A2 English Language- Child Language Acquisition

15 months:

• Bye Mummy
• Isee
• Allgone

At this age the child is in the holophrastic stage. This is when children use single words to take the place of a grammatical construction or use a single word as a phrase. At a young age children use mainly nouns and naming words, this child knows the word Mummy as their mother is likely to be in direct contact with them. They merge two words into one, Isee is describing what they can see and allgone, they understand the concept but do not know that it is two words; they are also phrases that they are likely to have heard around them.

20 months:

• All fall down
• Teddy tired
• Gone, where Mummy gone?
• More juice

At this age a child is in the two-word stage. In this stage children become aware of and action and an effect. Bloom observed that two word utterances can have different meanings. This is shown with these examples the phrase more juice could mean ‘I want more juice’, ‘there is more juice’ or ‘no more juice’. Because they child saying this is in the two-word stage they cannot yet produce the whole phrase but hopes that by saying something like it, it will be interpreted properly.

28 months

• Teddy's hat came off – preposition
• Harry's got a big, big green truck – use of more than one adjective.

This child is in the early telegraphic stage. At this stage the child is now able to for more of a sentence. The child is beginning to understand some aspects of grammar. The child is showing signs of logic, and problem solving, shown in the example of ‘teddy’s hat came off’ they can see that this is a problem. Some children do not get out of this stage.  

36 months

• Little Luke hit me, he did
• I am going to see Harriet another day tomorrow
• I don't like faces, I want to see children's ITV

This child is in the late telegraphic stage. The child’s knowledge of grammar has now started to develop even more, they are now aware of time and form ‘I am going to see Harriet another day tomorrow’ the arrangement and concept of the sentences and phrases are still not perfect but a child has a better understanding.

40 months

• Look at my knee. I felled over in the playground- inflections, irregular verb.
• Once upon a time there was a little girl and she got beautiful hair and then the monster killed her and then she got dead and then and then the beautiful fairy came and made them better again

This child is in the post-telegraphic stage. This child has reached the formal operational stage and they now know the mental distinction between themselves and others and an idea.