Stages of Child Language Acquisition

Question 1

Pre-verbal Stage

Answer 1

0-3 months

• Crying allows babies to recognise the importance of language and communication.
• Babies experiment with the articulators in their mouth.
• Babies produce different cries for different meanings.

Question 2

Babbling

Answer 2

3-12 months

CV patterns are commonly reduplicated.
Babies engage in turn-taking interaction.
produce voiced bilabial sounds, such as /p/, /b/, and /m/.
Stops and nasals are the most common consonant sounds.
Meaning is not yet assigned to sounds.

Question 3

One Word / Holophrastic

Answer 3

12-18 months

Children are naming lots of things in their immediate environment.
Content words, especially nouns and verbs, make up the bulk of their lexicon.
They also use adverbs ‘yes’ and ‘no’ with deliberate force.
Children are discovering connections between sounds and meaning.
One word takes the place of a phrase or sentence.

Question 4

Two Word

Answer 4

1-2 years

Rely on open-class words.
Children usually have a productive vocab of 50-200 words.
Standard word order.
Children tend to omit inflectional morphology (e.g. –ed, -ing), articles, prepositions, ‘to be’, auxiliary verbs.

Question 5

Multi-Word / Telegraphic

Answer 5

2-3 years

A range of function words and inflectional morphology are emerging (e.g. -ing, -s plural, simple prepositions).
Word order is generally Standard and children are joining utterances.
Children have an expanding vocabulary ~1000 words.

Question 6

Later Multi-Word

Answer 6

3-4 years

Can use language creatively in play, engage in make-believe.
Pronouns I, you and me are generally used according to the Standard.
A range of plural and past tense forms are evident.
Sentences are becoming longer, combining four or more words.