Language Acquisition

Posted on August 3, 2013 Updated on August 26, 2026

(Words 6353)

Language Acquisition

Language is a unique medium by which speakers, once it has been acquired, can communicate their thoughts and feelings to others. This powerful tool with which people can conduct their business or the government of millions of people, the vehicle by which science and philosophy has been transmitted, is truly remarkable. This sui generic verbal expression used by humankind is surely worth studying, I will try in this essay to put forward with ideas, about the study and mastery of English language focusing on first language acquisition. English language has in its time gone through many diversities of cultures. The expression is a reminder that the history of English language is a story of cultures in contact during the past 1500 years of communication between people. This amalgamation of the English language must be considered through the mixed character of its vocabulary. This lexis is prominent among the assets of the English language. Most notably this modeling makes for a language that has been acquired through various means, including borrowing from other languages, the words that it needs. The English language is forever changing as the years go by. The English language we arrive at today is distinctly different from the days of Geoffrey Chaucer’s English and Latin is all but forgotten.

To begin with, scholars in the field of language acquisition, work on many theories in their theoretical basis, as being a child’s language acquisition process. Two notable theories are that language is just like any other behavior, the child acquires. The behavior, which is mostly under the control of, forces acting on external stimulations. The child’s personal character is molded with the language. Also other scholars assume that language is innate and that no real learning situation is there. We can certainly take for granted that a child’s language acquisition appears to develop in mostly all children under normal circumstances, either as a unilingual or multilingual skill, crucially between the ages of one and five and a necessary interplay of innate and environmental factors. Their new language is acquired through no actual official training; any child can learn any language, under suitable conditions that allow the child to develop embracing voice and kinesthetic stimulation. The child will also follow facial movements. A certain innateness can be seen in a new born baby’s character, for example a baby will happily suckle the mum breast for milk on the first day, which shows that a child has a natural tendency to do specific behavioral tasks. The connection between the significant physiological and cognitive stages in the maturational history of a child lead several scholars to argue that there might be biological ability in man that make the human form of communication uniquely possible for our species and in this sense language is innate. From the moment they enter the world to eight weeks babies start the process of language acquisition. They begin to cry and make little sounds; this exercises the vocal organs and gives them practice in controlling the flow of air through their mouth and nose. These movements are the preliminary steps towards speech. Right-minded parents will help their child with their initial language even though the child will spontaneously acquire language himself while progressively developing his motor coordination. 

The acquisition of language is processed by the body’s most powerful asset; the brain. It has grown in man over millions of years and through natural selection engineered a complex design, which has adapted to language and communication problems. This process is studied in evolution psychology, which often investigates the adaptive functions of cognitive and emotional systems. This follows that the brain adapted and developed in order to find the answers to survive and exist while furthering the species. This is the brain that wakes up every morning ready to use new combinations of syntax that have never been used before. As Noam Chomsky stated ‘children are born with a universal grammar’, that allows any child to pick up the flow of language and decipher it to create ownership. The brain is not fixed to one specific language, the proposition of universal language means that every language has the same universal traits. This universal grammar that Chomsky proposes, is that any child, whose parents are from a certain country (i.e. Japan), can be brought up in another country (i.e. America) and learn its language as if that child’s parents were native language speakers of that country. The child will learn language from the environment he is in, which provides specific inputs to cognitive processes. It is his linguistic experience that molds his language. The fixed network in the brain is the system of principles of universal grammar, that a young child uses when in that new country. The switches in the child’s brain are the parameters. When these switches are set, the child has command of a particular language and knows the facts of that language. It has particular expression, has a particular meaning, and so on. Each permissible array of switch settings determines a particular language. In this case American English. It just says that if we characterize the knowledge that a person has when he knows a possible human language, we find that some things recur in every case (Italian, Arabic, Russian, etc.) and we call these ubiquitous things universal grammar. 

