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Summary of School-Age Child's Development of Language Form

By R.E. Owens, Jr.
Pearson Allyn Bacon Prentice Hall

Language development in the school-age period consists of simultaneous expansion of existing syntactic forms and acquisition of new forms. A child continues with internal sentence expansion by elaborating the noun and verb phrases. Conjoining and embedding functions also expand. Additional structures include the passive form.

Age in Years Syntax/Morphology Phonology
5
  • Produces short passives with lost, left, and broken
  
6
  • Comprehends parallel embedding, imperative commands, -man and -er suffix
  • Uses many plural nouns
  • Identifies syllables
  • Masters rule for /s/, /z/, and /əz/ pluralization
  • Is able to manipulate sound units to rhyme and produce stems
7
  • Comprehends because
  • Follows adult ordering of adjectives
  •  Recognizes unacceptable sound sequences
8
  • Uses full passives (80% of children)
  • Uses -er suffix to mark initiator of an action (teacher)
  • Is able to judge grammatical correctness separate from semantics
  •  Is able to produce all American English sounds and blends
9
  • Comprehends and uses tell and promise
  
10
  • Comprehends and uses ask
  • Comprehends because consistently
  • Uses pronouns to refer to elements outside immediate sentence
  • Understands difference between definitely, probably, and possibly
  
11
  • Comprehends if and though
  • Creates much with mass nouns
  • Uses -er for instrument (eraser)
  
12  
  •  Uses stress contrasts

 

Excerpted From:

Language Development: An Introduction
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Excerpt from Language Development: An Introduction, by J.E. Owens, Jr., 2008 edition, p. 338.

© ______ 2008, Allyn & Bacon, 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.

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