How Sophie's language has developed from the telegraphic stage to the post telegraphic stage.

At the age of two years and four months, Sophie is in the early telegraphic stage. It is shown that Sophie has progressed from the two word stage as she is using a larger combination of words in each phrase and this is how I can tell she is still in the early telegraphic. She uses a large amount of possessive pronouns; ‘me’ with a minority of ‘I’. From Ursula Bellugi’s theory on development of pronouns you can tell she is in Stage 2 of pronouns, which is when the child uses me or I in a sentence but interchanges them. Sophie also proves Stage 1 or Bellugi’s other theory by using ‘no’ at the beginning of a phrase which also shows she has only just moved on from the two word stage “no I got any hoover”.

At three years and five months, Sophie’s language has developed into the post telegraphic stage. She has begun to use more complex pronouns such as ‘her’ and to further develop her language onto the definite article. Sophie has also moved onto stage 3 of Bellugi as she negates using an auxiliary verb. However, she still uses child-like language in the form of ellipsis where she says “corder” instead of recorder. Her use of language has also become more complex as she is now capable of correctly using modal auxiliaries and prepositions.

The main development in Sophie’s language is shown through her sentence structure. In the post telegraphic stage she has used a conjunction to form a compound sentence, “I want to ring up somebody and her won’t be there tomorrow”. In addition, her use of time phrases “after lunch” correlates which her developed language. This shows how her acquisition of language is linked to cognitive development.