Chapter

3 Stages of Language Acquisition

Lesson 1

Introduction

This lesson looks closely at the process through which a child develops language.
Although the question of how thought develops is of interest, too, it will not be described with
the level of detail devoted to language acquisition.

What I Need to Know

1. Determine the stages of first language acquisition.

What’s New

Let’s Talk About It!

When people talk baby talk, what are they doing differently from talking regular talk?

______________________________________________________________________________

And why is it called baby talk?

_____________________________________________________________________________
_

What Is It

Stages of First Language Acquisition

There are roughly six stages of acquisition:

1. Prelinguistic Stage
2. Babbling Stage
3. First Words
4. Two-word Stage
5. Telegraphic Stage
6. Beyond Telegraphic Stage

1. The Prelinguistic Stage

The prelinguistic stage ranges from birth to approximately 6 months. Noises in this stage
include crying, whimpering, and cooing. These sounds are not considered language
because they are involuntary responses to stimuli. Linguists consider human language
creative – as free from internal or external stimuli. Since these noises do not fit within the
definition of language, this stage occurs before language is produced by the child. It is,
therefore, the prelinguistic stage.
During this stage, babies’ vocal tracts are more like an animal’s than an adult human’s. The

1
larynx is high, there is no pharynx, and the epiglottis and velum can be in contact with each
other. Additionally, the velum cannot firmly close off nasal cavity, so all sounds are
nasalized. The tongue fills the entire mouth and is controlled by external muscles. Extrinsic
muscle control of the tongue only allows the tongue to be "shoved" in and out, up and
down, as a whole. Some muscular contractions of the tongue itself are possible, but tongue
body constrictions are the only ones that can be produced. This accounts for nature of
(early cooing).

Images from: http://www.unc.edu/~tofu/ling101/loggrab/vt-development.pdf

One development in the ability to produce sounds seems to occur in this stage. At about
two months, infants seem to be able to coo voluntarily, whereas previously they were only
able to make sounds involuntarily.

Even though infants can’t produce linguistic sounds, they can perceive them. This stage
might more appropriately be called the pre-production stage. Infants alter their sucking
patterns when presented with a phonetic distinction in sounds. The alteration in sucking
shows an awareness of the change in sound, but infants do not seem to attach meaning to
the changes in sounds. They only register that they notice them. This awareness is
exhibited as early as one month old.

Infants can differentiate between sounds that are allophones in a language that adult
speakers of that language have learned to ignore, such as [p] and [p h].

Activity: Listening to a Prelinguistic Baby

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DDZbQ_OJWw&feature=related

2
2. The Babbling Stage

The babbling stage begins at approximately 6 months of age and continues until a child is
about one year old. One key development leading to babbling occurs during the
prelinguistic stage; around 4 months of age, larynx starts to drop, creating pharyngeal
cavity. Once the larynx has dropped, more varied constrictions can be formed, which leads
to a new stage of vocal play or babbling.

The child is also more able to raise and lower the jaw. A lower jaw also lowers the tongue,
creating the possibility of more vowels. Raising the jaw allows for more lip and tongue tip
constrictions.

Source: http://sapir.ling.yale.edu/ling165/
2 Types of Babbling May Occur:

1. Repetitive babbling - same syllable in each successive cycle

2. Variegated babbling - variation in syllables in successive cycles

Text from http://sapir.ling.yale.edu/ling165/

Universality of the Babbling Inventory

Essentially, all children use the same sounds when they babble, no matter what the
language around them is. "The consonants that occur with substantial frequency in the
babbling of infants, regardless of language environment (Locke, 1983) are:

/b/ /d/ /g/ /p/ /t/ /k/ /m/ /n/ /w/ /j/ /h/

Vowels in babbled syllables tend to be low front:" /æ/ "or central:" /a/.

