularity (Vorcaro, 2017)

The symbolic matrix operates by establishing the possibility of waiting: in the intervals produced by the inscription of the maternal progress, the infans will produce vocal manifestations that denote its first appeals that aim to recover the satisfaction once obtained. This is what Freud (2010) called a reality test, whose objective is to rediscover in the current perception the object of satisfaction that existed, which is there fore already represented in memory, making sure that it still exists. Returning to the path of Freudian thought.

Freud (1996) points out that the first expression of the infans, affected by its organic insufficiency, is the discharge of tension by a cry. In face of this, a specific action (capable of altering the external world) intervenes in order to temporarily eliminate this manifestation: it is the help of the next insurer (Nebenmensch), who takes the cry as an appeal that calls upon him/her, compelling him/herself to answer.

In the offer of the appeasing object/thing, the cancellation of the unpleasant endogenous excitation is consummated, establishing an experience of satisfaction. The mnemic record of absence and presence are alternate, in the articulation between appeal and response, being overcome by successive differential experiences in which they will be transcribed in the psyche (Freud, 2016b).

For Freud (2016c), the mnemonic image of the particular perception of the experience of satisfaction is associated with the memory trace of the excitement produced by the need, allowing, in the resurgence of the need, the infans to reinvent such an image. This psychic activity leads to perceptual identity, repetition of perception and reestablishment of the encounter with the object connected to the body of the other, in addition to the insertion of a logic in which it is possible to appeal for its return.

According to Pereira et al. (2018), the voice-appeal supports the reactivation of an object: the old infans scream is associated with an acoustic image capable of recalling that object. The formatting of this voice as an appeal lends itself to mean something to someone, forming the prosodic perceptual identity, which allows to recognize the first records and ties that leave the cry behind. These ties will gradually be tamed by the language.

The height of the intonation and time parameters of the baby sound production occurs at eight months, a process that begins around six months. According to Costa (2015), it is an adaptation to the sound image that is heard by those around him. Gorenberg (2016) shows that, around seven to 11 months of age, there is an interruption in which babies progressively lose the ability to produce phonemes that are not part of the mother language (official language), entering the stage of babbling. linguistic. In this moment of loss, babbling is more segmented, with more phonetic articulation and less intonation.

This period coincides with one of the constitutive moments of the subject, the Mirror Stage (Lacan, 1998b). It occurs between six and 18 months of life, when the baby recognizes his/her image in the mirror. This has repercussions in a series of gestures in which he/she playfully experiences the relation of the assumed movements of the image to his/her reflection, in a jubilatory work. In the rejoicing in which he/she assumes his/her wholeness in his/her mirror image, the child turns his/her head to the agent who supports him/her, who is behind him/her, incarnating the Other. He/she demands consent, approval of the value of this image, a fundamental time of the imaginary relationship insofar as there is a limit: the authentication of the Other that does not appear in the virtual image.

The mirror stage includes the primary incidence of writing on the body, with the joy of the mirror’s imaginary unity, which thus “[…] inscribes a before and an after […]”, which produces effects on the subjective position (Costa, 2019, p. 48-49). After all, the mirror stage points out the line of sharing between imaginary virtuality and symbolic effectiveness, between the alienation of the ego (moi) to the image and the formation of the I (je), before language restores its function as a subject.

In this process, the other of otherness emerges, relative to the similar and the symbolic dimension of the Other, with a capital letter. When identifying with the image of a body approved by the Other, the child finds the origin and the matrix of his/her ego (moi). Accommodating his/her own image, the subject should find an opportunity for integration in which the Other is a testimony that decant confirmation (Lacan, 1998a).

While the child settles in the language to be able to speak like the ego (moi), prosody plays an increasingly restricted role in the production of meaning, because the child moves from the ‘imitation’ of the sounds he/she hears to the production of his/her first vocal loss, when trying to adapt his/her voice to speech. In such an adaptation, he/she sacrifices his/her voice, part of him/herself, so that, in the functioning of language, his/her productions acquire meaning (Porge, 2014).

Thus, the infans appeal is the determinant of the first loss of the voice as an object of the drive, because in it is the outgoing dimension of the voice, the one that can hook itself to the functioning of language, in the face of its imaginary binding to the language (Pereira et al., 2018). This is the scandid voice that will echo the symbolic interdiction observed in each stumbling of speech. It is possible to recognize this contingency of the voice in something by which the subject sees him/herself surpassed, in surprise, and which is produced in a hyance.