Furthermore Noam Chomsky’s theory is a catalyst to language acquisition. He proposed a theory of transformational generative grammar, which attracted widespread interest because of the claims it made about the relationship between language and the mind and the universality of an underlying language structure. The transformations of a particular language are in general idiosyncratic. Chomsky distinguished between knowledge and behavior and maintained that the focus of scientific enquiry should be on knowledge. In order to define and describe linguistic knowledge, he assumed a set of abstract principles of grammar that appear to be universal and may have a biological basis. The historical catalyst was Chomsky’s review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior. The mind consisted of sensor motor abilities plus a few simple laws of learning governing gradual changes in an organism’s behavioral repertoire. Therefore language must be learned, it cannot be a module, and thinking must be a form of verbal behavior, since verbal behavior is the prime manifestation of “thought” that can be observed externally. Chomsky argued that language acquisition falsified these beliefs in a single stroke: children learn languages that are governed by highly subtle and abstract principles, and they do so without explicit instruction or any other environmental clues to the nature of such principles. Hence language acquisition depends on an innate, species-specific module that is distinct from general intelligence.

One of the questions that is salient, regarding ‘language acquisition’, has to be what constitutes knowledge of language? This is the knowledge of language, which is broken down into sounds, words and sentences. The general character of a child has to be thought of as the connection with language. The temperament of the child allows him to acquire that early knowledge which is beneficial for future learning. During the initial language acquisition stage children have to deal with the seemingly overwhelming difficulty of the acquisition of language but most overcome the task. Language can be said to be a progression of the process, which means that there is progressive emergence. That learning is intimately linked with the progressive surfacing of a child vocabulary and syntax. It can also be said that language comes with age and with the form of the body, where the child grows and his cognitive senses form. As time passes and after all the babble, the single-word stage gives place to the two-word stage and this enables us to speculate about the child’s underlying grammatical knowledge to see if there are any regular patterns in the structure of expression. The knowledge of the adult system can be linked here. Children’s speech could be taken to be a model of the speech that he is exposed to. This can give us a picture of the general character of the child to see what the capacity of that child has to acquire language to its fullest extent. Language acquisition is intimately connected with the acquisition of early knowledge. ‘The general form of a system of knowledge is fixed in advance as a disposition of the mind and the function of experience is to cause this general schematic structure to be realized and more fully differentiated’. The concepts and knowledge are assumed to be acquired by the application of the available inductive principles.

Generative grammarians take up the theory of language acquisition. These theorists take the position that a child is born with an innate structure. This allows the child to be able to learn a language and speak it. This follows that the acquisition process is just a matter of extracting, that which is inherent in the mind. Language acquisition, from the point of view of the generative grammar, is considered as a process of implicit theory construction. It shows that the child is not exposed to some intellectual capacity that makes him acquire language. Junctures are there to be made for the child language; it is up to him to recognize those places where language can develop. The child proposes linguistic theories suggesting rules for sentences he is hearing. He makes predictions from these hypotheses’ about the possible sentence patterns in the language to which he is exposed. He verifies these hypotheses against the new sentences he encounters. 

The real life situations that a child finds himself in, makes him aware of language and his need to speak, which is prevalent even at an early age.  The child’s language acquisition does not, like what was mentioned earlier, actually need any prescribed training. This is because the child is learning in real settings, which influence the development and implementation of cognition for the child. Our lives are filled with those million and one scenarios that occur every day.  These real scenarios are the experience that makes language what it is, as opposed to sitting down in a classroom staring at a teacher. The child needs to speak to get by in his world. For example, when the child wants milk, he will point and mutter something but the mother will tell him that is milk. The boy will try and mutter the same word; not exactly the same but somewhere near it. Here the mother is helping develop the language and make junctures for the child. This release of this child’s voice is the start of the use of their language to get somewhere, to be heard. This word, if said many times, would be locked into the child memory. 

