Childhood Language Development

By Jbarrott27

  • Birth

  • Period: to

    Age (within 18 years)

  • 3 Months; Responds vocally to partner, such as parents

    Responds vocally to partner, such as parents

  • 8 months; Starts to make gestures

  • 1 year; The first word is spoken. Words fill intentions previously signaled by gestures.

  • 1.5 years; Child begins combining basic words using the word order rules (subject-verb-object)

  • 2 years; Begins adding bound morphemes. Average length or mean length of utterance (MLU) is 1.6-2.2 morphemes.

  • 3 Years; More adult-like sentence structure. MLU is 3.0-3.3.

  • 4 years; Begins to change style of talking to fit conversational partner. MLU is 3.6-4.7 morphemes.

  • 5 years; Ninety percent of language form learned.

  • 6 years (1st grader); Contains a vocabulary of 2600 words

  • 6 years; Begins to learn visual mode of communication with writing and reading.

  • 11 years (6th grader) contains vocabulary of 30,000 words

  • Adolescence (13 - 18 years); Able to participate competently in conversations and telling of narratives.

    Knows multiple meanings of words and figurative language. Uses a gender style, or genderlect, when talking.

  • 14 years (9th grader) Contains vocabulary of 60,000 words.