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
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Growth in language acquisition is considerably influenced by some factors that will determine the development in language acquisition. These factor include sex
differences of the child, the intelligence level, family size, socio economic influences and bilingualism.
1. Sex Differences of The Child
A controversial factor that many cause differences in language development is the sex differences of the child. Many investigators have found that girls surpass boys
in nearly all aspect of language behaviour, including the length of utterances, comprehension of speech, articulation, the number of the word spoken, the number of
different word spoken, amount if the speech, and sentence complexity. Girls seem to be superior to boys in overall language development. Girl’s speech is comprehensible
earlier, girl’s uses sentences earlier than boys, and age for age, and they use longer sentences. Their vocabularies are consistency large. In some cases, females are more
talkative than males. Most of the differences seem to increase with age. For example; Smith 1926 in Fitzgerald et al, 1982:239 found that at ages two and three, girls had
larger vocabularies than boys and that the difference had disappeared by four years of age.
2. The Intelligence Level
Intelligence is probably the most important single factor in language development. There seems little doubt that rates of language acquisition are also
closed related to the general intelligence level of the child. Bright children usually begin to talk at an earlier age, acquire vocabularies more rapidly, articulate more
efficiently, and use longer and more grammatically correct sentences. 3.
Family Size
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In the same context, the size of family the number of children and the position of the child in the family are influential factors. The language behaviour of
first–born children does not differ consistently from the second-born children or the third-born children. The spacing of births is one important determinant of whether
ordinal position correlates with language performance. If children are closely spaced, parents may find it difficult to distribute the attention equitably. One might expect the
children receiving the least adult attention. However, one should not conclude that multiple births in it self is the cause of the slow language development of children. It
is difficult for parents to give fairly attention to each of two or three children of identical age as to only one child.
4. Socio Economic Influences
Socio economic level is considerable influence on language growth. Balle 1968 the scientist says that parent’s occupational and social level has a direct
relationship on language development. Lower-Class parents have a tendency not to talk to their children as much as middle-class parent do. Middle-class and upper class
parents like to discuss thing with their children, listen to them, answer their questions and use verbal methods of discipline than are lower-class parents. Children of middle-
class an upper class talk earlier, form sentences earlier, and use more mature sentence structure than their lower class.
5. Bilingualism
Early studies indicated that children from bilingual homes suffered marked language retardation as compared with children from monolingual homes. However, the plain
truth is that many bilingual children have no difficulty whatever in mastering two languages. It is now left that the effects of bilingual home may depend on whether
adults reprimand children for using their native dialect and insist that they speak
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Standard English or other standard language. Bilingualism is not a problem solely related to language, it might constitute a problem of cultural conflict. For example;
Smith 1949 in Fitzgerald et al, 1982: 240 found that only the brightest bilingual children were able to match the vocabulary size of monolingual children. Perhaps
bright children have sufficient cognitive facilities to master two labels for each object and two grammatical structures, whereas less bright children are cognitively over
whelmed by the demands of learning two languages.
2.2 Children Speech And Communication