There is a power of retention that also isn’t taught formally, but from morning to night the child is being bombarded with references, symbols, meaning, and realia that highlight the environment that child is living in. This develops the child, if it is stimulating and gets his interest. This is where motivation plays a very crucial role in all learning behaviour This is the environment that is filled with the communication that has untold permutations of language meaning, ranging from lectures on Isaac Newton’s ‘Principia Mathematica’, to somebody singing in the shower. These are the vocal sounds that fill our world. There are so many factors to consider, including cultural understanding that we teach our children. Culture, for an essential part of language acquisition, is both an effect and a manifestation of human cognitive abilities. Culture can be very complex for every country; kids in the countryside of Thailand, are certainly brought up different to a kids in central New York. The mother and father will help bring this culture to the child. They can teach the child so much by just being with him. Culture allows people to go beyond physical and cognitive limitations through the development and use of acquired skills. The child’s brain is like a sponge to these constant expressions and meanings. This will help him with his language acquisition and allow for his language and natural curiosity to flourish. This endless stream of words that exist in our lives is made up of complex ideas. The idea is that we live in world where babble only exists in children. People have to explain themselves to be understood and use their knowledge of words and structures to express themselves. So if people/kid’s talk is to be understood they must be real or existing, they must in some degree conform to the ideas to the things men would speak of; ‘or else men’s language will be like that of Babel; and every man’s words, being intelligible only to himself, would no longer serve to conversation and the ordinary affairs of life, if the ideas they stand for be not some way answering the common appearances’. 

The passage of time has brought us on from The Bible’s infamous Tower of Babel, along the path of evolutionary psychology to a relative understanding of language. We have adapted ourselves to attaining empirical factual knowledge as well as building an emotional system. Darwin’s natural selection has shown how we develop as a means to survive in this world. This development of the species changed our body to suit the needs of the race, and to develop those sounds that we call language. The development of the brain and body to compensate for the new forms in the body, makes for a language that is innate in a newborn baby. This passing from generation to generation the new forms of speech, has made the language more powerful and more extreme. Man’s urge to develop has far exceeded any animal capabilities. Human genes make this passage, so as a newborn baby, their inherent screams mean that they are hungry and the mother follows suit and give the baby the milk because she knows her duty. This is the way, in the baby’s own vocabulary albeit only sounds, is to say ‘I want some milk’. This innateness allows the child to try and form his own language. When the parents speak, it helps form those sounds into language thus it becomes knowledge. The child must learn to put those sound into meaning to fit into this world, The synapses in the brain grow and the child makes haste of the vocabulary given to him but it is a selective process, not all children will learn at the same rate. New vocabulary to a child may be so appealing that his subconscious brain links the words with meaning. If those words and phrases are continually said, they remember the words because they sound exciting to them. That is why mothers use mother-ese because the child thinks that the language is exciting and enjoys learning and communicating. Even though for the parents’ speech to their child, an essential requirement for language acquisition needs to be that the meaning of utterances to which a child is exposed be obvious and clear as not to confuse.

Within this communication, one underlying factor for consideration is, how can a baby start to acquire this language that intelligent adult learners learning the equivalent, as a second language, have so much trouble with? It is true that a child brought into this world lives in a surrounding that is language filled by people (family), TVs, stereos, and whatever that lets out verbal sounds. It goes to say once the newborn is hungry, that infant knows exactly what to do, to get attention. One of the words my child certainly started saying was ‘ go’ which was a consequence of his parents saying ‘Let’s go’ every time they exited the house. Now he always says this word, because he always wants to go out, and it usually follows that as we put our shoes on ready to leave, he will say the word. It is his way of saying I am excited and he shows his excitement in his intonation. The imitation of intonation/word patterns continues. All the same in the early years children naturally take on new words and babble, they will sit with their toys making noises to themselves and happily play away. Their natural instinct to mutter can be heard everyday, just like the children who sit with toy animals and play away as if it could talk. So language acquisition through those first years is just the babies chance to form different sounds. It is common knowledge, however, that children understand more than what they can speak in the beginning. This forming of sounds is same as how man first constructed his language from utterances that he made and so his voice developed. As humans went through the gradual process different sounds were made for different entities, thus we arrive at, after millions of years, the language we hear now. This is the same passage that children go through when they hear the different sounds for different things. 

