EL 103: PRINCIPLES AND THEORIS OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND LEARNING

MODULE 4
STAGES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
AY 2022-2023 | Prepared by: RLColegadoJr.,LPT.
Lesson Objectives:

At the end of the lesson, the students will be able to:

 Discuss the stages of language acquisition; and

Stages of Language Acquisition

There are four main stages of normal language acquisition: The babbling stage, the Holophrastic or
one-word stage, the two-word stage and the Telegraphic stage. These stages can be broken down even more
into these smaller stages: pre-production, early production, speech emergent, beginning fluency, intermediate
fluency and advanced fluency. This page provides a summary of the four major stage of language acquisition.

1. Babbling
Within a few weeks of being born the baby begins to recognize it’s mothers’ voice. There are
two sub-stages within this period. The first occurs between birth – 8 months. Most of this stage involves
the baby relating to its surroundings and only during 5/6 – 8 month period does the baby begin using
it’s vocals. As has been previously discussed babies learn by imitation and the babbling stage is just
that. During these months the baby hears sounds around them and tries to reproduce them, albeit with
limited success. The babies attempts at creating and experimenting with sounds is what we call
babbling. When the baby has been babbling for a few months it begins to relate the words or sounds it
is making to objects or things. This is the second sub-stage. From 8 months to 12 months the baby
gains more and more control over not only it’s vocal communication but physical communication as
well, for example body language and gesturing. Eventually when the baby uses both verbal and non-
verbal means to communicate, only then does it move on to the next stage of language acquisition.

2. Holophrastic/One-word Stage
This stage is characterized by one word sentences. In this stage nouns make up around 50%
of the infants vocabulary while verbs and modifiers make up around 30% and questions and negatives
make up the rest. This one-word stage contains single word utterances such as “play” for “I want to play
now”. Infants use these sentence primarily to obtain things they want or need, but sometimes they
 aren’t that obvious. For example a baby may cry or say “mama” when it purely wants attention. The
infant is ready to advance to the next stage when it can speak in successive one word sentence.

3. Two-word Stage
The two word stage (as you may have guessed) is made of up primarily two word sentences.
These sentences contain 1 word for the predicate and 1 word for the subject. For example “Doggie
walk” for the sentence “The dog is being walked.” During this stage we see the appearance of single
modifiers e.g. “That dog”, two word questions e.g. “Mummy eat?” and the addition of the suffix –ing
onto words to describe something that is currently happening e.g. “Baby Sleeping.”

4. Telegraphic Stage
The final stage of language acquisition is the telegraphic stage. This stage is named as it is
because it is similar to what is seen in a telegram; containing just enough information for the sentence
to make sense. This stage contains many three and four word sentences. Sometimes during this stage
the child begins to see the links between words and objects and therefore over generalization comes in.
Some examples of sentences in the telegraphic stage are “Mummy eat carrot”, “What her name?” and
“He is playing ball.” During this stage a child’s vocabulary expands from 50 words to up to 13,000
words. At the end of this stage the child starts to incorporate plurals, joining words and attempts to get
a grip on tenses.
As a child’s grasp on language grows it may seem to us as though they just learn each part in a
random order, but this is not the case. There is a definite order of speech sounds. Children first start
speaking vowels, starting with the rounded mouthed sounds like “oo” and “aa”. After the vowels come
the consonants, p, b, m, t, d, n, k and g. The consonants are first because they are easier to pronounce
then some of the others, for example ‘s’ and ‘z’ require specific tongue place which children cannot do
at that age.
As all human beings do, children will improvise something they cannot yet do. For example
when children come across a sound they cannot produce they replace it with a sound they can e.g.
‘Thoap” for “Soap” and “Wun” for “Run.” These are just a few example of resourceful children are, even
if in our eyes it is just cute.

How do children learn to speak?

Behavioural theory assumes that children imitate what they hear, and thanks to continuous, positive
reinforcement, children learn language through conditioning and habit formation. Behaviourist theorists such as
Skinner also claim that all errors during first language acquisition are due to ‘bad habit formation,’ which, in due
course, children correct as they hear and imitate accurate speech. In contrast to behaviourists, ‘nativists,’ like
Chomsky, believe that human beings are born with an innate capacity for language development. Deliberations
continue between linguists regarding the importance of ‘nature’ over ‘nurture’ in acquisition of language.

 Language Acquisition as a Result of Nurture

Behaviourists propose that a child’s environment is the most important factor in first language acquisition,
and if a child is exposed to ‘rich language,’ then ‘good habit formation,’ and proper language development will
occur. It is possible that first language acquisition includes speech imitation, but:

 Children do not imitate everything they hear; they appear to be very selective and only reproduce
unassimilated language chunks. Therefore, their replications seem to be controlled by an internal
language-monitoring process.
 Children learn the basic rules of language at around the age of five; the behaviourist theory cannot
account for the speed that first language is acquired.
  Children say things that are not adult imitations; in particular they use inflectional over generalizations
such as ‘goed,’ ‘putted,’ ‘mouses,’ and ‘sheeps.’
 Children produce language structures that do not exist; you often hear, “Where I am?” instead of
“Where am I?”
 Children that acquire language from habit formation seem to memorize certain structures prematurely.
These phrases become lodged in their minds as unassimilated chunks of information that they cannot
incorporate into their own verbal expressions.
 Children produce many more sound-combinations than they hear, and understand many more than
they can produce.
 Children are exposed to language performance and not to language competence. Often they are
exposed to “debilitated” language, yet, they manage to extract the language rules from these
utterances and speak correctly.

We are Wired to Acquire Language

“When we study human language, we are approaching what some might call the ‘human essence,’ the
distinctive qualities of mind that are, so far as we know, unique to man.” (Noam Chomsky)

Unlike the behaviourist approach that does not take into consideration the child’s own cognitive
processes, the ‘Innateness Hypothesis’ proposed by linguist Noam Chomsky supports the idea that language
acquisition has a biological foundation. Facts that support this theory include the following:

 Children acquire language sounds in a certain sequence, and the first sounds that children learn are
those that are common to all world languages: a stop consonant followed by an open vowel: thus a
child’s first utterances are usually those found in words for ‘mother’ and ‘father,’ sounds such as ‘pa,’
‘ma,’ ‘ba’ or ‘ta,’ as seen in French: maman, papa; Greek: mama, baba; Hebrew: eema, aba.
 Children tend to learn language in the same sequence, suggesting that universality of language exists
and the environment alone cannot be responsible for language acquisition.
 Children acquire function words such as ‘or’ and ‘on’ and the less salient sounds connected to
possessives, pluralisation and third person singular in a certain order. Interestingly, the plural ‘s’ and
other forms of ‘s’ are not all developed in unison.

Language Development: An Innate Neurological Process

For language development to occur, interaction has to take place; language cannot be acquired
passively. Although imitation and habit forming do have a role in language acquisition, children seem
predisposed to acquire speech and competency in language by being able to map language, possibly onto
what Noam Chomsky calls a ‘language acquisition device.’