Language development

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Definition

Language development is the process by which children come to understand and communicate language during early childhood.

Description

From birth up to the age of five, children develop language at a very rapid pace. The stages of language development are universal among humans. However, the age and the pace at which a child reaches each milestone of language development vary greatly among children. Thus, language development in an individual child must be compared with norms rather than with other individual children. In general girls develop language at a faster rate than boys. More than any other aspect of development, language development reflects the growth and maturation of the brain. After the age of five it becomes much more difficult for most children to learn language.

Receptive language development (the ability to comprehend language) usually develops faster than expressive language (the ability to communicate). Two different styles of language development are recognized. In referential language development, children first speak single words and then join words together, first into two-word sentences and then into three-word sentences. In expressive language development, children first speak in long unintelligible babbles that mimic the cadence and rhythm of adult speech. Most children use a combination these styles.

Infancy

Language development begins before birth. Towards the end of pregnancy, a fetus begins to hear sounds and speech coming from outside the mother's body. Infants are acutely attuned to the human voice and prefer it to other sounds. In particular they prefer the higher pitch characteristic of female voices. They also are very attentive to the human face, especially when the face is talking. Although crying is a child's primary means of communication at birth, language immediately begins to develop via repetition and imitation.

Between birth and three months of age, most infants acquire the following abilities:

• seem to recognize their mother's voice
• quiet down or smile when spoken to
• turn toward familiar voices and sounds
• make sounds indicating pleasure
• cry differently to express different needs
• grunt, chuckle, whimper, and gurgle
• begin to coo (repeating the same sounds frequently) in response to voices
• make vowel-like sounds such as "ooh" and "ah"

Between three and six months, most infants can do the following:

• turn their head toward a speaker
• watch a speaker's mouth movements
• respond to changes in a tone of voice
• make louder sounds including screeches
• vocalize excitement, pleasure, and displeasure
• cry differently out of pain or hunger
• laugh, squeal, and sigh
• sputter loudly and blow bubbles
• shape their mouths to change sounds
• vocalize different sounds for different needs
• communicate desires with gestures
• babble for attention
• mimic sounds, inflections, and gestures
• make many new sounds, including "p," "b," and "m," that may sound almost speech-like

The sounds and babblings of this stage of language development are identical in babies throughout the world, even among those who are profoundly deaf. Thus all babies are born with the capacity to learn any language. Social interaction determines which language they eventually learn.

Six to 12 months is a crucial age for receptive language development. Between six and nine months babies begin to do the following:

• search for sources of sound
• listen intently to speech and other sounds
• take an active interest in conversation even if it is not directed at them
• recognize "dada," "mama," "bye-bye"
• consistently respond to their names
• respond appropriately to friendly and angry tones
• express their moods by sound and body language
• play with sounds
• make long, more varied sounds
• babble random combinations of consonants and vowels
• babble in singsong with as many as 12 different sounds
• experiment with pitch, intonation, and volume
• use their tongues to change sounds
• repeat syllables
• imitate intonation and speech sounds

Between nine and 12 months babies may begin to do the following:

• listen when spoken to
• recognize words for common objects and names of family members
• respond to simple requests
• understand "no"
• understand gestures
• associate voices and names with people
• know their own names
• babble both short and long groups of sounds and two-to-three-syllable repeated sounds (The babble begins to have characteristic sounds of their native language.)
• use sounds other than crying to get attention
• use "mama" and "dada" for any person
• shout and scream
• repeat sounds
• use most consonant and vowel sounds
• practice inflections
• engage in much vocal play

Toddlerhood

During the second year of life language development proceeds at very different rates in different children. By the age of 12 months, most children use "mama/dada" appropriately. They add new words each month and temporarily lose words. Between 12 and 15 months children begin to do the following:

• recognize names
• understand and follow one-step directions
• laugh appropriately
• use four to six intelligible words, usually those starting with "b," "c," "d," and "g," although less than 20 percent of their language is comprehensible to outsiders
• use partial words
• gesture and speak "no"
• ask for help with gestures and sounds

At 15 to 18 months of age children usually do the following:

• understand "up," "down," "hot," "off"
• use 10 to 20 intelligible words, mostly nouns
• use complete words
• put two short words together to form sentences
• chatter and imitate, use some echolalia (repetitions of words and phrases)
• have 20 to 25 percent of their speech understood by outsiders

At 18 to 24 months of age toddlers come to understand that there are words for everything and their language development gains momentum. About 50 of a child's first words are universal: names of foods, animals, family members, toys, vehicles, and clothing. Usually children first learn general nouns, such as "flower" instead of "dandelion," and they may overgeneralize words, such as calling all toys "balls." Some children learn words for social situations, greetings, and expressions of love more readily than others. At this age children usually have 20 to 50 intelligible words and can do the following:

• follow two-step directions
• point to parts of the body
• attempt multi-syllable words
• speak three-word sentences
• ask two-word questions
• enjoy challenge words such as "helicopter"
• hum and sing
• express pain verbally
• have 50 to 70 percent of their speech understood by outsiders

After several months of slower development, children often have a "word spurt" (an explosion of new words). Between the ages of two and 18 years, it is estimated that children add nine new words per day. Between two and three years of age children acquire:

• a 400-word vocabulary including names
• a word for most everything
• the use of pronouns
• three to five-word sentences
• the ability to describe what they just saw or experienced
• the use of the past tense and plurals
• names for body parts, colors, toys, people, and objects
• the ability to repeat rhymes, songs, and stories
• the ability to answer "what" questions

Children constantly produce sentences that they have not heard before, creating rather than imitating. This creativity is based on the general principles and rules of language that they have mastered. By the time a child is three years of age, most of a child's speech can be understood. However, like adults, children vary greatly in how much they choose to talk.

Preschool

Three to four-year-olds usually can do the following:

• understand most of what they hear
• converse
• have 900 to 1,000-word vocabularies, with verbs starting to predominate
• usually talk without repeating syllables or words
• use pronouns correctly
• use three to six-word sentences
• ask questions
• relate experiences and activities
• tell stories (Occasional stuttering and stammering is normal in preschoolers.)

Language skills usually blossom between four and five years of age. Children of this age can do the following:

• verbalize extensively
• communicate easily with other children and adults
• articulate most English sounds correctly
• know 1,500 to 2,500 words
• use detailed six to eight-word sentences
• can repeat four-syllable words
• use at least four prepositions
• tell stories that stay on topic
• can answer questions about stories

School Age

At age five most children can do the following:

• follow three consecutive commands
• talk constantly
• ask innumerable questions
• use descriptive words and compound and complex sentences
• know all the vowels and consonants
• use generally correct grammar

Six-year-olds usually can correct their own grammar and mispronunciations. Most children double their vocabularies between six and eight years of age and begin reading at about age seven. A major leap in reading comprehension occurs at about nine. Ten-year-olds begin to understand figurative word meanings.

Adolescents generally speak in an adult manner, gaining language maturity throughout high school.

Common Problems

Language delay is the most common developmental delay in children. There are many causes for language delay, both environmental and physical. About 60 percent of language delays in children under age three resolve spontaneously. Early intervention often helps other children to catch up to their age group.

Common circumstances that can result in language delay include:

• concentration on developing skills other than language
• siblings who are very close in age or older siblings who interpret for the younger child
• inadequate language stimulation and one-on-one attention
• bilingualism, in which a child's combined comprehension of two languages usually is equivalent to other children's comprehension of one language
• psychosocial deprivation

Language delay can result from a variety of physical disorders, including the following:

• mental retardation
• maturation delay (the slower-than-usual development of the speech centers of the brain), a common cause of late talking
• a hearing impairment
• a learning disability
• cerebral palsy
• autism (a developmental disorder in which, among other things, children do not use language or use it abnormally)
• congenital blindness, even in the absence of other neurological impairment
• Klinefelter syndrome, a disorder in which males are born with an extra X chromosome

Brain damage or disorders of the central nervous system can cause the following:

• receptive aphasia or receptive language disorder, a deficit in spoken language comprehension or in the ability to respond to spoken language
• expressive aphasia, an inability to speak or write despite normal language comprehension
• childhood apraxia of speech, in which a sound is substituted for the desired syllable or word

Parental Concerns

Language development is enriched by verbal interactions with other children and adults. Parents and care-givers can have a significant impact on early language development. Studies have shown that children of talkative parents have twice the vocabulary as those of quiet parents. A study from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) found that children in high-quality childcare environments have larger vocabularies and more complex language skills than children in lower-quality situations. In addition language-based interactions appear to increase a child's capacity to learn. Recommendations for encouraging language development in infants include:

• talking to them as much as possible and giving them opportunities to respond, perhaps with a smile; short periods of silence help teach the give-and-take of conversation
• talking to infants in a singsong, high-pitched speech, called "parentese" or "motherese" (This is a universal method for enhancing language development.)
• using one- or two-syllable words and two to three-word sentences
• using proper words rather than baby words
• speaking slowly, drawing-out vowels, and exaggerating main syllables
• avoiding pronouns and articles
• using animated gestures along with words
• addressing the baby by name
• talking about on-going activities
• asking questions
• singing songs
• commenting on sounds in the environment
• encouraging the baby to make vowel-like and consonant-vowel sounds such as "ma," "da," and "ba"
• repeating recognizable syllables and repeating words that contain the syllable

When babies reach six to 12 months-of-age, parents should play word games with them, label objects with words, and allow the baby to listen and participate in conversations. Parents of toddlers should do the following:

• talk to the child in simple sentences and ask questions
• expand on the toddler's single words
• use gestures that reinforce words
• put words to the child's gestures
• name colors
• count items
• gently repeat correctly any words that the child has mispronounced, rather than criticizing the child

Parents of two to three-year-olds should do the following:

• talk about what the child and parent are doing each day
• encourage the child to use new words
• repeat and expand on what the child says
• ask the child yes-or-no questions and questions that require a simple choice

• encourage the child to ask questions
• read books about familiar things, with pictures, rhymes, repetitive lines, and few words
• read favorite books repeatedly, allowing the child to join in with familiar words
• encourage the child to pretend to read
• not interrupt children when they are speaking

Parents of four to six-year-olds should:

• not speak until the child is fully attentive
• pause after speaking to give the child a chance to respond
• acknowledge, encourage, and praise speech
• introduce new words
• talk about spatial relationships and opposites
• introduce limericks, songs, and poems
• talk about the television programs that they watch
• encourage the child to give directions
• give their full attention when the child initiates a conversation

Parents of six to 12-year-olds should talk to the children, not at them, encourage conversation by asking questions that require more than a yes-or-no answer, and listen attentively as the child recounts the day's activities.

Additional recommendations for parents and care-givers, by the American Academy of Pediatrics and others, include:

• talking at eye level with a child and supplementing words with body language, gestures, and facial expressions to enhance language comprehension
• talking in ways that catch a child's attention
• using language to comfort a child
• using correct pronunciations
• using expressive language to discuss objects, actions, and emotions
• playing with sounds and words
• labeling objects and actions with words
• providing objects and experiences to talk about
• choosing activities that promote language
• listening carefully to children and responding in ways that let them know that they have been understood, as well as encouraging further communication
• using complete sentences and adding detail to expand on what a child has said
• knowing when to remain silent
• reading to a child by six months of age at the latest
• encouraging children to ask questions and seek new information
• encouraging children to listen to and ask questions of each other

Television viewing does not promote language development.

When to Call the Doctor

Parents should call the pediatrician immediately if they suspect that their child may have a language delay or a hearing problem. Warning signs of language delay in toddlers include:

• avoiding eye contact
• neither understanding nor speaking words by 18 months of age
• difficulty learning nursery rhymes or simple songs
• not recognizing or labeling common objects
• inability to pay attention to a book or movie
• poor articulation, such that a parent cannot understand the child more than 50 percent of the time

Resources

Books

Bochner, Sandra, and Jane Jones. Child Language Development: Learning to Talk. London: Whurr Publishers, 2003.