For Musolino (2015), the contingency of the voice appears in the unexpected of na enunciation position, in a dimension of the enunciative cut, where what appears in the crack is destined for healing, for disappearance. Lacan (2008) defines this which precipitates from the meeting of infans with the signifiers of the discourse, with the term lalangue, a modality by which the subject, at the same time, alienates him/herself and inscribes him/herself singularly in language, before restricting his/her speech to the established discourse.

Trail that reproduces the part of what remains of the subject, housing the repressed, Lalangue is the element around which the language signifiers revolve, involving it. In this one that is not known whether it is a phoneme, word, phrase or even the thought, the jouissance of the unknown would act, knowing impossible to gather, piercing the Symbolic. In order to structure itself as a language, the unconscious will clarify about the real of lalangue, constituting a knowledge that is not known (Lacan, 2008).

Methodgical path

Two babies participated in thestudy, one male (M) and the other female (F), and their mothers (MM and MF, respectively), responsible for their daily care. For inclusion in the research, mothers who were speakers of Brazilian Portuguese and listeners were considered; and term, hearing babies. The study participants were chosen for convenience of access to them.

This was an empirical qualitative research, based on the exploratory-descriptive case study method (Gil, 2009). Cases were followed up longitudinally, through monthly meetings, from one to 11 months of babies. In the meetings, interactions between mothers and babies were recorded in moments of free play, through filming and audio recordings.

This study followed the guidelines and regulatory standards for research involving human beings, as set out in resolution 466/12, of December 12, 2012. The study respected the Free and Informed Consent Process with the subjects involved. Mothers formalized their participation and that of their babies by signing the Informed Consent Form (ICF).

This investigation was registered in the Projects Office of the Health Sciences Center and in the Research Ethics Committee of the Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM), located in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, under CAEE 34428014.6.0000.5346.

Results and discussion

The results are discussed from its division into four logical moments: the first is related to the primary nature of rhythm, a symbolic incidence that can be observed in the second month of life in babies; the second emphasizes the constitution of the bond with the other and the incorporation of the language in four-month-old babies; the third marks the passage through the voice of appeal and the objects that fall with it, readings that we undertake during the ninth month of the babies’ life; the last moment, recorded in the materials in which the research subjects were 11 months old, marks the passage through the signifiers and the subject constituted by language, presenting elements that highlight that the scandid voice resonated in the subject.

Primary nature of rhythmin the infans

During the second month of life of the participating babies, the interpretations of the Other’s agent about the babies’ organisms were undertaken by both mothers. In their first offers, the readings of the infans vocal productions were visible as appeals addressed to them. At first, the real condition to which the maternal agent is subjected to the baby is cut from this Other place, when it sustains its speech and its actions towards infans, ordered by language. In that time, everything can exist without a minimum of subject (Lacan, 1998a).

It is in the assumption of a subject, that in the face of the cry’s manifestations, in just one moment: (a) the other insurer, compelled by the real of the organism that was born and the presence that affects him/her, offers the supply of his/her need; (b) the other similar raises the cry to the condition of an appeal, making it a demand on oneself; and (c) the Barred Other ensures differential attributes to the cry-call, embodying it in the logic of the language to which it is subjected.

When F’s mother, for example, assumes that she wants to suckle, she immediately asks her a question: “What does F want, uh?”. It is in the successive addressments and demanding readings about the infans, that the instinctual loss of the infans operates through its insertion in the field of language. In relation to instinctual loss, Freud (2016a) is paramount in perverting pre-existing theories about instincts, through his concept of Drive (Trieb), which he conceives as a deviation from instinct. While instincts have fixed patterns of conduct linking object and objective and have the function of reproduction, denoting the preservation of the species, in the drive, the pattern of connection between object and satisfaction is fixed during the subject’s history.

Such stories are marked by the narratives of others who read the baby’s body. It also allows the baby to perceive a speaking subject, whom he/she sees speaking and who penetrates him/her “with reports from the beginning” (Lacan, 2016, p. 21). It is observed, in this study, that the readings undertaken by the mothers not only translate the babies’ movements, but also situate them in the dialogue, providing words as their answers. When MM indicates that M likes to be ‘naked’, she immediately produces the baby’s response: “[…] it's very hot, mom, I like to stay like this, it’s very hot, I like to be naked, see?”. In this first stage, it is still necessary for the other to speak for the baby, until the baby comes to speak for him/herself.