The universality of babbling makes sense when you realize that the easiest way to make a
sound is to simply open and close the mouth. It is not surprising that stops will be highly
prevalent in the inventory since they are produced by closing the oral cavity, which
happens when closing the mouth occurs. The rest of the difference between the stops is
where in the mouth the tongue contacts the other parts of the vocal tract. For example,
depending on whether a child rests the tongue on the bottom of the mouth behind the
lower teeth or whether it rests in the middle just behind the front teeth accounts for the
difference in the production of bilabial and alveolar sounds in babbling. All the child has to
do is open and close the mouth, and different sounds will be made.
Think of the words (we'll use English here) that we use to refer to many baby items and
caretakers:

 Baba (bottle)
 Mama (mother)
 Nana (grandmother)
 Papa (father)
 Dada (daddy)

These utterances show repetitive babbling of the low central vowel with stop consonants.
Now add the high back round vowel:

 Bubu (hurt)
 Mumu
 Nunu

3
  Pupu (poopoo)
 Dudu (doodoo)

These utterances also show repetitive babbling, but with a different vowel sound. The two
different syllables can be mixed together:

 Mami (mommy)
 Papi (Poppy, often used for grandfather)
 Pupi (poopy)

These utterances show variegated babbling.

And we’re back to Baby Talk. Baby talk has two different meanings:

1. It is the way that babies themselves talk, and when baby talk is used with this
meaning, it refers in particular to the babbling stage and the first words stage of
language acquisition, universal stages for all infants in all languages.
2. It is the way that adults talk when they talk to babies. When baby talk is used with
this meaning, it captures the fact that adults accommodate their speaking style to
that of the child. They help the child attach meaning to their utterances by using the
same utterances with the meaning attached.

Even deaf children babble.The hand gestures of deaf children occur in repetitive patterns
the way that the babbling of hearing children repeats. Deaf children b abble in sounds, too,
but it seems different than the babbling of hearing children.

In other words, deaf children babble in sign language and just make noises with their
mouths. Hearing children babble with their mouths, and just make gestures with their
hands. For hearing children, language is produced with the mouth, and extralinguistic
communication with the hands. For deaf children, language is produced with the hands
and extralinguistic communication with the mouth.
The Perception of Language

During the Babbling Stage infants begin to ignore/lose the ability to distinguish between
the sounds of their parents’ (caretakers’) language and other sounds.

They respond only to sounds that are the language distinctions of their parents’
(caretakers’) language.

In other words, prelinguistic Korean infants respond to the difference between [l] and [r];
children in Arabic environments do the same with [p] and [b]; children in Spanish
environments the same with [i] and [I]. But in the babbling stage, they no longer respond
to the difference, treating both sounds the same.

Remember that this starts at about 6 months of age; the early disappearance of awareness
of phonetic distinctions has great implications for second language learning and
pronunciation and lends support to the critical period hypothesis for first language
acquisition.

Activity: Listening to a Babbling Baby

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI6CijoYAeY&feature=related

4
3. The First Words Stage

Stage 3, the First Words Stage, starts at about one year and continues for approximately 6
to 12 months (up to approximately age 1-1/2 or 2 years old).

This stage is also referred to as the Holophrastic Stage because a "one word = one
sentence" pattern seems to exist in the utterances produced by the child. Babbling may
overlap with the production of the first words, and indeed the first words often exhibit the
same structure as babbled syllables, with a CV (consonant-vowel) syllable used as a word.
However, at this stage, meaning is attached to the syllables produced by a child, and this
characteristic distinguishes a babble from a word.

Examples of some first words include:

1. [no]
2. [da] (dog)
3. [ma] (mom)
4. [dæ] (dad).

The words produced are primarily noun-like (e.g. [da] (dog), [ma] (mom)) with verbs
second (e.g. [go]) and adjectives [ha] (hot)) third. Words also include
displeasure/rejection words (e.g. [no]). Words include social interaction words (e.g [bai
bai] (bye-bye) [nai nai] (night-night)).

As children begin to produce utterances that count as words, they continue to develop
their abilities to produce more and more individual sound segments. The sounds they
produce are typically sounds in the language of their environment, and they add to their
repertoire in a systematic way.

