Feargal Murphy Language Acquisition & Disruption 29-10-2015 The acquisition of language is one of the most difficult tasks a human infant takes on Children´s acquisition of language has been considered one of the most important human behaviors. Nowadays, there is still the belief that infants learn their mother tongue through their parents, either by imitating their behavior or through the sounds they emit. However, all children in different parts of the world learn the language they hear in their environment. From the outset, children tend to learn as many things as they possibly can, which will be used throughout life, for example, walking, talking and socializing. The acquisition of language is an issue that has been discussed for many
Social anthropology is the study of culture and society seeking an insider perspective on beliefs and practices that children engage in when building a language (Gillen, 157-8). Children tend to try to learn almost everything through their interaction with adults. Children learn most of their early language in chunks from the community surrounding them. And to know that a child had absorbed the language is when we see, that what they are producing is appropriate to the situation, known as communicative competence. Communicative competence is knowing not only the language but what to say, to whom, and in what situation.
Using their motor skills, infants began to use circular reaction when they discover something like a noise they can make with their body. They begin to practice that same noise or discover new ones and later they begin to us circular reaction with manipulatives as they get older (Berk, 2005, p.228). Sensorimotor has stages from birth to the age of 2 and the first stage is reflexive schemes when infants are newborns to one month old. In this stage, infants are using their reflexes and discovering new things. From one to four months old, infants are using primary circular reactions where they are using simple motor skills that they create with their body.
The development stages of the language: The first stage: after the child and led directly to a year. After the child directly and it led it screaming and crying, which they call "Babbling" A child babbling voice quasi-real and play with words in order lured the attention of adults and at this stage of the child's "baby" age the parents unaware what the baby wants. Phase II: from year to year and a half: When the child reaches one year of age, he utters some of the simple and easy, such as: Papa, Mama, Dada words. It can increase the terms that a child learns to talk with him more, even a year and a half old. In this age of the child understand anything said to him and responds when call his name, and does what he wants, such as: the legacy of things or to play
The child learns to speak by learning the rules of social behavior, the establishment of meanings, and then learn the basic rules of English grammar .As the first child experiences of language are with the caregiver, like ;parents , So the child will influenced by what the child had heard of caregiver. Furthermore , the adult or the caregivers have to use a simple way to communicate with them and with exaggerated intonation and this strategy referred to "child- directed- speech". In fact , Studies proved; the children have common features, as there are mental processes of the child reveal the relationship between the utterance (grammar and vocabulary) and understanding of the language and the world around him. All children born with awareness that the language is corrupted from (verb phrases and noun phrases ) but they do not know how to combine them together , that according to the Theoretical linguist Chomsky. Also, the children learn the essential elements in sentences, where they begin to use the language establishing short sentences like consisting of two words to express simple semantic relationships and this is what is called (telegraphic language) ,such as "The box is red" , the child will express this by saying "box red".
1.1 Introduction: The first year of a child’s life is extremely important for language development, more in depth learning continues throughout a child’s early years. In the first 12 months, babies develop many of the foundations that form their speech and language development. For the first three years or so, children understand a lot more than they can say. From three to six years old, you can expect longer, more abstract and complex conversations, their vocabulary will continue to grow. During the early school years, children will learn more words and start to understand how the sounds within language work together.
According to this hypothesis, children will create a grammar even if not exposed to a proper language during their early years. Some of the strongest support for this hypothesis comes from the study of pidgin languages. These are new, primitive languages created when two or more groups of people having different native languages are in contact with each
They needn’t be taught the complex rules of language’ Fromkin, V., & R. Rodman. Language Acquisition. In an Introduction to language, (Sixth Edition p. 340) Acquisition seems to be easy as it is innate. As a student of linguistics it’s very hard to grasp the syntax and the study of how infants acquire language. Acquisition happens quite fast as fast as how an infant develops from birth to an infant and so on.
For children when acquiring their mother tongue this is every communicative aspect that surrounds them. For a second language learner this is whatever the teacher and his studies guide him to incorporate in his education. In the case of second language acquisition it happens the same as in the process to acquire the first language. Yule (2010) also explains that children do get a little help to acquire their mother language by older people and other infants, “[they] provide language samples, or input, for the child”
However, cognitive perspectives to language learning focus on children’s linguistic competence. They also focus on the mental processes within children’s minds in making sense of language as a system especially their grammar and vocabulary. Moreover, cognitive perspectives focus on all normal children and what’s common to them rather than how each child is different in the process of acquisition of English. English-speaking children who are between the ages of two months and two years usually express simple semantic relations by producing mini sentences which is known as “telegraphic language”. We usually notice that the child’s utterances consist of content words only as they omit function words while speaking.