Chomsky 1987 states that the acquisition of language by native speaker is learned primarily with psychology and psycholinguistics development. Eventhough,
when a child is learning to talk, his utterances cannot be fully understood, but we can see that children imitate what they heard and have the natural ability to understand the
grammar. There are two views of scientists, they are empiricists behaviourists and
rationalists mentalists. The empiricists say that knowledge is derived from experience. The behaviourists claim that language is learned by operant conditioning.
The other theory of empiricists says that language acquisition is the result of stimulus, response of activities, imitation, memorization, and reinforcement facilitating their
process of language acquisition. A child should learn to make a response in the first place, and than the response should be reinforced in a variety of ways.
It is different from the empiricists behaviourists theory. According to rationalist theory of language development, speaking is an innate ability. Rationalists
believe that human brain is wired or predestined to learn a language. They say that all children pass through the same sequence when they learn to speak, no matter what
language they use. Chomsky 1987, for instance, claims that infants are born with a Language Acquisition Device LAD, which gives them an ability to learn the rules of
grammar in any possible language. The speech that a child hears activates only those structures in the LAD which are needed to learn the language in question.
2.1.1 First Language Acquisition
First language acquisition takes place in speaker’s native environment. It is also a basic experienceknowledge in learning to speak by using language. Native
language is a primary language that will be used forever by native speaker.
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Klein 1988 : 4 states that first language acquisition happens when a child learns step by step and can speak with language. The states that first language
development is connected to cognitive and social development of children. The children usually imitates what they hear in adult speech for example,
some of the early attempts at sound patterns, and the acquisition of new words, but very little of grammatical structure is learned by simple imitation. This was early
noticed by researchers, who pointed out that child coinages such as mouses for mice or goned for gone could not have been produced through a process of imitation for
adults do not say such things, but must represent the childs own application of abstract rules already acquired. Furthermore, direct correction and coaching have very
little effect, showing the important role of the childs own efforts. Various ways of explaining this internal ability were proposed, most notably CHOMSKYS argument
that children must be credited with an innate language acquisition device: a set of outline principles about the way language is structured and a procedure for
discovering the remainder. Investigators such as Piaget argued for the importance of relating the emergence of childrens language to their underlying intellectual or
cognitive development. Others stressed the importance of analysing the nature of the input presented to them by adult speakers. It is now apparent that each of these factors
has a role to play in guiding the course of acquisition, but the nature of their interdependence is far from clear.
2.1.2 Language Acquisition Device
In linguistics, a genetic mechanism for the acquisition of language proposed by Noam Chomsky. LAD was ‘wired’ with language universals and equipped with a
mechanism which allowed children to make increasingly complex guesses about what they heard around them, aided by an in-built evaluation measure that enabled them to
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select the best GRAMMAR consistent with the evidence. It has, however, proved difficult to specify and test this theory, and Chomsky has abandoned it in favour of
parametric theory, which suggests that children are preprogrammed with some universals but only partially ‘wired’ with others. They have advance knowledge of
certain basic language options, but have to discover by experience which occur in the language they are exposed to.
In Chomskyan terminology, they know the parameters along which language can vary, but have to fix their values, perhaps by setting a ‘switch’ in one of two
possible positions. According to this theory, languages are similar at deep, eventhough on the surface they appear different.
It has been proposed that humans possess a “Language Acquisition Device.” The “Device” is credited to Dr. Noam Chomsky, who hypothesized that children are
born with a special ability to process language through an innate language acquisition device. Other linguists, as scientists, either support Chomsky’s hypothesis or work at
disproving it. Linguists and speech therapists believe that the device is centered in the
frontal left hemisphere of the brain, although the entire brain participates in language functions. The device contains the principles that are universal to all languages. And
apparently, only humans possess an innate predisposition to learn and reproduce spoken language. This language acquisition device is activated in an infant’s brain
when in the presence of parents, guardians and siblings. A baby doesn’t learn a language by conjugating verbs or memorizing dialogues. No one holds grammar and
literature classes with the infant. Instead, the device is activated by language input,
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meaning listening and attending as the parents, family and others speak and interact with the baby.
When the baby begins to listen to his parents, he will unconsciously recognize the language he is dealing with. The tot will set his parameters to the correct one. He
knows intuitively that there are some words that behave like verbs, others like nouns and objects. The child already knows that there is a limited set of possibilities as to
their ordering within any phrase. This knowledge is contained in the child’s language acquisition device because the adults in the child’s life either don’t teach, or are
incapable of teaching this information to the child. A tot’s ability to learn a language in the early years is fascinating. At about
one year, children are able to understand words, and shortly afterwards are able to speak individual words. At around 18 months, their vocabulary begins to grow
impressively, and their grasp of simple syntax is demonstrated in the form of two- word and three-word sentences. By three years of age, they can grasp relatively
complex rules of grammar. At around four years of age the soft spot in the child’s skull solidifies as the
brain’s metabolism begins slowing. As the child reaches puberty the brain’s metabolism assumes adult levels. This accounts for the apparent decline in the ability
to learn a second language after childhood. The language learning circuitry of the teenager is no longer as plastic as in childhood.
Children can learn a second language, or recover first language ability when the left hemisphere of the brain is damaged or even surgically removed though not
quite at normal levels, but comparable damage in an adult usually leads to permanent language loss. Many explanations have been advanced for children’s first and second
language superiority. They can exploit the special ways that their mothers talk to
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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
