PUTRU LESTARI | 20400118052 | PBI ‘3

SUMMARY: FIRST LANGUAGE LEARNING

 Prior to uttering speech sounds, infants make a variety of sounds – crying,

cooing, gurgling. Infants everywhere seem to make the same variety of
sounds, even children who are born deaf (Lenneberg et al., 1965). The
ability and propensity to utter such sounds thus appear to be unlearned.
Later, around the seventh month, children ordinarily begin to babble, to
produce what may be described as repeated syllables (‘syllabic
reduplication’), e.g. ‘baba’, ‘momo’, ‘panpan’. While most of the syllables
are of the basic Consonant + Vowel type (‘baba’ and ‘momo’), some
consist of closed syllables of the simple Consonant + Vowel + Consonant
variety (‘panpan’). This structure of babbling as repeated syllables has
been found to be produced by children in all studied languages.

 From an advanced stage of babbling, children begin to speak their first

words. Often this occurs at around 1 year of age but can occur earlier or
later. When children start to say the words, it is somewhat surprising that
only a few of the sounds they make while babbling appear in speech.
Another vote must be recovered.

 visibility of articulators and ease of articulation (first proposed by

Steinberg, 1982). When the child becomes motivated to produce
meaningful speech (this occurs after the child has learned to understand
some words spoken by other people), the child begins to seek ways to
produce the desired sounds. The child then becomes alert to clues that
relate to the articulation of the speech sounds. The child observes where
speech sounds come from and notes the relationship between the sounds
and the position of noticeable speech articulators, particularly the mouth
and lips (Kuhl and Meltzoff, 1988; Legerstee, 1990).

 First words have been reported as appearing in children from as young as 4

months to as old as 18 months, or even older. On average, it would seem
that children utter their first word around the age of 10 or 12 months.
Some of this variability has to do with physical development, such as the
musculature of the mouth, which is essential for the proper articulation of
sounds. Certain brain development is also involved since the creation of
speech sounds must come under the control of speech areas in the cerebral
cortex (Bates et al., 1992).

 It appears that children first use nouns as proper nouns to refer to specific
objects (Moskowitz, 1978), after which they may or may not extend the
meaning correctly for common nouns (Clark, 1973). For example, while
‘dada’ may first be used to identify one particular person, it may or may
not be extended to include all men or all people. Or, ‘wow-wow’ may be
 used to refer to one dog, and then be extended to refer to all animals, soft
slippers, or people in furs. In time, of course, the proper restrictions and
extensions are learned. Researchers have noted that children may describe
a complex situation by using a series of single-word holophrases. ‘peach,
Daddy , mommy was used to describe a situation where Daddy had cut a
piece of peach that was in a spoon (Bloom, 1973), and ‘car, go, bus’ was
used to describe a situation in which hearing the sound of a car reminded
the child that she had been on a bus the day before (Scollon, 1976).

 At the age of 2 years the child enters the telegraph stage where the
children say 2 or more. Where children realize that adding more words
will improve communication, for example "mom I want chocolate"

 It is worth mentioning that even if a fetus could hear sounds from the
outside world, those sounds would have to be through the medium of a
liquid in the fetal sac. That being the case, speech sounds are difficult to
distinguish. How much. General sounds are all that come through. While
this may be enough of a basis for a fetus later to distinguish among
different voices according to pitch or loudness, it is certainly insufficient
for identifying speech sounds.

 While the ability to utter speech in appropriate situations is a good

indicator of language knowledge, the absence of the ability to produce
speech may not indicate a lack of language knowledge. There are many
hearing persons who are born mute. People may be born with cerebral
palsy or some other abnormality that prohibits them from articulating
speech. Yet such persons may learn to comprehend all that is spoken to
them.

 People who hear develop the ability to understand speech without their
ability to speak, as long as their basic intelligence is intact. But how can
such people understand the sentences they make, remembering that such
sentences reflect the essential characteristics of language, namely an
understanding of the unlimited number of grammatical sentences of the
novel, recognition of synonyms, ambiguity. this mute person develops
grammar, mental grammar based on understanding speech; which allows
them to make sense of the speech they are having, is the same grammar
that normal children develop.
 Saying that language comprehension must precede the production of
comprehension of some words, phrases, or grammatical forms learned,
some of which can result in speech. Systems of understanding and
production do not develop separately for normal children. When the child
gets grammatical aspects to understand, the child will then try to find ways
to use them in production.
 Comprehension at 6 months earlier than most researchers previously
thought. understanding suggests that it is eight or ten months of age when
 children start attaching language labels to certain objects. Whatever the
case, it is clear that understanding and the production process develop in
parallel with production which always tries to follow understanding.

 In learning any language in the world, children must first be able to

understand the meaning of the language before they can produce it
themselves. First of all, children need to be shown the utterance clearly
related to the article being referred to before they can begin pronouncing
the greeting themselves. Since children are not born with knowledge of a
particular language, for example English or Chinese, they need to be
introduced to a language in order to learn it. It is also important that what
words are exposed to children should be linked to objects, events and
situations in their physical environment, and to subjective events in their
minds such as pain, hunger, desire. Children will not learn a language if all
they hear is the sound of speech, no matter how many times it is said.

 The meanings that underlie the understanding of speech are the concepts
that exist in a person's mind. Speech does not provide such a concept. The
sound of speech at first was just a meaningless voice. The thought content
is provided by the child the environmental experience, namely dogs, cats,
humans, food, and events related to these objects, and the child
experiences feelings, emotions, desires, and their own conceptual
constructs (thoughts). Without such thought content, the child will have
nothing to define as the meaning of words and sentences. Thought always
precedes language.

 Baby Talk is a feature that has its foundation in early childhood talking.
Parents and others clearly believe that these traits, when reintroduced to a
child, serve to promote communication. However, it should be
remembered that Baby Talk is something parents learn from other adults
and includes standard vocabulary. It is a 'standard' in the sense that such
vocabulary is culturally passed on from generation to generation.
Vocabulary Most Baby Talks involve modifications in vocabulary. There
are words already established. Another construction principle for many
Baby Talk words is that they are supposed to represent the sounds made
by various things, that is, they are onomatopoeic. Syntax plays a less
prominent role in Baby Talk than vocabulary.

 Many people believe that language is learned by imitation. By imitating it

means that the child copies and repeats aloud the words he hears. Through
imitation, children learn how to pronounce sounds and words and they
seem to enjoy imitating the sounds they hear (Masur, 1995). The
production of certain novel words and sentences by children cannot be
explained by imitation. Children usually produce words that don't fit
grammar.