Children Language Learning (1 st

Language Acquisition)

Member of group 2:
M. Chanif
Fitri Novita Sari (A73217071)
Tiaramadhani
 The Outline

Critical Age Issues for 1st Language Acquisition

Stages of Language Learning/ Acquisition (Speech Milestones)

How Do Children Acquire Their 1st Languange

Stages of First Language Acquisition
The Prelinguistic Stage: The Early Months
• Babies can hear in the womb after 7 months
• There is evidence that 2 months old babies can recognize the
intonation patterns of their native language.
• Other studies have shown that babies can distinguish human
language sounds from other sounds (car engines, doors slamming,
dogs barking).
• Babies can also distinguish different language.
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The Babbling Stage: 4 to 8 Months
• 6 months old babies seem to have mastered many of the sounds of their
own language.
• Then, about a year old they produce these sounds consistently during
what is called the Babbling stage.
• All hearing babies capable of vocalization babble.
• Deaf children exposed to signing babble with their hands.
• Babies in the babbling stage tend to produce the same consonants /p, b,
t, m, d, n, k, g, s, h, w, j/. Except /f, v, l, r/ and others are only
infrequently produced during this period.
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The One-Word Stage: 9 to 18 Months
• After about a year, hearing babies recognize the word as the link between
sound and meaning.
• At this stage, children tend to employ both overextensions, in which they
extend the meanings of words, and under extension, in which the
meanings are narrower than for adults.
• An example of overextension is candy used not only for candy but for
anything sweet.
• This stage of acquisition is also called the holophrastic stage, in which a
single word can function as a sentence or proposition.
• Most of their words are consonant + vowel combinations no matter what
language they speak.
The Two-Word Stage: 18 to 24
Months

A. Children seem to go through

‘naming explosion’ or also called ‘fast
mapping’, when they grasp the idea
that things have names.

B. Children begin to combine words

into two-word utterances determined
by semantic relationships rather than
by syntactic ones as in adult speech.
 The Early Multiword Stage: 24 to 30 Months

• Children begin to acquire more complex syntactic structure and rules at

this stage.
• From around 2 to 4 years, children form questions such as where and
what.
Examples: ‘Where kitty?’, ‘What me think?’
• Acquisition of negative sentences during this stage by simply use no to
indicate negation.
Examples; ‘no eat’, ‘no sit down’, ‘no do that’
 The Later Multiword Stage: 30 Months and Older
• Right around 30 months begins what Steven Pinker (1994) refers to in
The Language Instinct.
• Development is so rapid that it’s hard to distinguish stages, and children
begin to produce sentences of varied length and complexity.
• During this stage, children begin to use more question words, such as
why and how.
Examples: ‘Why doggie run?’,’ How she can do that?’
• Children produce more complex negative structures with no or not and
some auxiliary verbs or modals, such as don’t and can’t.
Examples: ‘I can’t move it.’,’ He not tall’,’ Mommy no play’,’ I don’t
know him’
• Later, children produce negative sentences with not in the position after a
wider range of auxiliary verbs,
Examples: ‘I didn’t do it’,
• And finally, children invert the subject and auxiliary verb in questions.
Examples: ‘Why did doggie run?’,’ How can she do that?’
• Then, children gain command of function words (such as prepositions),
coordination (with words such as and and or), and dependent clauses:
Examples: “He was stuck and I got him out.”
 How Do Children Acquire Their 1st Languange
• The development of speech production started fom vocalization to babbling speech.

• Vocalization is the variety of sounds tha babies make such as crying, cooing, and
gurgling.

• Around 6 to 7 months of age, children started to babble

Babble is the repeated syllable consist of simple consonant and vowel, such as ‘baba’,
‘momo’, ‘panpan’.

From as early as 6 months of age infants from different language communities begin to
babble somewhat distinctively, using some of the intonation of the language to which they
have been exposed (Nakazima, 1962; Lieberman, 1967; Tonkova-Yampol’skaya,1969).