Developmental order of sounds articulated:

1. The full range of vowels in the native language is produced before the full range of
consonants

2. Consonants are typically added in the following sequence of manner (examples of

sounds in each category come from English): Nasals [m] [n] [ŋ], Glides [w] [j], Stops [p] [b]
[t] [d] [k] [g], Liquids [l] [ɹ], Fricatives [f] [v] [s] [z], Affricates[tʃ] [dʒ]

3. Consonants are typically added in a front to back order of place, with certain front
sounds being delayed: labials (sounds produced with the lips) come first, then alveolars
(sounds produced just behind the teeth), then velars (sounds produced near the back of
the roof of the mouth), then alveopalatals (sounds produced behind the teeth and a little
further back). Interdentals (sounds produced by placing the tongue between the teeth)
come last.

4. New contrasts generally show up in the initial position first. That is, when a child adds a
new sound segment to his/her repertoire, he/she uses it as the first sound in a word, then
puts it in other positions later (i.e., in the middle or at the end of a word).

Children can perceive more sound segments than they can produce. As a result, they will
often substitute one sound for another in their own utterances. The substitutions or
alterations they make are systematic in nature; they will always use the same sound as a
substitute for their intended sound, such as always using [w] for [l], producing [wajk]
instead of [lajk] for like. The substitutions and alterations make articulation easier until
they can develop more control over the vocal tract. As control develops, more sounds are

5
added and a vocabulary is constructed.

Activity: Listening to a Child Entering the First Words Stage

Watch this video to see a child produce his first words near the end of the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHHOCGJBbTw&NR=1

Now watch the same child add more words.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucy8PPtsoUk&feature=related

Activity: Listening to a Child in the First Words Stage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT9XYixxxfA

Stage 4: The Two Word Stage

The Two Word stage normally begins at around 18-24 months (1½ or 2 years) and
continues for several months, perhaps shifting into the next stage at about 2½ years old.

During this stage children continue to increase the repertoire of sounds and vocabulary
they can produce according to the order of development that was begun in earlier stages.
Some notable benchmarks and features in the production of language in this stage
include:

 11 consonant sounds are typically included, the specific sounds depending on the
native language being acquired.
 A vocabulary of 50 or more words marks the beginning of this stage, with more
words being added.
 Clear syntactic and semantic relations begin to appear, but not syntactic or
morphological markers.
 There are no inflectional affixes and pronouns are rare.

Since the linguistic nature of the child's utterances is now unmistakeable, it is interesting
to note how meaning is attached to the utterances, for although they are clearly linguistic
in nature with meaning attached, they are still unlike the utterances of adult native
speakers. The utterances are different because they lack full syntactic markings and
because the limited vocabulary size is insufficient to capture an adult perspective of the
world. What is uncertain, however, is whether the child's perspective is constrained by
the lack of vocabulary or whether the size of the vocabulary is constrained by the
childish perspective. (Note the interrelationship of language and thought in this
conundrum; you should be able to see both the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and Vygotsky's
theory here.)

The pictures and captions below capture some of the details and provide examples of the
thought/language conundrums present during this stage.

6
 An utterance can carry more than one
meaning because of the absence of
syntactic and morphological
markings. The word order of the two
words matches the word order an
adult might use, but for the child, the
same two words in the same order
could have more than one meaning.
The full meaning must be derived
from the context in which the words
are uttered.

Example: Mommy sock can mean

Mommy is putting my sock on my foot,
or There is mommy’s sock.

Words are associated with meaning in

several ways, and each way displays a
limited vocabulary/perspective:

a) Whole Object: A word refers to the

whole object, not to any of its parts or
to any of its attributes. Does this mean
that a child doesn't break down objects
into individual parts at this stage of
cognitive development? Very possibly.

Example: sheep will not mean white or

woolly or leg.

b) Type: A word may be used to refer

to the type of thing, not a particular
thing. This could be a kind of
overgeneralization or overextension.
That is, the child might misunderstand
the meaning of the word sheep and
think it refers to all animals. It could
also be that the child doesn't perceive
the individual variations betwen two
types of animals and conceptually
lumps them all together. Or it could be
that a child simply doesn't know the
words for all the different kinds of
animals and makes do with the name
of another one.

