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After reading this article you will learn about the stages in the process of the development of language behaviour in the child.
The neonate does not speak or communicate unless one assumes that the birth cry is the first form of communication. Gradually, the process of communication starts with the child’s parents trying to stimulate responses to sounds of the mother’s voice, or to some other gestures.
Gradually unclear early babbling sounds give way to speech like sounds and ultimately production of utterances. We may for the sake of convenience, divide the entire process of language development into three broad stages.
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The three broad stages can be described as a stage where the child acquires an ability to produce or make speech sounds and utterances; the ability to comprehend, understand and interpret; and finally, the ability to actively communicate through adult level language. Of course, the three stages are not strictly compartmentalized.
For example, some form of comprehension and interpretation exists even during the first stage and so also some form of communication. The three stages are classified depending on the dominance of the particular aspect of development of language at that stage.
Ability to Produce Utterances:
The ability to utter speech-like sounds (words) appears to begin around the 9th or 10th month. This ability seems to coincide with the child’s cognitive ability where he or she is able to perceive and conceive the objects around as permanent entities or permanent objects. Many experiences crystalize this.
The mother becomes a permanent object; the doll becomes a permanent object. This concept of ‘object permanence’ according to Flavell leads to the emergence of sounds which are closely associated with the objects around. Sounds come to refer to things and objects. The dog becomes ‘bow bow’; and cat become a ‘meow’. Gradually, real world like utterances appear at a very rapid pace.
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Of course, there is no doubt that the child is helped in this process by models of adults speech. Slightly distorted forms of adults words appear. Thus a dog is pronounced as go, and a cat as ‘Ca’. Not surprisingly, the first few words which a child acquires are nouns and names of objects which are connected with his own actions like eating or drinking, animals, etc.
Interestingly, most of the early utterances have something to do with action, movement or acting, including objects like animals whom he or she sees moving. Names of things which are fixed and immovable are acquired later. Studies by Nelson have shown that children differ in the type of words they acquire.
Some children acquire more of nouns and less of social words like ‘Tata’, ‘bye bye’ and others in the reverse direction. Children’s vocabulary expands rapidly and more interestingly. As shown by Bloom words used earlier also start disappearing from around 18 months of age.
One Word Sentences:
The utterances of single words to constitute sentences follow the earlier stage. Here, the child uses a single word to constitute an entire sentence. A number of studies have shown this. McNeil is of the view that the one-word utterances are really sentences. According to him, at this stage, the child already knows about the grammatical relations among words and also understands the grammar and that the problem is only at the level of expression.
Some others have modified this view to state that since the child is able to contextualize single words, the rest of the expression may be said to be contexts enabling adults, to infer ‘sentence meanings’ from single words. Such an argument is advanced by Greenfield and Smote. According to them what the child has at this stage is a conceptual or semantic understanding rather than syntactic language and grammar. Some writers like Bloom totally reject the view that there is anything called one word sentence.
Classification of Structured Utterances:
Structured utterances involving more than one word begin to appear around about 18 months and there is definite evidence to the appearance of the utterance of such structured utterances by the end of the second year. During this period, between 18 months and the fifth year, there is a very rapid growth and development in the child’s language.
One may see a tremendous increase in the length, complexity and variety of utterances. Some investigators like McNeil and Slobin are of the view that by the age of five, the child essentially masters all the basic elements of language. Further, one also notices increasing individual differences.
There appears to be a clear stage where the child uses two word utterances including a subject and a predicate and this occurs between 24 months and 36 months, suggesting that by this age the child is able to make a distinction between a word and a complete speech utterance, even though the utterances are often telegraphic. There is an increasing regularity in the order of words in these utterances. Further, one also sees a great deal of consistency in the order and relationship among the words.
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There is, however, disagreement as to whether these features regarding order and consistency can be taken to indicate the mastery of syntactic language. While some theories maintain that this is true, others argue that these utterances of children at this stage are essentially expressions of a conceptual relationship which they already had earlier and is only expressed in different ways.
According to this view, language development at this stage is essentially an expression of the overall conceptual and cognitive development rather than language development as such. There is not much evidence from research to say anything with finality on this point.
