Previous research has shown a similar starting time for early combinations of words and play actions in children and has suggested that similar cognitive processes underlie the transition to combining activities in language, symbolic play, and manipulative play. A study was undertaken to investigate combining activities in these three domains and to look for correlations among the activities in a sample of children who were approximately two years old. The 30 subjects engaged in symbolic play tasks that involved a set of modelled scenarios such as hugging a toy dog, putting a leash on it, and making it eat from a bowl. Each scene was modelled with both appropriate and inappropriate objects. They also performed manipulative play tasks that included a modelled action sequence of banging a plastic ring with a block, spinning the ring, and then stacking it on a dowel. For both tasks, the dependent measure of play combinations was the number of actions the child could string together without interruption. The dependent measure for language was mean length of utterance (MLU). No correlation was found between MLU and combining abilities in symbolic play with appropriate objects. However, a positive correlation was found between symbolic play combinations with inappropriate objects and MLU. A negative correlation was found between manipulative play combinations and MLU. (FL)