Example: A child may take sheep to

mean any animal, not just that
particular kind of animal.
Overextensions may not be a misunderstanding of a word on a child's part, but
may be a compensatory technique to overcome vocabulary limitations. The process
of overextending a word's meaning plugs a hole until the child can learn the proper
word.

Example: If it's alive, and non-human, it's a sheep!

7
Sheep! Sheep! Sheep! Sheep! Sheep!

Underextension may also occur. In underextension, a child doesn't use a word for
enough particular cases. It's the opposite of overextension where a child uses a
word for too many different cases.

Example of underextension: Kitty might mean the family cat, but not other cats.

Underextensions may occur because a general word (like kitty) is almost taken as a
name, not as a word. It could also be related to the prototype concept of word
meaning. The prototype theory suggests that people have mental concepts of a
word's meaning and attach a word to the concept. The concept is developed through
interaction with the world. If the family pet is what a child interacts with, but it is
unusual, then a child might not see the word for the family cat as appropriate to
another cat that lacks the unusual features of the source of the concept.

Example: If this is what kitty means in your house,

what would you use to call the animal in the picture
on the right?

Image from:
http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2009/01/23/
dialect-dangerous-to-cats/
c) Basic level assumption: a word
refers to types of objects that are
alike in basic ways. Adults will
recognize a child's meaning even
when an incorrect word is used
(from the adult's perspective)
because the word used by the child
will share the same basic features as
the word an adult would use. If a
child doesn't know the word for an

8
 animal, he/she will likely choose the
word for soemthing else that is alive
and moves around.

Example: sheep might be taken to

mean any animal, but probably
won’t be taken to mean rose or
flower.

Thus, Disney's Bambi is a bad

example of first language

Copyright © : Walt Disney

Contextual clues are extrememly important for attaching meaning in this stage. An adult
may need to follow a child's gaze or their pointing in order to determine the exact
meaning of an utterance. Or an adult might need to observe what the child is doing in
order to determine the meaning of the utterance. Likewise, a child in this stage needs to
use the context to make sense of what an adult is saying.
5. The Telegraphic Stage
The Telegraphic stage occurs around the age of 2 1/2 years.

In this stage, children begin stringing more than two words together, perhaps three or
four or five at a time. However, the style of speaking children use in this stage resembles
the way of writing that used to be used in telegrams. That’s why this stage is called
telegraphic. In the past, every word in a telegram cost money, so people used to write the
shortest possible messages to save money. For example, to send the message "We arrived
in Paris on Monday," someone might write "Arrived Paris Monday." Function words
(pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions) and even grammatical morphemes (-ed) are
typically absent.

Articulation of sounds continues to develop in order described in earlier stages. 20

consonants are articulated, and all vowels are articulated by approximately 3 years of
age. All vocabulary development processes continue, and more words are added.
Utterances exhibit phrase structure, that is, they tend to follow the grammatical rules of
the language.

6. Beyond The Telegraphic Stage

The Beyond Telegraphic stage begins around the age of 3 years and continues into fully
developed language skills.

Vocabulary development continues, including its strategies of overextension. In fact, a

similar pattern of overgeneralization is used for morpheme development: -ed, meaning
past, shows up in such utterances as goed, or putted. Derivational affixes and
compounding show up early in this stage: age 3 or 4. Inversion in questions comes in later.
To conclude, children go through approximately six different stages in learning their
native language.

9
The next question is, "When are they finished?" That is, "When can we say that a child has
learned language?"

The End of the Acquisition Process

One answer to the question is that a child has acquired language by six years of age.

This makes sense if you think about it. One reason we traditionally send kids off to school
at age six is because they now have enough language to manage on their own. There are,
of course, other developmental milestones that have also been reached (such as toilet
training), allowing a child of six to manage away from regular caretakers, but an
important benchmark is the language level that they have reached.

