The notion of expressive options is a universal characteristic of language as well as a fundamental acquisition for language learners. Having expressive options implies to consider different formulations as somehow related one to another, be it under commonality of meaning, of communicative function, or simply of referentiality. Previously constructed signifier-signified and form-function relations change in status by being embedded into an array of co-possible alternatives, as the meaning of individual items is colored, limited or enriched by that of other individual items belonging to the same system. This paper considers the notion of expressive option from the point of view of its emergence, by looking for possible antecedents and early manifestations of this capacity, and models the directions in which they develop. It proposes that the emergence of this ability is related to children's cognitive development and, in particular, to the mechanisms that allow the subject to entertain different possibilities at the same time. Results show that the first alternative expressions consist of successively-centered perspectives. Then, when alternative expressions start to be anticipated simultaneously and mentally considered as co-possibilities, at this early stage two kinds of outcomes may result: 1. Simultaneously anticipated alternatives are viewed as a set of options among which to choose one expression considered better adapted to the situation at hand (the "alternative expressive options" outcome); 2. Simultaneously anticipated alternatives combine to enrich the expression of one given communicative intention, and are coordinated into a higher level structural unit (the "combined options" outcome) preparing the child to multiword speech. This higher level unit can then become a new possibility in a set of alternative expressive options.