I’m not an expert in child language development, but I have noticed that my son has gone from parroting new words he hears to pulling in words from his vocabulary when he encounters a new word.

 Here’s an example:

When my husband and I decided to go out for a summer ice cream trip, we talked up the whole experience on our way there.  When we arrived we said, “Look!  It’s Dairy Queen!”

My son, not being familiar with the word “Dairy”(he is only 2.5) filled in a similar sounding word that he is intimately familiar with…

Hence, we enjoyed a nice ice cream cone from the “Dirty Queen!”