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Brown's Stages
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF MORPHOLOGY AND SYNTAX
 Copyright © Caroline Bowen 1998 All rights reserved
Citing this article
This page contains an article about language development. Cite it as:
Bowen, C. (1998). Brown's Stages: The development of morphology and syntax, Retrieved from http://www.speech-language-therapy.com/BrownsStages.htm on (date).

Introduction
"Brown's Stages" were identified by Roger Brown 1925-1997 and described in his classic book (Brown,1973). The stages provide a framework within which to understand and predict the path that normal expressive language development usually takes, in terms of morphology and syntax (defined below). They are used extensively by speech-language pathologists when they perform a structural analysis of a sample of a child's spoken language. A structural analysis does not include a measure of a child's development in the area of the clarity of pronunciation of speech sounds. Such an analysis or assessment is done in addition to a structural analysis, and comprises a phonetic assessment of the speech sounds a child can produce, and a phonological assessment of the way those sounds are organised into speech patterns.

Morphology
In Linguistics, morphology is the branch of grammar devoted to the study of the structure or forms of words, primarily through the use of the morpheme construct. It is traditionally distinguished from syntax.

Syntax
In Linguistics, syntax is a traditional term for the study the rules governing the combination of words to form sentences. It is distinguished from morphology, which is the study of word structure.

Morpheme
A morpheme is a unit of meaning. It does not necessarily relate to the "word count" or "syllable count" of an utterance. Here is an example of the way morphemes are counted in the words happy, unhappy, unhappily, and unhappiest, and the sentence 'He meets the unhappiest boys: 

happy  'Happy’ is ONE WORD, it has TWO SYLLABLES (ha-ppy), and because it contains only one unit of meaning it counts as ONE MORPHEME.
unhappy If you add another unit of meaning, such as ‘un’, to make 'happy' into  ‘unhappy’ you still have ONE WORD, but THREE SYLLABLES (‘un-ha-ppy’) and TWO MORPHEMES (‘un’ and ‘happy’)
unhappily 'Unhappily' is ONE WORD, FOUR SYLLABLES (un-happ-i-ly), and THREE MORPHEMES ('un', 'happy' and 'ly').

unhappiest 'Unhappiest' is also ONE WORD, FOUR SYLLABLES, and THREE MORPHEMES.

"He meets the unhappiest boys" is 1-sentence, it has 5-words, and 8-syllables, and it contains nine morphemes:

He   meet   s   the   un   happi   est   boy   s  

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

"The girl's mother slowly filled the bucket with water" is 1-sentence, it has 9-words, and 13-syllables, and it contains twelve morphemes.

The  girl s mother slow ly fill ed the bucket with  water
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
 

Brown's Stage I
Between 15 and 30 months, children are expected to have MLUm's (mean length of utterance measured in morphemes) of about 1.75 morphemes. Their MLUm’s gradually increase as they acquire more language. In Stage I, just after they have built up a 50 to 60 word vocabulary, children acquire the ability to produce the Stage I sentence types, outlined below. The column headed "communicative intent" includes examples of what the child might have said if they were mature enough to talk in full sentences.

 
STAGE I SENTENCE TYPES
Operations of Reference Examples Communicative Intent
Nomination that car That's a car.
Recurrence  more juice There is more juice.
Negation - denial no wee wee I didn't do a wee wee.
Negation - rejection no more I don't want more.
Negation - non-existence birdie go The bird has gone.
Semantic Relations Examples

Communicative Intent
Agent + Action     daddy kiss
doggie bite

Daddy is kissing.
The doggie is biting.
Action + Object push truck
give ball		 Pushing the truck.
Giving the ball.
Agent + Object mummy 'puter
man hat		 Mummy (is at the) computer.
The man (is wearing a) hat.
Action + Locative go pool
in bath		 (We) are going (to the) pool.
(I) am getting (in the) bath.
Entity + Locative teddy car
dolly bed		 Teddy (is in the) car.
Dolly (is on the) bed.
Possessor + Possession (object) Daddy car.
Baby toy.		 Daddy's car.
Baby's toy.
Entity + Attributive water hot
truck big		 (The) water (is) hot.
(The) truck (is) big.
Demonstrative + Entity     that train!
 (Not this one.)
(Not that one.)
 

Brown's Stages I to IV
 As children's MLUm increases their capacity to learn to use grammatical structures of greater complexity also increases. They move from Stage I into Stage II, where they learn to use "-ing" endings on verbs, "in", "on", and "-s" plurals. They then proceed to Stages III and IV.

 
Brown's Stage Age in months Mean MLUm MLUm range Morphological 
Structure		 Examples

Stage I

 15-30 1.75 1.5-2.0 Stage I sentence types See above
Stage II 28-36 2.25 2.0-2.5 (1) Present progressive 
(-ing endings on verbs)		 it going, 
falling off
 
       (2) in
 in box, 
pussy in
 
       (3) on
 on tree, 
birdie on head
 
       (4) -s plurals 
(regular plurals)		 my cars, 
two ties
Stage III 36-42 2.75 2.5-3.0 (5) Irregular past tense me fell down
 
       (6) -s possessives
 doggie's bone, 
mummy's hat
 
       (7) Uncontractible copula 
(the full form of the verb 
'to be' when it is the only 
verb in a sentence		 Are they there? 
Is she coming?
Stage IV 40-46 3.50 3.0-3.7 (8) Articles
 a book, 
the book
 
       (9) Regular past tense 
(-ed endings on verbs)		 she jumped, 
he laughed
 
       (10) Third person regular 
present tense		 he swims, 
man brings
Stage V 42-52+ 4.00 3.7-4.5 (11) Third person irregular
 she has, 
he does
 
       (12) Uncontractible auxiliary (the full form of the verb 'to be' when it is an auxiliary verb in a sentence) Are they 
swimming?
 
       (13) Contractible copula 
(the shortened form of the 
verb 'to be' when it is the only verb in a sentence		 She's ready. 
They're here.
 
       (14) Contractible auxiliary 
(the shortened form of the 
verb 'to be' when it is an auxiliary verb in a sentence)		 They're coming. 
He's going. 
Reference
Brown, R. (1973). A first language: The early stages. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.

 

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