Some Observations on the Linguistic Competence of a Two-Year-Old Child

Records were collected of the speech of a boy in the age range of 21 to 33 months. Attention was given to revealing utterances even if they were not statistically prevalent. The child showed a distinction between appropriate generalizations of a pattern and inappropriate ones, used mainly for humorous effects. The child's submission to his internal linguistic system at a given time was shown by insistence on using his own forms in exchanges with adults instead of the ones initiated by his addressee. His spontaneous substitutions of words in song frames and completions of the utterances of others showed a higher syntactic ability than was reflected in his normal speech. Development of some semantic abilities prior to their corresponding syntactic aspects was noted, as well as lags in the opposite direction. In phonology, the child seemed to have acquired the patterns of relations inherent in English before he had fully mastered the specific sounds. Different functions and types of speech are distinguished.