There are altogether six stages in speech and language development, namely pre-verbal stage, babbling stage, holophrastic stage, two-word utterances, telegraphic speech and post-telegraphic stage. A baby goes through all this stages before they know how to communicate.

Pre-verbal stage is also known as the stage that a baby does or says anything before meaningful words are used. The pre-verbal stage occurs during the infant is zero to six months. At zero to two months, reflexive vocalisations occur in baby such as crying, coughing, gestures, grunting and burps. Reflexive vocalisations are involuntary responses to a physical state of a baby. For instance, baby cries when they feel hungry or uncomfortable. At two to four months, baby starts to coo or laugh in comfortable states. During four to six months, baby tries to test his or hers vocal apparatus. This stage is called as vocal play. Vocal play is same as cooing but the cooing is prolonged. Baby tends to produce loud and soft sounds.

Babbling is the second stage in speech and language development which occurs from six to ten months Babbling is the extended repetition of syllables such as ma-ma-ma, pa-pa-pa, ba-ba-ba. At seven to nine months, baby will be experiencing canonical babbling, in which they try to repeat babbles and variegate babbles with different consonants and vowels. Baby babbles either when he or she is alone or when interacting with adults. The babbling is bi-directional when adults respond to infant’s babble. Babbling slowly begins to include sounds from native language. The purpose of babbling is to aid baby in practising speech-like sounds, intonation patterns and to gain control of his or hers speech organs. The last stage of babbling is called jargon state in which babbling overlay with the starting of meaningful speech phase.

Holophrastic stage is one-word utterance stage which occurs during the age of ten to eighteen months. In this stage, children begin to express their needs and ideas in single words, which usually are expressed in a sentence. At this phase, children comprehend words twice as fast as they produce. Children expand their vocabulary through interacting with environment and experiences. As an illustration, if the child’s father is fat, the child may call out other fat men as ‘papa’, guessing all fat men his or her father. In this instance it shows that the child starts to understand the meaning of words although not fully. The significance of this stage is the ability for a child to grab attention or to get something they want or desire.

A two-word utterance is the fourth stage in the speech and language development which takes place ranging from 18 to two years in a child. The rapid increase of language after or during 18 months is called as the naming explosion. The child at this age tries to convey the needs and message through a

combination of two- word sentences. These sentences are plain and contain a subject word and a predicate word. For example, ‘mama, juice’ rather than using ‘mama, I want juice’. Another example would be if the child wants to go to park, the child would say ‘mom, park’. Although at this stage the child uses

two-words, he or she is still able to put the words in order which resembles the order of a complete sentence.

Telegraphic stage follows after the two-word utterance stage. In telegraphic stage, a child combines words to produce simple sentences without using grammatical elements. Essential words which could convey meaning only is used. For

exemplification, ‘Want more water’, ‘Mommy go work’. The objective of telegraphic speech is to ask questions, express complex needs and talk about events and things.

Post telegraphic stage is the last stage in language development. It is also known as speech emergence. The post- telegraphic stage happens at age of 30 months to four years. This is the stage at which a child progressively merges words in a correct order. At this point, complex sentences are being used with basic grammar mistakes. The three main common errors are under-extension, over-extension

and over-generalization. Under-extension is using the word narrowly. For a child at this stage, ‘puppy’ is referred to the family puppy and ‘car’ is used to refer only to the child’s family car. Over-extension is using a word way too generally than it should be. For instance, ‘car’ is referred to any vehicles like lorry, truck and bus by the child. Over-generalization is applying general rules to words

that are exceptions. A child might say ‘I have two foots’ instead of ‘I have two feet’ and “I goed to park’ rather than using ‘I went to park’.