Children are learning an art and as with any subject if you practice everyday for many years, it will be finely tuned. That does not mean to say every English speaking person is an eloquent speaker far from it. The child must have the motivation to learn and develop to identity himself with the people who speak the language. There has to be a certain amount of concentration and understanding in learning the new language that does not compensate for every child. The structure of language that these children learn is a unique system for humans to communicate with. It has proceeded through the passages of time. Over that time a formulaic pattern of sound has been built that people can decipher into meaning. Man’s instinct to create a language, is as much a matter of urgency, as a bird needing to have a beak and tongue to get insects. This need, relates to man’s instinctive tendency to want to speak, but with anybody learning a new art they have to start at the beginning. This means playing around and producing different sounds. This natural instinct to make those sounds can be seen through the babble of a child. This babble of children’s language as a sound that resonates from the vocal cords, even though unclear, still can be professed to have a certain character to it. It shows that children understand the way certain scenarios happen.  The child’s story telling starts before the actual first distinguishable sounds come out of the child’s mouth. Referring to those first enunciations by the child. The child who babbles, it is his natural instinct to make himself heard. His parents recognize this and listen to the child. Even though the child’s language is not distinguishable he is still trying to say something. He can’t be just repeating the same phrase over and over again. He is trying to say something. It is only when he gets older and learns the art of language that these sound are made into recognizable patterns. Every hour of everyday he practices with his voice, he is tuning that art. This is more touching, as your can hear the sound of intonation as the child raises his voice as with anger or pain. This in itself shows certain innateness that before the parent has even given the child that skill to tell a story or explain/express his feelings, the child is displaying his personality already. Above all he is showing skills that for that short period of time of learning language could not have been learnt from his parents or any other person who came into verbal contact with the child. 

The communication and relationship the child has with his parents brings me to ‘feedback’ from them, as the way for the child to put his sounds into words. As any deceptive parents, they would help their child. For example their child falls over and hurts his knee and he has a gash. The mother will instinctively tell him what has happened, telling him that ‘oh, have you hurt you knee?’ The acting out of this scenario leads the child to know how his mother feels about the situation like this, and what she might say. Moreover a child who cannot speak defined words, can tell you in his verbal sounds that the dog, their family has, has gone out side. This utterance may just be just a few grunts but significantly the point of it is; is that the child is telling you the dog has exited the house. Now, if the parent was to put words to this motion of the dog, and as with learning a language the phrase is said again and again that child realizes a pattern. He will gather some of the wording from the phrase ‘the does has gone out’. Even if the child says ‘out’ there is an acknowledgment of the meaning of the phrase and the feedback from their parents. Every time that dog goes out the child is more than likely to say ‘out’. In theory with time when he recognizes the scenario, he could well start saying ‘dog out’. Hopefully still with the parents able to acknowledge the child efforts to speak. This hypothetical observation of my own goes along with the language acquisition theory that language is innate and the parents as fluent vocal users somehow fill the void in the language gap. The parent’s language input to the child starts by the child observing the world going by and the situations that happen every minute of the day and verbalizing them. Stephen Krashen highlighted that a student (or a child) of language will acquire phrases and sentences when exposed to a comprehensible input of the target language, which is finely tuned to his language proficiency. This theory is achieved with the insight of the parent or the language teacher in school.  The constant chattering from the child and instruction from others is shown in the child learning new phrases and words. It has been shown that children are learning words before their first birthday. By the time they enter school, children command about 13000 words (Pinker 1999). The effect of those early years of babbling certainly pays off. Language acquisition can be achieved by learning from a parent’s mouth. This doesn’t mean to say that they are the sole provider of the language.