Research evidence from cognitive development from children during the period 18 months to 5 years hitherto has been too meager to tell us anything clearly about the relationship between cognitive development and language utterances. But one thing that is clear is that concepts and semantic relationships experienced by children at this stage are limited compared to adult standards.
However, at this stage, child utterances do clearly show a very important capacity to analyze, understand and respond to situation specifically. Whether this is due to increased conceptual and cognitive development or syntactic language development is yet to be answered.
Some investigations like that of McNeil suggest that the fact that the utterances at this stage show a consistent order and regularity of relationship among words indicates that definite language structures have emerged.
The child’s sentences clearly indicate an actor – action sequence. But there are others who do not agree with this view and claim that the child at this stage has not acquired the syntactic competence. Another view is that even if the child may have acquired syntactic competence, his utterance may not reflect this because of difficulties of expression.
Leaving aside these controversies one may conclude that between 18 months and 35 months of age definite language structures appear in the form of one word sentences, two word sentences and perhaps even longer expressions. Language acquisition proceeds at a very rapid rate and by the age of five, most children are able to produce utterances very similar to adult utterances.
Learning to Understand Utterances:
The progress from babbling to production of meaningful sentences, one word, two word or even longer increases very clearly showing that the ability to produce utterances and speech sounds reaches a peak by the age of five.
An attempt was also made to examine the relationship between the acquisition of the ability to produce speech sounds and the ability to understand. By and large it may be stated that there is a fair degree of correspondence between both the ability to speak and the ability to understand. There is also enough evidence to show that children in general acquire a greater degree of ability to understand the language before they can produce or utter the same.
In brief, there is considerable evidence which shows that conceptual and semantic understanding occurs earlier and faster than the ability to produce syntactically correct sentences. Unfortunately, educationists, parents and teachers have primarily shown greater concern with the ability to produce utterances rather than the ability for comprehension.
In fact it may be seen that even parental and adult stimulation in terms of reinforcement is based on how meaningful the utterances of a child is rather than whether it is linguistically correct. Imitation and modelling also play a part in the growth of the child’s language at this stage.
Here one particular type of reaction by parents may be referred to as expansion.
Mini – “Daddy Office”.
Mother – “Ha, daddy has gone to office”.
It may be seen here that the mother understands the utterances and helps the little girl to arrive at an exact meaning. This kind of corrective expansion by parents has been shown to help language development. But even here, the effect has been found to be only marginal.
Such a state of knowledge has often led some scientists to remark perhaps in a lighter vein “Children accomplish language mastery” or “even that language manages to get accomplished”. But while this may be said in a lighter vein some scientists have tried to offer an explanation of what is happening.
Chomsky, McNeil and others argue that children acquire a set of rules rather than discover these rules. These rules are derived from ‘innate’ language structures. This theory has been described as a little linguist theory. According to this view the child discovers rules and structures of a language just as a linguist discovers them.
Essentially, it is argued that children observe and experience how a semantic and conceptual representation is expressed in sentences or language by others. On the basis of these experiences they arrive at hypotheses of possibilities about syntactic form, order etc., a sort of postulated grammar.
This serves as the basis for producing their own utterances and also semantically understand others utterances. These self-formulated hypotheses or grammatical rules get corrected, confirmed or rejected through further experience. The grammar undergoes continuous reformulation and proceeds towards adult forms. While a large amount of data obtained appears to support the theory, still it has some limitations.
Those who argue against such a hypothesis hold the view that if this theory is correct then any attempt at correction of mistakes committed by children and by adults should be followed by sudden spurts in language development, and evidence for this is not very strong in research. But there may be a counter argument as to whether the child has the necessary cognitive readiness to respond immediately to corrections.
Why should a child be able to correct himself or herself just because an adult corrects him or her? Cognitive processes are not at the beck and call of the so called correctors. However, there is considerable amount of agreement on the point that the little linguist theory is not clear as to how and by what rules the child corrects the language. This last point may be a limitation, but does not appear to justify a total rejection of the theory.
Achieving Linguistic Competence and Communication Skills:
There appears to be a general agreement that a child acquires the ability to understand and conceptualize events and experiences much earlier than the ability to master rules of grammar. Basically, it appears to be justified to conclude that by the time a child is five years old, he or she is able to understand and conceptualize on the one hand and also produce speech terms comparable to adult standards though acquisition of finesse and smoothening may continue for a few more years.
