Verbal stages

• Around 12 - 18 months
• Babbling/monosyllabic reduplication
• Can usually only say one word at a time - meaning is context-driven
• Proper nouns e.g. 'Daddy', 'Nana'
• Concrete nouns e.g. 'juice', 'biscuits'
• Phatic/social talk e.g. 'hiya', 'bye-bye', 'please'

• Around 18 - 24 months
• Made up of primarily two-word sentences
• Often contain one subject word and the other a verb/action
• Incomplete sentences = relying on context for interpretation
• 'The emergence of grammar'
• Beginning to use prepositions e.g. 'on'
• And possession words e.g. 'my'
• And pronouns e.g. 'she

• Around 2 - 2.5 years
• Child begins to use sentences of up to four words in length
• Understand grammar, semantics, phonology and beginnings of pragmatics
• Function words are often left out but content words remain
• Start to use questions

- What

- Where

- Why

- When

• Start to use auxiliary verbs