STAGES OF
LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
(PSYCHOLINGUISTICS)
Compiled by:
Drs. Sugianto
Rewritten
by: Ade Wikytama
D.
Stages
of Language Acquisition
Children do not acquire language abruptly or have been
born with a bundle of vocabulary in their head. Instead, they go through a
process of acquisition step by step. Observations of children in different
language areas of the world reveal that the stages are very similar, possibly
universal. Some stages may overlap for a short time. Some stages may last for a
short period and others may happen longer. But the transition between stages
has often been observed to be quite sudden.
Linguists divide the stages of language acquisition
into two observed stages. The first sounds of babies in the form of cries and
whimpers of the newborn, or neonate can not be considered early language, such
noises are completely stimulus-controlled they are the child's involuntary
responses to hunger, discomfort, the desire to be cuddled or the feeling of
well-being.
Before six months-old, babies makes sounds through
their mouths. They cry, they coo like pigeons, they gurgle, suck, blow, spit
and make a host of other virtually indescribable noises. Although, these are
not speech sounds, their production gives the child exercise in articulation
and control. They also get practice in coordinating breathing with the making
of sounds. These belong to pre-linguistic
stages.
The
lingustic stages begin approximately after six month-old
of age. They can be classified into four major stages. They are babbling stage,
one-word stage (holophrastic stage), two-word stage, and beyond two-word stage
(telegraphic stage). Each stage occurs successively with different
characteristics distinguishing them.
1.
Babbling Stage
Babbling
is type of vocalization where the children use speech sounds, mainly vowels and
consonant-vowel syllables. Babbling stage starts around sox-month old. At this
period, children first utter various series of identical syllables, like
“ba-ba-ba” or “ma-ma-ma”.
The
sounds produced in this period seem to include the sounds of human languages.
Most linguists believe that in this babbling period child produce a large
variety of sounds; many of which do not occur in the language of the household.
Deaf children are also reported to do the babbling, so babbling doesn’t depend
on the auditory input.
At
this period, children are learning to distinguish between sounds which are used
in the language they acquire and those which are not part of the language. They
also learn to maintain the “right” sounds and leave the “’wrong” ones. Children
at this stage also begin to learn the intonation pattern before producing any
words so that their production of pitches or intonation pattern of the
utterances begin to resemble the intonation pattern of sentences spoken by
adults.
The
sounds produced at this period mainly consist of consonant-vowel syllables.
They are produced repetitively. The
repetitive uttering of these sounds gives them a speech-like quality. When the
babbled sounds have consistently been used for a purpose (for example to say “no” or “yes”, children say “baba”
and “mama”), they are called protowords
or vocables.
2.
One-Word Stage
One Word Stage
or also called Holophrastic Stage
starts one year old. It varies among children and has nothing to do with how
intelligent the child is. Some of this variability has to do with physical
development, such as the musculature of mouths and throat, which is necessary
for the articulation of sounds. Certain brain development is also involved
since the creation of speech must come under the control of speech areas in the
brain.
In
this period, children begin to produce their first words, like “mama”, “dada”,
and “up”. The words usually refers to familiar people (father, mother), toys
and pets (teddy bear, kitty), food and drink (cookie, juice), and social
interaction (bye-bye).
One
word stage is also called holophrastic stage because children seem to produce
one word to refer to the whole sentence or phrase. Often a single word can be
used to express several different purposes.
The single word can mean a name of
an object, a request of something, emphasizing action or even expressing complex situations. Look at
the following examples:
|
Expression:
|
Content:
|
|
“Dada”
|
Here comes Daddy! (Emphasis)
This is for Daddy. (Emphasis)
That is where Daddy sits. (Complex)
This shoe is Daddy’s. (Situation)
|
|
“Mama”
|
This is mother. (Name)
I want my mother. (Request)
|
|
“Nana”
|
I want my banana. (Request)
This is my banana. (Name)
|
3.
Two-Word Stage
Around
the time of the second birthday (20 to 24 month old), children move to produce
the strings of two the earlier holophrastic utterances, each word with its own
pitch contour.
Soon
after this, children begin to produce two-word sentences with the relation the
two word showing – definite syntatic and semantic relations and a single pitch
contour for the two words. At this stage, utterances show a preference for
combining noun – like element with a predicate like element, like “Daddy come”,
“Shoe mine”, “Apple me”, etc.
Similar
to one-word stage, at this period children are actually trying to express a
more complex structure than merely two-words. They seem to express the whole
sentences or phrases in only two words. The two-word utterances are also used
with certain purposes. They might be a request,
a warning, an answer to a question, a bragging,
a kind of information, a refusal or a question. The following are examples showing them.
|
Expression:
|
Content:
|
|
“Daddy come.”
“Shoe mine.”
“Apple me.”
“Mary chair.”
Mommy chair”
“Where doll?”
“No sleep.”
|
Daddy, he is coming. (Information)
The shoe, it’s mine. (Warning)
The apple, give it to me. (Request)
This chair belongs to Mary. (Bragging)
Mommy is sitting on the chair.
(Warning)
Where is the doll? (Question)
I don’t want to go to sleep. (Refusal)
|
4.
Beyond Two-Word Stage
Since
there seem no three-word or four-word stages, the term “beyond two-word stage”
is used here. Linguists or even parents themselves could not recognize them.
This stage is also called Telegraphic
Stage because the sentences children produce seem to be lack of function
words, just like a telegram. It seems that only important words are uttered by
children.
When
children start stringing more than two words together, the utterances may be
two, three, four or five words or longer. The linguists compare the acquisition
among children not by age, rather by the Mean
Length of Utterances (MLU) than by chronological age. That is, children who
are producing utterances which on the average age 2.3 to 3.5 morphemes seem to
have acquired other, similar aspect of the grammar.
At
this period, the sentences children produce have special characteristic.
Usually the small function words such as “to”, “the”, “cart”, “is” and so on
are missing; only words that carry the main message – the content words –
occur. They also lack of inflections. They look like telegrams and are usually
called as Telegraphic Speech.
Look
at the following examples:
·
Cat stand up table.
·
What that?
·
He play little tune.
·
Andrew want that.
·
No sit there.
·
Cathy build horse
The
examples above do not mean that children do not deliberately leave out the
non-content words, as does sending a telegram. But, as children acquire more
and more language, or approximately close to the adult grammar, they not only
begin to use syntatic or grammatical function words but also acquire the
inflectional and derivational morphemes of the language. And finally the
children’s utterances sound like those spoken by adult.
Bibliography:
Sugianto.
2014. Psycholinguistics. Kediri: Nusantara University
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