CLA Terminology

It's now widely accepted that children don't acquire language solely by imitation and reinforcement. There are differing schools of thought. Some, like Chomsky, suggest children acquire language through an inbuilt device that encourages them to ‘look' for language. Others describe language acquisition as a cognitive process. All researchers agree that children acquire language in stages.

The first year sees babies working on speech sounds. By the time they are six months old they are making the characteristic burbling sounds we associate with ‘baby talk'. The first year can be roughly divided up into the stages: crying, cooing and babbling.

The first sound a human baby makes is to cry. Often known as vegetative noises, this is the only way it can express pain, pleasure or hunger. It is an instinctive noise and is therefore not considered a language.

A baby's brain development is in front of its body development and it therefore has to exercise the 100 different pairs of muscles it takes to produce speech sound. Cooing (or gurgling) is a sound development that occurs at around six to eight weeks old. Babies experiment with ‘coo', ‘goo' and ‘ga' and gradually gain more and more control over their speech organs (or vocal cords).

Babbling begins at six to nine months old. It is not learned or copied but pre-programmed. The work-out of the vocal cords means babies repeat syllables over and over. Combinations of vowels and consonants, such as ‘ma', ‘pa', ‘da', are produced and repeated and therefore ‘mama' and ‘dada', known as reduplicated monosyllables, often sound like adult language.

The second year of development sees an increase in the ability to manipulate speech sounds and more of a shaping of sound into familiar pronunciations. The second year can be roughly divided up into the stages ‘one-word', ‘two-word' and ‘telegraphic'.

At this stage, children begin to concentrate on building phonemes into words, beginning largely with nouns that reflect their needs and interests. Often words for objects a child encounters everyday are the first. Basically, they build a personal vocabulary to deal with their world. Single words convey more than one meaning - “milk!” may mean “I want some milk.” or “I've spilt some milk.” Words used in this way are called holophrases. They substitute a complex grammar.

This stage, during which the major speech pattern is of two-word utterances, happens around 18-24 months old. This is particularly significant because here young children are demonstrating an understanding of the rules that govern how we communicate meaningfully. An example of a two-word utterance might be “Daddy ball!” which could mean a variety of things including “Daddy get the ball”, “That's Daddy's ball” and “Daddy throw the ball”.

Holophrases. Even before children can form grammatical sentences, they can indicate extensive meanings with single words. For example, the word ‘more' stands for repeat whatever action has immediately preceded that statement. Through these types of utterances, we can see that they begin to show evidence of an understanding of grammar.

Noun plurals

It is generally accepted that children acquire language through an in-built ability to recognise the patterns that exist. However, these patterns are not always straightforward and there are exceptions, so children inevitably make mistakes.

Verb tenses

Young children's speech will reflect some application of regular patterns, for example, adding ‘ed' to form past tenses. However, as yet, irregularities will not form part of their understanding, so birds ‘singed' and children ‘runned' are completely understandable, if not completely accurate sentences

Imitation & reinforcement theory (Skinner, 1957
Skinner was a proponent of the theory that children acquire language by imitating the way others speak. When the child is successful at producing words it is praised. This approval motivates the child to repeat the action thus learning words.
This theory has now been largely discredited. The task of acquiring language is such a vast one – children acquire tens of thousands of words and complex rules of grammar and syntax within a very short space of time.
Further flaws in this theory are revealed if we consider the mistakes children make in their grammar usage. They clearly do not imitate statements such as “I cleaning my tooths”. This is not a sentence formation which would have been praised by an adult.

Innateness theory (Chomsky, 1965
Noam Chomsky argued against Skinner's theory. He reasoned that children have an innate ability to acquire language through what he called a ‘language acquisition device' (LAD).
Chomsky claimed that all languages have a different surface structure - French and English sound different from each other through their differing intonations and stresses. However, he felt that all languages share the same deep grammar structure, or linguistic universals - subject–verb-object. His theory suggests we are pre-programmed with this deep structure. Chomsky's theory explains how children can understand sentences they've never heard before.
Critics such as Bard and Sachs (1977) argue that children don't learn to speak automatically. They need to communicate and interact with others – innateness alone is not enough.

Cognition theory (Piaget, 1966
The cognition theory links stages in language acquisition with stages of cognitive development. Piaget observes that children initially view themselves as the centre of the universe believing that objects exist only in relation to themselves. At around 18 months children begin to realise that objects have an existence that is nothing to do with them. A big growth in vocabulary occurs at this time and proponents of the cognition theory suggest that these events are linked - children are compelled to find names for things they now know exist. Piaget's theory shows a relationship between language and thought – though the theory only seems to stand up for the first 18 months of a child's life. Studies show that some children whose mental development is retarded can speak fluently. Here it seems that word order, meaning and grammar have not been subject to the child's general cognitive development.

Before acquiring cognitive ability, children are unable to contrast sizes and cannot use comparative language. Piaget showed that, looking at a range of sticks of differing sizes, they use words such as ‘short' or ‘long' but not the comparative terms ‘shorter' or ‘longer'.
Skinner claimed that children learn language by copying or imitating those around them.
Chomsky maintained that, whilst all languages have a different ‘surface' structure, they all contain the same deep grammar structure. His theory suggests we are pre-programmed with this deep structure as a kind of language acquisition device.

As well as theories on how children acquire language, there are theories about when. Eric Lenneberg's (1967) theory suggests that there is a critical period in a child's life during which they are able to acquire language. What is the duration of this period? What evidence is there for and against it? Lenneberg's theory claims that language acquisition is linked to maturation. He proposes that the human brain is designed to acquire language at a certain time. Lenneberg suggested that there is a cut-off age of around 12 or 13 years and that once this period has passed language learning slowed down or in effect was no longer possible.

The brain begins to grow at around 18 months old. It has acquired grammar and phonology by about four years of age and it is widely accepted that an ability to acquire language probably extends this learning period up to the middle of the second decade. After this point, it is said that there is a decline in the neural plasticity of this area of the brain, severely impairing language acquisition ability.

Unfortunately, there have been occasions to test Lenneberg's theory. Studies highlight the plight of ‘Genie', a 13 year old American girl raised in appallingly deprived circumstances. Locked away from the world, deprived of language and forbidden to speak, she was denied human interaction. When she was discovered she did not have language as we know it – just ‘grunting' sounds. Despite many and varied learning programmes, Genie never spoke in a fluent manner. It appears that Genie was rescued too late to acquire language within the critical period.

It has been widely accepted that there is some truth in Lenneberg's theory. The immense language learning ability, which accompanies us through our early years, does seem to be shut down by some kind of genetic programming around the time of puberty.  Genie and Victor's cases would have also supported a theory by another well-known psychologist - Vygotsky. Vygotsky (1978) argued that a child is only able to acquire language when he is interacting with people in his environment and, in particular, in co-operation with his peers. Obviously, neither Genie nor Victor had the opportunity to do this.

Most children will still learn to speak some words if they are not exposed to language during the critical period, though looking at ‘Genie' and ‘Victor's' examples it is unlikely that they will fully acquire a language. Bard and Sachs argued that innateness alone was not sufficient to enable children to acquire language. Genie and Victor's stories also suggest that a child's ability to acquire language declines after a certain age.