But it is not just any speech, the maternal addresses use the prosodic resources of motherese. MM caresses M and calls: ‘affection’ (extended, between 17m20s and 17m35s of recording). This addressing is capable of causing M to stop the crying he produced, which allowed him to sketch the prosody as bait to which the infans let himself be caught very early. It is observed that the vocal thrust that MF uses with melodic characterization in: “Look at the butterfly”, is used only after the look of F is captured in the object, as the mother had wished. This indicates that maternal production is also encouraged by the babies’ catches.

It is also noted that in the face of maternal appeals that do not include phrasal tonal variations, there is a return, in vocalization, on the part of babies, but in a reduced number in relation to those found before the melody of motherese. In these cases, there is often the vocal manifestation of babies, who seem to be really interested in the sound object. There are many examples in which the mother speaks to her and F does not respond, such as the following: “Are you enjoying the machine?”. In another moment, in the face of the maternal intonation, “Whaaat? What do you waaant?” ... “Huh?” (4m48s), M addresses “ã” (4m50s).

Babies’ vocalizations are welcomed by maternal vocalizations. When M vocalizes with extension, the mother repeats the production: “ééé”. The mother’s vocal production is very close to the baby’s production, precipitating the inscription of the vocal traces produced by the boy.

Babies’ vocalizations are performed in the range of the mother’s voice. The appeal to the presence-absence of maternal vocalization, linked to pleasure-displeasure, is established. Given the idea of complementarity of these two poles, we refer to the alternating game in which the possibility of absence is security of presence. In this way, babies of the first month of the research are on the premises of the drive erogenous game, at the same time that, in their vocalizations, some melodic aspects begin to be established that will serve the game in the bond with the other. Such a bond passes through the active and passive poles in Freud (2016a), in a fundamental reversal, making the drive path circulate.

In the primary nature of the relation to the voice object, it can be noted that the rhythmic evidence of the infans vocalizations is also an imposition on entering the game. In the scene below, there is the suspension of M’s crying after a monotonal and rhythmic speech, to which he replies:

− MM: “Okay, I left you naked as you like”.

− M: “ã”.

Unlike the musicality of motherese, the musical rhythms extracted from the maternal speeches were monotonal, but had an effect analogous to the maternal musical melody. It is clear that the maternal momentum occurs not only in relation to the musical melody, but also to the rhythm that clearly marked some intervals in the maternal speeches. Here is one of the innovations of this research, the particularity of the progress that can be seen in this study results from a time interval marked by a mathematical logic. It is understood, within the mathematics of the interval, an ascendancy to predictability, where the symbolizing order is located. More than understanding maternal prosody as a song that facilitates the apprehension of the infans by the Symbolic, this study proposes to touch the limits, the voids and the interdictions of that voice.

The drive bond and the prosodic vocal features

At the age of four months of babies, it is observed that the mother’s demand has already settled on the infans body and is manifested in an active search for the bond with the other. They are also looking for the objects that their mothers make available to them. Babies are now immediately hooked by the prosodic intonation typical of motherese used by mothers when offering objects to the baby. There is a record in which MF calls F’s attention to the microphone of the audio recording device: “Did you see?” (extensive), and F immediately turns her face to where the mother points.

These addressed speeches promptly locate the infans body in space. In the face of the previously helpless newborn, the other provides the first differentiations of perceptual activity, whose drive is the measure of the work demand imposed on the soul as a result of its relationship with the body. (Freud, 2015). In a perceptual framework linked to the seductive appeal of maternal addressing, there comes an engagement of one subject to come through the bond with the other.

It is observed that four-month-old babies vocalize as an appeal, within a temporal logic. F, for example, when not reaching an object, vocalizes, but when reaching it, she silences. This psychic activity leads to perceptual identity and restoration of the encounter with the object (Freud, 2010). In this, babies inserted in a logic in which it is possible to appeal for their return, make their voice appeal. The formatting of this voice that means something to someone allows to recognize the first ties of the voice, leaving behind the scream (Pereira et al., 2018).

There are also more silences, lack of sound emissions that are the incidence of the symbolic. They are the gap voids, within the logic of temporal anticipation, whose alternating object is missing, which is visualized at that moment. The anticipatory logic concerns precisely the foundation of the subject, in the Other, a place where the signifiers are offered by a caregiver (Lacan, 1998a). The symbolic pertinence of the rhythm, marking intervals by which the subject launches into the anticipatory logic is where he/she can inscribe his/her acts and his/her vocalizations.