There is experimental and research evidence which shows that between the ages of 5 and 12, cognitive development, development of perception, thought and interpretation bring about a lot of changes which result in further mastering or acquisition of linguistic skills including structures and manners. This phase represents the period when children become communicators, active communicators, and not just passive interpreters or speakers. Communication involves skills which are more than mere skills of expression and understanding.
The communication has to make the other persons understand one’s own utterances which in turn will help the other person to express or utter. This certainly requires that one should be sensitive to what the other person already knows and wants to know. Communication needs of the other person is something to which one should be sensitive.
Is this possible for the young child? Perhaps not. Piaget’s studies have shown that early forms of child communication are egocentric. We have already examined the concept of ego centralism and seen how Piaget attributed this to an inability to decenter their speech from their own points of view to take on another person’s point of view take relationships into account. Piaget called this pre-operational stage, which extends up to around the age of five or six.
From this stage on, there is a phase of transformation to what Piaget called the stage of concrete operation resulting in what is called socialised speech. A number of studies carried out subsequently by Flavell and others have shown that children even in mid-childhood do not master the skill of explaining some games (which they know well) to others.
On the other hand, there are certain studies which have shown that even young children show a difference in pattern when they are talking to different groups. Thus, a four year old child, behaves differently when he is talking to an adult or a two year old or to another four year old as reported by Sachs and Bevan. This difference here may be because of the nature of the contents in spontaneous speech. Children deal with contents which are easier for them than the material involved in experimental studies where the contents are more complex.
Hitherto, the child has been developing as a spontaneous speaker combining his conceptual or semantic understanding on the one hand with the utterances he is able to produce. Communication on the other hand requires the examination of the language which is used and this ability is known as meta-linguistic ability.
Such an ability to analyse one’s utterances does not appear to develop until the age of five or six. Meta-linguistic abilities include arriving at judgements about ambiguities, extendibility, synonyms, etc. This involves the analysis of one’s language itself and not just utterances. Language features and characteristics become mere objects of critical examination.
It has been shown widely that the emergence of meta-linguistic abilities coincides with drastic changes in the cognitive process itself. Basically middle childhood, the age from five to seven shows the emergence of many complex linguistic abilities which not only help the communication, but also the process of cognition.
An interesting feature appears to be that, while in the earlier stages, linguistic and cognitive processes appear to proceed independently, during this stage, there appears to emerge a close and reciprocal relationship between the two. At this stage, children acquire the ability to analyse and judge the terms they utter. Of course, this process goes on throughout one’s life and there is no end to the process of improving one’s skill of communication.
Overall, the process of language development appears to proceed through the following stages. The first and earliest phases mainly consist of sounds which are more physiological without any distinct linguistic structure, more as a response to some pleasant stimulation from outside or unpleasant conditions, like the mother’s voice or internal discomfort. Of course, while most infants show the same pattern there are also individual differences, differences between sound acquisition of a healthy child and that of an unhealthy child.
At the next stage we see an ability of rudimentary speech sounds or babbling with definite contextual relevance. These sounds definitely show signs of being situation sensitive. At the same time, differences also appear to become more and more prominent. Socio-economic class differences, socio-cultural differences and other forms of variations appear.
The one word sentences appear at this stage. The child at this stage indicates an ability to produce a number of words relevant to specific situations. Most of the words are nouns or names. This stage appears around 18 months, and this is followed by two word sentences with a noun and a verb action relationship, word order relationship etc. Of course, grammatical structure and order are still absent.
The second stage appears around 36 months of age, when complete sentences with nouns and verbs are formed. Speech assumes generalized conceptual character and long sentences appear. But the language is not still very objective. Egocentricity characterizes the speech at this stage.
It is only around the age of seven that real communication skills appear and egocentricity gives way to objective communication and the child’s speech and communication show signs of basic characters of adult speech. It takes a few more years for full, mature adult forms of speech to appear.
This process of development, particularly the rate of development varies with a number of factors. Generally girls have been found to be ahead of boys and more intelligent children show a faster rate and so do children from higher socio-economic groups. Language development in the child certainly appears to pass through certain clearly postulated stages, but still many points are not clear.
