| 0-12 months |
• From the first day to the first month of life, the infants have in crying their reaction to pain and hunger; they wake up and startle with unfamiliar sounds.
• From 2 to 3 months old, crying becomes different in each situation (hunger, pain or fussiness); babbling and chuckling seem to be related to the sensation of well-being, they react to human speech; they chuckle, gaze and babble.
• By the 5th month, they start playing with their voice and the sounds they utter, repeating a syllable over and over (e.g.: /papapa/, /mamama/).
• From 8 to 9 months old, intentional communication behaviors appear; they repeat sounds uttered by others;
• The first words appear when they are 10 to 15 months old; short words are acquired before the long ones;
• They can repeat words said by others, but the repetition will not follow the same phonetic pattern (e.g.: “Where’s the dog?” - the child: [daw]). |
| 13-24 months |
• 18 months: expanding of their phonological system, broadening their phonetical inventory; period characterized by the occurrence of sound substitutions and omissions.
• They present a functional language, i.e., they communicate to express their needs, call attention, inform and ask.
• They speak isolated words or word-like sentences. (e.g.: [memilk] - “I want milk”).
• They produce onomatopoeias (e.g.: [ow-ow] for dogs), idiosyncratic words, i.e., the child’s own words (e.g..:[ashunk] for elephant), contextual words (ex.: [mehungry] - when they want to eat), and social words (ex.: [dis] - when they are pointing at something.
• From 18 to 22 months, they produce about 20 words and understand about 50.
• They maintain a conversation by speculating and complementing.
• They understand routine and situational questions, orders and statements (e.g.: “It’s time to eat!” - the child goes to the kitchen).
• Beginning at 18 months old, two- or three-word sentences are produced (ex.: [moh milk] for “I want more milk”).
• They understand routine and situational two-command orders (e.g.: “Pick up the key and put it in the drawer” - the child does so).
• By the end of the second year of life, the so-called vocabulary boom takes place. |
| 2 years and 1 month to 3 years |
• All phonological simplifications are expected.
• Elimination of the processes of syllable deletion, assimilation, fricative stopping, velar backing and fronting, and liquid reduction (by 3 years and 6 months old).
• /s/ is acquired by 2 years and six months old; /s/ is most commonly substituted by /ʃ/.
• By 2 years old, children can produce more than 200 words, and by 2 years and 6 months old, more than 500 words.
• From 2 years to 2 years and 6 months old, sentences have 3 or 4 words, with incorrect nominal and verbal inflections (e.g.: “It’s mine ball”; “She eat all cookie”).
• They do not properly use the genders of the personal pronouns (you, I, he/she), possessives (my) and demonstratives (this) (e.g.: “Sally is wearing his daddy’s shoes”).
• Close to three years old, coordination between sentences is noticed (e.g.: “This doll cries and pees”).
• They use many nouns: names of toys, objects around the house, people they daily live with, parts of the body (at least 4), food, animals, drinks, clothes, some categories (toy, food, animal). They use many verbs to represent actions, as well as some adjectives (big/small, clean/dirty, ugly/pretty, hot/cold). Semantic deviations are frequent in words with lexical meaning (super-extension, sub-extension, antonymy).
• The prepositions appear: “of”, indicating possession, “for” indicting beneficiary (e.g.: “house of grandma”).
• They say and understand some adverbs of place (there, here, inside, near) and pronouns (I, you, me, mine, he, this). They refer to time with some adverbs, as “now” and “yesterday”, but they use unsteadily.
• They understand and verbally answer questions with the pronouns where, who, what (e.g.: “Where is the doll?”).
• They use oral language to ask (to meet their physical and psychological needs), inform, question, interact.
• They narrate, helped by the other’s questions, about the place (where), the happenings (what), and people (who). Proto-narrative sentences.
• They talk with people in familiar contexts about concrete subjects with present time referential, in simple turns (one sentence with the minimal necessary information so the conversation will not be interrupted). |
| 3 years and 1 month to 4 years |
• The adult is the model of the developing child’s future narratives.
• By three years old, children can classify the same objects in different categories, revealing the same flexibility the adults have when using such categories for inductive inferences.
• Simple and compound six-word sentences are used (coordinated and subordinated with “why” and “but”) (e.g.: “I don’t wanna eat because it’s bad”).
• Interrogative clauses appear, with the pronouns “who” and “which” (e.g.: “Which one you want?”).
• They make use of verb tenses and grammatical constructions in the present, past and future, though there are incorrect verbal inflections due to rule generalization (e.g.: “Daddy is gonna by me” - future grammatical construction; “He buyed me a candy” - He bought me a candy).
• They use definite articles, respecting gender inflection rules (in Portuguese) (as for number, they can be used by cultural influence) (e.g.: “Gimme the ball and the clown”).
