Top-Rated Free Essay
Preview

Master1

Good Essays
826 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Master1
Psycholinguistics and Child Language Acquisition
Psycholinguistics merges the fields of psychology and linguistics to study how people process language and how language use is related to underlying mental processes. Studies of children’s language acquisition and of second-language acquisition are psycholinguistic in nature. Psycholinguists work to develop models for how language is processed and understood, using evidence from studies of what happens when these processes go awry.

They also study language disorders such as aphasia – impairment of the ability to use or comprehend words and dyslexia – impairment of the ability to make out written language. It is the study of interrelationship of psychological and linguistic behaviour. Its most important area of investigation has been language acquisition. It has raised and has partly answered questions such as how do children acquire their mother tongue? How do they grow up linguistically and learn to handle the registral and stylistic varieties of their mother tongue effectively? How much of the linguistic system that they ultimately command, are they born with and how much do they discover on the basis of their exposure to that system? John D. Carroll states that this branch uses:

“Some aspects of psychology and some aspects of linguistics. It is confined to the study of how people use a language system and how they learnt it”
By language acquisition is meant the process whereby children achieve a fluent control of their native tongue. By 1950, people thought that children imitated their elders and got language but now various theories have been presented. Some argue that it is the environmental impact and product of our experience and others discuss the innateness of language or Empiricist (Behaviorists) and Rationalists (Mentalists). The theoretical questions have focused on the issue of how we can account for the phenomenon of language development in children at all. Normal children have mastered most of the structures of their language by the age of five or six. The earlier behaviorist assumptions were that it was possible to explain language development largely in terms of imitation and reinforcement. Psycholinguistics therefore argue that imitation is not enough; it is not merely by mechanical repetition that children acquire language. They also acquire it by natural exposure. Both nature and nurture influence the acquisition of language in children. Both schools of thought have said significant things but neither is perfect. Language Acquisition is a process of analogy and application, nature and nurture. Experience and innateness. Imitation is there but the child forms his own grammar of rules. Children learn first not items but systems. In other words, what is being claimed is that the child’s brain contains certain innate characteristics which ‘pre-structure’ it in the direction of language learning. To enable these innate features to develop into adult competence, the child must be exposed to human language, i.e., it must be stimulated in proper to respond but the basis. David Crystal asserts:
“On which it develops its linguistic abilities is not describable in behaviourist terms”
Psycholinguistics has researched and exposed that there is a critical period in first language acquisition. If the child, in the first thirteen years, is not exposed to language, he loses his critical period and then he can never master a language; even his native tongue. Genie and Chelsea who lost their critical period, are the examples in this proof. If he is exposed to language in his childhood, he goes certain stages to learn his mother tongue. The development of a child’s language starts from babbling; merely saying /b/, /p/ and /m/ etc. and then he goes on to word level. His One-Word Stage is between the ages of 12 months, children are able to produce one word utterances. And the child can use one word to mean the whole thing as dada to mean I see daddy or daddy is coming etc. or Juice to means give me juice etc. In Two-Word Stage: such as baby chair meaning the baby is sitting in the chair or baby’s chair etc. Hit Doggie meaning I hit the doggy etc. In Telegraphic Stage, children begin to produce longer and complex sentences such are chair broken, Car make noise, I good boy, man ride bus today etc. Language development from age 2 is rapid and fast. The telegraphic stage is a very important period which is characterized by the emergence of powerful grammatical devices.
In short, Psycholinguistics deals with relationship between language and mind focusing mainly on how language is learnt, stored and occasionally lost. Mind and language have two functions: Acquisition and Performance and the two are linked. For empiricists, language learning is the result of conditioned behavior while Chomsky maintains that every human being has an innate capacity to learn his language. Language behavior is a very complex phenomenon. Language behavior is subject to different social and psychological factors. There is strong evidence to prove that language learning is a biologically controlled process. Psycholinguistics seeks to study all these issues and more.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    The theorist who theory is language development is B.F. Skinner. His theory is that children use cognitive behavior when understanding and giving communication. They will use trial and error to get the right words out until they succeed. He believes that children observe adults and other children for the correct way to communicate and repeat the actions they have seen until they get it right. We support this at nursery by speaking clearly and simply and nodding or praising a child for getting a word, sentence or request correct. This is to encourage them to use the correct terms when they wish to communicate.…

    • 858 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    First, children¡¯s acquisition of language is an innate mechanism that enables a child to analyze language and extract the basic rules of grammar, granted by Chomsky. It basically states that humans are born with a language acquisition device that, the ability to learn a language rapidly as children. However, there is one important controversy in language acquisition concerns how we acquire language; since Chomsky fails to adequately explain individual differences. From the behaviorists¡¯ perspectives, the language is learned like other learned behaviors. It is learned through operant conditioning and shaping. For example, when the children used language correctly, they got rewarded by their parents with such as smile or other form of encouragement. Then, they would be more likely to use language correctly in the future.…

    • 617 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The theorist who theory is language development is B.F. Skinner. His theory is that children use cognitive behavior when understanding and giving communication. They will use trial and error to get the right words out until they succeed. He believes that children observe adults and other children for the correct way to communicate and repeat the actions they have seen until they get it right. We support this at nursery by speaking clearly and simply and nodding or praising a child for getting a word, sentence or request correct. This is to encourage them to use the correct terms when they wish to communicate.…

