Stages of Development
CPD for Primary: Children's Language Development (by Tom Hollins), topic 1.1.5
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.
Test yourself on Stages of Development
Stages of Linguistic Development
Childhood Stages of Linguistic Development - David Crystal
At what age does object permanence emerge?