12.3: Language Development- Infancy

Do newborns initiate communication? Absolutely! However, they do not communicate with the use of language. Instead, they communicate their thoughts and needs with body posture (being relaxed or still), gestures, cries, and facial expressions. A person who spends adequate time with an infant can learn which cries indicate pain and which ones indicate hunger, discomfort, or frustration as well as translate their vocalizations, movements, gestures and facial expressions.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): From infancy, humans communicate by looking, facial expressions and sound.[1]

Stages of Language Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood

1. Crying: Initially an infant cries when they experience any kind of discomfort. They cry when they are hungry or uncomfortable, or in pain. Many caregivers say that they are able to distinguish between the different stimuli that are eliciting the discomfort, and respond to the particular situation that the child is crying about. While not all caregivers are equally adept in this manner, ethologists would say that we, human adults, are biologically programmed to respond with concern when we hear a baby cry.
2. Intentional Vocalizations: Cooing and taking turns: Infants begin to vocalize and repeat vocalizations within the first couple of months of life. That gurgling, musical vocalization called cooing can serve as a source of entertainment to an infant who has been laid down for a nap or seated in a carrier on a car ride. Cooing serves as practice for vocalization as well as the infant hears the sound of his or her own voice and tries to repeat sounds that are entertaining. Infants also begin to learn the pace and pause of conversation as they alternate their vocalization with that of someone else and then take their turn again when the other person’s vocalization has stopped. Cooing initially involves making vowel sounds like “oooo”. Later, consonants are added to vocalizations such as “nananananana”.
3. Babbling and gesturing: At about four to six months of age, infants begin making even more elaborate vocalizations that include the sounds required for any language. Guttural sounds, clicks, consonants, and vowel sounds stand ready to equip the child with the ability to repeat whatever sounds are characteristic of the language heard. Eventually, these sounds will no longer be used as the infant grows more accustomed to a particular language. Deaf babies also use gestures to communicate wants, reactions, and feelings. Because gesturing seems to be easier than vocalization for some toddlers, sign language is sometimes taught to enhance one’s ability to communicate by making use of the ease of gesturing. The rhythm and pattern of language is used when deaf babies sign just as it is when hearing babies babble.
4. Understanding: At around ten months of age, the infant can understand more than he or she can say. You may have experienced this phenomenon as well if you have ever tried to learn a second language. You may have been able to follow a conversation more easily than to contribute to it.
5. Holophrastic speech: Children begin using their first words at about 12 or 13 months of age and may use partial words to convey thoughts at even younger ages. These one word expressions are referred to as holophrastic speech. For example, the child may say “ju” for the word “juice” and use this sound when referring to a bottle. The listener must interpret the meaning of the holophrase and when this is someone who has spent time with the child, interpretation is not too difficult. They know that “ju” means “juice” which means the baby wants some milk! But, someone who has not been around the child will have trouble knowing what is meant. Imagine the parent who to a friend exclaims, “Ezra’s talking all the time now!” The friend hears only “ju da ga” which, the parent explains, means “I want some milk when I go with Daddy.”

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Two children playing with toys – infants and toddlers communicate while playing with adults.[2]

6. Underextension/Overextension: A child who learns that a word stands for an object may initially think that the word can be used for only that particular object. Only the family’s Irish Setter is a “doggie”. This is referred to as underextension.  More often, however, a child may think that a label applies to all objects that are similar to the original object. In overextension all animals become “doggies”, for example.
7. First words and cultural influences: First words if the child is using English tend to be nouns. The child labels objects such as cup or ball. In a verb-friendly language such as Chinese, however, children may learn more verbs. This may also be due to the different emphasis given to objects based on culture. Chinese children may be taught to notice action and relationship between objects while children from the United States may be taught to name an object and its qualities (color, texture, size, etc.). These differences can be seen when comparing interpretations of art by older students from China and the United States.
8. Vocabulary growth spurt: One year olds typically have a vocabulary of about 50 words. But by the time they become toddlers, they have a vocabulary of about 200 words and begin putting those words together in telegraphic speech (I think of it now as 'text message' speech because texting is more common and is similar in that text messages typically only include the minimal amount of words to convey the message).
9. Two word sentences and telegraphic speech: Words are soon combined and 18 month old toddlers can express themselves further by using expressions such as “baby bye-bye” or “doggie pretty”. Words needed to convey messages are used, but the articles and other parts of speech necessary for grammatical correctness are not yet used. These expressions sound like a telegraph (or perhaps a better analogy today would be that they read like a text message) where unnecessary words are not used. “Give baby ball” is used rather than “Give the baby the ball.” Or a text message of “Send money now!” rather than “Dear Mother. I really need some money to take care of my expenses.”[3]

Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): Toddlers use toys and symbols to focus on their burgeoning communication skills.[4]

Language Milestones

In the first two years of life, children go from communicating by crying to being able to express themselves with words. Here is a table of common language milestones for infants and toddlers.

