Language development

Language development is a process starting early in human life, when a person begins to acquire language by learning it as it is spoken and by mimicry. Children's language development moves from simple to complex. Infants start without language. Yet by four months of age, babies can read lips and discriminate speech sounds. The language that infants speak is called babbling.

Usually, language starts off as recall of simple words without associated meaning, but as children grow, words acquire meaning, with connections between words being formed. As a person gets older, new meanings and new associations are created and vocabulary increases as more words are learned.

Infants use their bodies, vocal cries and other preverbal vocalizations to communicate their wants, needs and dispositions. Even though most children begin to vocalize and eventually verbalize at various ages and at different rates, they learn their first language without conscious instruction from parents or caretakers. In fact research has shown that the earliest learning begins in utero when the fetus can recognize the sounds and speech patterns of its mother's voice.

There are four major theories of language development.

The behaviorist theory, proposed by B. F. Skinner suggests that language is learned through operant conditioning (reinforcement and imitation). This perspective sides with the nurture side of the nature-nurture debate. This perspective has not been widely accepted in either psychology or linguistics for some time, but by many accounts, is experiencing a resurgence. Some empiricist theory accounts today use behaviorist models.

The nativist theory, proposed by Noam Chomsky, argues that language is a unique human accomplishment. Chomsky says that all children have what is called an LAD, an innate language acquisition device that allows children to produce consistent sentences once vocabulary is learned. His claim is based upon the view that what children hear - their linguistic input - is insufficient to explain how they come to learn language. While this view has dominated linguistic theory for over fifty years and remains highly influential, as witnessed by the number of articles in journals, and books.

The empiricist theory suggests, contra Chomsky, that there is enough information in the linguistic input that children receive, and therefore there is no need to assume an innate language acquisition device. This approach is characterized by the construction of computational models that learn aspects of language and/or that simulate the type of linguistic output produced by children. The most influential models within this approach are statistical learning theories, as suggested by Saffran, such as connectionist models and chunking theories.

Functional theories of grammar are those approaches to the study of language, that see the functions of language and its elements to be the key to understanding linguistic processes and structures. Functional theories of language propose that since language is fundamentally a tool, it is reasonable to assume that its structures are best analyzed and understood with reference to the functions they carry out.

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