    • 307 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Children, despite having no knowledge of words themselves when they are born, are able to acquire language quickly and with apparent ease, and many ideas have been put forward to examine and understand the processes that lie behind the acquisition of language. The main theories include those of Nativism and Empiricism.…

    • 1473 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Language Paper

    • 1227 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Language is something that generally every human has as a form of communication. It can be in the form of verbal words, in the form of written words, or even in the form of signed words, but it is something that as humans we all use in one way or another. The need for language evolved as a way for people to express their thoughts, their feelings and emotions, and even their fears. Humans needed a way to communicate with each other to express things that normally couldn’t be expressed. This paper is going to set out to cover language. It will cover the definition of language and lexicon, as well as evaluate the key features of language. The paper with describe the four levels of the language structure and processing as well as analyze the role of language processing in cognitive psychology. While it seems so simple, language is a complex as well as fascinating cognitive function that will be explored more in this paper.…

    • 1227 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    secret life of the brain

    • 705 Words
    • 3 Pages

    A young child has twice as many neurons than adults. The child brain is plastic, a magnificent and flexible engine for learning. Children learn to crawl, reason, pay attention and remember. They learn to make friends, but nowhere is learning more dramatic than in the way a child learns to master language, the great leap that the brain makes that is nothing short of a miracle. I can relate being the eldest of my siblings’ language development represents one of the most profound mysterious changes.…

    • 705 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Anthropological linguistics: This subfield of Anthropology is focusing on the study of language and culture and the connections between language, human biology and cognitions. Someone studying Anthropological linguistics may be interested in studying the different languages of Native Australians.…

    • 302 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Each child learns language at their own rate and pace. There can be different factors, such as a child learning multiple languages at once. Most often, with little effort, the child will be able to learn oral language by being in an environment that fosters conversation. Early on, toddlers will begin to make intentional sounds, "At one year of age the child says his first intentional word…his babbling has a purpose, and this intention is a proof of conscious intelligence…He becomes ever more aware that language refers to his surroundings, and his wish to master it consciously becomes also greater….Subconsciously and unaided, he strains himself to learn, and this effort makes his success all the more astonishing." (The Absorbent Mind, p. 111) Most children by the age of two will have a rapid growth in language comprehension. Towards the end of the second year the child is able to combine two or more words into basic sentences, “Every child…bursts out with a number of words all perfectly pronounced. And all this occurs at the end of the second year of his life.” (The Absorbent Mind, p. 103)…

    • 751 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Nature vs. Nurture

    • 586 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The acquisition of a first language is purely based on nurture. It is proven that any child can learn any language with the same about of facility if learnt at the appropriate time. However, any language acquired after this period of time if stored in a different area of the brain, thus the child can never fully master it.…

    • 586 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    'The universality of language is what unites all human being across the globe .The different perspectives of thought is what differentiates our languages. ' (Rendall,1998:58). As stated by Rendall, language is common to all human being and is a typical characteristic of the human race. but the way we acquire,develop and evolve this special feature is still not clearly understood and has been the object of researches from which different theories about language acquisition has emerged. Following Dolati (2012:752) statement that 'Behaviourism, Innatism and Interactionism…

    • 6976 Words
    • 24 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Critical Period Hypothesis

    • 1558 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Developing a new language is not easy, but to a child just learning the basics of English has an advantage by their brain accepting new grammar rules and pronunciation at a more rapid pace. Phonics become easier and is less complicated to understand as a young child. There are multiple theories describing how a little kids brain is more developed in learning complex subjects when compared to adult minds. The Critical Period Hypothesis “is a period during the early life of a [human] when some property develops rapidly, and is more susceptible to alteration by the environment” (Daw 1). Noam Chomsky proposed a language acquisition device in the brain that helps children naturally or automatically pick up the language but switches of as an adult (Wen 149). There are children in parts of the world that pick up more than three or four languages. Kids pick up dialects without any awareness that they are speaking a different language. The child’s brain is just registering: this is how you talk to your mom, this is how you talk to your grandma, and this is how you talk to your…

    • 1558 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Children are said to be able to communicate from the very second they enter the world. This communication is known globally and all babies unconsciously are able to do it, this form of communication is recognized as crying. This is all right for a short period of time when the child only requires the basic necessities of life, however as they develop and are more consciously aware, this makes children want and need more, so starts their journey to learn the “primary means of communication of humans beings through language…

    • 360 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Language is a code made up of rules that include what words mean, how to make words, how to put them together, and what word combinations are best in what situations. Speech is the oral form of language. The purpose of this study is to find out the developmental stages the child goes through in the acquisition of language from birth to 5 years.…

    • 9402 Words
    • 38 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    While working at a daycare, I observed a speech therapist work one-on-one. Before working with the therapist, the boy communicated through gestures and grunts. Over the next year, I witnessed his communication skills improve. The boy who once played alone was now laughing and effortlessly interacting with friends. Recollecting his progress, I was eager to explore the field of speech-language pathology which I found to have numerous parallels with education and psychology.…

    • 261 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    1. The analysis of human language competence, its origin and development in the process of life.…

    • 1576 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays