Language development from age 2 to 3

Between the ages of 2 and 3 years:

• The child develops an understanding of how words are used to express different semantic and syntactic relationships;

• At two and a half to three years of age, a child can modulate the meanings of her utterance, so will begin to use negatives ("no" sentences) and question forms (Yes/no or wh- questions), as well as imperatives ("Go bye-bye"). As her understanding of causality develops, she begins to use words such as "so" and "because";

• The child will start to use different verb forms (often over-applying rules e.g., runned);

• Pragmatically, the child will still struggle with turn-taking and with repairing conversation break-down, but she will begin to use politeness (e.g, please);

• The use of pronouns (e.g., he, she, it) develops and auxiliary verbs (e.g., she is running) are used more consistently. The child begins to extend the noun phrase (e.g., adding the use of words such as my, his, her, this, that, these, those, all, most, both, just, as well as adjectives such as big, small, yucky). The child will also use other conjunctions such as but, so, if and or.