Interestingly, deaf infants who have been exposed to sign language from birth do the
equivalent of babbling – with their hands (Petitto and Marentette, 1991).
• Around 1 year of age, children start to say their first word, although it could
be earlier or much later in other children.
• There is some discontinuity between babbling and early speech.
The reason is because babbling is a non-intentional sound (produced by the
chance coordination of speech articulators) while meaningful speech required a
specific knowledge of previously heard sounds associated with certain object or
expression that children must acquire first.
Early speech stages: naming, holophrastic,
telegraphic, morphemic
• Naming • Telegraphic speech is the use of two or
three words in early speech, for
Children can be said to have learned their example, ‘tummy hurt’. (A kid must
first word when have realized that adding more words
will improve communication)
(1) They are able to utter a recognizable
speech form, and when this is done in
conjuction with some object or event
in the environment
• Holophrastic function is the use of
single words to express complex
thought, for example: a kid says
‘mama’ to express that ‘I want mama’.
Some examples
• After that, children also start to acquire the use of morpheme.

According to psycholinguist Roger Brown (1973), there is an

order to which children acquire morpheme, see the table
 It is affected by 3 factors:
a. Ease of observability of referent:

The easier an object or situation to observe by a child the more likely it is to be remembered and spoken.

Example: seeing a dog, smelling a cookie, hearing a car, feeling hungry,

b. Meaningfulness of referent:

The more meaningful it is the more likely a child use it.

Example: car going, doll sitting, dog walking. (v-ing are more meaningful than another grammatical item such as to
be ‘is, am are, be’ or article ‘a, an’)

c. Distinctiveness of the sound signal

The more distinct the sound is, the more likely a child to recognize it and use it.

Example: ‘what is it?’,’Marry’s playing’ (‘is’ on ‘what it is?’ is more clearer than ‘is’ on ‘Marry’s playing’)
 The development of speech comprehension
• Speech comprehension is the understanding of speech.
• Speech comprehension comes before speech production. (A child must have
understood a word before using it, that is why mute-hearing child doesn’t
have any problem in their speech comprehension process)
• Speech comprehension is based on the child thought.
• The contents of thought are provided by the child’s experience of the
environment, i.e. dogs, cats, people, food, and events concerning those
objects, and the child’s experience of its own feelings, emotions, desires, and
conceptual constructions (thoughts).
 Parentese and Baby Talk
• Parentese is the speech that children receive from many sources: mother,
father, siblings, relatives, friends, etc.
• Baby talk is the same with Parentese, but Baby Talk involves the use of
vocabulary and syntax that is overly simplified and reduced.
• Both baby talk and parentese have a positive but small effect.
 Parentese and Baby Talk
• Parentese is the speech that children
receive from many sources: mother,
father, siblings, relatives, friends, etc.
• Baby talk is the same with Parentese,
but Baby Talk involves the use of
vocabulary and syntax that is overly
simplified and reduced.
• Both baby talk and parentese have a
positive but small effect.
Imitation, rule learning, and correction
• Imitation is the process of children
learning by copying and repeating the
words that they heard.
• Imitation can apply only to speech
production and not to speech
comprehension.
• Rule learning is the process of children
learning the rules of grammar.
• Parent rarely correct wrong grammar
from their children, because the kid
must have figure it out themselves.
 Memory and logic in language learning
• Memory is important in acquiring first language, since children must
remember everything they have learned.
• Logic: In learning language, the child must use both induction and deduction
in the analysis of words and sentences and the formulation of grammar and
strategies.
• Example:
 References

Steinberg D. Danny., and Natalia V. Sciarini. An Introduction to Psycholinguistics. 2nd ed. Lancaster University
Aitchison Jean. The Articulate Mammal-Intro to Psycholinguistics. 5th ed. Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group. 2007
Denham, K., and Lobeck, A. Linguistics for Everyone An Introduction to Languge. 9th ed. Canada: Wadsworth, Cengange Learning. 2011.
Fromkin Victoria, Robert Rodman, Nina Hyams. An Introduction to Language,9th ed. Canada: Wadsworth, Cengange Learning. 2011.
Finegan Edward. Language: Its structure and Use. 5th ed. Boston: Thomson Wdsworth. 2008
Singleton David, and Lisa Ryan. Language Acquisition: The Age Factor. 2nd ed. Great Britain: Cromwell Press Ltd. 2004
THANK YOU