There are controversies regarding the existence of universal language structure, the primacy of conceptual over the syntactic features etc. Similarly, in the later stages, particularly, after the fifth year, there appears to be some uncertainty about our understanding of the relationship between language development and thought development or cognitive development.
Cognitive psychologists like Piaget, Flavell and others strongly argue that it is difficult to separate the two. Others are inclined to maintain that the process of thought development and language development are different. Research evidence on these points, even though many outstanding studies have been carried out, is still meager in terms of number of children involved, the variety of situations studied, etc.
The Concept of Stages:
Slobin on the basis of extensive observation and analysis of the data available has suggested that children employ a series of strategies in acquiring understanding and bringing about a congruence between understanding and utterances.
One strategy which children appear to employ, according to Slobin is, ‘to pay attention to the ends’. Children in general learn to pay more attention to the last words or end words. A second strategy appears to be that children acquire or develop the capacity to keep in mind the order in which the words are uttered. The order in which the words are uttered is important in most languages and almost seems to be universal.
Children develop an ability to use this. A third and more important strategy seems to be what Slobin refers to as a principle of avoidance of rearrangement or interlude. Children tend to use the simplest and the most experienced ways of understanding the utterances. Evidence seems to suggest that these strategies are universal and innate and come to the fore when a child has to learn a second language, very different from his mother tongue.
The stage approach suggests that there are different stages with characteristic features therein through which the child passes while acquiring a semantic understanding of language and arriving at a congruence between semantic and syntactic aspects. In the final stage, children are guided by their own concepts and meanings which they attach to the individual words or utterances they hear, interpret them in terms of the meanings of the individual words combined in different forms.
This suggests that syntactic sensitivity appears to develop and the order of words emerges as a determining factor in interpretation. A general scheme of word order appears to develop Actor Action. However, children soon acquire the ability to appreciate exceptions to the general norm. On the one hand they develop certain strategies or principles of attending to what part of others utterances is to be emphasized more, and on the other hand, they also appear to learn a general strategy for interpreting the words or utterances of others.
The Concept of Meaning:
Overall, the research data available suggests that the ability to acquire and contribute meanings precedes the acquisition of syntactic language. The development of language seems to be guided mainly by an attempt to understand and interpret utterances than by any process of attaining mastery of syntactic or structural language. Overall, the growing child appears to be developing and expressing strategies for interpreting and understanding the spoken word rather than schematically acquiring meanings.
Language in a sense can be viewed as a tool or instrument which creates a link between two systems, a cognitive or mental representation on the one hand, and a system of sounds or a phonological system on the other. The two, the phonological and the semantic systems are related by the syntactic system of rules, grammar, etc.
The external phonological system of sound as earlier said is arbitrary. The sounds by themselves do not mean anything. But among the possible phonological sound systems, each language makes use of a few sounds (alphabets) and develops a set of rules which guide the combinations and sequencing of these phonemes.
The internal semantic system has a code through which both speakers as well as listeners arrive at a representation of the meanings of the spoken utterances. As is obvious, a semantic code represents a very wide variety of meanings different from groups to groups, individual to individual, and culture to culture.
It is therefore, very difficult to identify all the rules which govern the activity of coding internal experiences which are internal and mental, not open to direct observation. That is why one can see that in some languages there are a number of words to describe different shades of the same colour while in other languages there are very few.
Thus, Eskimos have very large number of words to describe different kinds of snow. This is not the case with languages spoken in the tropics. Snow is a very significant part of the life in the case of Eskimos and there is no wonder that it has a very complex and varied set of meanings for them resulting in a number of words.
A syntactic system is developed to translate elements from the phonetic system into the semantic system and vice-a-versa. The semantic system is therefore very complex. When we say that a person knows a language, it means that he is able to translate a semantic representation into a phonetic representation by operating on them through the syntactic system.
It may however be noticed that while the external phonetic code is essentially a language code, the internal semantic code is not so. It has a much wider function and can form part of thought or the thinking process or even be a set of feelings.
Every element in the semantic code need not and perhaps cannot be translated into the external phonetic code. Thus, there are experiences in the life of every individual which cannot be represented in external language. Abstract paintings of great artists provide ample evidence for the limitations of the phonetic code of language. A similar instance is seen in the case of dreams, and even psychotic language.