This is because the very rhythmic functioning of the alternation performed by the agents operates a lag that is inscribed between the differential terms, the mismatch between alternating terms excludes one of them in the face of precipitation or postponement, a temporal intervention that introduces the equivocity between the mother and the child (Vorcaro, 2003).

It is observed that the infans manifests itself when waiting for one of the differential terms. In a game in which MM removes and gives the pacifier to M, the boy’s vocalizations appear in place of the missing object. In the time lag, the infans occupies the empty position by means of a shout, replacing the sustaining term of alternation. This cry is already a body that is offered to what is lacking in the symbolic alternation, through the cry that appeals, that tries to connect to an acoustic image capable of recalling the lost object, first records and ties of the voice.

It is suggested, at this logical moment, the classification of the vocal record as appealing and, therefore, of the order of a radical significant connection. Added to this structural moment is the enrichment of babies’ vocal modulations in proprioceptive babbling. When MM plays to put the pacifier in M’s mouth and then take it out, chanting a phrase with motherese, MM vocalizes, chanting more than one note. When, however, the mother does so with typical speech, M whines.

At four months, the baby constitutes prosodic features related to the capture of vocal sound. These prosodic changes in babies’ vocalization occur when the erogenous game, in the bond with the other, has already installed itself (Jerusalinsky, 2011). In this way, vocal traces are precipitated that can be a means of offering elements so that the baby can circulate among the signifiers, engaged in the symbolic functioning where the subject is constituted.

The passage through the appealing voice

At eight months of age, babies respond to their mothers’ interrogative phrases, even if they do not have the specific prosody of motherese. Their answers also appear in the dialogic time:

- MF: “And where does the baby have to put it?”.

- F: “Mommy”.

- MF: “Where does F have to put?”.

Mothers silence up, supporting a dialogical matrix. Babies, in turn, are engaged in otherness (Freud, 2015; Lacan, 1998b). These movements appear together with the vocal losses of the linguistic babbling stage, where there is production of the first vocal losses of the subject being constituted (Porge, 2014). F and M produce the linguistic babbling. F says: “Bum, bum, bum” and M, “iéiéiéié”, “abuu, abuu, aaa”.

It is a time of interruption in which the phonetic abilities seem to stagger, since babies no longer have all the vocal abilities that were evident in the initial babbling (Gorenberg, 2016). As the subject tries to speak to mean, they lose the sound of the speech. The voice is the support of the discursive enunciation and disappears behind the meaning, this is the addressing voice (Vivès, 2012).

In this moment of loss, babbling is more segmented and has more phonetic articulation (Jerusalinsky, 2011). In a moment, MF asks what F wants and goes on: “Do you want daddy?” She seems to answer for F, but now, in a very cadenced way, dividing the syllables: “dad-dy, dad-dy”. In the face of maternal cadence, F utters “atata” and repeats “ta-ta” with segmentations. Assuming the appropriation of vocal contours through the identification path ways, the sound image that the child produces and the sound image that they hear from the people around are appropriate (Costa, 2015).

At this time, the child goes through the identification of their image in the mirror, from the symbolic validation of the Other, a process in which they find the origin and the matrix of their ego (moi) (Lacan, 1998a). In these identification processes, the bonding to the language of the Other is evident. At this time, the thrust falls on the statement of the language, so that it operates on the form of its production by babies, in na imperative to correct pronounce.

As soon as F produces “ta-ta”, MF overlaps “dad-dy”, na imperative is observed about the language to be spoken, before which F tries tosay “p” instead of “t”, tries to get around their lip movements for vocalizations. Lip movements are relevant when the mother asks F to look ather face: “F, look here!”. F moves her lips too, even if she does not make a sound with them.

There is also a place for erogenous exchange here, F borders her lips and smiles. The lips that perform the function of the drive edge are the embodiment of a cut of the object. (Lacan, 2005b). The reported scene denotes just that, the function of the cut put on the scene. It is noticed that the voice appears here as na object of the drive, a voice assumed in na opening and in a scansion (Porge, 2014). The subject who operates, with his/her voice, his/her bond with the other, implies his/her psychic economy in opening and closing in on the other. It opens and closes because the symbolic matrix allowed it to be structured by language.

