Why is my 2 year old not talking yet in sentences?

Expressive language in the toddler period can be closely linked to early speech development. Some children find it difficult to build their sentences when people are not even understanding their single word attempts. Speech delays can impact on grammatical development which is an important aspect of expressive language development. For example, the /s/ sound is important for sentence development. The /s/ sound indicates how many (cat vs cats), ownership (Dad’s keys, tells us an action is happening “The boy’s running”). While two year old children might not be able to say the /s/ sound 100% correctly, they will often have an approximation of the sound to mark grammatical words.

One question to ask is whether the two year old or older child is using their spoken words for a range of social needs (e.g., asking questions, telling you things, commenting, rejecting, requesting objects, requesting actions). As social language builds the children need to develop sentences to help express their new ideas. If a child’s social language is not developing (e.g., early signs of autism) to age expected levels, they may not have the drive to build sentence skills.

If a 2 year old or older children only say “thing words” (i.e. names objects such as nose, eyes, ball, cup, table, car) it is hard for them to formulate early sentences. You can express a meaning of ownership with two thing words (e.g., car key) however without action words, describing words, pronouns it is hard for them to build their expressive language skills. Just saying “ball” can not express as much even 2-word sentences (kick ball, my ball, bounce ball, big ball, where ball).