A good example that Sophie is more advanced both cognitively and grammatically, is her use of the questioning word, “why” in response to a piece of the puzzle not fitting. This word, along with “when” is not normally used by children early on in their speech development due to the sense of past and future needed. It also seems that she is unable to phrase certain questions, She is able to use “what”, though it is unclear as to what the completed question would have been, as something occurs outside of the conversation, possibly one of them replaces or removes a piece of the puzzle, causing Sophie to change her question into a statement with an informative function (according to Michael Halliday), or according to John Dore, a protest - “that not go in there.”
If we look at the very basic aspects of the extract, Sophie seems to now be aware of turn taking and the conversation is more fluid than Extract 1. Sophie’s mother does not need to initiate or try and prompt her daughter in order to gain a response, but they are given more readily. She does however continue to use certain aspects of care giver speech in order to keep the conversation moving or to get Sophie involved. In this case she uses tag questions, “let’s turn all the pieces over shall we?”. In this phrase, although it’s not easily noticed, due to colloquial elision, she is also using inclusive pro-nouns.
At 36 months, Sophie is now at the telegraphic stage, although she does use a variety of verbs, and pro-nouns, she has a tendency to omit the functional words and keep those which are relevant to context, “when you been tidying up” in comparison to “when you have been tidying up”. This is not a conscious selection for Sophie, as to which words she uses to express the meaning but (according to Maggie Bowring) are likely to be how she has heard the words used in sentences, i.e. the functional words in sentence are generally stressed, and so are therefore the words children pick up on and assimilate into their own language/vocabulary.
This extract shows how parents tend to utilise care giver speech in order to try and influence their children’s grammar and language; when Sophie omits the auxiliary verb in the phrase, “that not go in there”, her mother responds with the verb that should have been present, “does it?”, and it is likely that “does” would have been stressed, in the possibility that Sophie will pick it up.
Further evidence that Sophie is beginning to develop more advanced language skills, is her use of negation when discussing with her mother where the jigsaw pieces go, “that not go in there”. Sophie is demonstrating what Peccei said to be the end of the telegraphic stage, there is the absence of the auxiliary verbs in the clause, (which in this case would be “does not”), however in this extract she is also showing a higher understanding of syntax. In comparison to Peccei’s theory that the children place the negative marker either at the beginning or end of the clause, Sophie has used it where it would be correct should she have also used the auxiliary verb.
According the Peccei although she still refers to her mother as “mummy” initially she is also beginning to refer to her as “you” “when you been tidying up” , so instead of merely using 3rd person pro-nouns, she is also advancing towards the 2nd stage of development, referring to herself as “me”, “me did good – me did some of those mummy”.