For language to work there must be words for a specific matter you are talking about. There is a universal language that can be shown by people having a word for every conceivable thing. Those first enunciations have changed from language’s origin and the creolization of it, is exhibited now over many languages. We can arrange the phrases in a sentence different, but the design features are all found in any language. Language has changed because people want to be different and be one as opposed to following by definition. Take American English for instance, an unworldly person could say it is exactly the same as English, but why do Americans say ‘elevator’ and the English ‘lift’? American English if it is studied, you could find many differences that go past wording and intonation. English say ‘can’t’ with the vowel sound like the vowel in word in ‘car’, contrasting with the equivalent word in American English; ‘can’t’ with sound like the vowel in word in ‘cat’. English is classed a Germanic language. It shares similar grammatical structures and common words with many other languages. Half of the English language is derived from Latin. An English speaking person thinks nothing of saying ‘measles’ or ‘umbrella’ that are borrowed from Dutch and Spanish respectively.

The building of the language and the borrowing from other languages expresses the diversity of English. It is a changing language. These factors have to be included in the language acquisition process. A difference can be seen between a stasis part of language that being the units of speech nouns, verbs etc which make up the words and rules, and a dynamic language emphasizing the multitude of scenarios language can work in. Linguist Paul Hoper alluded to the point that grammar is a phenomenon ‘whose status is constantly being reorganized in speech and which cannot be distinguished in principle from strategies for building discourses’. Above all, the fact that language has changed so much over the centuries makes for a rule system, all though stasis at the core, it does see changes. Nouns are becoming verbs. For example: fish as a noun, which refers to ‘any of a large and varied group of cold-blooded aquatic vertebrates possessing gills and fins’, and ‘fish’ as a verb, which refers to ‘an act of fishing’. The rules change which is exemplified by rap a musical phenomenon that uses slang and rhyme. Kids will not feel out of place saying ‘Yo bro’ as a way of acknowledging a friend.  ‘Yo bro’ can be translated as ‘Hello, my friend’. It could also be said that writers in there hast to develop a style that is new will transform language which does not conform to the standard route. For a non-conformist example, I would choose the book “Trainspotting’ by the author Irvin Welsh who is Scottish. He wrote the whole of this novel using the own Scottish dialect, so the words were written as he would says them in his own colloquial way.  This goes to show the dynamism of language with these uses of the language. The fundamental rules still do not prepare you for meeting another person from another culture who speaks the same language as you, or a person from different generation (i.e. grandfather and grandson). 

As a newborn child, language acquisition is by the dynamic approach. The face-to-face encounters are the exchanges that build a language and character. Children learn in different situations. Their parent’s voice is used in different interchanges. There are distinct changes due to mood and feeling. These changes for every situation are along a structure of words and rules but these rules do not work for the accentuation of the speech. Notwithstanding that a dynamic switch from the knowledge of grammar is taken. The two have to work together. The words and rules system still has the fundamentals that are the foundation of the language. Clearly as children are spoken to by their parents rules are being shown, but conjugated with this is the dynamism that the parent shows in each language scenario. For instance, a child does something naughty. The sentence ‘you shouldn’t do that’ can be said in many ways depending on how much the parent needs to make the point. It involves the way the parents behave in the situation. One father might be aggressive and shout at the child, another father could be more caring and say the sentence as if he is giving advice to the child. The caring father realizes that children are naughty. It is normal, not every child is perfect. Children vocabulary and their response to such language from a parent, show dynamism working, because as such a young age they have not yet learned to react in the proper manner to their parents’ outburst of advice or shouting. They end up quiet with nothing to say. Children must learn the combinatorial tools of their language across many different combinations. This helps form their character and language. Every time two or more people meet they are using language that has new combinations. These combinations appear for the first time. 

