Monday, October 26, 2015

How a Child Acquires First Language (Mother Tongue)?

First language is a language which human acquired during the childhood. Every language can be the first language as long as it is acquired during the childhood. If the learner can use more than two languages during his childhood, then he has two first languages (multilingualism). Otherwise, an American who learns Indonesian language for example, Indonesian will become his second language that is because English is his own language. Indonesian can also either our first (mother tongue) or second language. As an instance, if a person from Bimanesehas first language that is Bima language, then Indonesian becomes his second language if he can use the language after Bima language. A student who learns English from Bima has three languages; the first is his first language that is Bima because Bimanese is the language that he acquires during childhood, after his first language is established, he learns and acquires his second language that is Indonesian. What about English? English is his foreign language because in the place where he lives no one can use English in informal situation but in formal situation for particular purpose.

The first language is special subject to know because how the children acquire mother tongue is very crucial. Mother tongue can be acquired by children through the speech community,i.e. family and environment.
There are four stages how children acquire the first language:
1.  Cooing
The children undergo this stage is about 3 to 5 months. The sound that they produce is vowel sound.
2. Babbling
Consonant and nasal sound is produced by the children in the age of 5 to 6 months. This stage is called babbling stage. The children produce the consonant sounds that can form syllable, such as ma, ba (bilabial sound) and ta da (alveolar sound). This stage is undergone by children as a step toward one-word stage.
3. One-word stage
The children undergo one-word stage is about 7 – 12 months of age. In this stage, the children start to produce only one word, which is also called as holophrastic or whole phrase. It means that a child produces one word which is intended by them as the whole of the structure in their mind,in another word, the child cannot arrange or produce word into sentence instead of using one word in order to refer it as the whole phrase or sentence. For example, the word ‘Teddy’ could mean ‘I want may Teddy, here is my Teddy, where is my Teddy, or hello my Teddy’, etc. This is where overextention occurs. Another example, the word ‘doggie’ is referringto all four-leg animals such as goat, cow, chicken, etc. The word ‘doggie’ is intended by the children asa certain kind of dog,this is an instance ofunderextention. The process to gather the data for this subject need a long time,it is called longitudinal study.
4. two-word stage
This stage occurs to the children who are 2 years old of age. Two words utterance refers to the whole sentence, that is, this stage is also a step toward a telegraphic stage (multiword speech).In the two-word there is no function word, the two-word such as ‘mommy eat’ is intended as mommy is eating, mommy eats, etc. As can be seen, thistwo-word are absence of function words which does not have lexical meaning unless it combines with the content words. 

Critical Period Hypothesis
The critical period hypothesis states that there is a period during which language acquisition is easy and complete (i.e. native speaker ability is achieved) and beyond which it is difficult and typically incomplete (Ellis: 1997).This time is also called as nativist position, it means that human cannot reach nativism if they do not learn language in this time.
There are two evidences that support critical period hypothesis,i.e.the story of Genie and Chelsea.
Genie
Genie learnt language after the critical period, this support that hypothesis. Actually, there is no brain damaged, she cannot produce the language normally. Instead, according to Susan Curtiss who works with Genie for a number of years, she said that the most part of Genie’s utterances are the stringing together of content words with clear meaning but little with the grammatical structure.
Chelsea
Chelsea is also a woman who also supports the critical period hypothesis. She was born deaf in California, isolated from any major urban center, she knew that she was deaf but there is no school for the deaf at there at that time so that she did not attend the school. Like Genie, she was not able to develop a grammar. That is because she was never listening to human language or speaking. These two stories support the critical period hypothesis. 

Imitation Theory
Another issue related to the first language acquisition is imitation theory. Jean Berko(1987) drew a picture of an imaginary animal on a piece of paper, and told a child that it was called a wug, and then she drew a picture of two of the same animals in another piece of paper, and asked the child what they were. The child replied ‘Wugs’.
Evidence:
Suzy: Don’t make me lost it
Daddy: No, don’t make lose it
Suzy: No, not lose… losed!
From the conversation, it can be concluded that:
1. Child imitates and recognizes adult speech
By Skinner in Mitchell (1998), the children acquire the language by imitating their caretakers.
2. The child creates his own system of language.
By Chomsky, the children do not learn and reproduce a large set of sentences, but they produce the language which they never heard before.
3. The child speech errors are systematic
The child speech is systematic errors because it is the current level of the child’s competence.By Chomsky, competence is the speaker-hearer underlying knowledge of language.

Innateness capacity
Some linguists and psycholinguists believe that the genetic predisposition which children have from birth to learn language remains with them throughout life. Children are born with a special ability from themselves the underlying rules of language system.


Bibliography:
Ellis, R. (1997). Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jean Berko. (1987). Language and Psychological Development.
Mitchel,R. (1998). Second Language Learning Theory. London: Arnold.


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