And what do we teach kids about language at school?

Think of the three Rs:

 Reading
 'Riting
 ‘Rithmetic

Children learn to read and write: to correlate the sounds and words of the language to the
written symbols for them. That means they already have the sound system and know the
essential words of the language. They already have all the language skills that can be
learned through the natural process of first language acquisition.
A second answer is never.

Consider the following point of the argument for this answer:

Even adults keep adding to their vocabularies. One of the hallmarks of the college years is
a tremendous increase in vocabulary. Of course, if a person doesn’t attend college, the
increase is not as significant. So the vocabulary increase may not be tied to age so much as
to the college experience.

Nevertheless, the human brain continues to develop until about age 25, and if Vygotsky is
correct in describing a development of thought and language, why wouldn't we expect
continued development of language until age 25? Of course, Vygotsky describes the
situation as more of the intertwining of language and thought, which is a rather different
from ongoing development.

Still, we should also consider that language is a system comprising phonology,

morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. In the discussions of the stages given so
far, focus has been given to these categories except pragmatics. Dr. John Madden
(personal communication) has suggested that further language acquisition stages deal
more with pragmatics than with some of the other linguistic areas.

And so the debate continues. However, for the moment, the age of six can be taken as a
key age in the attainment of language skills. A child of six can fairly readily be said to be
able to speak, something that is not as clear for young children, whose language use is
often described with mitigating terms such as "She's just starting to talk." or "He knows
some words." Rarely would one look at a six-year-old and ask the parent, "Can he talk
yet?" It's not even a question that comes to one's mind, since most children of this age can
not only talk but can also talk just fine.

10
Teaching Language
The fact that there is a relationship between age and language development suggests that
the age of the learner is an important factor in language teaching.

The fact that language development begins as early as birth suggests that even preschool
environments shouldn’t ignore language, especially spoken language.

 The question arises whether learning a second language is the same as or different
than learning a first.
 The question also arises whether learning two languages at the same time follows
the same developmental patterns in the same time frame.

These issues and questions form the basis of methods of teaching language and
differentiate L2 teaching from L1 teaching.

What’s More

A. How do the stages of language acquisition support/contradict Lenneberg’s

proposed Critical Age Hypothesis?
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________
B. Journal Writing
Talk about your new learning/discoveries. Given the learning you have, what
will you do differently as a would-be teacher? (You may use a separate sheet)
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________

What I Can Do

A. Explain thoroughly the relationship between age and language

development.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________
B. Using a graphic organizer, show the stages of language acquisition.

References:
https://canvas.highline.edu/courses/1275198/pages/stages-of-language-development-pre-linguistic-
and-symbolic-language

http://web.mnstate.edu/houtsli/tesl551/LangAcq/page1.htm

11
Additional Readings:

Stages of Language Development: Pre-Linguistic and Symbolic Language

How does language expression emerge in children? Learn about the development of syntax in
children through the pre-linguistic and linguistic stages of language development in this lesson.

Introduction to Syntax
What image do you have in your mind when I say the following words: Venetian blind? You
picture a common window covering, right? Now what happens to that image when I switch up
the order of the words: blind Venetian? It creates a completely different idea, doesn't it? As this
example shows, the order in which we use words can be very important! The term that refers to
the order or sequencing of words in a language is syntax.

Studies show that syntax is learned as young children are exposed to speech with proper,
complex sentence structure. So, how does this process take place? Before babies say their first
word, they have made a lot of progress towards understanding language and speech. A young
child listens and attempts to imitate the sounds it hears. In turn, we respond to and reinforce
these attempts at speech. A young child does not develop this ability all at one time. Instead, the
process consists of a series of developmental stages. These stages are typically divided into two
categories: pre-linguistic and linguistic.

Pre-Linguistic Language Development

Pre-linguistic language development is when a child is learning to control the sounds he can
produce and to string these sounds together in vocal play. In this stage, the child is not yet able to
manipulate these sounds into proper words.

