The theory that the sounds in infant babbling begin to approximate those of the target language well before the onset of the first words. The process of approximation begins about 9-14 months. In the past, there were problems in finding data in support of this theory. More recent cross-language studies, however, have suggested relatively early language effects on infants’ babbling behavior. For example, the linguistic origin of babbling samples by six-month-old French and Arabic infants were perceived above chance by a group of French phoneticians. The same result obtained in the case of non-phoneticians for corresponding groups of eight-month-olds. The theory (or hypothesis) was first put forward by the linguist Roger William Brown (1925-1997) in 1958.