Stages of child language acquisition

All information on ages given here are approximation; everyone is different in their own way.

Many people believed that language acquisition begins when children starts to say their first word. This is incorrect, there has been research done that shows that children begin acquiring language before that. Including a research that suggested that unborn babies are influence be the sound of the first language that penetrates the womb!

A lot happen linguistically during the first year of life. Before they start talking, they are learning a lot about sound.

Pre-Verbal Stage (birth-11 months)

Infants begin producing sound by gurgling and cooing. They start to produce talking sound when they are around 7 months old. These sounds are known as ‘babbling’. Whatever conditions they live in, every children babble, even if they are deaf. Deaf children babbling are similar to a non deaf child. Their babbling often covers a range of sound. Sounds located in the articulator positions are most common, because they are easy to produce. They also produce many different sounds, it like they are experimenting with it. They will produce a large number of different sounds. Often they repeat syllables such as ‘da da’ or produce a mix of syllables such as ‘da bu ma’. During this they begin to figure out their vocal apparatus and discovering sounds close to their language(s) (phonetic sounds). Babbling is when they begin to make ‘speech-like’ sounds.

As they babble they often use body language to convey their message, such as making faces or grabbing objects. This is all part of communication. Out of all factors, the guardian has the most impact on a child. At an early stage they will learn different kinds of action from their interactions with their guardian. These actions are called eye gaze norm and turn taking norm. Eye gaze norm is not universal but in countries where it is socially used, child will learnt that when someone is talking to them or the other way around, it is polite to look at them. Turn taking norm is when a person decides to speak.

 Holophrastic Stage (11-18 months)

This is when children start to discover that sounds have meanings to it. They will begin to produce one word utterances. One word utterances are usually often used in everyday interaction such as 'mama' and 'dada'. These common words are usually the child first word. Sometime they come close in pronouncing a particular word.  Around this age children are capable in producing around 50 words but they often use these words with a variety of meaning. For example the child might use the word, ‘Moon’ to refer to the moon in the sky, a cake or everything that resemble the shape of a circle! Even though they only know around 50 words, they have the capability of recognizing them before they actually pronounce them.

Telegraphic Stage (1.5-2.5 years)

Around this age children can produce a whole bunch of new words and have the abilities to combine them into two-word utterances. 

For example:

-Dad chair

-Doggy bad

This stage is usually referred as ‘word spurt’. At this stage the child’s utterances only contain content words (open class words); there are no function words (closed-class words) or morphemes. In other word the things they say are non-grammatical.

Although just because they are non grammatical, research has confirms that they combination of words are not random but carefully structured. The syntax structure for location phases are always object/person +location. The syntax structure for action utterances are always Person +action.

This stage is also when children stop mimicking the utterances they hear around them and start to become creative in what they say.

Multi-Word Stage (2.5 years and onward)

In this stage children will jump from two-word utterances to multiword stage. This is where the length of their utterances increases and they begin to develop an understanding of morpheme and syntax. Even though their utterances are sentence like, their use of function words and morphemes are lacking. As time progresses grammatical parts start to make an appearance. As their vocabulary expands rapidly, their grammar and use of pronunciation would soon follow on.

Children development in language acquisition increase very rapidly. Their capability in learning a language is far superior than at other ages. 

References:

Books:

-Unit 1, Area of Study 2, Language Acquisition

-Crystal, David, How Language Works, Penguin Australia, 2008

Websites:

- University of Michigan (2006), Children’s Language Acquisition

http://sitemaker.umich.edu/nicolesling/home

- Linguistics 001 (2003), Stages of language acquisition in children

http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fall_2003/ling001/acquisition.html

                                             Time Line

Phase	Age (months)	Primary Mode	Lexemes	No. Of lexemes per utterance	Syntax	Examples
Pre-Verbal	0-11	Body language, eye gaze, turn taking	No	None	No	crying
Holophrastic	11-18	Speech, body language	Yes	One	No	Bye
Telegraphic	18-30	Speech	Yes	Two	No	Me jump
Multi-Word	30 and onward	Speech	Yes	Many	Yes	Doggie and I run