stage 4: the telegraphic stage

Question 1

how long does the telegraphic stage last?

Answer 1

24-36 months

Question 2

what happens in the telegraphic stage?

Answer 2

utterances become longer; children convey ideas through content words and an emerging
use of grammatical words, which are often omitted as they are not needed for meaning.

Question 3

what is a content word? (feature)

Answer 3

• words that carry the most meaning when we speak (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs)

Question 4

what is a grammatical word? (feature)

Answer 4

• needed for structural accuracy but not for meaning so are often omitted/gradually acquired.
• these include conjunctions, pronouns etc.

Question 5

what is a virtuous error? (feature)

Answer 5

errors in morphology/grammatical mistakes that have some underlying logic to demonstrate that learning has taken place (eg. I runned, three mens).

Question 6

what is syntactic inversion? (feature)

Answer 6

reversal of the normal order of the words and phrases in a sentence, learnt when forming a
question (eg. ‘I can eat the cake’ (S;MAV;V;O) becomes ‘Can I eat the cake?’ (MAV;S;V;O)) or a placing of an adjective after a noun.