1. Esra TAMER
Emine ÖZKURT

2. I. Steps in children acquiring a language
A. Definition of Language
B. How does language develop?
a. Learning Perspective (Skinner)
b. Nativist Perspective ( Chomsky)
c. Interactionist Perspective
d. Cognitive Perspective ( Piaget)
C. The Critical Age Period Hypothesis
D. Stages
a. Prelinguistic (Babbling) (0-12 months)
b. The Holophrastic Period (12- 18 months)
c. The Telegraphic Period (18-24 months)
d. Early Grammar (24-60 months)
E. Conclusion

5. the systematic,
meaningful
arrangement of
symbols and
rules.
a symbolic code
used in
communication.

6. THE IMPORTANCE OF LANGUGE IN
OUR LIFE

7.  to communicate
with other
people,
transfer
information
creates a rich
cultural heritage.

8. HOW DOES LANGUAGE DEVELOP?

9.  starts with making limited kinds of sounds
 spelling
 forming sentences
 learning basic grammatical rules

10. HOW CAN WE EXPLAIN
THIS RAPID LANGUAGE
PROGRESS?
1.Learning Perspective
2.Nativist Perspective
3.Interactionist Perspective
4.Cognitive Perspective

11. 1.LEARNING PERSPECTIVE
 It argues that
children imitate
what they see and
hear.
 conditioning,
punishment and
reinforcement.
 The main theorist
associated with this
perspective is B. F.
Skinner.

13. 2.NATIVIST( INNATIST)
PERSPECTIVE It’s all in your mind
Humans are biologically
programmed to gain
knowledge.
The main theorist’s of
this perspective is Noam
Chomsky.

14. All humans have a
language acquisition
device and this device
contains knowledge of
grammatical rules.
He points out that a
child could not possibly
learn a language
through imitation
alone.

15. 3. INTERACTIONIST PERSPECTIVE
Learning from inside and out
It concerns with
the interaction
between
environmental and
biological factors.
It tends to view
children as having
a strong biological
tendency to acquire
a language.

16. Bruner recommends
parents to employ
some strategies to
facilitate acquisition.
One of them is
scaffolding which
means using a language
at a level that is
slightly beyond what
children can
comprehend.

17. Another one is infant
directed speech or
motherese.
 It means that speaking
in a higher pitch and
slowly to infants.

18. The next one is expansion and
recast.
When the child begins to
produce sounds, adults
responds with more complex
forms.
Then, the child imitates more
complex forms.
Felix eated.
Yes, that’s right,Felix
ate his dinner.

19. THE CRITICAL AGE PERIOD HYPOTHESIS
The hypothesis says that animals, including
humans, are genetically programmed to
acquire certain kinds of knowledge and skill
at specific times in life.

20. There is an ideal time to acquire a language in
a linguistically rich environment.
After that ideal time, language acquisition
becomes much more difficult and requires
conscious and regular studies.

21. History has documented a few ‘’ natural
experiments’’. Two of the most famous cases
are those of Genie and Victor.
Genie Victor

22.  In 1799, a boy known as Victor
was found naked in the woods in
France.
 He was about twelve years old
 A young doctor Itard devoted
five years to socializing Victor
and trying to teach him
language.
 There was little progress in his
language ability.
 Victor responded only to sounds
that had meaning for him in the
forest such as animal sounds or
the sounds of rain.

23. Genie,
a thirteen –years-old
girl was discovered in
California.
 had spent more than
eleven years tied to a
chair in a small
darkened room.
 beaten when she made
any kind of noise.
 undeveloped physically,
emotionally and
intellectually.
 had no language.

24. She was cared for and educated with the participation
of many teachers and therapists.
She lived an a foster home and attended special
schools.

25. Genie made remarkable
progress in becoming
socialized and cognitively
aware.
She developed deep
personal relationship
Genie’s language was not
like that of a typical
five-year old.
There was a larger than
normal gap between
comprehension and
production.

26. She used grammatical
forms inconsistently
and overused formulaic
and routine speech.
If language input
doesn’t occur until
after this time, the
individual will never
achieve a full command
of language- especially
grammatical systems.

27. 4.COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE
OF PIAGET
Who was Piaget?
He was a developmental
psychologist and
philosopher known for his
epistemological studies
with children.
 His theory of cognitive
development and
epistemological view are
together called "genetic
epistemology"

28. While studying
his children,
Piaget developed
theories
concerning how
children learn.

29. Theory of Cognitive Development
According to Piaget,
children are born with a
very basic mental
structure (genetically
inherited and evolved) on
which all subsequent
learning and knowledge is
based.

30. Piaget’s Theory Differs From Others’ in
Several Ways
It is concerned with children,
rather than all learners.
It focuses on development,
rather than learning.
It proposes discrete stages of
development marked by
qualitative differences.

31.  The goal of this theory is to explain the
mechanisms and processes by which the infant ,
and then the child develops into an individual.
 To explain his theory, Piaget used four stages
of cognitive development.

