The 4 stages of language development

The acquisition of linguistic comprehension and expression skills is a cumulative process that begins with the birth of the baby. As soon as the baby arrives in the world, he begins to hear the phonemes and to identify the verbal structures that little by little he will acquire in order to communicate with those around him and thus cover his needs.

In this article we will describe the stages of language development in young children, from the first undifferentiated vocalizations to the acquisition of the complex components of speech that in the long term will allow the improvement of communication skills.

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The stages of language development

The main stages of language evolution are the following:

1. The preverbal or prelinguistic period

At the beginning of life, babies make sounds that are increasingly communicative and close to language. Maternal or maternal speech, characterized by a slower rhythm, frequent repetitions, shorter sentences, grammatical simplification and a clear pronunciation, can be helpful in the progressive development of the child's linguistic understanding.

Preverbal interactions between the baby and other people are classified as proto-conversations because they have a structure similar to that of dialogues. This background of language is complemented by non-verbal responses such as hand gestures or facial expressions.

Among the prelinguistic signs, the "protos" stand out. Proto-imperatives appear around nine months; the baby points to an object to indicate to another person that he loves it. We are talking about proto-declarations, which are developed at twelve months, when a similar gesture has the objective of attracting the attention of the adult to fixate on something.

In the first year of life, the sounds of babies advance from the first vocalizations reflexes, such as grunting and crying, to cooing (consonants, vowels, or simple combinations like "gu") and babbling, consisting of the production of syllabic chains; initially these are repeated, but later on different syllables are combined.

The first words appear at approximately twelve months of life. At this time, babies tend to omit and replace phonemes, as well as to bring the pronunciation of two successive consonants closer together to facilitate it; This is known as "assimilation."

2. The holophrasic period

The term "holophrase" is used to talk about the phrases made up of a single word, which are characteristics of the second stage of language development. During the holophrasic period, words fulfill functions that will later correspond to sentences.

The meaning of holophrases depends largely on the context in which they are pronounced and of non-verbal language. So if a baby says "baby" he is probably asking for a bottle, but if he points to it, he may want to say "This is a bottle," for example.

The holophrase will constitute the nucleus of linguistic development: despite the lack of grammaticality of these constructions, their Appearance indicates that the baby understands that verbalizations have the basic objective of transmitting a certain meaning to others people.

Babies usually reach the holophrasic period when they are about a year old. Later your vocabulary will grow rapidly and intensely and little by little they will begin to combine different words.

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3. The first word combinations

The holophrasic period ends shortly before two years. At this age, the baby's vocabulary has become very complex, so that he is already capable of combine words and therefore meanings. In this way, subjects and predicates appear explicitly for the first time, although it is not yet clear that the child distinguishes between categories of words.

Between the ages of two and three, children begin to combine three or more words on a regular basis, producing surprisingly rich phrases. They also learn to use different intonations that allow them to use the interrogative mood, for example.

The first word combinations are known as "telegraphic speech" because the little ones ignore the less informative components of sentences, such as determiners and conjunctions, giving priority to verbs and nouns; the latter constitute the bulk of the words learned during this stage of linguistic explosion.

4. Advanced language development

In the period between 16 months and 4 years, approximately, children's vocabulary increases exponentially. When you reach this age their linguistic ability begins to approach that of adults progressively, although it will take many years to perfect both vocabulary and grammar.

There is a dissociation between the understanding and the production of language. In particular, young children are capable of understanding complex sentences that they will not be able to generate on their own until more than two months later.

There are two types of errors that are very common during the time of language acquisition: overextension and underestimation. The former are generalizations consisting of using a word to designate other objects, such as calling all mammals "dog"; under-extensions or under-generalizations are opposite errors to these.

As the little ones grow, different milestones take place that will be fundamental for the development of adult language. Among others, the identification of irregular forms, the acquisition of verbal modes and the progress of metalinguistic and metacognitive knowledge are of great importance.

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