Lecture : Dr. Oom Rohmah Syamsudin M.

Hum
Subject : Advanced Linguistics
Name : Afif Adani
NPM/Class : 20217470145/ II B
Assignment : Essay on Language Acquisition
Major : S2 – Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris

First Language Acquisition

Clark (2009) stated that a process where every human being has the capacity to
understand, produce and use words to understand and communicate is called language
acquisition (p. 56). This involves many factors such as syntax, phonetics, and extensive
vocabulary. Language acquisition lies in mastering the first language, which learns the baby's
native language master, and for mastery of the second language lies in adults as an additional
language. At the age of about 9 months the mastery of language in children appears by
composing their first words. From there, these capacities arise to acquire and use language
and distinguish humans from other organisms.
Dardjowidjojo (2008) stated that the process of the child begins to recognize verbal
communication with its environment is called language acquisition of children (p. 225).
According to Syafrizal (2014), “First language acquisition is the study of the process through
which learners acquire language” (p. 8). In this case, the first language acquisition occurs
when a child from the beginning without language has mastered the language. In the process
of acquiring children's language, more children lead to the communication function. Mastery
of children's language can be said to have continuity characteristics, has a continuum, moves
from one simple word to a more complicated word combination. Language acquisition is
closely related to cognitive development, namely, first, if the child is able to produce speech
which, based on neat grammar, does not automatically imply that the child has mastered the
relevant language well. Second, the speaker must obtain cognitive categories that underlie
various expressive natural language meanings.
Steinberg (2001) during the first language acquisition proposes four main stages as
follow:
1. Pre-speech
Much of importance goes on even before the child utters his first word:  infants learn
to pay attention to speech, pays attention to intonation and the rhythm of speech long
 before they begin to speak. Infants respond to speech more keenly than to other sounds. 
Speech elicits greater electrical activity in the left side of the 2 month old infant's brain
than do other sounds.  Experiment with microphone and nipple showed that infants suck
more vigorously if the action triggers a human voice as opposed to music or other sounds.
Child learn to recognize the distinctive sounds, the phonemes of the language they
hear from birth long before they are able to pronounce them.  Infants can distinguish
between /p/ and /b/ at three or four months (in an experiment with /ba/ played vs. /pa/, a
two month infant showed awareness of the change). But children do not learn how to use
these sounds until much later-- around the second year or later--as shown by the
experiment with /pok/ and /bok/.  The same is true for rising vs. falling intonation, which
only becomes systematically funtional much later.  Infants know the difference between
one language and another by recognition of phonological patterns (Story of the Russian
fairy tale book.)
2. Babbling stage
Begins at several months of age.  Characterized by indiscriminate utterance of speech
sounds-- many of which may not be used in the given language but are found in other
languages-- clicks.  Many native speech sounds may be absent-- some are naturally harder
to pronounce-- /r/ /th/.  Very few consonant clusters and repeated syllables are common.
3. One word (holophrastic) stage
Infants may utter their first word as early as nine months: usually mama, dada  (these
words resemble babbling).  Deaf babies whose parents use sign language begin making
their first word/gestures around eight months.  This stage is characterized by the
production of actual speech signs.  Often the words are simplified: "du" for duck, "ba" for
bottle. When the child has acquired about 50 words he develops regular pronunciation
patterns. This may even distort certain words-- turtle becomes "kurka". Incorrect
pronunciations are systematic at this time: all words with /r/ are pronounced as /w/.  sick--
thick, thick--fick. Children tend to perceive more phonemic contrasts than they are able to
produce themselves.
The first 50 words tend to be names of important persons, greetings, foods, highlights
of the daily routine such as baths, ability to change their environment-give, take, go, up,
down, open.
The meaning of words may not correspond to that of adult language: 
overextension-- dog may mean any four legged creature.  apple may mean any round
object.  bird may mean any flying object.  Child can still distinguish between the
 differences, simply hasn't learned that they are linguistically meaningful.  Dissimilarities
linguistically redundant.
Two patterns in child word learning—
referential-- names of objects.
expressive-- personal desires and social interactions:  bye-bye, hi, good, This is a
continuum.  Child's place on this continuum partly due to parent's style:  naming vs.
pointing.
The extra-linguistic context provides much of the speech info.  Rising and falling
intonation may or may not be used to distinguish questions from statements at the one-
word stage.  Words left out if the contexts makes them obvious.  At this stage, utterances
show no internal grammatical structure (much like the sentence yes in adult speech, which
can't be broken down into subject, predicate, etc.)
4. Combining words
18 month - 2 years.  By two and a half years most children speak in sentences of
several words--but their grammar is far from complete. This stage rapidly progresses into
what has been termed a fifth and final stage of language acquisition, the All hell breaks
loose stage.  By six the child's grammar approximates that of adults. Children learning any
language seem to encode the same limited set of meanings in their first sentences:

ownership-- Daddy's shoes; describing events-- Me fall; labeling-- That dog; locational
relations-- toy in box. Sentences usually two words.  Children can repeat more complex
sentences spoken by adults but cannot create them until later (called prefabricated
routines) not indicative of the child's grammar.

The ability to acquire languages with native speaker competencies is greatly reduced
during puberty. There are two suggestions as to why this is the case. 1) Shortly before
puberty the lateralisation of the brain (fixing of various functions to parts of the brain) takes
place and this may lead to general inflexibility. 2) With puberty various hormonal changes
take place in the body (and we technically become adults). This can also lead to inflexibility
that mastery of the language cannot lead to conclusions reached in early childhood.

In general, first language acquisition is defined as a process of children in acquiring

and learning his native language for the first time from he was born. First language
acquisition includes four main stages in the process of its occurrence: Pre-speech, babbling
stage, one word stage, and combining word stage, which in outline, the characteristics and
traits of first language acquisition are: It is an instinct; It is very rapid; It is very complete;
and it does not require instruction. Additionally, the universality by which children acquire
language suggests that children are genetically endowed to acquire language through an
intermediate of the brain. Consequently, brain damage to the left hemisphere can result in
aphasia and the language faculty stops functioning properly. That suggests as well that
language is an innate faculty of the human brain and the essence of this innate faculty appears
to be the Universal Grammar suggested by Chomsky.

Generally, the ability to acquire a language with native speaker competence

diminishes severely around puberty. There are two suggestions as to why this is the case. 1)
Shortly before puberty the lateralization of the brain (fixing of various functions to parts of
the brain) takes place and this may lead to general inflexibility. 2) With puberty various
hormonal changes take place in the body (and we technically become adults). This may also
lead to an inflexibility which means that language acquisition cannot proceed to the
conclusion it reaches in early childhood.
 REFERENCE

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https://www.uni-due.de/ELE/LanguageAcquisition.html