Lexical and Grammatical Development of Children Summary

The Pre-Verbal Stage

• The cooing stage occurs when a child is roughly 8-20 weeks old where they produce sounds such as "aaaaah."
• The babbling stage occurs when a child reaches 9 months old and can produce sounds such as "ba, ba , bbb." 
• The next stage is known as verbal scribbling and happens when the child is 30 weeks old, this is where the child uses a range of consonants, vowels and fricative sounds which are produced when sounds escape through a small air passage in the mouth. 
• Melodic Utterance occurs when the child is roughly 9-18 months and the sounds they utter become more recognizable.  

Lexical and Grammatical Development 

Stage One- The Holophrastic Stage 

• Stage one is known as the holophrastic stage, this occurs when the child is roughly 12-18 months old. In this stage the child utters their first word and builds a vocabulary of holophrases also known as single words to convey meaning. At this age the child has learnt about 50 words and so from the pre-verbal stage has developed to understand 5 times more words. It is known as holophrase as oppose to words as they all convey the meaning of a phase or sentence through body language, intonation and volume related to the child everyday life e.g. "doggy" and "gaga". 

Stage Two- The Two Word Stage 

• Stage two is known as the two word stage, this is where children of aged 18 months begin to use two words at a time. Some call this stage the 'emergence of grammar' as it is now possible for a child to choose word order and make a simple grammatical analyses of the meanings of these sentences. They often consist of a noun and a verb the same as an objects and an action.                                           The type of utterances are more flexible with a range of grammatical functions e.g. 

1. An action affects an object- "Make bridge"
2. An order performs an action- "Mummy sleep"
3. An object is given a location 

• It is possible to work out grammar behind utterance and there are quite a few that defy definition and understanding including: "hot pretty", "mummy-daddy", "teddy-juice". These do not make sense but it is evident  that the child is asking for their teddy and some juice however they do not have the language skills to differentiate asking for this in two separate sentences. 
• The meaning relies heavily on context and a sympathetic listener 
• Correct syntax (Word Order)- "My Bed"
• Begin to use preposition- "On Head"
• Possession Words- "My Cat"
• Pronouns- "She Cold" = The child is able to refer to others as well as themselves

Stage Three- The Telegraphic Stage 

 

• At the age of 2-2 and a half years a child goes into the telegraphic stage, this is where the child begins to use sentences containing up to 4 words in length. Sentences with gaps where the non lexical words ( those without a dictionary meaning) such as "and", "but" and "if" (conjunctions) "the", "a" (articles) "is", "has" (auxilary verbs) as well as endings like "ing" are lost. E.g. go swim instead of go swimming. The child combines 3-4 words in a variety of constructions e.g. a statement sentence, a question sentence and a command sentece.
• After the age of 3 child langauge advances in leaps and bounds, although massive developments happen simultaneously and are linked together. The simpliest way is to divide them into four categories, these are:

1. Semantics
2. Phonology
3. Grammar
4. Pragmatics

Stage Four- Post Telegraphic Stage

 

• The post telegraphic stage begins at roughly 36 months in a childs life, this is where they start to become more grammatically complex and their development of reading and writing skills begin to improve.