Language Acquisition


A human being uses language as his main tool to communicate, send messages, understand utterances and keeping his social interactions alive, it what makes us different from an animal, it is the unique ability to control our language and having a variety of expression and thinking, language is the language of thoughts. Linguistics is concerned with discovering and defining the form and structure of human languages. All normal human children learn the language (or languages) that they hear around them. having a language or acquiring is a long process that starts from the day we were born, it starts with the first sound that we hear and stored in our minds, The study of language acquisition is the study of how and when children get a command of the thing linguistics sets out to define. it is how we acquire the ability to produce and understand language.

Acquiring a language has stages, these stages have their unique characteristics, period and background, these stages are: From vocalization to babbling to speech, 

1- From vocalization to babbling to speech: The child starts producing utterance to reflect a certain need, basically crying, cooing, etc. infants everywhere tend to use the same variety of sound at this stage Later, around the seventh month, children ordinarily begin to babble, to produce what may be described as repeated syllables ('syllabic reduplication'), e.g. 'baba', 'gigi', the uttered sounds after 6 months can change according to the language environment, such as intonation, 

2- Babbling to speech: after one year of a child born (can be much earlier or later) child starts to utter his/her first words, these words are intentional, while babbling is somehow spontaneous, it is used here to explain a certain idea, or to express a certain need.

3- Speech: The child in this stage starts to produce consonants and vowels, also he starts to understand certain terms, such as (mama) for mom, and starting from nearly 2 years, the child is capable to produce to somewhat a sentence, not a full one but an understandable one, the child starts to understand speech, order and naming things


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