Education.com

Stages of Morphosyntactic Development in Young Children’s Language (page 2)

By S.A. Raver

Pearson Allyn Bacon Prentice Hall

In the table below find an outline of five stages of morphosyntactical development in preschooler's language. This table shows morphosyntactic characteristics with associated examples from 12 months of age to 46 months of age.

Stage	Age (months)	Morphosyntactic Characteristics	Examples
I	12–26	Single-word utterances and multiword combinations based on word-order/ semantic-syntactic rules.	“Eat cookie” (action + object) “Daddy shoe” (possessor + possession) “Doggie bed” (entity + locative)
II	27–30	The appearance of grammatical morphemes.	“Mommy driving” (present progressive-ing) “I love dogs” (regular plural –s)
III	31–34	Simple sentence forms Development of noun and verb phrases with the addition of grammatical morphemes, quantifiers, adjectives, and adverbs. Development of different sentence types (declarative, interrogative, imperative, and negative).	“Dave eats banana” (subject–verb–object) “Mommy’s car” (possessive nouns) “Diana has three cats” (quantifiers) “She has a blue cap” (adjectives) “She runs quickly” (adverbs) “I’m eating ice cream” (declarative) “What are you eating?” (interrogative) “Throw me the ball, please” (imperative) “I don’t want that” (negative)
IV	35–40	The appearance of embedded phrases and subordinate clauses within a sentence. Subordinate clauses are introduced by conjunction words (after, although, before, until, while, when) or relative pronouns (who, which, whom, that).	“The woman in the blue dress is my teacher” (embedded phrase) “The boy we met last week is in my class” (embedded clause)
V	41–46	The appearance of sentences conjoined with conjunction words (and, if, because, when, but, after, before, so).	“I play the violin and she plays the piano” “She cried because she fell down the stairs” “We went to school after we ate breakfast” “I like fruit but I don’t like vegetables”

Early Childhood Special Education - 0 to 8 Years: Strategies for Positive Outcomes
Buy this book »

Excerpt from Early Childhood Special Education - 0 to 8 Years: Strategies for Positive Outcomes, by S.A. Raver, 2009 edition, p. 127.

© ______ 2009, Merrill, an imprint of Pearson Education Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The reproduction, duplication, or distribution of this material by any means including but not limited to email and blogs is strictly prohibited without the explicit permission of the publisher.

Next Article: Language Characteristics of Primary-Aged Students with Language Impairment

Add your own comment

Ask a Question

Have questions about this article or topic? Ask

150 Characters allowed

Related Questions

Q:

In what grade children learn second language? (no answers)

Q:

how does the play of children relate to cognitive development? (no answers)

See More Questions

Today on Education.com

SEASONAL

This Memorial Day, take a moment to bone up on your U.S. military history! Here's everything you need to honor soldiers past and present.

Celebrate Memorial Day! Worksheets and Activities About American History

WORKBOOKS

Check out our new batch of May workbooks, just in time for summer!

May Workbooks are Here!

WE'VE GOT A GREAT ROUND-UP OF ACTIVITIES PERFECT FOR LONG WEEKENDS, STAYCATIONS, VACATIONS ... OR JUST SOME GOOD OLD-FASHIONED FUN!

We've got a great round-up of activities perfect for long weekends, staycations, vacations ... or just some good old-fashioned fun!

Get Outside! 10 Playful Activities

Washington Virtual Academies

Tuition-free online school for Washington students.

Learn More

Popular Articles

Wondering what others found interesting? Check out our most popular articles.