W1A-001 Linguistics essays-1.txt
The acquisition of language is an extremely long, complex process Ð one which most people go through and few can do without.

Although the first real evidence of progress comes in the first year, when the child utters its first words, language development begins long before the child is able to speak.

0-8 weeks

During this stage the child produces sounds which reflect discomfort or distress of some sort, such as crying (reflexive noises). Sucking, burping and other such sounds which are uttered because of bodily functioning are known as vegetative noises. These sounds share some of the features found in later speech: vocal folds are used, an air stream mechanism produces the noise and there is rhymical vocalization.

8-20 weeks

At this point the child has begun to laugh and coo. Cooing sounds are strung together sometimes producing syllables very like those in proper speech. During this time children learn to use the tongue and lips in co-ordination with the vocal folds and this is essential training for later speech.

25-50 weeks

During the early weeks of this stage, a small set of sounds are used frequently and repetitively to produce sounds like 'ga-ga', known as reduplicative babbling. This develops into variegated babbling, with shifts between consonants and vowels. Rhythm and syllable length begin increasingly to resemble that of later speech. These utterances have no meaning, although they may seem to, but they are essential of the child's mastery of sounds necessary for speech production.

9-18 months

Sounds produced by the child are more varied that they previously were and are known as melodic utterances. Often parents can infer meaning from these utterances and there is at this stage no doubt that the childs language skills are really developing.

A perception of speech is necessary before the child can begin to speak itself, and it is surprising how highly developed this perception is. Even new-born babies have impressive auditory abilities and by four weeks they can clearly distinguish between different sounds. Babies also develop comprehension abilities extremely quickly, being able to respond to differing tones of voice from around 2 months, and understanding as many as 60 words by the end of their first year. (H. Benedict, 1979)

Another factor important in child language acquisition is the influence of it's mother. Mothers talk to their children from the moment they are born even though the child can obviously not yet speak. As the transcripts in Appendix 2 show, mothers pick up on all their children's utterances in an an attempt to make some kind of conversation. This, importantly fosters in the child an awareness of what exactly a conversation is, and how to take part in one.

We can break the development of language and communication skills into several areas:

PHONOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT

Even around the age of one, when children are able to recognise certain words, they have difficulty in pronouncing those words themselves. This ability develops gradually. Consonants are more easily pronounced when they are at the beginning of words rather than at the end, and some are more easily pronounced than others. For example, [p] [b] [k] [n] [f] [d] [g] [m] and [h] are common as beginning for words by the end of the second year but only [p] [b] [k] [n] and [f] are easily used as word endings. Usually by the age of four, all vowels and diphthongs and almost all consonants can be pronounced correctly. Often when children are unable to pronounce a word correctly, they reduplicate sounds which the are able to make, forming an approximation of the word. 'Bottle' might become [bubu] and 'water' may be pronounced [wowa]. It is likely that reduplication helps children learn to pronounce in stages and to express meaning by pronouncing the most prominent phones or'sound units'. Around 1, children begin learning the correct use of intonation, a process which is not finished even when the child is in it's teens. In the first year, intonation might be used to express such states as surprise, fear and greeting, and in following years more complex uses are learned. Appendix 1(a) illustrates the anxious attempt of a child trying desperately to make himself understood through intonation, since he is unable to do so with his limited vocabulary.

GRAMMATICAL DEVELOPMENT

Between 12 and 18 months, children are usually able only to form one word utterances, although these can function almost as sentences. Admittedly, some phrases are known, but the child will think of these as only one word and they should not be viewed as being proper sentences. Single word utterances can function as sentences because of intonation and gesture Ð they have no real grammatical form.

Around 18 months children begin to grasp morphological aspects of grammar such as word-endings. This ability develops considerably over the next two years, but as Appendix 1 shows, even a four year old can have problems with tense and other morphologies. Children begin to string two word sentences together at about 18 months, and although these are often ungrammatical, they can nevertheless convey a considerable amount of meaning. Sentences comprising several words emerge around the age of three, the child begins to learn the complexities of grammatical structure and to form sentences contining more than one clause. By four years, the child is surprisingly competent with grammar, and by ten, even most subtle grammatical rules have been mastered. The two year old in Appendix 1(c) is unable to use the past tense, but the four year old in 1(d) is quite competent, although still prone to such mistakes as 'Father Christmas bring bringed us our toys'. That these mistakes are made is not surprising: tenses do not always follow regular rules.

SEMANTIC DEVELOPMENT

Young children learn vocabulary with amazing rapidity but the ability to actually pronounce vocabulary lags behind the ability to comprehend it. By 18 months, most children understand around 250 words, but only have the capacity to say about 50 words. Six months later, spoken vocabulary exceeds 200 words. Once children reach the age of four, it become increasingly difficult to measure their vocabulary because of the incredibly rapid lexical expansion which takes place around the age of three. Even when a child uses a word grammatically, it may not fully understand it's meaning. 'If','so', 'because','should','since' and other clauses cause a lot of problems. Only at about six years to children gain the ability to comprehend those subtle aspects of language whose meaning is implicit rather than explicit.

PRAGMATIC DEVELOPMENT

As well as knowing how to speak, children must learn the conversational skills necessary for social interaction. These abilities begin to develop at around two years of age, and by three children are starting to take into account their listeners needs for clarity and the chance to participate fully in a conversation. They also become aware of appropriate responses Between three and five, children learn to use polite language such as 'please' and 'thankyou', 'Mr' and 'Mrs'. Their skills at initiating and sustaining conversations, as well as manipulating them, also expand.

As this essay has shown, there is more to acquiring language than meets the eye (or ear), although we all take it for granted. For most, the learning process develops naturally and rapidly. Schools and observation of other's language play a high part in learning, but no learning would take place were it not for the innate ability for form a lingual system of communication. It is certain though that all would agree that child language acquisition is a fascinating phenomenon, and one which brings a great deal of enjoyment to all who observe it.