The dynamism of language is shown by its continual growth, thus words come more to the fore than others. Now in the days of electronic equipment, science, mobile phones and computer games, the children of today are using new fangled words. The decay of language is always happening and old-fashioned words go out of use. This is the constant growth and decay that characterizes all forms of life. It is true to say that when a language does not change it ceases to be alive. Nowadays classical Latin is not used. A dead language like Latin dies because it has not changed in hundreds of years. This is what gives English language that vibrant edge to it. A mother cannot teach her kids every single word. Firstly the parent has a problem because there are so many words in English to learn, and some are new, gaining entry into the language every year. Old words die out, new words are added and existing words change their meaning for example ‘Nice’ in Shakespeare’s day meant ‘foolish’ and in Old English ‘Stan’ became ‘stone’. But today, we still say ‘to be or not to be’. 

After all the changes, English with its structures and rules has propelled itself forward, and of the 6000 languages spoken in the world, it is one of the most used. We can fill encyclopedias with the rules of English grammar. Grammarians have specific names for all the words in sentences. For example the word ‘walk’ is a verb that explains an action, that being the ‘an act of walking’. We have ‘ship’ which is a noun that refers to ‘large seagoing vessel propelled by sail or engine’. So as we see these words in themselves ‘walk and ‘ship’ have specific meanings outside the letters you see, they do not stand-alone. These words both perform functions in a sentence, that far from being babble are formed in to constructed uniform patterns. This also includes information about how each word behaves syntactically (for example, that a verb is transitive or intransitive). For nouns, if you have more than one ship, you must add ‘s’. This use of inflection is prominent in the English language; it is used to express a particular grammatical function or attribute, as number, case, gender, tense, and mood. Another example using the verb ‘walk’, would be ‘walked’. The inflection ‘ed’ shows that the tense has changed and we are talking about the past. This rule makes English distinct from other languages as some do not mark tense. 

Furthermore there are also patterns in the English language. The most recognizable pattern in English is Subject Verb Object. Although we see this pattern in different countries, it is moved around from (SVO) Subject Verb Object in English, to where we see it in Irish Gaelic language as (VSO) Verb Subject Object. Each complies with universal grammar but makes a different choice from allowable options regarding this particular principle. Italian allows a subject to be suppressed. French does not. Again each complies with universal grammar but makes a different choice regarding another principle option. Also, it can be seen that almost never does the object precede the subject a universal that goes across many languages. An example would be Thai versus English where I say ‘I went to Tesco’s yesterday’ using ‘went’, and ‘yesterday’, as past English tense markers. In Thai they would use near enough the same structure saying ‘Yesterday I go Tesco’s’.  Now you have the same Subject (i) – Verb (go/went)  – Object (Tesco’s) structure. As you see ‘yesterday is moved between the languages but as applies in English this can be moved to the front position i.e. ‘Yesterday I went to Tesco’s’. In Thai the verb does not change for tense, they use ‘yesterday as a tense maker. ‘Yesterday’ is used to make the sentence that bit more specific. Also in Thai the preposition is missing. In English we use preposition before nouns, in this case being ‘to’ as in ‘to Tesco’. English is head-first, for this instance ‘to Tesco’s’ which has its preposition first. There is still a certain universal grammar that shows matches in these two languages.

Once a certain amount of acquisition and possession of empirical factual knowledge of English language is accomplished, then the acquisition of the rest, should come a little easier. It is amazing to think how articulate a child is with no real linguistic experience. In such a short time on the earth, a child attains vast array of knowledge of the English language. There is a point when a child will grow wings and start using the ‘wh question’ for everything. Thus the parents find themselves having to answer questions that are unanswerable (i.e. why don’t monkeys turn into people no more?’). Getting the language off the ground has to be the biggest problem. This follows with the universal grammar that falls into a specific structure within the study of markedness of the language. There is an exterior that is forever changing but the core stays the same. This peripheral evolvement of the English language is shown by there being every year a new buzzword (“a word or expression from a particular subject area that has become fashionable because it has been used a lot especially on television and in the newspapers”). The process of acknowledging a new buzzword has been going on since 1904. The list provides people of today’s hot new word and includes words that have and may not stand the test of time. Some, like tiddly-om-pom-pom (1909), have gone into a tailspin (1917), while cheerio (1914) has largely been demobbed (1920) from hip (1904) conversations. Last year’s buzzword Chav (2004)is a noun which describes young men who wear cheap gold jewellery and baseball caps and hang around in shopping centres all over Britain. The word is thought to have come from the mid-19th century Romany word chavi, meaning child, an explanation that seems unlikely if undeniably cool (1948). It is quite a good example of a word that has burst out on to the scene. It is quite surprising in a way. It is one of quite a few social class labels that have emerged in the English language. It also fair to say that popular culture has played a huge part in the construct of children lives, especially the TV. As we reach the year 2005, video games seem to be one of the biggest markets for children, so much so that many children education is formed playing these games for many hours. I expect for some children, that more time is spent playing on the computer, than actual concentrated study time at school.

