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Period: to
2nd 6 Months: Babbling
Babbling begins mainly with consonant-vowel patterns, and, in conjunction with culling of unused phonemes, begins to take on native phonemes and rhythmic patterns (Fromkin et al., 2011). -
Period: to
8 - 9 Months: Intentional Gestures
The child incorporates intentional gesturing, indicating recognition of communication as a reciprocal process (Owens, 2011). -
Period: to
12-18 Months: First Words
The child associates patterns of sound with meanings, and begins to produce first words, entering the holophrastic phase in which one word may indicate more complex intention (Fromkin et al., 2011) -
2 Years: Multiple Word Utterances
The child begins to connect words into meaningful intentions, eventually adopts clearer intonation, largely respects agreement rules, and incorporates negation and question intonations, thus entering into the telegraphic stage (Fromkin et al., 2011). -
3 Years: Grammatical Rules
The child begins to use grammatical rules, characterized by overgeneralization (Fromkin et al., 2011). -
4 Years: Most Adult Grammar Acquired
By four years and up, the child has acquired most adult grammar (Fromkin et al., 2011) and can converse in such a way as to sustain the conversation (Tolchinsky, 2004). -
8 Years: Metalinguistic Awareness
The child begins to demonstrate metalinguistic awareness (Edwards & Kilpatrick, 1999). -
Period: to
9 Years - Adulthood: Pre-Speech Planning
The child begins to incorporate pre-speech planning processes characteristic of adult language (Sapadogan & Smith, 2008). -
Period: to
10 Years - Adulthood: Non-Literal Usage
The child begins to understand and use non-literal meanings such as metaphor (Norris, 1995). -
Period: to
11 Years - Adulthood: Lexical Amiguity
Via metalinguistic skill, the child can handle lexical and phonological ambiguity for sentences out of context (Tolchinsky, 2004).