How a baby might develop language

Katherine Nelson(1973) identified four categories that the first 50 words learnt by a child within the first year of their life could be grouped into . These categories are naming, actions/events,describing/ modifying and personal/ social words. The first 50 words learnt by a child are content words and not function words; content words have open word classes and function words have closed word classes.

A baby may develop naming words such as; "book" and "socks" because they are mainly everyday objects that the baby is associated with on a daily basis in a household, thus the semantics of the words are important for the child as they do come across these objects in everyday life. Also, within the first year of a child's life, their language is not very developed. The phonology of these words learnt is simplistic and each words only has one or two syllables.This suggests that these words are easier to learn for the child.

Moreover, the action words learnt in the first year of a baby's life are crucial, for example; "poo" and "cuddle"  these type of action words help the baby communicate with their parents to aware them on what it needs as it isn't independant at a young age.

The social words learnt are all words that help the child communicate in a basic conversation; "yes" or "no" these also help the child to communicate with it's parents to understand what it needs or wants. Also, the social words developed immediately help with their social skills for when they grow older; " bye-bye" and "hiya" this helps the child later in life in social situations. This could also be seen as politenes, "ta" and "please"; as society is a very polite, the child needs to learn how to adress people in a formal manner to help them converse with different people as they grow older.

I think a baby might develop describing and modifying words to help it understand what their preferences are; "hot"and "nice" this helps the child decide what they like and don't like, and may help their parents to understand too. Again, these words do not have many syllables, therefore, the phonology is simplistic for the child to pronounce and learn.