Language Development Progression

Table 9.1 Stages of Language and Communication Development

Stage	Age	Developmental Language and Communication
1	0–3 months	Reflexive communication
2	3–8 months	Reflexive communication; interest in others
3	8–12 months	Intentional communication; sociability
4	12–18 months	First words
5	18–24 months	Simple sentences of two words
6	2–3 years	Sentences of three or more words
7	3–5 years	Complex sentences; has conversations

Infant Vocalization

In terms of producing spoken language, babies begin to coo almost immediately. Cooing simple vowel sounds, such as “ooh” or “aah.” Cooing serves as practice for vocalization, as well as the infant hears the sound of his or her own voice and tries to repeat sounds that are entertaining. Infants also begin to learn the pace and pause of conversation as they alternate their vocalization with that of someone else and then take their turn again when the other person’s vocalization has stopped.

 

Video 9.5 Infant cooing

At about four to six months of age, infants begin making even more elaborate vocalizations that include the sounds required for any language. Guttural sounds, clicks, consonants, and vowel sounds stand ready to equip the child with the ability to repeat whatever sounds are characteristic of the language heard. Eventually, these sounds will no longer be used as the infant grows more accustomed to a particular language.

At about 7 months, infants begin babbling, engaging in intentional vocalizations that lack specific meaning and comprise a consonant-vowel repeated sequence, such as ma-ma-ma, da-da- da. Children babble as practice in creating specific sounds, and by the time they are 1 year old, the babbling uses primarily the sounds of the language that they are learning (de Boysson-Bardies et al., 1984). These vocalizations have a conversational tone that sounds meaningful even though it isn’t. Babbling also helps children understand the social, communicative function of language. Children who are exposed to sign language babble in sign by making hand movements that represent language (Petitto & Marentette, 1991).

Gesturing

Children communicate information through gesturing long before they speak, and there is some evidence that gesture usage predicts subsequent language development (Iverson & Goldin-Meadow, 2005). Because gesturing seems to be easier than vocalization for some toddlers, sign language is sometimes taught to enhance one’s ability to communicate by making use of the ease of gesturing. Deaf and hard of hearing infants use the rhythm and pattern of language in a similar way as hearing babies do when they babble.

Joint Attention

Joint attention refers to a shared focus between a caregiver and a child (including gaze, pointing, and visual attention). Joint attention is an important feature of language development because once joint attention is shared, the caregiver and child have a communicative context in which information about objects or events in the environment can effectively be communicated.

Joint attention is related to language development. Children’s ability to respond to bids of joint attention by their caregiver at 6, 8, 10, and 18 months of age has been reported to predict vocabulary size at 30 months of age (Morales et al., 2000). Interestingly, there is also some evidence suggesting that responding to pointing may be predictive of receptive vocabulary size and that initiating joint attention may be predictive of expressive vocabulary size (Colonnesi et al., 2010). Gaze-following behavior at 10 to 11 months predicted receptive vocabulary at both 14 and 18 months (Brooks & Meltzoff, 2005). Further, full-term infants’ responsiveness to gaze alternations in joint at 9 months and initiating joint attention at 14 months were positively correlated with later language, such that infants with more responsivity to gaze shifts had better receptive and expressive language scores at 30 months (De Schuymer et al., 2011). Individual differences in responding to joint attention at 9 and 12 months and initiating joint attention at 18 months predicted 24-months expressive language (Mundy et al., 2007).

One reason joint attention is related to language development is because shared attention toward an object allows for language to be more easily mapped to objects. For example if a caregiver and an infant are jointly attending to the same object, such as a dinosaur, when the caregiver uses the word “dinosaur” it creates a clear link between the object (dinosaur) and its linguistic label.

Receptive Language

At around ten months of age, the infant can understand more than they can say, which is referred to as receptive language. You may have experienced this phenomenon as well if you have ever tried to learn a second language. You may have been able to follow a conversation more easily than contribute to it. One of the first words that children understand is their own name, usually by about 6 months, followed by commonly used words like “bottle,” “mama,” and “doggie” by 10 to 12 months (Mandel et al., 1995).

Infants shake their head “no” around 6–9 months, and they respond to verbal requests to do things like “wave bye-bye” or “blow a kiss” around 9–12 months. Children also use contextual information, particularly the cues that parents provide, to help them learn language. Children learn that people are usually referring to things that they are looking at when they are speaking (Baldwin, 1993), and that the speaker’s emotional expressions are related to the content of their speech.

Productive Language

Children begin using their first words at about 12 or 13 months of age and may use partial words to convey thoughts at even younger ages. These one word expressions are referred to as holophrastic speech. For example, the child may say “ju” for the word “juice” and use this sound when referring to a bottle. The listener must interpret the meaning of the holophrase, and when this is someone who has spent time with the child, interpretation is not too difficult. But, someone who has not been around the child will have trouble knowing what is meant. Imagine the parent who to a friend exclaims, “Ezra’s talking all the time now!” The friend hears only “ju da ga” to which the parent explains means, “I want some milk when I go with Daddy.”