Buckley, Belinda. Children's Communications Skills: From Birth to Five Years. New York: Routledge, 2003.

Oates, John, and Andrew Grayson. Cognitive and Language Development in Children. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004.

Periodicals

Howard, Melanie. "How Babies Learn to Talk." Baby Talk 69, no. 3 (April 2004): 69–72.

Tsao, Feng-Ming, et al. "Speech Perception in Infancy Predicts Language Development in the Second Year of Life: A Longitudinal Study." Child Development 75, no. 4 (July/August 2004): 1067–84.

Van Hulle, Carol A., et al. "Genetic, Environmental, and Gender Effects on Individual Differences in Toddler Expressive Language." Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 47, no. 4 (August 2004): 904–12.

Organizations

American Academy of Pediatrics. 141 Northwest Point Blvd., Elk Grove Village, IL 60007. Web site: www.aap.org.

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. 10801 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852. Web site: .

Child Development Institute. 3528 E. Ridgeway Road, Orange, CA 92867. Web site: www.cdipage.com/index.htm.

Web Sites

"Activities to Encourage Speech and Language Development." American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Available online at www.asha.org/public/speech/development/Parent-Stim-Activities.htm (accessed December 29, 2004).

Dougherty, Dorthy P. "Developing Your Baby's Language Skills." KidsGrowth. Available online at www.kidsgrowth.com/resources/articledetail.cfm?id=714 (accessed December 29, 2004).

Genishi, Celia. "Young Children's Oral Language Development." Child Development Institute. Available online at www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/development/oral_language_development.shtml (accessed December 29, 2004).

"How Does Your Child Hear and Talk?" American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Available online at www.asha.org/public/speech/development/child_hear_talk.htm (accessed December 29, 2004).

"Language Development in Children." Child Development Institute. Available online at www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/development/language_development.shtml (accessed December 29, 2004).

Lorenz, Joan Monchak. "Common Concerns about Speech Development: Part I." KidsGrowth. Available online at www.kidsgrowth.com/resources/articledetail.cfm?id=965 (accessed December 29, 2004)./p

Rafanello, Donna. "Facilitating Language Development." Healthy Child Care America, Summer 2000.Available online at www.healthychildcare.org/pdf/LangDev.pdf (accessed December 29, 2004).

[Article by: Margaret Alic, PhD]

This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. Please help recruit one or improve this article yourself. See the talk page for details. Please consider using {{Expert-subject}} to associate this request with a WikiProject. (February 2009)

Since language development is the crucial part of the human cognitive nature, understanding language development is an important aspect to understand the base and to recall its various components of linguistics. And as to their universality, the cognitive aspect of communication in language is understood as similar among primates, non-primates, and human in some aspects, and differs in other aspects in term of:

Predisposed communication

Photographic utterances

Language acquisition

Telegraphic utterances

Morphosyntactic components

Pragmatic components

Language development is a process starting early in human life, when a person begins to acquire language by learning it as it is spoken and by mimicry. Children's language development moves from simple to complex^{[citation needed]}. Infants start without language. Yet by four months of age, babies can read lips and discriminate speech sounds. The language that infants speak is called babbling.

Usually, language starts off as recall of simple words without associated meaning, but as children grow, words acquire meaning, with connections between words formed. In time, sentences start as words are joined together to create logical meaning. As a person gets older, new meanings and new associations are created and vocabulary increases as more words are learned.

Infants use their bodies, vocal cries and other preverbal vocalizations to communicate their wants, needs and dispositions. Even though most children begin to vocalize and eventually verbalize at various ages and at different rates, they learn their first language without conscious instruction from parents or caretakers. In fact research has shown that the earliest learning begins in utero when the fetus can recognize the sounds and speech patterns of its mother's voice.

Contents 1 Biological preconditions 2 Environmental Influences 3 Social preconditions 3.1 Phonological development 3.2 Semantic development 3.3 Grammatical development 3.4 Pragmatics development 4 Theoretical frameworks of language development 5 Theoretical stages of morphemes in language development 6 See also 7 Reference list 8 External links

Biological preconditions

Linguists do not agree on the biological factors contributing to language development, however most do agree that the ability to acquire such a complicated system is unique to the human species. Furthermore, many believe that our ability to learn spoken language may have been developed through the evolutionary process and that the foundation for language may be passed down genetically. The ability to speak and understand human language requires a specific vocal apparatus as well as a nervous system with certain capabilities.

