How do children acquire and develop language

 

From the young age of fifteen months, children begin to develop linguistic skills of a basic level, for example making noises and sounds with their mouth and tongue. Bilingual children will develop slower as they are accessing different parts of the brain in order to access two different languages. The reason for only basic noises and sounds is the position of the larynx that doesn’t allow the throat to produce words. Over the next year from this age, the larynx will move down 3cm which will then allow the child to produce lexis and construct phrases, this is then known as the voice box. During the time in which the child is learning vocabulary and pronunciation, they are using 30 muscles in their face alone to speak, this then could affect the development of phonology as the child has to learn to use different sounds.

 

 

At 2 and a half years old, the child then goes on to learn 10 new words a day, in which they will use to describe in detail, communicate, construct sentences and use their vocab as an instinctive map for language (chompsky- universal language). A lot of sentence types at this age are declaritve, exampling alack of pragmatic skills. At this age, children mostly get the grammar correct all the time, as ‘children have an instinctive map for language’. It’s also this age in which children begin to develop self- awareness in which they recognise themselves in a reflection in the mirror and they realise they are their own person, hence why they say about the terrible 2’s in which children have their worst tantrums as they realise they are their own person and they don’t understand the concept of sharing and want everything for themselves.