Stages of Development

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The Stages of Development

Here are the stages of development of a child:

The Holophrastic Stage

The Holophrastic Stage denotes the period of time when children speak using single words (or holophrases).
Generally speaking, this happens between 9-18 months. The holophrases are predominately (but not always) nouns.
The holophrases will often encompass many meanings and moods. For example, juice could mean:
- Can I have some juice? (Interrogative)
- Give me juice! (Imperative)
- There’s the juice. (declarative)

The Two-Word Stage

Often confused with the Telegraphic Stage, this stage denotes utterances of two words only.
This stage occurs between 18 and 24 months.
Other word classes start to emerge, but nouns still dominate.
Syntax is explored (correctly).
- Subject-verb (‘Robin jump’).
- Verb-object (‘jump dog’).
- Noun phrases (pre-mod adj + noun – ‘big dog’).
Inflections are not applied to verbs.

Telegraphic Stage

The Telegraphic Stage denotes when a child is speaking using utterances with just enough information. This word ‘telegraphic’ stems from the word ‘telegram’.
Roughly occurs between 24 and 30 months.
A wider range of word classes are acquired (particularly pronouns, followed by determiners and prepositions).
For example:
- ‘Rory want food’.
- ‘This coat all wet’.

2.5-5 years

From 2.5 years old onwards, there is rapid expansion through to 5 years old. In particular, more frequent adjectives.
Between 3-5 years, the child enters the complex utterance stage (sometimes referred to as the Post-telegraphic Stage).
This includes time features, contracted negatives and increasingly accurate inflections.

Negation

Within the acquisition of language and word order, a child quickly learns to use negations.
Between being Holophrastic and Two Word, the child starts to front negatives like ‘no like that’.
As we approach the Telegraphic stage, the child is starting to place negatives before the main verb like ‘don’t like you’.
Past this, negation is almost always correct and errors tend to be virtuous.

Stages of Development - David Crystal

David Crystal states that children will have the following linguistic abilities at their disposal at these ages:

Up to 1 years old

'Scribble talk’ – sounds like adult speech, but has no meaning.

1 year, 8 months old

Around 50 words in their lexicon.
Littered with reduplication and overextension.

2 years old

Inflections are emerging, but are insecure.
Around 300 words known.
Object permanence emerges. This is the understanding that objects exist even when you can't see them.

3 years old

Up to 10 words are being used per sentence utterance.
Vocabulary is too big and varied to accurately estimate.
Irregular verbs and nouns cause problems (e.g. 'run' and 'mouse').
Parataxis (repeated use of coordinating conjunctions like ‘and’) begins to be used.
Multiple negation/double negatives start to happen – the child does not grasp that negatives cancel each other out.
Contractions begin to be used.

1Children's Language Development

1.1Stages of Development

1.1.1A Child's First Year & Consonant Acquisition

1.1.2Consonant Acquisition

1.1.3Beginning Stages of Language

1.1.4Lexical Development

1.1.5Stages of Development

1.1.6Grammatical Constructions

1.2Theories of Language Development

1.2.1Behaviourism

1.2.2Interactionism

1.2.3Interactionism 2

1.2.4Nativism

1.2.5Chomsky

1.2.6Cognitivism

1.2.7Social Constructionism

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