Child Language Development: From Birth to 5 Years

Posted on Jan 17, 2025 in English Studies

How Do Children Learn Their Mother Tongue?

First, we have to distinguish between communication and the use of language:

  • A baby can communicate from the very beginning through crying, gesticulating, and body language.
  • But they obviously cannot use language.

Every individual has an innate capacity to learn at least a first language/mother tongue. This is known as the Language Acquisition Device (LAD), a concept introduced by Noam Chomsky.

This process of learning a language seems to have common patterns since every child, regardless of their nationality, learns their mother tongue.

This is a very difficult process since they have to develop a complex psychological structure that allows them to speak in a very short period of time: from not being able to speak a single word, they achieve a code system (language) that allows them to speak.

Therefore, the most important aspects of speech, achieved by a child from birth until they are 5 years old, are:

Language Acquisition Milestones

Learning Acquisition Periods

AgeAcquisition
0-5 Months (Prelinguistic)
  • Babies babble using their throat.
  • Make sounds related to pain and pleasure (smile, cry, complain).
  • Make some noises when people talk to them.
6-12 Months (Prelinguistic)
  • They understand denials, like ‘no’.
  • Babble.
  • Start to pronounce ‘mama’ and ‘papa’, although they don’t know the meaning.
  • Attempt to communicate by gesticulating.
  • They try to repeat some sounds.
  • They say their first word.
12-18 Months (Non-Combinatory Language)
  • They answer simple questions with body language.
  • Use 2-3 words to point to a person or object.
  • Try to imitate simple words.
18-24 Months (Non-Combinatory Language)
  • Pronounce without any mistake all the vowels and ‘n’, ‘m’, ‘p’, and ‘j’, and start to use other sounds.
  • Around 50 vocabulary words.
  • Call usual food by its name.
  • Onomatopoeia (animals).
  • They start to combine 2 words and to use pronouns.
2-3 Years (Combinatory Language)
  • They use some concepts related to space, like ‘in’ and ‘over’.
  • Know the pronouns.
  • Start to use descriptive words.
  • Around 250-900 vocabulary words.
  • 3-word sentences.
  • More accurate speech, though they have difficulties pronouncing clearly the last sounds.
  • Answer simple questions.
  • Start making questions to ask for something.
  • Use plural and regular verbs in the past tense.
3-4 Years (Combinatory Language)
  • Classify words into families (clothes, food, etc.).
  • Distinguish colors.
  • Use almost every sound of the alphabet, though they can have difficulties with the most difficult ones (‘l’, ‘r’, ‘ch’, ‘y’, ‘z’). These are known as dyslalias.
  • Use consonants in every syllable.
  • Can describe some daily objects.
  • Start to enjoy language.
  • Answer simple questions without any problem.
  • Can repeat whole sentences.
4-5 Years (Combinatory Language)
  • They are able to understand complex questions.
  • Their speech is perfectly understandable, although they make mistakes with long and difficult words.
  • Around 1500 vocabulary words.
  • They start using irregular verbs in the past tense.
  • They can say elements belonging to the same family.
  • They answer questions asking ‘why?’.
5+ Years (Combinatory Language)
  • They can understand 2000 vocabulary words.
  • They can distinguish a sequence of time.
  • They can carry out more than 3 instructions.
  • They can keep a fluent conversation.
  • Sentences with more than 8 words.
  • They use their imagination to make up stories.
  • They can describe objects.