General Language Milestones: Semantics B-5

Question 1

First words used for names of familiar people and objects; communication games and routines; to talk about appearance, disappearance, recurrence

Answer 1

8 to 12 months

Question 2

Semantic roles expressed in one word speech:

• Agent
• Object
• Action
• Location
• Possession
• Rejection
• Disappearance
• Nonexistence
• Denial

Answer 2

12 to 18 months

Question 3

Words are understood outside of routine games; still need contextual support for lexical comprehension

Answer 3

12 to 18 months

Question 4

Average exp. vocab size 200 to 300 words

Answer 4

24 months

Question 5

Understands single words for objects that are out of sight

Answer 5

18 to 24 months

BS 1

Question 6

Understands two word relations similar to those that are expressed (see the Roger Brown common semantic relations)

Answer 6

18 to 24 months

BS 1

Question 7

Understanding and use of questions about object (what?), people (who?), basic events (what x doing? where X going?)

Answer 7

24 to 30 months

BS 2

Question 8

Use and understanding of why questions

Understanding and use of basic spatial terms (in, on,under, etc.)

Answer 8

30 to 36 months (2.5 to 3)

BS 3

Question 9

Semantic relations between adjacent and conjoined sentences include (note how it is now about how the sentences are being used together):

• Additive
• Temporal
• Causal
• Contrastive

Use of basic color words

Use and understanding of basic kinship terms

Answer 9

36 to 42 months (3 to 3.5)

BS 4

Question 10

Use and understanding of “when” and “how” ?s

Understanding of words for basic shapes

Use and understanding of basic size vocab (big, small)

Use of conjunctions and, because to conjoin sentences

Answer 10

42 to 48 months (3.5 to 4)

Late BS 4 early BS 5

Question 11

Knowledge of letter names and sounds emerge

Knowledge of numbers and counting emerges

Use of conjunctions when, so, because, if

Answer 11

48 to 60 months (4 to 5)

BS 5