Pointing Toward Two-Word Speech in Young Children

Abstract

The first two-word combinations that a child produces are significant for two reasons. First, they reflect the child’s developing ability to express propositional information within a single communicative act. Rather than produce baby and drink in separate utterances, the child can now conjoin them within a single sentence, baby drink, thus explicitly signaling that there is a relationship between the two elements. Second, two-word combinations are the child’s first step into syntax. Independent of the language they are learning, children across the globe tend to produce the words that comprise their sentences in a consistent order. The particular orders they use mirror the orders provided by the language models they experience-baby drink rather than drink baby for an English-learning child. Even when the language a child is learning has relatively free word order, the child tends to adhere to a consistent pattern based on a frequently occurring adult pattern.

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