Language Development Over Time

3 Month Milestone

2 BCE

This stage from shortly after birth to around 3 months is where an infant learns signal responses. Crying, the signal, results in comfort, the stimulus response. (Owens, Metz, & Farinella, 2015)

3-4 Month Games & Rituals

1 BCE

At this stage, usually 3 to 4 months into development, rituals, diaper changing or feeding, have emerge along with games, "peekaboo" (Owens, Metz, & Farinella, 2015).

8-9 Month Intentionality

1 CE

This stage is where intentional gestures start to emerge and are used to influence the other person (Owens, Metz, & Farinella, 2015).

12 Month First Words

1 CE

Around 12 months is the first time a simple word is used along with gestures.

18 Month simple combinations

2

This is when infants start to combine words to form primitive word combination of 3-4 words (Owens, Metz, & Farinella, 2015).

3 Years Preschool Language

3

Fueled by a larger lexicon, more complex sentences are formed for recalling events for children at this stage in preschool life (Owens, Metz, & Farinella, 2015)

4 Years Development

4

By this time children can tell short simple stories about events in the past, but they perform "reformulation" of words to fit the speaker they are with (Owens, Metz, & Farinella, 2015).

5 Years Development

5

By this time, 90% of the child's language is formed.

6 Years Development

6

By this time, children start to form their independent identities apart from family and they can start telling more adult-like, complex stories of events (Owens, Metz, & Farinella, 2015).

10-18 Adolescent Years.

12

By this time, language development is almost complete, but still growing larger due to the use of figurative language. Competent use of language aspects are used, but they may not be cognitively understood by the speaker (Owens, Metz, & Farinella, 2015).