Child Language Acquisition

Language is a concept that is unknown to children, and as they are born they are exposed to vast amounts of language from their caregivers. The cry is the first stage of language for young children, and is important for them expressing their psychological states through their basic cry, pain cry and hunger cry. Vocalisation is then the second stage, where the child is often found cooing and babbling to express exact desires. This concept is also known as protolanguage, the stage before they are able to actually articulate utterances. Communicative expressions then become apparent, with instrumental functions such as ‘I want’ and ‘Give’ creeping its way in, and influential functions, for instance ‘hi’ and ‘bye’.  It first becomes apparent around the age of twelve to eighteen months when children begin using single word utterances such as hi and dadda. Vocabulary is found to be restricted for younger children, and are unable to recognise the conditional, past and present tense. It is usually seen that children pick up words from their local topics (ball, water, toy) and use this in their language. It is also seen that children use single word utterances in a variety of ways, whether it be to attract someone’s attention, refusing, commenting and calling. We often see that children use these single word utterances to exhibit their emotion and what they require, for instance, ‘water’ meaning that they are thirsty. These one word utterances are referenced as ‘holophrases’, meaning that the usage of the single word utterance is almost acting as a full sentence, which they cannot produce at that moment in time.

Holophrases then become a pivotal stepping stone, as they are able to use combinations to piece a sentence together. This is where a syntactic model becomes apparent, where the agent and the object is then combined to produce a minor clause, for instance, ‘Me food’ ‘Ride dog’. Adult functional systems, interpersonal and ideational purposes act as a contribution to dialogue and sustaining it. It’s also crucial in shaping utterances with another in mind to invoke attention and the possibility of a relationship.