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Essay On Child Language Development

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To understand what is LAD, we need to think deeper to a child’s experiences in learning language. Saffran, R. J. et al. (1996) states that, “Before infants can begin to map words onto objects in the world, they must determine which sound sequences are words. To do so, infants must uncover at least some of the units that belong to their native language from a largely continuous stream of sounds in which words are seldom surrounded by pauses. Despite the difficulty of this reverse-engineering problem, infants successfully segment words from fluent speech from seven months of age”. This statement indicates that, an infant discover the language through sounds he heard. This sounds, as the infant grows, will develop into chunk of sounds and later on will expand into understandable words. Their development of language will …show more content…

Crain and Lillo-Martin state that “language is not a concrete set of things out in the world that we can point out to or measure rather; it is something inside our brains and minds”. The LAD in a child’s mind will eventually help the child to make sense of the language that develops through social interactions and experience. The LAD within the child’s brain makes it easy for them to understand the language. This claim is in coherence with Bruner (1957) who claims that, “Children are not little grammarians, motivated to decode the syntax of the language around them through the operation of their LAD, but social beings who acquire language in the service of their needs to communicate with others”. I second this statement because I believe that the acquisition of language is innate but the development of the language is parallel with what the child’ experiences and social interaction with their family, school, society. These insomuch will develop the child’s knowledge of language

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