First words and Cultural Influences

First words if the child is using English tend to be nouns. The child labels objects such as cup, ball, or other items that they regularly interact with. In a verb-friendly language such as Chinese, however, children may learn more verbs. This may also be due to the different emphasis given to objects based on culture. Chinese children may be taught to notice action and relationships between objects, while children from the United States may be taught to name an object and its qualities (color, texture, size, etc.). These differences can be seen when comparing interpretations of art by older students from China and the United States.

Two-word Sentences and Telegraphic Speech

By the time they become toddlers, children have a vocabulary of about 50-200 words and begin putting those words together in telegraphic speech, such as “baby bye-bye” or “doggie pretty”. Words needed to convey messages are used, but the articles and other parts of speech necessary for grammatical correctness are not yet used. For example, instead of saying, “I would like to go to the park,” toddlers may say “go park.” These expressions sound like a telegraph, or perhaps a better analogy today would be that they read like a text message. Telegraphic speech occurs when unnecessary words, articles, and grammatical auxiliaries are dropped from the sentence.

Language Errors

The words children create are often simplified, in part because they are not yet able to make more complex sounds of the real language (Dobrich & Scarborough, 1992). Children’s pronunciations become increasingly accurate between 1 and 3 years, but some problems may persist until school age.

A child who learns that a word stands for an object may initially think that the word can be used for only that particular object, which is referred to as underextension. Only the family’s Irish Setter is a “doggie”, for example. More often, however, a child may think that a label applies to all objects that are similar to the original object, which is called overextension. For example, all animals become “doggies”.

Children learn the rules of grammar as they learn the language. For example, regular verbs use the same rules to indicated past tense, but adding “-ed” at the end of the word. Irregular verbs, on the other hand, do not use the same rules as regular word to indicate past tense.

Often when learning language, children apply rules for regular words to irregular word, referred to as overregularization. For instance, a child learns to add “ed” to the end of a word to indicate past tense. Then form a sentence such as “I goed there. I doed that.” This is typical at ages two and three.  As the child hears the correct grammar rule applied by the people around them, they correctly begin to say “I went there” and “I did that.” It would seem that the child has solidly learned the grammar rule, but it is actually common for the developing child to revert back to their original mistake. This can happen because they intuitively discover the rule and overgeneralize it or because they are explicitly taught to add “ed” to the end of a word to indicate past tense in school. A child who had previously produced correct sentences may start to form incorrect sentences such as, “I goed there. I doed that.” These children are able to quickly re-learn the correct exceptions to the -ed rule. This is an example of U-shaped development: performance starting off well, then deteriorating before improving (Marcus et al., 1992).

Child-Directed Speech

Have you ever wondered why adults tend to use “baby talk” or that sing-song type of intonation and exaggeration used when talking to children? This is known as child-directed speech, and is used in many, but not all, cultures. It involves exaggerating the vowel and consonant sounds, using a high-pitched voice, and delivering the phrase with great facial expression. Infants are frequently more attuned to the tone of voice of the person speaking than to the content of the words themselves, and are aware of the target of speech. Werker et al. (1994) found that infants listened longer to a woman who was speaking using child-directed speech than to a woman who was using adult-directed speech. Why might this be the case? It may be in order to clearly articulate the sounds of a word so that the child can hear the sounds involved. It may also be because when this type of speech is used, the infant pays more attention to the speaker and this sets up a pattern of interaction in which the speaker and listener are in tune with one another.

Vocabulary

A child’s vocabulary expands between the ages of two to six from about 200 words to over 10,000 words. This “vocabulary spurt” typically involves 10-20 new words per week and is accomplished through a process called fast-mapping. Words are easily learned by making connections between new words and concepts already known. For example, children can learn new words, often with only one exposure to the new word.

The parts of speech that are learned depend on the language and what is emphasized. Children speaking verb-friendly languages, such as Chinese and Japanese, learn verbs more readily, while those speaking English tend to learn nouns more readily.

By fifth grade, a child’s vocabulary has grown to 40,000 words. It grows at a rate that exceeds that of those in early childhood. This language explosion, however, differs from that of younger children because it is facilitated by being able to associate new words with those already known, and because it is accompanied by a more sophisticated understanding of the meanings of a word.

Those in middle and late childhood are also able to think of objects in less literal ways. This sophistication of vocabulary is also evidenced by the fact that older children tell jokes and delight in doing do. They may use jokes that involve plays on words such as “knock-knock” jokes or jokes with punch lines. Young children do not understand play on words and tell “jokes” that are literal or slapstick, such as “A man fell down in the mud! Isn’t that funny?”

