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The 5 Stages of Prelinguistic Production

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The 5 Stages of Prelinguistic Production

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Take a look at this handout if you want to ensure your child's first word meets all criteria for a true first word!

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Stage 2: Transition from Sounds to Words (1-2 years)

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Stage 2: Transition from Sounds to Words (1-2 years)

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This stage is the start of linguistic development and begins around 1-2 years of age. The linguistic phase begins when your child says their true first word. There are three criteria needed before knowing that this was a true first word; please see the post below for these criteria.

The “First-50-Word” Stage starts with your child’s first word and ends at the two-word phrases stage which is at around 18-24 months. There is a gap between your child’s receptive language (what they understand) and expressive language (what they say). When your child produces 50 words, they usually understand about 200 words.

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In this stage, we see the most growth of your child’s sounds and language. From 18 months old to about 24-30 months old, your child’s expressive language triples, so they go from about 50 words, to 150-300 words and also start using two word phrases. By kindergarten, your child’s vocabulary increases to about 8,000 words and they have learned almost all speech sounds.

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Stage 4: Mastery of Speech and Literacy (5+ years)

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Stage 4: Mastery of Speech and Literacy (5+ years)

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In this stage, your child’s perceptual skills continue developing and they can accurately recognize words in noise. There will still be some sounds, such as “r”, “z”, “v”, “th”, etc., that may still be developing.

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Stage 1: Foundations for speech (0-1.5 years)

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Stage 1: Foundations for speech (0-1.5 years)

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This stage is when your child is acquiring the foundations for speech. These are described as perception and prelinguistic productions (this has five sub-stages). To learn more about these stages, see the posts below titled "Perceptual Skills" and "The Five Stages of Prelinguistic Production".

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At this stage, specifically with later babbling, your child's productions will mostly be "open syllables". This means their syllables end with vowels. In the following syllable structure examples, "C" stands for "consonant" and "V" stands for "vowel".

Syllable Structure = Example Production
1. CV = "Ba"
2. V = "A"
3. VCV = "Aba"
4. CVCV = "Mama"

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Your child begins to produce more complex syllable structures at this stage (by the age of two). This means that they are likely producing closed syllables which means the syllable ends in a consonant. Again, in the following examples, "C" stands for "consonant" and "V" stands for "vowel". During the First-50-Word stage, syllable structures such as CV, VC, and CVC are common.
Your child might also start producing clusters. Clusters are essentially two or more consonants grouped together and not separated by a vowel. Examples include "br" as in "bread" and "ch" as in "chair.

Syllable Structure = Example Production
1. VC = "am"
2. CVC = "bot"
3. CVCC = "card"
*In this example we see "rd" which is a consonant cluster.*

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This is a chart by Eric Sander that shows children's average age when different consonants are acquired/being produced.
Some word examples include:

1. "The" for the voiced "th"

2. "Bath" for the voiceless "th"

3. "Closure" for the "zh" sound

4. "Jungle" for the "ng" sound

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Some skills are not mastered until, or after, the age of 11! These include understanding intonation (rise and fall of speech) and pauses in other's speech which convey meaning as well as contrastive stress which is used to point out differences between one thing and another as well as to bring out a specific word in a sentence.
Overall phonological development continues until around age 17!

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There are 4 stages of phonological development. They are shown in the yellow boxes below. These stages are classified as prelinguistic behaviors and linguistic development. Prelinguistic behaviors refer to sounds your child makes before their first word, while linguistic development stages start at your child’s first word.