There are four categories of pre-linguistic development that can be distinguished. Vegetative
sounds occur at 0-2 months of age and include the natural sounds that babies make, such as
burping or crying. Cooing and laughter occur at 2-5 months of age. These are vocalizations that
the baby makes when it's happy or content and can be made up of vowel or consonant sounds.
Vocal play begins around the ages of 4-8 months. During vocal play, the baby begins to string
together longer vowel or consonant sounds. Finally, babbling occurs around the ages of 6-13
months. At this time, the child begins to produce a series of consonant-vowel syllables and may
develop utterances, such as ma-ma and da-da.

Linguistic Language Development

Linguistic language development is the stage of language development signaled by the
emergence of words and symbolic communication. Prior to this stage, most of the sounds a child
produces are no more than the practice of sound manipulation and sound sequencing in order to
gain the motor skills necessary to create words. There are six periods of linguistic language
development.

Before a child masters the ability to form words, they will first begin to use specific sound
combinations consistently with specific meaning. This is the early one word period that begins
around 12-19 months of age. An example of this would be a child saying 'baba' every time he
wants a bottle of milk. Even though this is not the exact same as the word bottle, the child is
using 'baba' in the same manner as you would use the word 'bottle.'

The later one word period begins around 14-24 months of age. In this stage, the words used by
the child are readily identifiable, and he begins to name and label people and objects in his

12
environment. A child's typical vocabulary during this period will consist of words like 'dog,' 'go,'
'daddy' and 'bye-bye.'

Next comes the two word period of language development. As the name implies, this is when he
will begin to combine two words together to make simple phrases, such as 'mommy go' or 'shoe
on.' The two word period typically begins from 20-30 months of age.

The three word period begins around the ages of 28-42 months of age. During this period, a child
adds at least one more word to their phrases and begins to use pronouns. They may also begin to
use articles and simple prepositions. Examples would be 'me go daddy,' 'you on chair' or 'he kick
a ball.'

At around 34-48 months of age, the four word period begins. At this time, the child will begin to
use combinations of four to six words. They will use more prepositions, and adjectives begin to
appear in speech. Examples would be 'Suzy has a little dog' or 'I sleep on the top bunk.'

The last period of linguistic language development is the complex utterance period. It begins
around the ages of 48-60 months. At this time, a child regularly produces phrases longer than six
words in length, and they begin to express concepts of past and future time. Examples are 'Daddy
comes home from the trip tomorrow' and 'I saw a dog at the park yesterday.' They may also begin
to use contractions, such as 'can't' or 'don't.' Researchers do not agree on when this period is
completed and adult sentence structure is achieved. Opinions range from 5 years of age to 12
years of age.

Expressive vs. Receptive Language

This lesson on language development has focused on the progression of syntax and the increased
ability to communicate through speech. This is considered expressive language. There's also the
development of receptive language to consider.

Receptive language refers to speech comprehension or the ability to understand what is being
said. Receptive and expressive language develops separately of one another, but there is some
parallel development of note between them. A child must be able to understand at least at the
same level that they can express themselves. Typically, a child will actually always understand
more than they can express, although the degree to which this occurs varies greatly from one
child to the next.

Lesson Summary
The order or sequencing of words in a language is called syntax. Language development focused
on the progression of syntax and the increased ability to communicate through speech is
considered expressive language. Speech comprehension, or the ability to understand what is
being said, develops separately and is called receptive language. A child must be able to
understand at least as much as they can communicate their needs. This varies from child to child,
but they will typically always understand more than they can express.

Pre-linguistic language development is when a child is learning to control the sounds it can
produce and string these sounds together in vocal play. In this stage, the child is not yet able to
manipulate these sounds into proper words. Pre-linguistic language development can be divided
into four categories: vegetative sounds, cooing and laughter, vocal play and babbling.

Linguistic language development is the stage of language development signaled by the

emergence of words and symbolic communication. Linguistic language development can be
divided into six categories: early one word, later one word, two word, three word, four word and
complex utterance.

13
14