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A child's first real word is uttered around one years of age. Before this a baby goes through several developmental stages illustrated below.

Contents 1 0 - 12 Months 1.1 0 - 2 Month 1.2 2 - 6 Months 1.3 10 - 12 Months 2 12 - 18 Months 3 Comments

0 - 12 Months

0 - 2 Month

At this early stage of life babies cry, burp and cough, depending on their physical conditions, e.g. they cry if they are wet or hungry.

These noises also helping control airflow that will help the baby prepare for adult speech.

2 - 6 Months

Around this time babies start to respond to parental smiles and begin to experiment more.

They will often 'coo' which is a softer sound than crying. This is where the first interactive dialogue begins, as babies realise that cooing will elicit a response from their mother.

Babies at this point can also differentiate between vocal tones such as anger and humour.

At around 16 weeks they will encourage more varied responses from their mother with their first laugh.

At this time simple games like peek-a-boo make interaction fun and aid the babies language acquisition.

By 6 month babies seem to recognise words such as mammy, daddy and names of family members.

10 - 12 Months

Babies can use vocalisations to express emotions.

Utterances at this stage are important because they form the basis for the sounds of early speech.

Before babies first birthday they will probably be able to respond to some situations such as 'say bye-bye' or 'say night-night'.

Babies will experiment with sounds, usually high pitched, they glide from high to low much like adult sentences, and they will reduplicate sounds like 'ba-ba-ba' and 'da-da-da', this is assimilation, another stepping stone in language acquisition.

12 - 18 Months

Children have the ability to indicate their intentions.

First words will be said and the first noticeable steps towards language acquisition will be made.

Most children up till this point will have acquired language at the same rate, however, at this point the child's language becomes more individual.

Children will produce holophrastic utterances based on everyday objects, such as cat or pop.

At this stage children are acquiring 10 - 20 words a month. Most of these words will be naming words, which provides a function for the child, it will allow them to communicate effectively.

Over extension.

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