Today our topic of discussion is – Stages of first language acquisition
Stages of first language acquisition
Language development researches showed that children cannot acquire all the developmental factors at a time; they go through a sequence of recognizable stages as they master their native language, for example, meaningless sounds precede single word utterances; joining two words and associating meanings comes to them much later,
at the age of 1 year 6 months or 2 years. Thus it is easy to think of stage wise child language development. Although a certain stage can differ from child to child, the sequence of stage appears to be the same for all children who acquire same language (Moskowitz, 1978).
Following are the strongest and most believed research works emphasizing children’s first language acquisition, according to age level or researches that discuss the stages of first language acquisition-
Stages: Jean Piaget
Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget discussed four (4) stages of language
development which he regarded as the core to his theory of cognitive development (cognitivism). He developed these stages on the basis of children’s thinking process. According to Piaget these stages are universal and the sequences of development will be same for children all over the world despite of their cultural differences. The stages
are-
(a) Sensory Motor Stage (birth to 2 years)
(b) Preoperational Stage (2 to 7 years)
(c) Concrete Operational Stage (7-11 years)
(d) Formal Operational Stage (12 and up)
Piaget (1957) discussed the above mentioned stages for overall language development accounts. Among all the four stages the first two stages relate to this research. Thus, these two stages will be discussed below-
Sensory motor stage
This is the first of the four stages of cognitive development theory by Piaget. It extends from birth to around two (2) years and reflects a period of rapid cognitive growth. Initially infants use their senses and actions to build up basic knowledge of the world around them through trial and error.
Through the assimilation and accommodation processes acts are gradually adapted to the world (e.g. grasping schema). One of the main developments of this stage is the understanding that objects exist and that
events occur independently of one’s own actions which means that the child can represent them mentally (known as the object permanence).
Deferred imitation is another important development that occurs at the end of sensory motor stage (18-24 months). It is an important milestone in early cognitive growth. Piaget refers to the child’s ability to imitate the actions they observe others perform as deferred imitation. In order to develop further symbolic and pre-operational development, deferred imitation is very important.
Preoperational stage
This stage ranges from about ages two (2) to seven (7). Children at this level can psychologically perceive events and objects (the semiotic function and engage in symbolic play). The features of this pre-operational stage are typically egocentric thoughts and interactions.
Egocentrism refers to the failure of a child to see the situation from the point of view of another person. At this preoperational stage children may only concentrate on one aspect or component of any issue.
A transition of this level addresses this issue along with the problems of conservation (the understanding that something stays the same in quantity while its appearance changes).
2.4.2 Stages: Jean Aitchison. Jean Aitchison (1987) identified three phases that occur during a child’s vocabulary acquisition.
These stages were based on her main idea of “language has a biologically organized schedule and children following a similar pattern everywhere’. Children will of course differ independently when they reach each stage. Ultimately the language of the child will be in place and the child will have a basic lexicon of several thousand words. These stages are- a) labeling, b) packaging and c) network building.
Labelling
It is the first stage and it involves making the link between the sounds of specific words and the objects they refer to, e.g., knowing that ‘cat’ refers to the family pet.
Packaging
It enables a precise understanding of the range of meanings of a word. For example, understand that the word ‘cat’ refers not only to the family pet, but also to all the other cats.
Network building
It involves knowing the connections between words; understanding that some words have the opposite meaning. Such as, understanding the relationship between ‘hypernyms’ and ‘hyponyms.
Stages:
David Crystal. According to British linguist David Crystal children acquire language through five stages which are interlaced. He did not give the stages any name but described them as stage 1 to stage 5 (Crystal, 1997).
The ‘first’ stage starts from naming things with individual words and continues till the child can relate to objects. Stage ‘two’ starts when the child begins with the use of interrogative pronouns concerning naming and classifying things. During the stage ‘three’ children begin to make and express more complex sentences and ask lots of questions with marked intonations.
Stage ‘four’ is marked for communicating meaning indirectly by replacing imperatives with questions. In addition, children can express a wide variety of meaning through the use of complex sentence structures.
Children use language to do everything they need for successful communication. Such as providing information, asking and answering questions, requesting directly and indirectly, recommending, proposing, stating and expressing themselves while in stage five.
They are also able to talk about things, both hypothetically and conditionally, with references to past and future.The stages given by David Crystal are directly related to children’s development.
Stages:
Roger Brown. Roger Brown in 1973 stated some stages of language development which were described in his book ‘A First Language. On the basis of a longitudinal study on three children (Adam, Eve, Sarah), he tried to figure out their MLU (Mean Length of Utterance) in morphemes (Brown, 1973).
Brown believed that stages of development can differ according to the degree and the goal of different researches. Brown affirmed six stages of early language development, which contribute to the first words of a child and can include crying, babble play or babbling, and single words.
While most babies perform these stages in an orderly manner, sounds from the previous stages can reappear. For example, we can hear “la-la-la” after the single-word stage has been reached, but possibly not as much as we have heard before. Brown’s stages are as follows-
Pre linguistic stage
The duration of this stage is from birth to one (1) year. In the first month infants are found to be cooing to communicate. Cooing stage is also accompanied by crying. When the child cries he does what he can to express his feelings to others in the most basic form.
The cries vary slightly in order to convey a number of different signals (like hunger, sleep, hot cold, pain, discomfort etc.). Around six months of age, cooing shifts to babbling or meaningless vocal behaviour, including strings of vowels and consonants.
Typically two types of babbles are found in the children’s use- ‘reduplicated babbles’ where the sounds are repeated such as ‘bababa’, ‘ma ma’ and ‘variegated babbles’ where sounds like “ba-ba-be-be’, ‘ga-ga-gu-gu’ etc. are varied. According to Brown this stage prepares the child to understand and acquire words initially.
Single word stage
Onset of word acquisition is around one (1) year of age.
Single words are uttered of which mostly object like words are found. This stage comprised slow acquisition of approximately fifty words.
Early sentence stage
This stage starts from one and half a year (1.5) and lasts till two (2) years of age. Sudden increase of word acquisition is the main feature of this level. This is the onset of multiword utterances (like ‘mummy sock’) or the telegraphic stage.
Short sentence stage
Starting from age two (2) this stage can last till age two and half. This is the beginning stage of grammatical development like inflections (plural, past tense, etc.) Even grammatical structures like pronouns, prepositions and auxiliaries also begin at this level.
Complete sentence stage
. Starting from age two and half (2.5 years), this stage continues till six (6) years of age. It can be called the advanced grammatical development stage as, complete (sometimes almost) grammatical sentences are produced. Use of different types of clauses (relative, complement, adverbial) is seen at this stage. Brown observed complete grammatical development by this age.
School age:
Six. Complex aspects of grammar are often seen in the usage of children aged six (6) and over. Reading, writing skills, work together with speaking proficiency. Expansion of constructions through reformulation which is the ability to repeat meaning with a change in structure is a remarkable feature of this stage group of children.
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