32. 1.Sensory- Motor Stage
In this stage, the emphasis
is on movement and
physical reactions.
Senses, reflexes and motor
abilities develop rapidly.
Actions discovered first by
accident are repeated and
applied to new situations to
obtain the same results.
They have object
permanence competence.
In this stage Piaget shows
linguistic skills as basically
physical.(monopoly game)

33. 2.Preoperational Stage: ages two
through seven
The child is not yet
able to think
logically.
The most evident
feature of this
stage is egocentric.
 Child sees objects
from only one point
of view; his own.

35. Lack of conservation: They can’t realize that
if nothing is added or taken away, the amount
stays the same regardless of alterations in
shape or appearance.
(monopoly game)

36. 3.The Concrete Operational Stage: ages
seven through eleven
The child is able to perform
mental operations.
They think about physical
actions that she or he
previously performed.
The primary characteristic
of this stage is its
reversibility. The child can
mentally reverse the
direction of his or her
thought.

37. simple mathematical
operations.
 Operations are
called ‘’concrete’’
because they apply
only to those
objects that are
physically present.

38. Conservation
ability to
classify objects.
another person’s
point of view.
(monopoly game)

39. 4.Formal Stage/ Ages Eleven
through Sixteen
Children are now able
to reason logically
about abstract and
hypothetical ideas.
using language to
express and debate
abstract theoretical
concepts.

40. conceiving all the
possible ways as
they can solve a
problem.
approaching a
problem from a point
of views.
developing an inner
value system and a
sense of moral
judgment.
(monopoly game)

41. STAGES OF LANGUAGE
ACQUISITION

42. 1.PRELINGUISTICS (Babbling)
First few months
During the first few
months infants cry,coo
and begin to babble
certain sounds.
Initially making sounds
is unconscious and
reflexive reaction but
still it is important in
terms of indicating
baby’s needs.

43. APPROXIMATELY 6 TO 12 MONTHS
 During the first years
of life the infant’s job
is to uncover the
sounds of that
language. Firstly these
sounds they make are
similar no matter what
language their parents
speak.

44.  From around six months
they begin to lose the
ability to discriminate
between sound that are
not phonemic in their own
language.
 For example;Japanese
infants can no longer hear
the difference between [r]
and [l] which don’t
contrast in Japanese
whereas babies in English-
speaking homes retain this
perception.

45.  They have begun to learn
the sounds of the
language of their parents.
 Before that they appear
to know the sounds of
human language in
general.
 Children all around the
world seem to do same
kind of babbling even
deaf baby’s babble vocally
at this stage even though
they are not getting any
linguistic input from
speech.

46.  This fact indicates that
babbling is an internally
driven behavior not a
response to external
stimulation.
 The early babbles consist
mainly of repeated
consonant-vowel sequences
like mama dada gaga, later
babbles are more varied.
 While making this sounds
baby also observes responses
that are given by people
around him/her.

47. 2. APPROXIMATELY 12-18 MONTHS
One-word utterance-
 It is accepted that this
stage is the most critical
stage of language
development.
 The child begins to produce
her first meaningful words
and also uses gestures to
communicate at this stage.
For example; reaching
upwards to indicate that
she wants to be lifted up.

48.  The child also tries to
explain many things with
only a single word like
BALL to express GIVE
ME THAT BALL.
 That is called
holophrastic stage.
 At this stage she
realizes that sound are
related to meanings and
apprehends the meaning
of words.

49. 3.Approximately 18 To 24 Months -
telegraphic speech-
 Baby starts to put words together and they
speak in the shortest way with two or three
words so this stage called telegraphic speech
stage.
 At this stage the child has a vocabulary of
400 words.

50.  Baby starts making multi-word utterances that
lack function words like conjunctions, articles.
describing events-- Me fall
vocational relations-- toy in box

51. 4.EARLY GRAMMAR
(24 TO 60 MONTHS)
 During this stage a child acquires some
grammatical devices such as determiners,
pronouns, past tense…
 They continue to go through acquisition of
auxiliary verbs, prepositions and using syntactic
transformations.

52.  They can learn the grammar rules, sentence
structure.
 They engage in more social conversations with
peers at this stage.

53.  They have almost normal speech with good
command over syntax, semantics and also have
ability of defining words or correcting their own
grammatical mistakes because they involve
conscious awareness of the properties of
language.
 By the age of 5 most children have a vocabulary
of over 1.500 words.

54. REFERENCES:
1.Shaffer, D.R.(2001). Developmental Psychology (6th ed.). USA,
Wadsworth.
2.Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., Hyams, N.(2007). An Introduction To
Language (8th Ed.). USA.
3.Rahimpour, M. ‘’Developmental Stages Of Child Language’’. Journal
Of Faculty Of Letters And Humanity. Vol.47, No.190, Pp.57-70
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/ling001/acquisition.html
http://aggslanguage.wordpress.com/chomsky/
http://linguistlist.org/ask-ling/lang-acq.cfm
http://iteslj.org/Articles/McGlothlin-ChildLearn.html
http://gelisimveogrenme.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/piagetye-gc3b6re-
dil-gelic59fiminin-evreleri.pdf