First Language Acquisition in Milestones

After birth: Different forms of communication: Screaming, crying, ‘mooing’    

6 months: ‘Babbling’, more languagelike sounds (bababa, dada, mamama)  

11-16 months: Usage of words, simultaneous to babbling (individual point in time for each child when the usage of words exceeds the usage of babbling)    

2 years: Phonological progress, pronunciation differences occur (substitutions, deletion, simplification)  

• Syntax progress, sentence structure changes (from one-word sentences to combination of words and more complex sentence structures)  

• Morphology progress, children learn word classes and different word forms, this progress follows a certain pattern (e.g. content words develop more quickly than articles).    

Later in childhood: Pragmatics progress, understanding beyond literal meaning. “A child in learning a first language must learn to go beyond the literal meaning of utterances to understand the pragmatic force” (Gass & Selinker, 2008).