Understanding Child Language Development: From Cooing to Speech
Caretaker Speech
Caretaker speech is the characteristically simplified speech style adopted by someone who spends a lot of time interacting with a young child. It is characterized by frequent questions, always with exaggerated intonation, simple sentence structures, and frequent repetition. These simplified models serve as clues to the basic structural organization of language.
Pre-Language Stages
The pre-linguistic sounds of the very early stages are called cooing and babbling.
- 3-10 months: Three stages of sound production:
- Cooing: First recognizable sounds, such as /k/, /g/, /i/, /u/.
- Babbling: A number of different vowels, fricative consonants (/f/, /v/, /s/), nasal consonants (/m/, /n/), and syllable-type sounds (mu, da).
- By 9 months (babbling stage): Recognizable intonation patterns in consonants and vowel combinations.
- By 10-11 months (standing position; late babbling stage): More complex sound combinations.
Holophrastic or One-Word Stage
- 12-18 months: Children begin to produce recognizable single-unit utterances.
The term single-unit or single-form is sometimes preferred since what the child utters is a single form functioning as a phrase or sentence, such as in response to What’s that? The child is not yet ready to put units in order to make sentences.
The Two-Word Stage
- Begins around 18-20 months.
With two years, the child can produce a variety of combinations among words, such as baby chair, mommy cat, bad. The child is given feedback which usually confirms that the utterances worked. By the age of two, the child will have a vocabulary of more than 50 words.
Telegraphic Speech
Before the multiple-word utterance stage, we find characteristic strings of lexical morphemes in sentences such as Andrew want ball. The child has developed some sentence-building capacity and can order the forms correctly. While this type of telegram-format speech is being produced, a number of grammatical inflections begin to appear in some words, and the simple prepositions in and on also turn up.
Multiple-Word Utterances (2-3 years)
By two and a half, the child’s vocabulary is expanding rapidly, and they are initiating more talk. Between two and three years old, the child will begin producing a large number of utterances.
Syntax: Questions
- Stage 1: Simply adding a wh-form (where, who) to the beginning of the expression or utterance, with rising intonation towards the end. For example, Where kitty?
- Stage 2: More complex structures can be formed, using the rising intonation strategy. More wh-forms are used. For example, What book name? You want eat?
- Stage 3: Inversion of subject and verb has appeared, but the wh-forms do not always undergo the required inversion, especially in negatives. For example, Can I have a piece? Will you help me? Why kitty can’t stand up?
Syntax: Negatives
- Stage 1: Not or no comes at the beginning of any expression. For example, no mitten, no fall.
- Stage 2: Additional negative forms don’t and can’t are used. No and not are placed in front of the verb. For example, You can’t dance. I don’t know.
- Stage 3: Incorporation of other auxiliary forms, such as didn’t and won’t, are used. Disappearance of the Stage 1 forms. For example, I didn’t catch it. She won’t let go.