First step in the child’s language
(Hendra 060954)
A. Introduction
Learning a first language is something that every child
does successfully (Pinker:
http://user.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/papers/py104/pinker.langacq.html), he does
not need formal lesson to acquire it and does not depend on his fully
functioning general intelligent as he has innate capacity to learn. Through a
great deal of exposure, engagement and support, he naturally pursues his
language development stages from the first few steps are steps in the right
direction. This means that a child is really unique (Musthafa: 2003). His
uniqueness makes us to the ongoing research about the first child’s language
acquisition.
The child learns new languages very easily, almost too easily.
God has given young child a magical ability to learn new languages. This
ability slowly disappears, and is completely gone by the time an adult begins
the task of learning a new language (J. Doug McGlothlin: 1997). To him, the
life is all play and no work (Einon: 2005).
From the moment of birth, a child began to communicate. (http://www.medem.com/search/article_display.cfm?path=n:&mstr=/ZZZC8N4W59C.html&soc=AMA&srch_typ=NAV_SERCH). At first, child’s cries may seem like a foreign language to us.
But before we know it, we will learn baby's "language" and be able to
provide him with what he needs. We consider “baby language” because we can
understand it and language is a systematic means of communicating ideas or feeling
by the use of conventionalized signs, sounds, gestures, or marks having
understood meaning. (Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the
English Language 1961: 1270 in Brown: 1994:4)
After birth, we introduced baby to our own ways of
communicating: touching, soothing, holding and making facial gestures. The baby
will learn our "language," just as we will learn his.
B. Stages
in the child’s language acquisition – Universal.
As well as receiving sounds, the child has been
producing them from the very beginning, first in the form of cries, coos and
then as bubbles. The child cries coos and babbles vocally or nonvocally sends
an extraordinary number of messages and receives even more messages (Brown: 1994).
At about 4 months, he'll start to babble, using many of the rhythms and
characteristics of his native language (J. Doug McGlothlin: 1997).
There are six Universal Stages of language development
generally recognized to govern children’s language acquisition. These are as
follows:
(Rice et.al:
www.ohio.edu/~linguist/soemarno/1270/notes/Igacqui550.htm)
1.
Pre-linguistic
stage
Ø Crying
Ø Cooing
Ø Babbling
2.
Holophrastic
stage
3.
Two-words
stage
4.
Telegraphic
stage
5.
Intermediate
development stage
6.
Adult stage.
In this case, I will only highlight first step of the child’s
language namely:
1.
Pre-linguistic
stage
This stage is also known by “the silent period” which is
relatively long period where the infant does not produce any formulated sounds;
he only cries. Most of importance goes on even before the child utters his
first word; avis infant learns to pay attention to intonation and rhythm of
speech long before he begins to speak. Infant responds to speech more keenly
than to other sound.
The child learns to recognize the distinctive sound, the
phonemes of the language he hears from the birth long before he is able to
pronounce them. Infant can distinguish between /p/ and /b/ at three or four
months.
In this stage, a child does as follows:
Ø Crying
(from the birth – 2 months)
The baby is born with the ability to cry, which is how he will do
most of his communicating for a while. The baby's cries generally tell us that something
is wrong in his world; it may be that his belly is empty, his bottom is wet,
his feet are cold, he's tired, he needs to be held and cuddled and so on. Soon we
will be able to recognize which need the baby is expressing and respond
accordingly. In fact, sometimes what a baby needs can be identified by his cry
- for example, the "I'm hungry" cry may be short and low-pitched,
while "I'm upset" may sound choppy.
Crying is a baby's way of
communicating toward one of those needs. As baby grows, he gradually learns
other ways of communicating with us. He gets better at eye contact, making noises,
and even smiling, all of which reduce the need for crying.
Very young baby cries in order to communicate his needs.
While some experts feel that the cries are indistinct, others believe that
infants make specific sounds for varying needs. In any case, babies do
communicate their needs verbally and wise parents are quick to react, further
encourage their babies to "talk."
Ø Cooing (2 – 6 months)
The infant begins to make “comport
sound”, typically in respond to pleasurable interaction with a caregiver. The
earliest comport sound may be grunts or sights, with a lowered velum and a
closed or nearly closed mouth, with later version being more vowel-like “coo”.
The vocal tract is held in a fix position. Initially comport sounds are brief
and produced in isolation, but later appear in series separated by glottal
stops. Laughter appears around 4 months.
Ø Babbling (6 – 8 months) Repetitive CV
pattern
It begins at several months of age
and it is characterized by indiscriminate utterance of speech sound. Many native
speech sounds may be absent, some are naturally harder to pronounce /r/th/.
Very few consonant clusters and repeated syllables are coon.
Infant starts to make extended sounds
that are chopped up rhythmically by oral articulation into syllable-like sequence,
opening and closing his jaw, lip and tongue. Repeated sequences are often
produced, such as [bababa] or [nanana], as well as “variegated” sequences in
which the characteristics of the consonant-like articulations are varied. The
variegated sequences are initially rare and become more common later on. Both
vocal play and babbling are produced more often in interaction with caregiver
or parent, but infant will also produce them when he is alone.
Baby starts to babble, showing
a special fondness for repetitive sound. Often, they are a combination of
consonants and vowels, such as "baba" or "gaga."
Occasionally, baby of this age will choose "mama" and/or
"dada," sure to delight his proud parents, but experts believe that
baby is not yet associating words with meanings, so it is highly unlikely that he
is actually calling his parents by name.
(http://www.kidsdevelopment.co.uk/LanguageDevelopmentConcernsForKids.html)
C. Conclusion
After having described some steps of the child’s
language, henceforth I can take some conclusions as follows:
1.
The first
step in child’s language is crying and cooing then bubbling.
2.
Crying,
cooing and bubbling are considered as a pre-linguistic language (a sign of
non-linguistic code). Despite of merely signing sound, we can understand what
the child’s need. When a child or baby cries, it generally tells us that something
is wrong in his world; it may be that his belly is empty, his bottom is wet,
his feet are cold, he's tired, he needs to be held and cuddled and so on.
3.
A child
can easily learn the language successfully. Through a great deal of exposure,
engagement and support, he naturally pursues his language development stages
from the first few steps are steps in the right direction.
REFERENCES
Brown, H. Douglas. 1994. Principles of Language
Learning and Teaching. New Jersey
Einon, Dorothy. 2005. Permainan Cerdas Untuk Anak
(Things to do: Play and learn by Hamlyn Octopus). . Jakarta
Musthafa, Bahrudin.2003. EFL for Young Learners.
Bandung : Department of English, Indonesia University
Rice et.al: www.ohio.edu/~linguist/soemarno/1270/notes/Igacqui550.htm
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