Language development: the two-word and telegraphic stage (1;6–2;6 years)

In this blogseries I will talk about the language development or acquisition of a child, both monolingual and bilingual (or multilingual). Be sure to read the previous blogposts about preverbal development, the one-word stage and the introductory blogpost about the different stages I will mention and the most used defining terms. If at any stage you don’t understand the abbreviations used, go check them out here!
This post is divided into three sections, one for monolingual development (MFLA), one for simultaneous bilingual development (BFLA) and one for sequential bilingual development (ESLA).

In this post I will talk about part 2 of the early linguistic stage. The early linguistic stage usually lasts from the 1-year mark until the age of 2;6 years. Once the one-word stage is finished, the two-word stage begins (sounds logical doesn’t it?). This is sometimes seen as part of the telegraphic stage (which I explain below). In this stage children start combining their words into small sentences, making their communication much more understandable.

Although children will communicate in words and small sentences, this doesn’t have to mean you will understand them always. It is very common for children this young to still babble alongside their speech in the beginning, and the pronunciation is yet to be improved. Overall, children this age are intelligible (understandable in their speech) for about 50–70% of the time.

After children have learned that concepts and things are linked to words, the developments goes fast. Around the age of 15 to 18 months, the first two-word sentence usually appears, with a normal deviance until 2 years old. This big of a deviance has to do with the general rule of 50. Once children know and actively use around 50 words, sentences will start to be formed. Before this age and word-count, some “proto-sentences” can be seen. Examples of this are saying a word and combining this with a gesture (saying apple and pointing to oneself), or using two gestures together.

While some children may stay in the two-word phase quite long, other children will quickly lengthen their sentences to 3 or more words per sentence. When this happens, they enter the telegraphic stage. As the name already explains, this is the kind of speech that sounds like old telegrams. The grammar is not complete or correct yet and the sentences don’t flow yet. Sentences like “no wash”, “where ball now” and “want orange candy” portray this style. Words like “a” “in/out”, “I/you” and “have” are (often) not yet used and will be added later in the development.

Up until now, children mostly used speech to ask for things, or to say “no”. In this phase, they learn and discover the other ways to communicate (and we grownups are actually capable of understanding them). There are many ways (or reasons) to communicate, which are called the communicative functions. I will list them down here, and maybe write a separate blogpost about them later.

• Requesting (things, actions or information)
• Refusing (things or activities)
• Seeking attention
• Describing and commenting (e.g. a red shirt)
• Answering questions
• Social routines (e.g. greeting someone)
• Sharing feelings

As language A and B might not develop exactly the same, sentences might not appear at the same time in both languages. There are roughly two possible scenarios. Children that are very good at separating their languages, might need 50 words per language to start forming sentences in the respective languages. They might start forming sentences in language A, while using mostly single words in language B. They might also start speaking sentences in both, but use code mixing (more about that below).
The other scenario has to do with children that still use both (or the strongest) languages, regardless of their surrounding. These children might need 50 words in total (across all languages) to start forming sentences. These sentences might be mostly in one of the languages, or the child combines words from all their languages into one sentence.
Regardless of the scenario, bilingual children should start making sentences (in at least their best language) at roughly the same time as monolingual children. There might be a small difference, but should still fall within the “normal range” of 1;6–2;6 years.

Some aspects of normal bilingual development are transfer, code mixing and code switching. As sentences are now formed, those aspects become more apparent. I will explain all three aspects in short.

Firstly transfer is the having elements of language B into language A (and vice versa). This process is subconscious and can be negative (interference) or positive. With negative transfer things like different pronunciation, using the grammar of language B, and ways to make words plural result in an incorrect use of language A. With positive transfer there is no change or don’t make a substantial difference (e.g. when both grammars are similar). An example of this can be the pronunciation of “r”. In Spanish, different versions of “r” in a word can change the meaning of a word. In English however, a word doesn’t change regardless of how the “r” is pronounced. A Spanish speaker talking in English might have positive (or neutral) transfer, while an English speaker will have negative transfer (or great difficulty) in Spanish.

Code mixing and code switching are often used as the same thing but can be distinguished. Both are combinations of languages within the speech. Code mixing is combining languages within a certain word or sentence. Elements or words from language A are used in a word or sentence that is spoken in language B. Code switching is combining languages on a bigger scale and requires a better understanding of both grammars. A sentence can be started in language A and ended in language B, with correct grammar in both parts (e.g. when quoting something in another language). Another possibility is that certain language A words are used as a loan-word and put into a full language B sentence (including changing the loan-word to suit the correct grammar).

As this stage is still before the age of 3, researchers generally don’t speak of second language acquisition or sequential bilingualism. Children might have a short silent period or speak mainly in language 1. As most children will have a meta linguistic awareness around this age, they will quickly adapt to their environment and use the desired language.

Similar to bilingual first language acquisition, aspects like transfer, code mixing and code switching can be seen. Where in BFLA this goes both ways, in SLA this often means elements of language 1 are seen when using language 2.

Originally published at https://intentionallybilingual.weebly.com.