Two-Word Stage

The two-word stage in child language acquisition

It is undeniable that toddlers at the two-word stage can produce meaningful utterances that make sense grammatically, however, their speech is still clearly unlike adult speakers. They still have a limited vocabulary as they haven't developed the ability to use function words such as articles, auxiliary verbs and subject pronouns.

A toddler's development of syntax can be observed at this stage from the increasingly complex words that they put together to communicate with adults. They begin to learn how to express semantic relations with actions, objects, entities, and locations, and also start forming commands and questions.

Two-word stage: examples

Some examples of two-word phrases spoken by children are 'read book', 'daddy sleep', and 'cat shiny'.

A major component of language development comes from toddlers repeating words or phrases that they hear adults use. In this process, they will negate the function words that adults use and only use the keywords.

Fig. 2 - Children learn increasingly complex words at the two-word stage.

Example of pivot words in the two-word stage

Children follow simple rules to generate their two-word utterances. They tend to build phrases around a single stable word rather than choosing two terms of the same status.

Their phrases are built around 'pivot' words and open words. Pivot words are high-frequency words that are typically determiners or prepositions and are always in a fixed position (either the first or second word). They can be used in conjunction with a wide variety of words, making them a useful part of a child's vocabulary. ²

Open words make up the content of the two-word phrase and are often a noun or a verb. These words can be interchanged as the first or second word of a phrase and may also be used in isolation.

The example word 'all gone' represents a pivot that's used as a first word. A toddler may use the word in a variety of situations: 'all gone sweets', 'all gone bread' or 'all gone toy'. It is unlikely for the toddler to use the pivot word as the second word of a phrase, which is composed of an open word.

Second-word pivots are used less frequently than first-word pivots. The word 'off' can be used in a variety of ways: 'TV off', 'light off' or 'shoe off '. Similarly to first-word pivots, a child is unlikely to use a second-word pivot as the first word in a phrase.

Interpreting the meaning of two-word phrases

A toddler at this stage will find it difficult to express their thoughts clearly to adults since their vocabulary limits them. Toddlers can assign meaning to words in several ways, which is difficult to interpret with confidence because of the lack of syntactic markings in the language.³

A word referring to a whole object

A word that a child uses will refer to the entire object, not to any of the constituent parts.

It could be that the toddler isn't able to perceive the difference between the plants and flowers, or the toddler may settle for using the word flower because there aren't any alternatives in their vocabulary.

Fig. 3 - A child may refer to any plant they see as a flower.

Considering the context

It can be difficult to figure out what a toddler is trying to say without considering the broader context. Adults must pay close attention to the child's body language when they are trying to speak as they may provide clues by looking or pointing to a relevant object.

The context is equally important for the toddler that is trying to understand what the adult is saying.

Common mistakes in the two-word stage

Toddlers haven't yet achieved full command over the pronunciation of words and they will display common errors in their speech.

Assimilation

The pronunciation of a word is affected by a particular sound in the word. A toddler will replace a difficult sound with a sound that is more familiar with.

Toddlers often struggle with bilabials, which are consonant sounds made by pressing the lips together, such as p, b, and m sounds. They find it much easier to produce the same sounds in a word so they tend to assimilate when they come across difficult words to pronounce. If there's a bilabial sound in a word, a toddler may use the same bilabial in another part of the word since it's easier to pronounce.

Gliding

Gliding is when liquid sounds (l and r) are replaced with glide sounds (w and y). It's a normal part of a child's language development process and usually disappears at 5 years old.

Cluster reduction

A child may have difficulty pronouncing a cluster of consonants in a word and reduce it by one or more consonants.

Weak syllable deletion

This is when an unstressed syllable in a word is not articulated.

Stops

Consonant sounds that have a long airflow are replaced by sounds that have a stopped airflow.

• Oller. D., et al., Infant babbling and speech, Journal of Child Language. 1976
• JG de Villiers, PA de Villiers, Language Acquisition, Vol. 16. 1980.
• Lightfoot et al., The Development of Children. 2008.