Some evidence that language is biological includes:

• there are proven areas of the brain that are responsible for language production and comprehension (Broca's Area and Wernicke's Area)
• during brain lateralization, there seems to be a sensitive period for speech production
• Linguist Noam Chomsky (1957)proposed that humans are biologically prewired to learn language at a certain time and in a certain way. He argued that children are born with a Language Acquistion Device (LAD) ^[1]

Environmental Influences

"The behavioral view of language development is no longer considered a viable explanation of how children acquire language, yet a great deal of research describes ways in which a children's environmental experiences influence their language skills. Michael Tomasello (2003, 2006; Tomasello & Carpenter, 2007) stresses that young children are intensely interested in their social world and that early in their development they can understand that intentions of other people."^[1]

"One component of the young child's linguistic environment is (child-directed speech)also known as baby talk or motherese, which is language spoken in a higher pitch than normal with simple words and sentences. Athough the importance of its role in developing language has been debated many linguists argue it to have the important function of capturing the infant's attention and maintaining communication. Adults use strategies other than child-directed speech like recasting, expanding, and labeling:" Recasting is rephrasing something the child has said, perhaps turning it into a question or restating the child's immature utterance in the form of a fully grammatical sentence. Expanding is the restating, in a linguistically sophisticated form, what a child has said. Labeling is identifying the names of objects^[1]

Social preconditions

It is crucial that children are allowed to socially interact with other people who can vocalize and respond to questions. For language acquisition to develop successfully, children must be in an environment that allows them to communicate socially in that language.

There are a few different theories as to why and how children develop language. The most popular -- and yet heavily debated-- explanation is that language is acquired through imitation. The two most accepted theories in language development are psychological and functional. Psychological explanations focus on the mental processes involved in childhood language learning. Functional explanations look at the social processes involved in learning the first language.

There are four main components of language:

• Phonology involves the rules about the structure and sequence of speech sounds.
• Semantics consists of vocabulary and how concepts are expressed through words.
• Grammar involves two parts. The first, syntax, is the rules in which words are arranged into sentences. The second, morphology, is the use of grammatical markers (indicating tense, active or passive voice etc.).
• Pragmatics involves the rules for appropriate and effective communication. Pragmatics involves three skills:
  • using language for greeting, demanding etc.
  • changing language for talking differently depending on who it is you are talking to
  • following rules such as turn taking, staying on topic

Each component has its own appropriate developmental periods.

Phonological development

From shortly after birth to around one year, the baby starts to make speech sounds. At around two months, the baby will engage in cooing, which mostly consists of vowel sounds. At around four months, cooing turns into babbling which is the repetitive consonant-vowel combinations. Babies understand more than they are able to say.

From 1–2 years, babies can recognize the correct pronunciation of familiar words. Babies will also use phonological strategies to simplify word pronunciation. Some strategies include repeating the first consonant-vowel in a multisyllable word ('TV'--> 'didi') or deleting unstressed syllables in a multisyllable word ('banana'-->'nana'). By 3–5 years, phonological awareness continues to improve as well as pronunciation.

By 6–10 years, children can master syllable stress patterns which helps distinguish slight differences between similar words.

Semantic development

From birth to one year, comprehension (the language we understand) develops before production (the language we use). There is about a 5 month lag in between the two. Babies have an innate preference to listen to their mother's voice. Babies can recognize familiar words and use preverbal gestures.

From 1–2 years, vocabulary grows to several hundred words. There is a vocabulary spurt between 18–24 months, which includes fast mapping. Fast mapping is the babies' ability to learn a lot of new things quickly. The majority of the babies' new vocabulary consists of object words (nouns) and action words (verbs). By 3–5 years, children usually have difficulty using words correctly. Children experience many problems such as underextensions, taking a general word and applying it specifically (for example, 'blankie')and overextensions, taking a specific word and applying it too generally (example, 'car' for 'van'). However, children coin words to fill in for words not yet learned (for example, someone is a cooker rather than a chef because a child will not know what a chef is). Children can also understand metaphors.

