A Developmental Perspective on Language Acquisition 35The next stage of language development, called Later
Syntactic-Semantic Complexity, occurs between the ages of three-
and-a-half to seven years (Gerber and Prizant 2000). During
this stage, the children produce multiverb utterances such as “I
have to go now” and grammatically complex sentences such as
“I have to go now because it’s late.” At this stage children use
this relatively advanced language to talk about more cognitively
sophisticated notions as well as events that are removed in time
and place. In addition, they understand questions with the
terms “how” and “when” and follow multistep directions. They
comprehend more locative concepts such as “behind” and “in
front of ” and the temporal terms “before” and “after” (Gerber and
Prizant 2000). By the end of the early childhood years, children
understand between 3000 and 8000 words (Miller and Paul 1995).
Children at this stage also produce and understand more
varied kinds of discourse including narratives. Children’s first
stories emerge in a conversational context in interaction with
another person during the preschool years forming a type
of social monologue. Eventually, by school age, these stories
develop into what we typically think of as narratives with a
clear beginning, middle, and end. Children’s earliest narratives
are based on their personal, scripted knowledge derived from
previously experienced events such as a doctor’s visit or birthday
party. Children’s later narratives eventually have a defined
structure called “story grammar” (Stein and Glenn 1979) with
one or more characters and a plot that relates past, present, and
future events. The structure of children’s narratives varies with
their cultural-linguistic background and the stories of children
from diverse backgrounds might not adhere to this pattern. Melzi
and Schick (2017) provide a discussion on cultural variation in
narrative development.
Children achieve the final stage of language development,
referred to as Communicative Competence, from 7 to 12 years