Syntactic Development in Children

Although babies learn how to speak at different

rates, almost all little ones learn how to form
words and sentences in a similar order,
beginning with single syllables and graduating
to more complex ideas like tense. In just a few
short years, a child goes from no language at
all to forming cohesive sentences following
grammatical rules. This process is called
syntactic development
 General Information

• Syntax refers to the rules used to combine words to

make sentences; syntactic development is the way
children learn these rules. Syntactic development is
measured using MLU, or mean length of utterance,
which is basically the average length of a child’s
sentence; this increases as a child gets older.
 General Information

• According to Jean Berko Gleason’s book, “The

Development of Language,” kids go through five stages
of syntactic development which were identified by Roger
Brown in 1973. Children automatically develop syntactic
rules without explicit instruction; they learn it simply by
listening to others speak around them.
 Stage 1

Age limit : 12 to 26 months

In Stage I, just after they have built up a 50 to 60 word
vocabulary, children acquire the ability to produce the Stage
I sentence types. The column headed 'communicative intent'
includes examples of what the child might have said if they
were mature enough to talk in full sentences.
Operations of Reference Examples Communicative Intent
Nomination That car That is a car.
Recurrence More juice There is more juice.
Negation - denial No wee wee I did not do a wee wee.
Negation - rejection No more I don't want more.
Negation - non-existence Birdie go The bird has gone.
Semantic Relations Examples Communicative Intent
Action + Agent Daddy kiss Daddy is kissing.
Action + Object Push truck Pushing the truck.
Agent + Object Man hat The man (wears) a hat.
Action + Locative In bath I am in the bath.
Entity + Locative Dolly bed The dolly is on the bed.
Possessor + Possession (object) Kim car Kim's car.
Entity + Attributive Water hot The water is hot.
Demonstrative + Entity This train THIS train (not THAT train).
 Stage I

• According to Gleason, these primitive

sentences mostly consist of nouns, verbs and
adjectives with a lack of important
grammatical elements.
 Stage II

• As children move through the five stages of syntactic

development, their sentences grow in length. According to
speech language pathologist Caroline Bowen, kids begin to
learn grammatical elements in Stage II, usually between 27
and 30 months. Most toddlers acquire these elements in the
same order, beginning with the present progressive -ing, then
the prepositions in and on.
 Stage III

• Bowen writes that Stage III includes the acquisition of

irregular past tense words, such as:
• For example, a toddler will often say “goed” or “foots” before
he says, “went” or “feet.” But this shows understanding of the
rules; it's another automatically learned phenomenon. Till 34
months they also understand the use of is and are.
 Stage IV
• 35-40 months
• During this stage, children learn the use of articles, regular
past tense, and third person regular present tense.
• Examples: A ball on the book. (Articles)
• She jumped. (Regular past tense)
• The puppy chews it. Jason likes it. (Third person regular
present tense)
 Stage V

• From 41 months on, children reach Stage V, which includes using

contractions, such as:
• combining them with other verbs (She’s ready.)
• forming contractions with them (He’s going)
• According to Bowen, kids have usually mastered all of these stages
by 52 months and should be able to form four to five word sentences
around age 4.