Thus, the production of linguistic babbling manifests a movement of language, even though babies cannot yet slip with ease through the signifiers. For these, the intonation has a fundamental weight in what is said, the peak of the intonation and temporal parameters of the babies’ sound production occurs at eight months of age (Jerusalinsky, 2011). This is what this study realized, the incidence of prosodic types in extensive babbling, for example, when F produces “Ba, ba - da, da, da” (10:31 - 10:34), and M vocalizes in a cadenced way: “ta-ta-ta-ta-a-a-a-a” (9:56 - 10:05), in which the residue of temporal marking is included in the infans experience, contemplated in the scansions of the progress. This occurs after establishing the functioning of language in the body that resonated in the vibration of the speech progress (Vorcaro, 2017).

The articulate voice

In this moment of reading, attention is paid to the infans body that is formed where the voice resonates articulate. At 11 months, it is observed that the vocalized features return articulated. Babies are now in a very different position. When MF asks if the cookie is good, F responds with an emphatic “there”. When M wants to take the recorder and is prohibited by his mother, he says: “get out”. Subjects can circulate, through language, among the signifiers.

Vocalizations already have their contours well defined in the language. Alluded to by precipitates of lalangue, where the evanescent subject now co-inhabits, the first effect of significant functioning was lost, repressed by the constriction that organized language imposes (Lacan, 2008).

When MF says “don't move”, F says “no”; when MM tells M that he cannot touch the recorder, with an emphatic “no”, he vocalizes “nooo”. It is observed the ideal in the manifestations, response to parental demands. It is observed that it is in the time concomitant with the words that are enunciated along with the language, that the mother begins to offer her son as an object of jouissance to the other. MF offers F’s productions to the researcher: “show auntie that you know how to kiss”, to which F makes a lip movement. F’s body is offered to the other’s gaze. MM also wants M to show himself: “show what you’re up to”; “dance”; “throw a kiss”; “say hi to auntie”.

This game in which the baby is an object of desire and is made to see, responds to the Freudian drive dynamics - to look / be looked at (2016a). In this drive game, the third time allows to operate with the separation between the subject and the other, which originates the subject’s desire. In the third invocative time, the subject can be heard.

Babies now announce themselves addressed to the interlocutor. In one scene, F wants to show the “au-au” outside the house. Thus, there is a subject that speaks and another that listens, but mainly the passage between a subject and himself, a subjec tthat made their voice un precedented, as explained by Porge (2014).

There are the signifiers in articulation, there mission of each other, places of significant passage (Lacan, 1998a). In na extensive vocalization F “reads” a little book, pronouncing “abôpuiéé” (07m58s-08m10s). She pauses, widens her vocalization, and seeks something that she seems to associate with her reading. In the dimension of the enunciative cut, something appears in the gap.

Through a drive function of the unconscious, in the passage between a subject and himself, something manifests itself that deepens the signifier. It is a voice that takes consistency in the transmission, that refers to the place that hás gone out and that gives vent to another signifier to be placed there. There the subject appears, in the interval of the scandid voice resonated.

Final considerations

Before language structuring in the unconscious, the buzz of spoken language crosses the living body, like assemblies of marks in the body. This first effect of a significant functioning will be lost, repressed by the constriction that the organized language imposes. Henceforth, it will only be alluded to by precipitates of lalangue, where the evanescent subject co-inhabits.

This research considered the primary nature of the rhythmic evidence of maternal addressments and vocal productions of babies, in which the movement presents the mark of the body’s affection of displacement, implying time, by which the intonation is reduced. In temporal ordering, the subject launches into the anticipatory logic, initially as a body that offers itself to what is lacking in symbolic alternation.

When passing through the drive times in which the voice is the object of circularity in the relationship with the other, the study marks the subject involved in the movement of opening and closing to the other, distinguishing their experience of language, based on his residues of temporal marking. In this way, the voice is referred to the erased place, which allows na other signifier to put itself in its place. It is there that the subject appears, in the interval of the scandid voice that resonated in him/her.

It is also worth noting the limits of the investigation carried out here, in relation to the theoretical perspective adopted. Direct observation of cases, so dear to scientific research, does not occupy here the place of evidence and confirmation of universality. On the contrary, it only situate sthe singular way of each subject entering the language, pulling the strings of the symbolic from unpredictable places, where some structural regularities of the subject can be pointed out, without, however, precipitating generalizations. Moreover, what is observed only touches on elements that we demarcate, in conducting theories that are not confirmed by the visibility hypothesis, requiring logical constructions that, even provisional, are not intended to be exemplary.

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  10 May 2021
• Date of issue
  2021

History

• Received
  28 Aug 2018
• Accepted
  02 Nov 2020