Telegraphic speech, according to

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

and

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...

, is speech during the two-word stage of

language acquisition Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language. In other words, it is how human beings gain the ability to be aware of language, to understand it, and to produce and use words and s ...

in children, which is laconic and efficient. It follows the Holophrastic speech stage of

in children.

Background

The name derives from the fact that someone sending a

telegram Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas pi ...

was generally charged by the word. To save money, people typically wrote their telegrams in a very compressed style, without conjunctions or articles.

Term in anthropology and developmental psychology

As children develop language, they speak similarly: when a child says "cat here", it is understood that the child means "cat is here", omitting the copula. The words dropped in this style of speech are

closed class In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech ( abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are ...

or function words. In the field of

, telegraphic speech is defined as a form of communication consisting of simple two-word long sentences often composed of a noun and a verb that adhere to the grammatical standards of the culture's language, with the ordering dependent on the language's conventions on word order (i.e. subject-verb-object for English). For example, an English-speaking child would say "Give cupcake" to express that they would like a cupcake rather than "Cupcake give", as a Turkish- or Japanese-speaking child would. Researchers have noted that this period of

occurs some time between the ages of 18 and 36 months and is present not just in English-speaking cultures, but can be found worldwide.

Clinical term

In adults, regression to telegraphic speech may indicate a neurological problem such as

multiple sclerosis Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease resulting in damage to myelinthe insulating covers of nerve cellsin the brain and spinal cord. As a demyelinating disease, MS disrupts the nervous system's ability to Action potential, transmit ...

. Telegraphic speech is also common in non-fluent aphasia ( Broca's aphasia), which is caused by a stroke damaging the posterior-inferior frontal lobe. It is also a potential symptom of schizophrenia, as a manifestation of manneristic speech.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Telegraphic Speech Language acquisition acquisition-stub

Background

Term in anthropology and developmental psychology

Clinical term

See also

References