Stages In Language Development in a child
Many species have systems of communication. Can you think of
some species where the members communicate with each other and also think
of
the way in which they do so?
The dance of the honey bee communicates to
the other bees the approximate direction and distance of food source
and the enemy.
Birds communicate that they have taken possession of a certain tree or bush by special chirps and shrieks.
Then what is special about the
human language. Is it too not a method of communication?
The entire communication pattern of all species other than humans is inborn – that is, the communication pattern is un-influenced by experience.
In contrast, while the human infant is innately endowed and programmed to
learn language, the infant’s language learning is influenced by the
environment and humans can produce an infinite number of original sentences –
by ‘original’ we mean not imitated or inborn but produced by the
individual.
Humans can also talk about events and objects in another time and
place.
All children – whatever language they may speak – develop
language through similar stages and sequence. The sounds made by the
children
in the first year of life, before they are able to speak words are called
pre-linguistic sounds. These include crying, cooing and babbling.
Children acquire the first words around the end of the first year and after that
language develops rapidly and by adolescence they have become
sophisticated
producers of language though vocabulary continues to develop even
later throughout life.
An important aspect about language is that the child from the first day can understand more than she can speak.
Comprehension (receptive language) precedes production (expressive language)
Stages in Language Development
Crying -is the first form of a child’s communication. It is innate, or
inborn which means that the child does not have to be taught to cry. In
the first month of birth, this is the only sound that the infant makes.
An infant’s crying produces a physiological response in adults and children which motivates them to run to the baby to try to relieve her/his distress. The child’s crying communicates a variety of needs as the child has a different type of a cry for different bodily states – hunger, pain, illness.
By the second month, children begin ‘cooing’. This is also innate, vowel-like sound – like “oooh”, “aaaaaah” – which the infants make
when they are contented or feeling pleasure. When the infant coos, the parents respond by talking,smiling or imitating the sound and then wait for the child to coo again. Thus, it appears as though the infant and the parents are ‘talking’. Cooing decreases markedly by about 8 months and by 6 months the infant begins to babble.
Babbling is a consonant-vowel combination like da, ma or pa. The infant repeats this combination, leading to sounds like “dadada”, “mamama”.
Babbling sounds like human speech. The infant is capable of producing all the sounds contained in all human languages. Thus, the infant can produce sounds used in the German or African languages even though she/he has not heard those sounds. Even a deaf child, who is not able to hear the speech of others, babbles. These two facts bring out that babbling is innate.
However, gradually, the sounds that the child
does not hear in her environment get dropped. This tells us that the environment plays a tremendous role in language learning.
Around the first birthday, the child says the first word. How do we know that what the child has uttered is a word? We know it is a word because she uses it consistently to refer to the same meaning. First words
are brief, consisting of one or two syllables – papa, amma, tata, bye.
By 18 months children begin to produce about two dozen words. But at this time they understand simple commands and many more words. By two years of
age the child has about 250 words and after that adds hundreds of words every year.
Around the second birthday the child begins to combine words to speak two word ‘sentences’. The child’s’ first words are names of people, animals and things – i.e., nouns, action words (bye bye); and expressive words (no, namaste). Sometimes the child uses a word to refer to things and actions for which they do not yet have words.
An interesting feature of the child’s one-word or two-word utterances is that these express complete meanings which are found in complete sentences.
Thus when the child sees the mother and says “mamma”, depending upon the context, it may mean that “I want to go to mamma” or “My mamma is there” or any other meaning. This simple one or two-word sentences which express entire meanings are called telegraphic speech.
Between 2 to 3 years of age the child acquires grammatical forms and her/his sentence structure expands to include the words that were missing in telegraphic speech – articles, conjunctions and possessives.
By 4 years of age, the child’s language is well established – children can engage in lengthy conversations, ask questions and can take turns in
talking.
By age 6 their vocabulary is about 10,000 words.
By age 7 to 9, children understand that words have
multiple meanings and enjoy jokes and are riddles that language based.
