We're finding that with DS1. He's 7 next month and has come on in leaps and bounds in so many ways, over the past year or so. He seems to be acquiring speech in a pretty much Gestalt fashion - while there's still many days when he uses no recognisable speech, there's others when he's quite chatty and he's as likely to come out with a phrase as a single word and he's capable of using verbs and pronouns almost correctly. For example, yesterday he was overstimulated and trying to bash me with his elbow. I moved him away from me and said "No hitting!" and he ran off, giggling "I hitting!"