Single Word Utterances


At some point between about six months and one year, many children have begun to create sounds that can be interpreted as meaningful words. From this point on, interpretation of their utterances can be made easier by understanding some initial schemes of categorization. It is important to remember that not all sounds will fall into these categories, and in fact may not be interpreted correctly at all because of erroneous probabilities inherent in the learning process. However, examining some of what others have interpreted can still be valuable in understanding some of what goes on during the initial stages of language development.

One way to interpret inital speech containing single word utterances is an understanding of what linguists have referred to as the "holophrastic" stage. It describes the idea that entire sentences may be embedded in a single word. Contextual clues like tone and gestures must then indicate or augment the meaning in each instance. It is common for children around 12 to 18 months of age to practice the speech patterns of this stage.

Although it may be difficult to determine what actual words a child is using while the sounds of language are still unfamiliar, a categorization scheme developed through studies conducted by Greenfield and Smith cast some familiarity on what they might mean (Atkinson, 141).

The first category is performance, which refers to object identification, indication of action, or a demand for something.

The second category is agent and/or object, which indicates the state of an agent or object. It may also simply refer to the recipient or instigator of action.

A third category is called a relation of entity, which refers to a position, location, presence, or absence of an agent or object.

The final category is modification of an event, which indicates an alteration of the present* state or a direct request for change within that state.
* Children will usually begin by stating that which is in the present and only later develop a cognition of potential or past states or events.

These researchers propose that all meaningful utterances at this stage in linguistic development will fall into one of the preceding categories. However, at any time in this development, children may experience a vocabulary explosion as they might learn on the average of about five new words a day (Susan Carey in Cattell, 78).