Chronology of Language Development

Birth to 6 Months

• Within the first 6 months of life, children will begin to respond to people's voices with vocalizations of their own, primarily vowel sounds, and will cry when they need assistance. By 3 months, children will typically appear to recognize their mothers' voices. By 6 months, they will imitate certain sounds and practice intonation. By the end of this period, they will also produce certain consonants, primarily ̶0;p,̶1; ̶0;b̶1; and ̶0;m.̶1;

6 Months to a Year

• During their second 6 months of life, children will begin to imitate conversation, stringing together consonants and vowels and taking ̶0;turns̶1; when vocalizing with adults. Children in this period will also begin to respond to their names, and may recognize words for simple objects. By the age of a year, most children will have said their first words.

1 to 2 Years

• Between the ages of 1 and 2, a child will have a vocabulary of around five to 20 words, and will be able to produce many common consonant sounds. Children will begin to put words together into two-word phrases, such as ̶0;Mommy here,̶1; or ̶0;want milk,̶1; and will be able to identify body parts by pointing.

2 to 3 Years

• Children between ages 2 and 3 will have a vocabulary of 150 to 300 words, expanding to 450 by 3 years old. They will begin to incorporate regular grammatical patterns, sometimes in ways that produce ̶0;incorrect̶1; results, such as adding a ̶0;d̶1; sound to the past tense of ̶0;run̶1; in order to produce ̶0;runned.̶1; They will also begin to hold simple conversations, using short, incomplete sentences, generally from three to six words long, and will understand and ask simple questions.

3 to 4 Years

• Between ages 3 and 4, children will have vocabularies of 800 to 1,000 words. They will demonstrate the ability to use subject-verb-object word order in sentence construction, such as ̶0;Daddy get doll.̶1; They will use pronouns -- ̶0;I,̶1; ̶0;me,̶1; ̶0;mine,̶1; ̶0;she,̶1; ̶0;yours̶1; -- correctly, as well as simple prepositions, such as ̶0;on̶1; and ̶0;in.̶1; This is also the stage in which most children begin to use negatives, such as ̶0;no,̶1; ̶0;don̵7;t̶1; and ̶0;can̵7;t.̶1; The question-word ̶0;why̶1; is often a favorite of children at this stage.

4 to 5 Years

• Between 4 and 5 years, most children have a vocabulary of over 2,000 words, and, while they might still have difficulties with certain sounds, particularly consonant clusters, such as ̶0;str̶1; in ̶0;strong,̶1; they can make themselves easily understood. They can tell simple stories, and can describe a picture in four or five sentences. Most of the elements of grammar are used correctly, including some irregular plurals, such as ̶0;men,̶1; and ̶0;children,̶1; and past tenses of common irregular verbs, such as ̶0;ran.̶1;