To conclude, in this essay I think I have shown how we come to acquire (English) language in such a relative short time. Also I have shown what a diverse language, English is.  We have to remember that the formation of (English) language has been going on for millions of years and we are still not finished building it. I have tried to show that there are many factors to take into considerations during the language acquisition. We have to understand how the brain is formed and how certain parts of the brain are constructed for language. The surroundings play a part, that being the speech community that the child is brought up in. The child’s character and behavior are built from his environment. The child generally grows up speaking a colloquial language. That is his close verbal community. If he is brought up in inner London, he will more than likely have a cockney accent. He will also learn the slang that is easily misunderstood by other people not from London. His cockney language has special characteristics that some grammars do not recognize but the language is still understood by the people using it. This is the diversity of language. This is the point I have been making. Language is a medium to express ideas, attitudes and thoughts as well as to tell people to do things, amongst others. As long as this is understood they will be no complications. But all the same we are still misunderstood by people. The marvelous fact about language acquisition as I have said, is that a child picks up all this knowledge without you feeling that you are teaching him. It also must be said how the language available to a child is finite. Yet they still attain a grammatical competence. Another factor that has to be said, is that after attaining this grammatical competence; do you still think that child is completely fluent? A mother may think that just because the child is at school he is learning. He may be able to talk and use the language properly but all the same he still could be better. I say this because a parent will not sit down with the child and properly teach him. The same that the parent will not always use complete grammatical sentences. There is a certain common ground between people who know each other. This means that they understand each other pretty well. The parent – child conversations are about things they know or have talked about before. The point is; how does this compensate for when the child meets someone new and he has to use complete grammatical sentences to be understood? Talking to his mother, a child can be understood but if there is completely different woman; does he treat her the same and will he be understood? 

So, the logical answer could be that we should be articulate so everybody can understand each other, not just those closest friends and family that are used to us. Many theorists have their ideas of how we acquire language. But, It goes to say that a good parent/teacher should treat the child properly, be polite and not use broken and incomplete sentences to set the foundations for language acquisition while actively stimulating the child’s mind with ideas to further his thoughts and language. There should be an enunciation from the parent that respects the child as a new learner in the acquisition of language. It is also could be said for every other person the child meets, which includes learning at school. This could well help that child in his future life in the real world. I hope with this essay I have shown that language is complex but exciting to learn. Language acquisition is easy in some respects although to achieve what I suppose every person would like, which is to have an eloquent diction, you need to challenge yourself. I hope that I have opened that avenue of thought to study more.

Selected Bibliography

AN ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING (1690) 

–  By John Locke

TEACHING LANGUAGE – FROM GRAMMAR TO GRAMMARING 

–  By Dianne Larsen Freeman

WORDS AND RULES

– By Steven Pinker

THE LANGAUGE INSTINCT

– By Steven Pinker

LANGUAGE, LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT and READING

– Noam Chomsky Interviewed by Lillian R. Putman

– Reading Instruction Journal  Fall 1987

Noam Chomsky

– By Robert Horstien

Language Acquisition – An Invitation to Cognitive Science, 2nd Ed. Volume 1: Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

• By Steven Pinker
  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Language: a developmental process

– http://www.ciil-ebooks.net/html/disorder/link3.htm#l1