Child Language Acquisition Stages

Language acquisition for small children occur in stages...

• Babbling (apx 6 months) - Child produces the full range of possible speech sounds, even those which do not occur in speech heard in immediate environment, (the target language) and which s/he may later find "impossible" to reproduce when learning a foreign language.
• Holophrastic/One word stage (apx 12-14 months) - the words produced in holophrastic speech are not just any words. For example you get: cookie drink bad fast go yes/no But never: *in *the *and
• Two word stage (apx 24 months) - Still virtually no closed class words: some pronouns, especially me/you.
• Telegraphic Speech - no 3-word stage -basically English sentences, but still without closed class items. -some affixes (past tense marker, plural) -SVO word order (almost invariable) -constant changing/adding of rules

Sources: http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fall_1998/ling001/acq.html