From 6–10 years, children can understand meanings of words based on their definitions. They also are able to appreciate the multiple meanings of words and use words precisely through metaphors and puns. Fast mapping continues.

Grammatical development

From 1–2 years, children start using telegraphic speech, which are two word combinations, for example 'wet diaper'. Brown (1973) observed that 75% of children's two-word utterances could be summarised in the existence of 11 semantic relations:

Eleven important early semantic relations and examples based on Brown 1973:

• Attributive: 'big house'
• Agent-Action: 'Daddy hit'
• Action-Object: 'hit ball'
• Agent-Object: 'Daddy ball'
• Nominative: 'that ball'
• Demonstrative: 'there ball'
• Recurrence: 'more ball'
• non-existence: 'all-gone ball'
• Possessive: 'Daddy chair'
• Entity + Locative: 'book table'
• Action + Locative: 'go store'

At around 3 years, children engage in simple sentences, which are 3 word sentences. Simple sentences follow adult rules and get refined gradually. Grammatical morphemes get added as these simple sentences start to emerge. By 3–5 years, children continue to add grammatical morphemes and gradually produce complex grammatical structures. By 6–10 years, children refine the complex grammatical structures such as passive voice.

Pragmatics development

From birth to one year, babies can engage in joint attention (sharing the attention of something with someone else). Babies also can engage in turn taking activities. By 1–2 years, they can engage in conversational turn taking and topic maintenance. At ages 3–5, children can master illocutionary intent, knowing what you meant to say even though you might not have said it and turnabout, which is turning the conversation over to another person.

By age 6-10, shading occurs, which is changing the conversation topic gradually. Children are able to communicate effectively in demanding settings, such as on the telephone.

Theoretical frameworks of language development

There are four major theories of language development.

The behaviorist theory, proposed by B. F. Skinner (father of behaviorism) says that language is learned through operant conditioning (reinforcement and imitation). This perspective sides with the nurture side of the nature-nurture debate. This perspective is not widely accepted today because there are many criticisms. These criticisms include that the perspective is too specific, encourages incorrect phrases and is not entirely possible. In order for this to be possible, parents would have to engage in intensive tutoring in order for language to be taught properly.

The nativist theory, proposed by Noam Chomsky, says that language is a unique human accomplishment. Chomsky says that all children have what is called an LAD, an innate language acquisition device that allows children to produce consistent sentences once vocabulary is learned. He also says that grammar is universal. This theory, while there is much evidence supporting it (language areas in the brain, sensitive period for language development, children's ability to invent new language systems) is not believed by all researchers.

The empiricist theory argues that there is enough information in the linguistic input that children receive, and therefore there is no need to assume an innate language acquisition device (see above). This approach is characterized by the construction of computational models that learn aspects of language and/or that simulate the type of linguistic output produced by children. The most influential models within this approach are statistical learning theories such as connectionist models and chunking theories such as CHREST.

The last theory, the interactionist perspective, consists of two components. This perspective is a combination of both the nativist and behaviorist theories. The first part, the information-processing theories, tests through the connectionist model, using statistics. From these theories, we see that the brain is excellent at detecting patterns.

The second part of the interactionist perspective, is the social-interactionist theories. These theories suggest that there is a native desire to understand others as well as being understood by others.

Theoretical stages of morphemes in language development

Much of the research on language acquisition borrows heavily from the dominant paradigm in first-language of English acquisition and focusing on the circumstances of how such linguistic structures are acquired. Many studies, for example, have examined the acquisition of morphological features of language that are in place in native speakers. Among these studies, one of the notable study has been conducted is by Brown in his longitudinal study of Adam, Eve, and Sarah, namely--the “Brown’s fourteen morphemes” in their acquisition orders consisting of the stages on present progressive, prepositions, plural, irregular past tense, possessive, non-contractible copula, article, regular past tense, third-person present singular regular, third-person singular irregular, non-contractible auxiliary, contractible copula, and contractible auxiliary.

