Development of Language

Language is a complex system unique to human beings. Although psychologists have tried teaching sign language and use of symbols to chimpanzees, dolphins and parrots, human language remains more complex, creative and spontaneous. There is also great regularity across children worldwide in how language is acquired: individual children differ in the rate of development, but a predictable overall pattern shows up in the progression from almost no language use to becoming a competent language user.

Newborns and young infants make a variety of sounds that gradually resemble words. Crying is the first sound babies produce, initially undifferentiated but gradually varying in pitch and intensity to signify hunger, pain or sleepiness; these gradually become more meaningful cooing sounds ('aaa,' 'uuu'), usually expressing happiness. At around six months, children enter the babbling stage — prolonged repetition of consonant and vowel sounds ('da—', 'aa—', 'ba—'); by nine months these get elaborated into strings such as 'dadadadada' (echolalia); early babbling is random, while later babbling imitates adult voices. Children show understanding of a few words by six months, and around the first birthday most enter the one-word-stage, with a first word usually of one syllable (ma or da). They then combine one or more words into whole sentences or phrases, called holophrases, and by 18-20 months enter the two-word stage, exemplifying telegraphic speech (mostly nouns and verbs, like a telegram — 'got admission,' 'send money'). Close to the third birthday, language development focuses on the rules of the language heard. …