Language development in human beings begins early, for example, after birth, when infants learn to communicate. A child learns how to pass information through various stages. The first stage, the pre-linguistic stage, is characterized by the child’s ability to make different sounds. At this phase, “The infant can discriminate between all 200 human phonemes” (Johnson).
The developmental period for this stage is from birth to 7 months. In the first two months after birth, the infant produces non-troubled, non-reflexive sounds, characterized by moans that give a sense of a nasal vowel. The infant produces various forms of sound, like nasal murmurs, between four and seven months of age.
The second stage is bubbling, which starts at seven months. At this stage, the child uses speech organs to produce sound. The rate of development guarantees the production of extensive sound by oral means. At this phase, “A child randomly grows a variety of sounds, and sometimes these sounds partly match their mother tongue.” (Hakim). This stage is critical to children’s development because interacting with a caregiver is integral to how infants learn language.
The third stage is the one-word stage, which occasionally happens at nine months and two years. During this phase, infants can apply what they have learned, such as pronouncing words. At this stage, “Infants experiment with and practice many of the sounds that will eventually be combined into meaningful words by repeating syllables.” (Hakim). This fundamental knowledge is critical to helping children develop and acquire learning and communication experiences.
The fourth stage is the two-word stage, usually experienced by children aged 1.5 years. Infants can pronounce one to two words at this stage and build specific sound patterns(Johnson). During this language development stage, “Children subconsciously follow some grammatical rules in their sentences” (Hakim). This enables them to describe activities by using grammar functions. The capacity to produce various sounds empowers kids to construct meaningful sentences.
The final stage is telegraphic, experienced by children between 24 and 30 months. They can construct sentences longer than two words (Johnson). At this development stage, “Children start producing expressions with more than two elements, and the expressions of children are longer than two words and have meaningful characteristics.” (Hakim). Children at this stage use words and morphemes that express fundamental semantic content, articulating language growth and development.
Works Cited
Hakim, Azizul. “Stages of Language Development.” English Finders, 2018.
“Stages of Language Acquisition.” YouTube, uploaded by Johnson Andy, 2015.