Early Morphological Childhood Development

A baby's first crawl, first grasp, and first step are all memorable milestones, but none of those can compare to when a child speaks his or her first word. The astounding ability for humans to learn language never ceases to amaze and delight. Although researchers continue to study the complex and intertwined roles of nature and nurture in this morphological process, there is no doubt that it follows a basic timeline during early childhood. according to the authors of the book "The Development of Children" (see references).

  1. Early Infancy

    • In a 1985 groundbreaking study, psychologist Peter Eimas demonstrated that 2-month-old babies can differentiate between phonemes (the smallest units of language sound) and, by 6 to 8 months, have limited their distinguishable phonemes to those in their native languages. They can recognize their own names as early as 4 months, and at about 9 months of age they begin to comprehend expressions such as "Wave bye-bye" and "Cookie" when adults consistantly say them in the same scenarios.
      "Babbling," which starts at about 7 months and consists of strings of consonant sounds, quickly turns to "jargoning," which carries the actual stress and intonation of the native language. Then, at about the 12th month, babies will vocalize their first distinguishable words and are able to recognize about a dozen common phrases.

    Holophrases

    • Close to the same time that babies produce their first words, they also begin to use "holophrases." Those are one-word utterances that may convey the meaning of a whole sentence. For instance, "up" might mean "lift me up." Although parents react to holophrases as if there is a whole sentence of meaning, researchers are still unclear as to whether babies intend the meaning.

    Telegraphic Speech

    • On the other hand developmental psychologists agree that, two-word sentences, which babies develop at about 18 months and is called "telegraphic speech," definitely carry meaning. They can demonstrate the concept of possession -- for example, the baby might say "Mommy chair" or "Daddy dog." Telegraphic speech can also indicate the concept of nonexistence, as with "all-gone cookie."
      The most important aspect of telegraphic speech is that the infant can rearrange the morphenes, or units of meaning, to give the phrase a new meaning. However, because telegraphic speech remains simple, adults have a more difficult time understanding it out of context.
      Coinciding with the development of telegraphic speech is a burst in vocabulary learning, which gives the infant more "pieces" to work with. According to the Child Development Institute, infants go from a five-to-20 word vocabulary at 18 months to a 150-to-300 word vocabulary by 24 months.

    Grammatical Morphemes

    • In order to express more complicated ideas and to be understood out of context, toddlers must develop grammatical morphemes. Indeed, at about 30 months, the rudimentary building blocks of grammar appear. Interestingly, they develop in a standard order among young children learning different languages around the world.
      The first grammatical morpheme to emerge is present-progressive tense of verbs (in English, use of the "-ing" suffix) that shows something is happening temporarily. Next come the prepositions "in" and "on," followed by the indication of possession, past irregulars such "broke," and articles ("a" or "the"). Some of the later grammatical morphemes learned are contractions of "to be" such as "That's a book" or "I'm walking."

    Complex speech

    • Using those morphemes, 2-to-6 year olds are able to create more and more complex sentences that follow grammatical rules. Some of those grammatical guidelines are so subtle that although a young child learns to use them proficiently and intuitively, a high school student would have a hard time articulating the rules. Still, all children, no matter what language they speak, acquire these skills.

    Problems in Learning New Words

    • Small children face great difficulty in their morphological development. First of all, when an adult speaks about an object in a scene, the child struggles to identify which object it is and what characteristics the adult is discussing. They also have to slowly overcome the ambiguity of word definitions through experience. While learning, they use underextension and overextension; for example, a child will "overextend" a word and apply it to other objects with similar perceptual features. He or she might also "underextend" by only applying a word such as "blanket" to one specific blanket. It is interesting to note that although children under 2 years of age cannot necessarily apply the appropriate categories and subcategories with language, they can do so mentally.

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