• By 3 years and 6 months old, these disappear: non-lateral /R/ liquid simplification, by reduction (e.g.: [wabbit] - rabbit), substitution (e.g.: [twy] - try), or semi-vocalization (ex: [purty] - pretty).
• By 4, these disappear: final consonant simplification (final liquid /r/), by reduction (e.g.: [ka] - car; [maket] - market), or semi-vocalization (e.g.: [play] - pray).
• Vocabulary: from 500 to 1000 words.
• Increased meaning of names, verbs and adjectives, including words that refer to feelings (afraid, sad, happy), parts of the body (at least 6), comparison (same/different). All types of semantic deviations are very common (e.g.: “The wolf blew big” - strong).
• They acquire the prepositions “in”, “on”, “with” indicating companionship.
• They refer to many adverbs of place (over/under, behind/in front of, inside/outside, near/far), but make mistakes when distinguishing opposites. They use and understand the adverbs of time “now/later” but are unsteady when using the other adverbs (e.g.: “Now I’m gonna sleep”, “Later I’m gonna play”).
• They understand two unrelated orders (e.g.: “Close your closet and bring the ball”).
• They understand and verbally answer questions with the pronouns “how” and “when” (e.g.: “How do I take a shower?”).
• They ask for things, name things, complain, ask questions about an absent referential, use social expressions to interact. Predominant function: informative.
• They report immediate experiences, i.e., those that are happening at the moment they are asked. When telling stories, they have a hard time being coherent and cohesive, they omit secondary elements and include untrue facts. This is the phase of primitive narratives.
• Regarding conversational skills, what they say is intelligible and coherent with what was previously said. They keep the conversation going more than starting one, present more simple than expansive turns (they talk with more than one clause, with more information than necessary, so the conversation will not stop). If they are not understood, they do not correct themselves; instead, they repeat exactly what they had said. |
| 4 years and 1 month to 6 years |
• By 4 years and 6 months old, the following processes are eliminated: palatal backing (e.g.: [gog] - dog), palatal fronting (ex.: [sip] - ship), and lateral /r/ liquid simplification, by reduction (e.g.: [papuh] - paper), substitution (e.g.: [beluh] - better), or semi-vocalization (e.g.: [beyuh] - better)
• By 5 years old, consonant cluster reduction disappears (e.g.: [pane] - plane; [keen] - clean).
• Vocabulary: from 1500 to 3000 words.
• Significantly increased the meaning of names, verbs and adjectives. The semantic deviations decrease but are still observed, of which super-extension is a common one (e.g.: “This dress is small here” (referring to its length - short)), as well as associating things by contiguity.
• They use and understand many indefinite pronouns: another, nobody, someone (e.g.: “Someone made that mess and it wasn’t me”).
• They obey a sequence of three orders (e.g.: “Pick up the ball, put it on the chair and bring me the truck”).
• They tell a familiar story without help from someone else or images. The cohesive elements in the narrative are still flawed.
• They start presenting a greater balance between keeping and starting a conversation and between simple and expansive turns.
• They use simple and compound sentences, including subordinate ones with “because” and “so that” (e.g.: “Let’s draw this one because it’s the prettiest!”).
• They use verb tenses and structures as past perfect and conditionals (e.g.: “I had already made this drawing before you got here”).
• They correctly use the most common irregular verbs.
• By 5 years and 6 months old, these disappear: consonant cluster reduction, epentheses (e.g.: [bu-lue] - blue; [pulastic] - plastic), and substitutions (e.g.: [ship] - chip; [tooes] - shoes).
• By 6 years old, these can occasionally appear: omission of an unstressed syllable in polysyllable words with more than five syllables (e.g.: [feegirator] - refrigerator); consonant cluster and final consonant (final liquid) shift (e.g.: [stake] - skate).
• Vocabulary: around 6.000 words.
• Increase in lexical meaning of names, verbs and adjectives.
• They use and understand adverbs/prepositions of place by their opposites (on top/below; inside/outside; behind/in front of/beside; near/far). They dominate opposite terms, as “some/many”; “more/less”. The adverbs of time can still be unsteadily used but are frequently present in the child’s vocabulary (e.g.: “Yesterday I went to the circus”).
• They ask time-related questions (e.g.: “When is Christmas coming?”).
• They describe an object or place. They show metalinguistic skills (they define words, ask their meaning, identify and make rhymes).
• When narrating, they keep the facts in their time sequence, although omitting some secondary facts that are not essential to understanding the story. They do not include additional untrue facts only to keep the narrative going; if they do not remember, they just say so.
• They talk with more than one interlocutor at the same time about an absent and abstract referential, with expansive turns. |
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Source: Alexandre, Mandrá, 2017.
Source: Research data
Source: Alexandre, Mandrá, 2017