Language development from 12 to 24 months

Between 12 and 18 months

This is the problem-solving stage and so the infant:
  • will use trial and error in his actions and in his communication;
  • pronounce monosyllabic words, e.g., no, go, which may be duplicated into two syllables, e.g., mama, wawa;
  • will often overextend word meanings (e.g., doggie can refer to any animal with four legs);
  • communication depends heavily on face, voice and gestures;
  • will produce one and sometimes two word utterances;
  • begins to sort out specific words from general words (e.g., duck vs bird).

Between 18 and 24 months
  • The child can store memories of actions or vocalizations and reproduce these later. This is called deferred imitation, e.g., Aunt: What sound does a dog make?
    Child: Woof, woof
    Aunt: What sound does a cow make?
    Child: Moo, moo
    Aunt: What sound does a duck make?
    Child: Quack, quack
  • The child continues to learn to describe the actions of objects and other people through language;
  • She begins to produce multi-word utterances and uses the conjunction 'and';
  • The language can be interpreted at the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic levels:
    • Syntactic describes the way words are combined e.g., mummy sock (to describe an object belong to a person), daddy go (to describe a person and the action they undertake), more milk (to request);
    • Semantic describes the meaning of words – at this stage the child uses words to identify the characteristics/attributes of things, ownership and possession (e.g, big truck, my doggy). She is also beginning to use words to express emotion;
    • Pragmatic describes the use of language to achieve particular purposes. The child begins to follow some of the more complex rules of conversation (using the name of his conversational partner, getting that person's attention before talking, beginning to take turns when speaking)