This theoretical and empirical work in language acquisition serves as the basis for understanding what it means by acquisition of morphology in the patterns of universal grammar. And while long-standing theories describe acquisition of language through an innate language acquisition device, an alternative approach that is gaining ground is the adaptation of linguistic structures to the human brain, rather than vice versa.^[2] On this account, language universals may reflect non-linguistic cognitive constraints on learning and processing of sequential structure, rather than constraints prescribed by an innate universal grammar. However, some researchers have defined this narrowly around the parameter of grammatical rules, others around the abilities in accomplishing cognitive tasks, and still others around the social and communicative aspects of language.

According to their parameters in similarities between syntax and morphology in their acquisition, in syntax, it is understood that the mechanisms of UG and their role in language acquisition as consisting of a highly structured and restrictive system of principles with certain open parameters by their cognition to be fixed.^[3]

As these parameters are fixed, a grammar is determined, what is in turn termed SVO or SOV or VSO. In this theory, the role of principles i.e., the linguistically invariant properties of syntax common to all languages is to facilitate acquisition by constraining learners' grammars by reducing the learner's hypothesis from an infinite number of logical possibilities to the set of possible human languages—the UG.

Thus, it provides an important context for investigating the acquisition of general cognitive and specifically linguistic processes of morphology based on its parameters, for example, SVO language. This perspective however differs from its comparison to which has provided by the study of first language (L1) acquisition in children and in adult (L2) learners. As adult learners bring capacities to bear the language learning process that are both similar to and different from the capacities of children, the role of parameters which express the highly restricted respects in which languages can differ morphosyntactically is to account for cross-linguistic syntactic variation. In principles, it admits of a limited number of ways in which they can be instantiated, namely those allowed by the parameters specifying possible variation in the order of morphological acquisition.

In addition to the acquisition pattern in “Brown’s fourteen morphemes”, in general and in all languages, it is agreed that the state of knowledge of morphological awareness and learning begin by overgeneralization of various lexical entries. In terms of the causative factor, it is also understood as a universal pattern in children’s innateness, and the variations as the seriate aspects of linguistics in acquiring morphology. In this approach, children’s knowledge of tense morphology were examined using elicitation and grammaticality judgment tasks to predict variability in the morphophonological expression and knowledge of tense in developing grammars. It has long been noted that the acquisition of tense-marking morphology is a vulnerable domain for language learners across all languages in acquisition contexts, For example, children in English language typically enrol in three gradual stages to produce tense morphemes accurately; applying morphemes correctly but without knowing--the stage 1, applying analogy--the stage 2, and understanding the morphological differences--the stage 3.

And some other factors also have shown similarities in morphological acquisition across languages, like linguistic markedness of syntactic operations not involving forms with tense features like optional infinitives in one aspect, and linguistic markedness of syntactic operations involving forms with tense features like negation, modalities, passives, and coordinations on the other aspect.

See also

• Evolutionary linguistics
• Language acquisition
• Language acquisition device
• Babbling
• Mean length of utterance
• Artificial neural network
• Language delay
• Origin of language
• Speech
• Infantile speech
• Speech sound disorder
• Speech delay
• Speech disorder
• Phonological development
• List of language acquisition researchers
• Proto-Human language
• Essay on the Origin of Languages

Reference list

1. ^ ^{a b c} Santrock, J (2008). A topical Approach to Life-Span Development. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
2. ^ Gray, W.D. & Schunn, C.D. (eds) 2002, Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, NJ.
3. ^ Slobin, D.I. 1986, The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, NJ.

• Berk, L. E. (2006). Chapter 9 - Language Development. In Child Development (8th ed., pp. 356–395). Pearson. (Original work published 1989)
• Santrock, J (2008). A topical Approach to Life-Span Development. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

External links

• http://www3.niu.edu/acad/psych/Millis/History/2003/cogrev_skinner.htm
• http://www.asha.org/public/speech/development/Pragmatics.htm

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