Brown's 14 Grammatical Morphemes — Acquisition Order Cheatsheet
Printable reference of Brown's (1973) 14 grammatical morphemes in acquisition order, with age of mastery, example markers, and clinical significance for each.
Overview
Brown's 14 morphemes are the backbone of morphosyntactic development between roughly 18 months and four years, and they are the single most commonly referenced list in school-based language-sample analysis. Brown established the order in his 1973 longitudinal study of three children (Adam, Eve, and Sarah) based on the point at which each morpheme reached 90% obligatory use, and the order has been replicated in multiple cross-sectional studies since. This cheatsheet is the printable wall copy — a one-page reference that sits above the SLP's desk and lets clinicians look up a morpheme, its expected age, and the typical error pattern without loading a calculator or thumbing through a manual.
This cheatsheet is a static reference intended for clinical and educational use. Every page is rendered from a peer-reviewed source and cited below the printable sheet. Clinicians must adapt to the individual patient and to the current edition of any cited instrument manual before clinical use.
How to use this sheet
Print this sheet once, laminate it, and keep it inside the language-sample binder. During transcription, scan the child's utterances for each of the 14 morphemes in order; mark any that are absent in obligatory contexts. If the child is producing morphemes 1-4 reliably but missing morphemes 5-8, the LSA is already pointing toward a Stage III-IV delay even before you run MLU. For IEP goal writing, the acquisition order is also the treatment target order — a four-year-old who hasn't mastered morpheme 7 (regular past tense) should have that morpheme targeted before morpheme 11 (uncontractible copula), not the reverse. Pair this cheatsheet with the MLU calculator and the Brown's stages lookup to get a full morphosyntactic snapshot in under ten minutes per sample.
“The order on this sheet is the Brown 1973 order, not the order on the CELF-5 Word Structure subtest. Clinicians who confuse the two end up writing goals that target morphemes the child is developmentally not ready for — and the goal doesn't budge for a full IEP cycle.”
Get the full analysis
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Printable sheet
| # | Morpheme | Age of mastery | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Present progressive -ing (no auxiliary) | 19–28 months | "baby crying", "doggie running" |
| 2 | Preposition "in" | 27–30 months | "ball in box" |
| 3 | Preposition "on" | 27–30 months | "cup on table" |
| 4 | Regular plural -s | 27–33 months | "cats", "dogs", "houses" |
| 5 | Irregular past tense | 25–46 months | "went", "came", "broke" |
| 6 | Possessive 's | 26–40 months | "mommy's shoe" |
| 7 | Uncontractible copula "be" (main verb) | 27–39 months | "There he is." |
| 8 | Articles a / the | 28–46 months | "the dog", "a cookie" |
| 9 | Regular past tense -ed | 26–48 months | "walked", "jumped" |
| 10 | Regular third person singular -s | 28–50 months | "he runs", "she eats" |
| 11 | Irregular third person singular | 28–50 months | "has", "does" |
| 12 | Uncontractible auxiliary | 29–48 months | "He is running." (stressed) |
| 13 | Contractible copula | 29–49 months | "He's happy." |
| 14 | Contractible auxiliary | 30–50 months | "He's running." |
Brown (1973) acquisition order; ages of mastery from Brown 1973 and Miller 1981 replications. Age bands are 90% obligatory-use benchmarks, not absolute cut-offs.
Common pitfalls
- Treating the Brown list as a strict checklist — the ages are overlapping bands, and a child can hit morpheme 7 before morpheme 5 (irregular past) because irregulars have idiosyncratic learning curves.
- Scoring morphemes in non-obligatory contexts. A missing -s doesn't count unless the child's utterance requires a plural (e.g., counting multiple objects).
- Counting "gonna", "wanna", and "gotta" as auxiliary constructions. Brown explicitly excluded these catenatives from the 14 morpheme list.
- Reporting mastery on the basis of a single production. Brown required 90% correct in obligatory contexts across multiple recording sessions.
Free tools paired with this cheatsheet
MLU Calculator
Paste a language sample and get Mean Length of Utterance in morphemes and words, total utterances, total morphemes, and the matching Brown's stage. Implements Brown (1973) morpheme counting rules and runs entirely in your browser.
Open toolBrown's Stages Lookup
Interactive reference for Brown's (1973) five stages of grammatical development. Look up a stage by child age or MLU, see the MLU range, acquired morphemes, example utterances, and clinical milestones for each stage.
Open toolIPSyn Calculator
Free Index of Productive Syntax (IPSyn) calculator for speech-language pathologists. Score the 56 Scarborough (1990) grammatical items across the Noun Phrase, Verb Phrase, Question/Negation, and Sentence Structure subscales from a 100-utterance language sample. Live IPSyn total, per-subscale subtotals, sample-size guard, mobile-friendly, client-side, no sign-up.
Open toolRelated cheatsheets
MLU-Morpheme Norms by Age — Printable Reference
Printable one-page reference of Mean Length of Utterance in morphemes (MLU-M) expectations by chronological age, including Brown, Miller, and Rice norms.
Language samplingLanguage Sample Elicitation Prompts by Age — Cheatsheet
Printable one-page reference of age-appropriate language-sample elicitation prompts from 18 months to 12 years, with target utterance counts and topic cues.
IEP & school practiceSMART IEP Goal Format — Printable Reference
Printable one-page reference of the SMART IEP goal framework with the five elements, IDEA-compliant phrasing patterns, and a worked SLP example per element.
References
- Brown, R. (1973). A First Language: The Early Stages. Harvard University Press.
- Miller, J. F. (1981). Assessing Language Production in Children: Experimental Procedures. University Park Press.
- Owens, R. E. (2020). Language Development: An Introduction (10th ed.). Pearson.
- Paul, R., Norbury, C., & Gosse, C. (2018). Language Disorders from Infancy Through Adolescence (5th ed.). Elsevier.
- IDEA, 34 CFR § 300.320 — present levels and measurable annual goals.