Child Language Acquisition Stages: From Cooing to Sentences
Chapter 14: Child Language Acquisition
Early Stages
Caregiver Speech
During the first few years, interaction with other language users is crucial for a child’s language development. A simplified speech style, often used by caregivers, plays a significant role. This “caregiver speech” (also known as motherese or child-directed speech) is characterized by:
- Frequent questions with exaggerated intonation
- Extra loudness and slower tempo with longer pauses
- Simple sentence structures and repetition
Cooing
The earliest speech-like sounds are described as cooing. In the first few months, infants produce vowel-like sounds, particularly high vowels like [i] and [u]. By four months, they can produce sounds similar to [k] and [g]. Studies show that five-month-old babies can distinguish between vowels like [i] and [a], and syllables like [ba] and [ga].
Babbling
Between six and eight months, babies begin babbling, producing combinations of vowels and consonants (e.g., ba-ba-ba, ga-ga-ga). Later babbling includes intonation patterns and variations (e.g., ba-ba-da-da). Nasal sounds become common, and sequences like ma-ma-ma and da-da-da emerge.
Word and Sentence Development
One-Word Stage
Between twelve and eighteen months, children enter the one-word stage, uttering single terms for everyday objects (e.g., milk, cookie, cat). These utterances are often holophrastic, meaning a single word functions as a phrase or sentence.
Two-Word Stage
Around eighteen to twenty months, the two-word stage begins, with combinations like baby chair, mommy eat, and cat bad. Children receive feedback, confirming their utterances’ effectiveness in communication. By age two, a child’s understanding surpasses their production, often comprehending five times more words than they speak.
Telegraphic Speech
Between two and two-and-a-half years old, children transition to telegraphic speech, using strings of words (lexical morphemes) in phrases or sentences (e.g., this shoe all wet, cat drink milk). Word order becomes more accurate, and grammatical inflections and simple prepositions emerge.
Grammatical Development
Developing Morphology
Around two-and-a-half, children incorporate inflectional morphemes. The -ing form appears first (e.g., cat sitting), followed by the plural -s, often overgeneralized (e.g., foots, mans). Forms of to be (e.g., are, was) emerge, and the third-person-singular -s appears (e.g., comes, looks, does, has).
Developing Syntax
Studies show children don’t simply imitate adult syntax. Question and negative formation develop in stages:
- Forming Questions: Stage 1 involves adding a Wh-word or rising intonation (e.g., Where kitty?). Stage 2 uses more Wh-words and rising intonation (e.g., What book name?). Stage 3 introduces subject-verb inversion (e.g., Can I go?).
- Forming Negatives: Stage 1 places no or not at the beginning (e.g., no mitten). Stage 2 incorporates don’t and can’t before the verb (e.g., He no bite you). Stage 3 includes didn’t and won’t, with late acquisition of isn’t.
Developing Semantics
Children often overextend word meanings based on similarities in shape, sound, size, movement, and texture. For example, “ball” might refer to any round object, or “tick-tock” might describe anything with a round dial.