them, they make errors unselfconsciously, they are more motivated to communicate, they like to conform, they are not set in their ways, and they have no first language to
interfere. Successful acquisition of language typically happens by four to six years of
age. From six years to puberty, the ability is steadily compromised. By the teenage years, changes occur in the maturing brain, with the decline in metabolic rate and
number of neurons. With adulthood, the language device is mostly dormant. There is a neurologically determined “critical period” in childhood for successful language
acquisition. The ability to comprehend, produce, and manipulate language is probably the single distinguishing characteristic separating humans from other primates.
Experiments indicate that chimps and orangutans can react to spoken human language, but only humans internalize and reproduce spoken language McArthur :
www.encyclopedia.com. Observing excavated pottery from burial and ceremonial sites, archaeologists suppose that primitive man probably used language as long as
100,000 years ago.
2.1.3 The Stages of Language Acquisition
The normal children acquire language by exceed some stages. Some linguists divided the stage of language acquisition into pre linguistic and linguistic stages. The
pre linguistic stage covers roughly the first word spoken with meaning. The stage has been divided into some phases, such as: crying, cooing, and babbling. The linguistic
stage covers the remaining years of language acquisition. This stage exceed some phases, such as: the first word Holophrase, two word sentences telegraphic speech,
multiple word sentence, mastery of syntax rules of grammar and mastery of articulations phonology. The linguistic stage is the linguistic structure. It is describe
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about the meaning of words, about the sound the ways in which word combine with one another to form sentences. Lefrancois 1986: 270 claims that there are six
sequential stage of the acquisition of language starting from the pre linguistic period to then linguistic period.
1. Pre Speech Stage.
In early of life, Baby begins to vocalize the minute they are born by crying. Crying is infant’s first communications. The infant advances from crying to using
language to communicate ideas, experiences, desires, fears, and other feelings. Wolff 1969 in Hall, 1983: 308 says that each infant has three pattern of crying: the basic
rhytmical pattern the hunger cry, the anger cry, and the pain cry. A mother quickly learns to detect these differences in her baby’s cries and responds to them
appropriately. For example; in response to pain cry, a mother immediately rushes into the baby’s room.
At approximately 2 months of age, the infant begins to express a new type of vocalization called cooing. Cooing is the term used to the gurgling; squealing sound
and mewing sound, which an infant makes when shehe is comfortable, happy or even excited. Although still not considered language, cooing, like crying represents a form
of communication. Cooing consist of vowel sounds. Before cooing totally diminishes, babbling emerges at about 6 month of age.
Babbling includes both vowels and consonant which eventually becomes distinct, for example; “ma”, “pa”. Babling becomes the first vocalization that bears any real
resemblance of speech. The infant may also lie quietly while listening to sounds, when the sounds stop the child will resume babbling. Because of all the factors,
babbling leads to increased control sound. Most linguists believe that in the babbling
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period infants produce a large variety of sounds, many of which do not occur in the language of the household.
2. The HolophraseThe First Word Stage.
Holophrase stage is the stage when the infant utter their first word. Sometime after the sixth month or usually around age 1 or their first birhday, children
understand the names that stand for a few people or objects, and produce their first words. Generally, these words are the name of objects, person, even, and action.
During this one word stage, infants often use a single word for many purposes, relying on intonation to supply meaning. Children start out by using nouns or labels for object
around them. But they soon learn to state demands, such as;”that” of “this” means “Give me that or this”. Other words commonly used by children everywhere are
“Papa”, “Mama”. Thus although most holophrases are nouns, they are not simply for naming. For example; when a child say “milk”, shehe might mean, “there is the
milk”, shehe might also mean “give me some milk”, or “I am thirsty”. Clark et.al, 1977: 302 says that yet a list of the objects that the child’s first word refers to does
not tell us much about what the child is talking about. When children say truck, for example, they might be talking about it because it is mover, a moveable, or a place.
What is important is the role the truck plays in the event being talk about. According the scientists such as Nelson in Siahaan 2008 : 27 said the
children in this early stage of language acquisition often extend the meaning of a word to cover objects or actions for which they have no words, a process called
overextension. Young children to refer to several different things can also use single words. The word dog, for example, may often be used to refer to four legged animals,
such as dogs, cats, horses, and sheep. In this case, overextension mean is a sign that
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the child has not yet learned the precise referent of a word. Clark 1997, scientist gives statement is youngster learns a new words he extends to other features of
animals, such us size and sounds, and her concept of “bow-wow” becomes narrower; eventually he will have separate names for all animals. For example; a boy who has
learned the word “bow-wow”, may overextend it from dogs. When he learn a new word, say, “moo” for cows. In this case, he has two animal’s names in his vocabulary,
“moo” for cows and “bow-wow” for a dog. In this stage a child has able to imitate the animal sounds.
3. The Two Word Sentences Telegraphic Speech Stage.
The transition from holophrases to two word sentences generally occurs around age of 18 months. They begin to put two word together, with no pause
between the word and a falling intonation that spreads over the entire utterance. Helms and Tuner 1981: 187 said that toddlers begin to employ telegraphic
sentences, which are characteristically short and simple and composed primarily because the sentences lack some word such us tense endings verb, plurals endings on
noun, conjunction, preposition, etc. In learning to speak, children first use only the most meaningful words. They tend to leave out article the, an, preposition to, on,
pronounsyou, me and conjunctions. These shorts phrases are made when a new verb is combined with familiar nouns. While such grammatically omissions are made, the
word necessary to give the sentence meaning are complete. For example, when a child says “Daddy teeth” its mean that “Daddy brushing teeth” or “Daddy we go to dentist”.
In this stage, children are impossible to interpret out of context. This case, have seen that the context remains important in adult conversation. McNeill 1970: 20 says that
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Telegraphic speech is the outcome of the process of language acquisition. It is not the process itself. To understand it, we must penetrate more deeply into what children do.
4. Multiple Word Sentences Stage.
After pass through telegraphic stage, children move to multiple word sentences. This typically occurs around the age of 2 to 2½. In this stage, they begin to
assimilate some of the grammatical rules of language, learning to make good sentence. Like two word utterances, multi word sentences are required the use of
complete subject and predicates. Both subject and predicate are included in the sentence type. Brown 1973 in Lefrancois, 1986: 273 said that although the child’s
speech continues to be somewhat telegraphic after the stage of two word sentences, children now make increasing use of morphemes to express meaning. They include all
words, as well as grammatical endings such us –s, -ed and –ing, suffixes, prefixes, articles and so on. For example, the children transform the verbs “go to going”, “jump
to jumped” and “eat to eats”. Children appear to learn suffixes “-ed”, “-ing”, “-s” more easily than they learn prefixes. Because children who heard the syllable used as
a suffix found it meaning easier to learn than children who heard it used as a prefix. In this stages, they have been able to make declarative sentence, such as; “She is a
pretty baby”, make a question sentence, such in; “Where Daddy is?”, than make a negative sentence “I no can play” and make an imperative sentence, such as; “I want
more milk”.
5. More Complex Sentences Stage.
When children have mastered multiple word sentences, they begin to learn to more aspect syntax. This stage occurs between the ages of 2½ and 3 or 4. They have
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ability to make meaningful transformations. Children begin a show an understanding of various adult-accepted rules for transforming sentences; they also behave as though
they had an implicit understanding of grammatical functions of various words, phrases and clause. Clark et.al, 1977: 355 said that at around three, children begin to
use the first complex sentences the combining preposition into clause through coordination, gelatinisation and complementation. They start to link two or more
ideas in coordinate sentences like “Susan chooped some wood and Annie put up the tent”. They learn the rules to construct a good sentence. The acquisition of grammar
demands not only that children gradually grasp the underlying rules for combining words into sentences, bul also that they understand when to apply the rules.
6. Adult like Structures
In this stage, children have able to know grammatical rules of their language. They are speech as adult speech. They have been able to make conversation to adult.
The usually produce a complex structural by using “to be”. In this case, the child has to take account of different forms that express tense, for example, “I am coming”, “he
is going”, etc., and they are able to vary using the various forms of “to be” to understanding of person, thing, etc. Children tend to use their parent speech. For
example, “I do not eat my breads”, “I do not want a bath”, and “That is not my hat”, etc. Children have been able to utter yesno question form, such as; what, where, who,
why, when, and how. For example; “where are you going?”, “What are you doing?”, “Why are you crying?”, etc.
2.1.4 Factors Influencing The Language Development of Children
