Speech Acquisition of Children

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

2.2.1 Speech Acquisition of Children

The children’s use of language is different from that of adults. The vocabulary is smaller but may also contain words that don’t appear in grown-ups’ speech. The correct inflectional forms of certain words may not have been acquired fully, especially for those words that are exceptions to common rules. Spontaneous speech is also believed to be less grammatical than for adults. The study on the children’s Speech Act Acquisition deals with their ability in the production of language in maintaining contact with people and getting others things for them. According to Gleason and Ratner 1998 : 373-375 maintaining contact with the other people, and getting others to do things for them are the children’s early social intentions, which are described by researchers as the pragmatics aspects of language. According Bates 1976 and Halliday 1975 in Siahaan 2008, the social intention that children put into their language as since the one-word stage include drawing attention to the self, for instance hi; showing objects, for instance see and ball; offering, for instance the child says, there to offer and adult Universitas Sumatera Utara toy; and requesting object activities, for instance more. Those examples show that children engage communicative acts into their sentences in our society. In maintaining contact with the other people, as children grow phisically and mentally, they get more skill in using language because they also learn how to do thing with language. According to Clark 2003: 321 children learn to use any form of language for many functions or can be conveyed by many forms, and they learn using the forms to mark their membership in society, to be polite, how to be persuasive, to negotiate to resolve conflict, to distinguish actual event from playing specific functions depending on the speaker, addressee, setting, and preceding conversation. Children learn speech act to express their intention, which is termed as the function of the language forms they use. According to Clark et.al, 1997 children speech acts can be devided into two, they are the direct speech act and indirect speech act. The type of direct speech act that children use is the same with the form of the language they use. This means that the possible literal meaning of the one- or two-, or three-, or more that three-word utterance is the same with their intention. The second type is the indirect speech act. It is the type, which they use is different from the form of the language they use. This means that the possible literal meaning of one- or two-, or three-, or more that three-word utterance is different from their intention. As a comparative to the adults’ language, according to Austin’s theory 1962, speech act is doing a certain action by just saying a certain word provided the felicity condition is fulfilled. The felicity condition is the external condition of the language. It is the aspects of the context of the situation. So by using a word or a group of words having a literal meaning in an appropriate felicity condition, the adult can do the action such as making statement, interrogation, request, promise, etc. Children can produce a Universitas Sumatera Utara similar speech acts by learning it from the adults language. The matter in which their language forms are not well grammatically constructed is their relative approximation to the adult languages through their development.

2.2.2 Oral Language of Children