Language Milestones in Infancy[5]

Table \(\PageIndex{1}\): Language milestones in infancy

Typical Age	What Most Children Do By This Age
2 months	Coos, makes gurgling sounds Turns head toward sounds
4 months	Begins to babble Babbles with expression and copies sounds he hears Cries in different ways to show hunger, pain, or being tired
6 months	Responds to sounds by making sounds Strings vowels together when babbling (“ah,” “eh,” “oh”) and likes taking turns with parent while making sounds Responds to own name Makes sounds to show joy and displeasure Begins to say consonant sounds (jabbering with “m,” “b”)
9 months	Understands “no” Makes a lot of different sounds like “mamamama” and “bababababa” Copies sounds and gestures of others Uses fingers to point at things
1 year	Responds to simple spoken requests Uses simple gestures, like shaking head “no” or waving “bye-bye” Makes sounds with changes in tone (sounds more like speech) Says “mama” and “dada” and exclamations like “uh-oh!” Tries to say words you say
18 months	Says several single words Says and shakes head now Points to show others what is wanted
2 years	Points to things or pictures when they are named Knows names of familiar people and body parts Says sentences with 2 to 4 words Follows simple instructions Repeats words overheard in conversation Points to things in a book

Child-Directed Speech

Why is a horse a “horsie”? Have you ever wondered why adults tend to use “baby talk” or that sing-song type of intonation and exaggeration used when talking to children? This represents a universal tendency and is known as child-directed speech or parentese (historically referred to as motherese). It involves exaggerating the vowel and consonant sounds, using a high-pitched voice, and delivering the phrase with great facial expression (Clark, 2009). Why is this done? Infants are frequently more attuned to the tone of voice of the person speaking than to the content of the words themselves and are aware of the target of speech. Werker, Pegg, and McLeod (1994) found that infants listened longer to a woman who was speaking to a baby than to a woman who was speaking to another adult. It may be in order to clearly articulate the sounds of a word so that the child can hear the sounds involved. Or it may be because when this type of speech is used, the infant pays more attention to the speaker and this sets up a pattern of interaction in which the speaker and listener are in tuned with one another.[6]

Culture

While there are cultural differences in what languages are used, child rearing practices (and their influence on other motor development), and use of child directed speech, the basic trajectory of language development in infancy - for example, going from cooing to babbling by about 7-10 months - is common across cultures (Cychosz et al., 2021). Cychosz et al. (2021) also found that there were no socioeconomic differences in the sequence of this development. However their sample was small, and there were some indications that medical underserving of some communities might lead to delays. Other research (Cristia et al., 2019) has found that there is certainly a cultural difference in the amount of child directed speech used in different communities.

References:

Clark, V. (2009). What shapes children’s language? Child-directed speech and the process of acquisition. In V. C. M. Gathercole (Ed.), Routes to language: Essays in honor of Melissa Bowerman. NY: Psychology Press.

Cristia, A., Dupoux, E., Gurven, M., & Stieglitz, J. (2019). Child-Directed Speech Is Infrequent in a Forager-Farmer Population: A Time Allocation Study. Child Development, 90(3), 759–773. https://doi-org.ezp.pasadena.edu/10.1111/cdev.12974

Cychosz, M., Cristia, A., Bergelson, E., Casillas, M., Baudet, G., Warlaumont, A. S., Scaff, C., Yankowitz, L., & Seidl, A. (2021). Vocal development in a large‐scale crosslinguistic corpus. Developmental Science, 24(5), 1–22. https://doi-org.ezp.pasadena.edu/10.1111/desc.13090

Werker, F., Pegg, J. E., & McLeod, P. J. (1994). A cross-language investigation of infant preference for infant-directed communication. Infant Behavior and Development, 17, 323-333.

Attributions:

Child Growth and Development by Jennifer Paris, Antoinette Ricardo, and Dawn Rymond, 2019, is licensed under CC BY 4.0

(culture review by Bhadha, 2023)

[1] Image by US Army Southern European Task Force onFlickr, licensed CC-BY 2.0

[2] Image by the U.S. Air Force is in the public domain

[3] Children’s Development by Ana R. Leon is licensed under CC BY 4.0

[4] Image by Salim Virji is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

[5] Developmental Milestones by the CDC is in the public domain

[6] Children’s Development by Ana R. Leon is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Parenting and Family Diversity Issues by Diana Lang, 2020, published by Iowa State University is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0