STAGES OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

 

Most developmental psychologists view language as an interaction of maturation and experience with maturation playing a central role in infancy and experience becoming increasingly influential over time. Despite the fact that stages of language development are closely linked with maturational stages, cognitive development also plays a crucial role in language development. Language development is divided into a series of closely linked stages of development and these stages overlap somewhat, but they form a convenient framework for studying early vocalization.

(i)          Pre-babbling stage also referred to as Pre-Linguistic stage (birth to six months).

Language development in human children begins with the birth cry and for the first few weeks, their vocal repertoire is extremely limited largely characterised by cries as the only means of communication. They will cry to register discomfort. During the first three months, infants lack sufficient neuro-muscular development to control their vocal apparatus to provide speech sounds. As contended by Weber, (1991:149), “toward the end of this phase, infants begin to make speech-like sounds mainly using vowels ‘a’ and ‘e’. These sounds are often referred to as cooing.” At this stage, there is no significant language variation across culture. The behaviour in language acquisition across culture is similar.

(ii)         Babbling phase (6-12 months)

By six months, infants expand their speech sounds to include consonants like ‘m’, ‘b’, ‘d’ and ‘p’ The emergence of speech or phonemes is determined to a larger extent by the infant’s motor abilities. By about eight months, infants begin to combine sounds and repeat combinations over producing such common babbles as ‘mama’ and ‘dada’. Initially, all infants produce similar babbles (sounds) but by eight months onwards, the variety of sounds produced changes to better match the sounds commonly occurring in the language the infant hears. The period 8-12 months is characterized by continuing changes in phoneme production and increasingly word-like babbles. Infants repeat accidentally sounds and words they have heard (Lallation from about 7 to 8 months). From 9 to 10 months, repetition is more correct and “deliberate”.

(iii)            First words or single-word utterances (12-18 months)

This period starts with semi-words. Weber (1991:149) was of the view that, “the first words children use are idiosyncratic and typically not words heard from other people. They are invented words, approximations of adult words.” This in itself demonstrates the creative quality of language production and underscores the belief that children’s language is just but an imitation of adult language.

As the children progress past the fifteenth month, they learn words at an intermediate level of specificity first, such as, ‘dog’ rather than animal which is more general. They tend to often generalize any four-legged animal to them may be a ‘dog’ or whichever animal they first encountered. Early behaviour in children is thus defined in terms of perceptual features like four legs, white and black, has a tail, big and round and so on. As the children approach the eighteenth month, they develop holophrastic speech. 

The words produced at this stage are holophrastic (Single word-sentences) and used to convey whole thoughts. The word combined with intonation, gestures, and context, functions as a sentence would for an adult. Context is therefore very important in holophrases. For instance, a child who says shirt in a whining voice while waving arms to show the undressed upper part of the body means something quite different from a child who mentions the same word, with same intonation and gestures but is wearing a shirt. Wanting to say for example “mommy, I am hungry and I want you to give me milk”, s/he will simply say, “milk”.

(iv)              Early sentences or Telegraphic speech (18-24 months)

This is the stage of remarkable progress in language development for children because they begin to produce short sentences of two to three words. The sentences produced at this stage are highly telegraphic, also called pivot words and only contain few words sufficient to express an idea. For example, if they want to say, "Where is my mother?” they will say: “mom gone”. Function words and grammatical suffixes are eliminated. The universality in the use of telegraphic speech clearly implies maturational constraints on children’s language behaviour. At this point, expansion and frequent repetitions in correct and complete grammatical form on the part of parents and other caregivers is important for children to learn language. Research has furnished enough evidence that children exposed to full adult grammar advance quickly to the next stage of language acquisition unlike those exposed to baby talk for long.

(v)                 Emergence of Grammar (2-5 years).

By the age of two years, children have a reasonable vocabulary of between 250 and 300 words. Between 2-5 years, they excel further and acquire function words and suffixes necessary for grammatical speech. By this time, the language skills are still less developed and they tend to over-regularize. They still cannot discriminate between regular and irregular words and will apply the rules anyhow. For instance, they have heard that to form past tenses for some words, ‘ed’ is added like in the case of ‘jump - jumped’ or ‘walk - walked’. For them, they will do the same for words like ‘eat’ or ‘sleep’. During this stage especially towards the age of five, they begin to learn the pragmatics of language, the social rules of communication like listening, not talking at the same time, taking turns in conversations, politeness and so on.

(vi)              Refinement of Language (Beyond 5 years).

Children at the age of five are amazingly competent speakers of language. Weber (1991) postulates that, beyond five, most language changes involve increasing vocabulary and mastering the fine points of grammar and syntax, the rules of combining words into meaningful sentences. At this stage, they are able to function with less difficulty and can produce longer sentences with complex grammatical structures and they can also understand passive and embedded sentences. 

From five years going forward, the environment; including family, electronic and print media, school and peers all have a significant bearing and influence the rate and sophistication of language development. To summarise the language development process, let us take a look at the table covering the milestones in the human language development.

APPROXIMATE AGE RANGE	RECEPTIVE LANGUAGE MILESTONES	EXPRESSIVE LANGUAGE MILESTONES3
At birth	Newborns respond to sound in their environment, notably by being startled by sudden, loud noises. Newborns can distinguish their own mother's voice from other female voices and their own mother's native language from other languages.	Newborns have a repertoire of expressive sounds that generally correspond to pleasure or pain.
Through 3 months	Child begins to orient his/her face toward speaker; may quiet down as if to attend to an unfamiliar voice.	Child begins to smile in recognition of familiar face; coos and babbles.
4 through 6 months	Child begins to understand simple, common words, such as “no."	Babbling begins to sound speech-like in intonation and prosody; child’s speech sounds and gestures can communicate basic wishes.
7 through 12 months	Child orients to his/her name, turns to look toward speaker; enjoys “patty- cake"-type games and demonstrates recognition of common labels (e.g. “dog," "juice," “bed").	Word-initial consonant sounds occur (e.g., /b/ as in "bed" or /d/ as in "dog”); utterance of first real word (e.g., "Mama” or “Dada”).
12 through 24 months	Child will look toward or point to named objects and can follow simple commands, such as “Touch your nose.”	First two-word utterances (e.g., “Me go." or "Where car?") occur.
2 through 3 years	Child understands and complies with complex commands, such as "Put the bus on the shelf"; begins to contrast opposites (e.g., big/little, hot/cold).	Child uses many more labels for immediate and familiar objects and events; three- word utterances begin to use adjectives and adverbs (e.g., “Bus go fast!").

Table 1: Milestones in the typical development of receptive and expressive language

 IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGE IN EDUCATION

The importance of language in education cannot be overemphasised. It is through the use of language that effective learning takes place. Language enhances communication hence teachers should ensure that they provide an enabling environment through the provision of materials and creation of situations that would encourage learners to use language. This will help to identify learners who do not comprehend issues and assist them accordingly. If spoken language is used, the teacher should ensure that his sentences are well organized, words are correctly pronounced and the grammar used is acceptable. Simply put, language makes the sharing of knowledge easy between educators and learners.