by Hannah Russell

Created on: January 05, 2011   Last Updated: January 06, 2011

Stages of Language Development

First language acquisition is not something that occurs overnight.  Language is complicated and occurs bit-by-bit. It is not certain how exactly children learn language, but one of the most accepted theories was outlined by psychologist Roger Brown.  Interestingly, Brown’s stages of language development apply across languages and show roughly where a child should be in language development at a certain age.  It is important to remember, however, that these stages are only guidelines.  Children that reach these stages earlier or later than dictated may be of normal intelligence and do not necessarily have speech or learning disabilities.  

The first stages, outside of Rogerian theory, are the pre-linguistic stages.  These stages, lasting from birth to about five months, are named the Crying Stage, the Cooing Stage and the Babbling Stage.  The Crying Stage, lasting from birth to two months, consists of otherwise non-linguistic sounds such as crying, burping, sighing, coughing and sneezing. However, infants may have distinguishable cries such as a “hungry cry,” or “tired cry.”  The Cooing Stage, lasting from two months to five months, is characterized by vowel-like sounds that are often traded between the infant and the caregiver.  Laughter also begins in this stage. The third pre-linguistic stage, the Babbling Stage, is characterized by syllable-like sounds and lasts from five months to fifteen months when the true linguistic stages begin.  Babbling is really a form of “vocal play,” so will also have gurgling and other sound-making as the baby learns about all the sounds that they can make with their vocal tract.  The line between the Babbling Stage and the first linguistic stage is fuzzy, as towards the end of the Babbling Stage, babies will begin to use “protowords.”  Protowords do not correspond to the adult form of the word, but are always consistent when the child wants something specific.  For example, a child may call milk “da-pa,” regardless of the fact that “milk” bears no resemblance to “da-pa.”  This would be a protoword, so long as this “name” for milk is consistent.  Also towards the end of this stage, babies will have spoken some of their first true, adult words, such as “night night,” “bye bye” or “mommy.” 

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