Language Development in Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children

Children who do not receive any language input during their first two years of life, whether due to deafness or other factors, run the risk of never achieving language fluency (Hall et al., 2019; Humphries et al., 2012). Therefore, children born deaf or hard of hearing are often at risk of delays in language acquisition and cognitive development if they do not receive appropriate support.

Exposing deaf children to sign language early is crucial because it provides them both a visual and tactile form of communication to interact with their environment (Hall, 2018). American Sign Language (ASL), the most widely used sign language in the United States, is recognized as a natural language with its own grammar and syntax. ASL and other sign languages have the same defining features of language discussed previously:

• There is a distinct grammatical structure, including rules governing word order and sentence construction.
• Sign languages have similar phonological components, including morphemes and phonemes. These may be conveyed through specific handshapes, movements, and facial expressions.
• Sign languages have their own syntax, governing the arrangement of signs to convey meaning.
• Symbols and signs convey semantics in a manner like that of voiced languages.
• As in voiced languages, pragmatic principles exist for different social and cultural contexts.

Acquisition of language for children who use sign language has structural similarities to the development of oral language in hearing children (Schlesinger & Meadow, 1972). In fact, children who learn sign language demonstrate an onset of first sign earlier than hearing children demonstrate spoken words (Schlesinger, 1978). Bonvillian and colleagues (1983) found that deaf children in their study showed earlier attainment of additional milestones. Early first sign production often occurs with the first word at approximately 8.5 months with a range of 5.5 months to 12 months. Children acquire sign language vocabulary quickly, demonstrating an average size of 10 signs at the age of 1 year, and 50 words at 18 months (Bonvillian et al., 1983). The average for putting two signs together is 17 months with a range of 12.5 to 22 months. This is consistent with what we know about young children’s capacity to use sign language. Schlesinger and Meadow (1972) suggest that all children would learn to sign before learning to speak, if exposed to sign language. Regardless of whether we use spoken or signed languages, our brains process linguistic information in a comparable manner.

Infants and toddlers who are deaf or hard of hearing engage in symbolic play as part of their expressive language experiences and in doing so, practice using gestures and sometimes oral sounds or words. The development of gestures and the numbers of words and phrases understood or produced is related to specific attainments in symbolic play (Yoshinaga-Itako et al., 1998). Children who demonstrate higher expressive language levels make more attempts at utterances, words, and word combinations. All manifestations of expressive language, including spoken language and signed output, are strong predictors of speech outcome, suggesting ample opportunities for practice supports the development of speech skills (Yoshinaga-Itako et al., 2020). Therefore, opportunities to engage in social play strengthen productive language with children who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Speech ability is impacted by the severity of hearing loss (de Oliveria Sobreira et al., 2015). Some children are hard of hearing with mild to severe hearing loss, and some children are deaf with profound hearing loss, or have both hearing and visual loss. All of these possibilities impact the trajectory of how the child learns to communicate and how educators and families structure learning opportunities for children. Children who have early cochlear implants may have improved auditory-linguistic abilities (de Oliveira Sobreira et al., 2015). However, cochlear implants are not always sufficient to solve hearing loss, and results are variable (Peterson et al., 2010). The speech ability of children with mild to severe hearing loss becomes more similar as children reach adolescence, but the speech ability of children with profound hearing loss is less well developed. A child’s success may also be impacted by the frequency of signs along with speech, coupled with one’s level of hearing (Marschark & Knoors, 2012; Yishinaga-Itano et al., 1998). Approaches for communication may include sign language, tactile sign language, cued speech, hearing aids, and cochlear implants. Decisions about which strategies to use are determined by the child’s needs, the family preferences, and the availability of services or early learning settings.

Multilingualism

Children who grow up in multilingual environments learn and use multiple languages naturally. The process of acquiring multiple languages is not necessarily the same as acquiring a single language. Children may go through periods of mixing languages or may initially have a smaller vocabulary in each language. However, with continued exposure and practice, they easily become fluent in multiple languages.

Moreover, exposure to multiple languages in childhood is an experience-dependent process that may shape cognitive outcomes, including improved executive attention and minor differences in the way the brain processes language (Bialystok, 2017). There is also some evidence of a lifelong cognitive advantage, including greater neural sophistication and a delay in the onset of some dementias (Berkes & Bialystok, 2022; Liu & Wu, 2021). Children who speak multiple languages are also often better able to communicate and connect with people from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

There are not necessarily any best practices for raising a multilingual child. Some multilingual families choose to have different adults speak in specific languages, while in others every adult uses a mix of languages. Both approaches are successful, and early exposure provides the greatest advantage. Whatever approach is taken, it is essential to provide regular exposure and support for each language. Families in many countries, including the United States, Italy, and Indonesia, may also choose to enroll children in bilingual early childhood education programs, which may improve robust language development for children (Huang et al., 2023; Leotta, 2023; Chang, 2024).