Language Development

Language Development

1. what is language?

   • A form of communication, whether spoken, written, or signed, that is based on a system of symbols.

2. phonology

   • A language’s sound system.

3. morphology

   • Refers to the units of meaning involved in word formation

4. syntax

   • The ways that words must be combined to form acceptable phrases and sentences.

5. semantics

   • The meaning of words and sentences.

6. pragmatics

   • The appropriate use of language in different contexts.

7. Infancy

   • Babbling occurs in the middle of the fi rst year, and infants usually utter their fi rst word at about 10 to 13 months. By 18 to 24 months, infants usually have begun to string two words together.

8. Early Childhood

   • As children leave the two-word stage, they move rather quickly into three-, four-, and fi ve-word combinations. Th e transition from simple sentences expressing a single proposition to complex sentences begins between 2 and 3 years of age and continues into the elementary school years

9. Literacy in Early Childhood

   • Indeed, early precursors of literacy and academic success include good language skills, phonological and syntactic knowledge, letter identifi cation, and conceptual knowledge about print and its conventions and functions

10. Middle and Late Childhood

    • Children gain new skills as they enter school that make it possible to learn to read and write. Th ese include increased use of language to talk about things that are not physically present, learning what a word is, and learning how to recognize and talk about sounds.

11. Adolescence

    • Language development during adolescence includes increased sophistication in the use of words. As they develop abstract thinking, adolescents become much better than children at analyzing the function a word plays in a sentence.