Section – B - Describe how children acquire their mother tongue.

How children acquire their mother language?

Key words: mother tongue, native language and acquisition.

Introduction

Mother tongue is the language that child learns in his/her mother’s lap.It is the language
which the child learns almost without any conscious effort on his part.It is the language
which the child acquires while living in his own social group. A first language is the language
a person has learned from birth or within critical period or that a person speaks the best and
so is often the basis for sociolinguistic identity. The word “mother” means the prime care
giver of a child. “Tongue” in this sense means the language that is primarily spoken by this
caregiver. Therefore, when the words mother and tongue are analyzed the question is asking
for the process by which a child learns or develop his first language.The first language of a
child is part of their personal , social and cultural identity. Another impact of the first
language is that it brings about the reflection of successful social patterns of acting and
speaking.It is basically responsible to differentiating the linguistic competence of
acting.While some argue that there is no such things as native speaker or mother toungue , it
is important to understand what it means to be a non – native speaker and the implications
that can have on one’s life. Languages are shared with and understand by those who are
familiar with the system of symbols.A baby begins to communicate at birth through non –
verbal communication such as , facial expressions, cries and other sounds and body
movement.

According to Chomsky (2009:101-102) language acquisition is a matter of growth and

maturation of relatively fixed capacities, under appropriate external conditions. The form of
Acquisition and use of language the language that is acquired is largely determined by
internal factors; it is because of the fundamental correspondence of all human languages,
because of the fact that “human beings are the same, wherever they may be”, that a child can
learn any language. The functioning of the language capacity is, furthermore, optimal at a
certain “critical period” of intellectual development.In addition to that, the term „language
acquisition‟ is normally used without qualification for the process which results in the
knowledge of one‟s native language (or native languages).
From approximately 0 to 4 months of age ,child sound are mainly,limited to reflexing
crying.They are not yet using sounds to manipulate, but simply expressing their feelings in
the only way they have. Perception of speech sound of their mother’s voice.By roughly 4 to 6
months of age babies start to make many more sounds.Before speaking those words babies go
through a period of babbling, in which they are practicing the sound, intonations and rhythm
of the language.They learn to replicate the sounds they hear and how moving their tongue and
lips changes the sound they making.They learn to modulate their voice , to yell and
whisper.They start to babble the reaction to stimuli and eventually use it to manipulate by
other’s expressing needs and wants.By 9 to 11 months child’s babbling become more
melodic. Intonation starts to sound more like adult patterns. At the first sound will be mainly
drawn out vowel sounds and soon after they tend to add constants sound and repetitive
sounds like “da.. or dada” They may combine these sounds with gestures. A sequel and point
may be the child’s way of telling you he wants something over in that general direction.By 10
– 12 months babies become desensitized to sound differences in other languages that don’t
exit in the language they are exposed to. This is also the stage in which children learn to
recognize word and even begin to understand their meaning.

A child’s first word are produced by approximately 14 – 20 months of age. This is a general
guideline and not all children will speak when the scientists say they should. They begin with
content words. These would include “mama .. dada … car..” .It is common at this early stage
to leave off consonants or consonant clusters from the beginning or end of a word.Sometimes
a single word may represent and entire thought.If a baby wants a bottle and is just beginning
to learn to use language to manipulate , he may point to his bottle “ba or baba” which
obviously mean , “give me my bottle now”From approximately 2 years of age or when they
have vocabulary of about 50 words children begin to string two content words together to
indicate location , daddy gone , doggie mine .This is also called telegraphic speech. It is quite
an accomplishment because it shows an understanding of language semantics.not only words
but context and the difference between ages 2 and 3.At first they mostly use content words,
often strung together in no sensible grammar order. “Mommy apple eat” probably mean
“Mommy get me an apple to eat”.We know that at this point they understand word order and
context and soon they will be able to verbalize them.

Lightbown and Spada (2001) observe that acquisition occurs during the formative years of
one’s life - usually commencing in early childhood before age three - and that it is learned as
part of growing up among people who speak it fluently. In contrast, learning is differentiated
as a more conscious and explicitly sequenced process of ‘accumulating knowledge of
linguistic features such as vocabulary, sentence structure and grammar, typically in an
institutional setting’ (Yule 1985:163). The difference between these ways of developing
language competence is manifest most clearly in their outcomes: through acquisition the
contextual understanding of the language is gained, and through learning, knowledge ‘about’
the language: ‘knowing the rules, being aware of them, and being able to talk about them’
(Krashen 1982:10; also Schmidt 1983).

Sounds from birth , infants make and respond to sound. First there is crying and gurgling.
The next stage is cooing. This sound is commonly heard when the baby is in pleasant
mood,As early as months infants make these sounds in response to the attention they get.This
is called pre verbal speech or the development of expressive language.

Stages of mother language acquisition stages are babbling(6-9 months), holophrases(12 – 18

months), two word sentences(18-20 months) , telepgrapic sentences(24 – 30 months) , joined
sentences (30 – 33 months), language and the preschool child(36 – 39 months). Sounda like
da..da..da.. , ma..ma..ma.. are the sounds babies make at this age.These sounds do not have a
specific meaning as most parents belive , but because parents mimic these sounds the child
eventually called the parent by those sounds.When they are in holophrases stage child learns
a number of single words.Each word represent a phrase or a sentence that is called a
holophrase. When they are in two word sentences stage used to express idea concerning
relationships.For example “mama shoe and daddy car” used for sentences. Two words are
also used to describe actions , such as “grand ma eat” , “dog come”.It is also proven that if a
child lives in an environment where the mother repeats the sentence correctly , that child will
developed speech patterns much earlier than a child who is not spoken to or just
mimicked.When they are in telegraphic sentence stage child attempts to make sentences
consisting of two or more words in to phrase.For examples “daddy drive car , want orange
juice , all has the function words such as “the” and “this” missing . These sentences are
supplemented with gestures.And pre school child use language in a symbolic way . For
example , the word leaf might be associated to an ant.They use words to represent things.At
first, words are used in an egocentric way through use of monologue , in which the child talks
aloud during play.but not to anyone . At this stage , they usually have a vocabulary of about
1000 words or more.
Linguistic have become deeply interested in finding out what all 5000 or so of the world
languages have in common because this may tell us what kind of knowledge about language
are actually innate. For examples it appears that all languages use the vowel sound “ahh ,
eeh , and ohh the same vowel sound the baby produced first.

Conclusion

The child must pass through various stages to acquire mother tongue.He cannot proceed to
the next stage until the previous stage is learned . It is claimed by someone that if any of these
points developments are missed, the child is never able to go back and learn in the same
way.Once the age of puberty is reached the ability to acquire language rapidly
deteriorates.Language seems parallel to other developments like motor and intellectual . By
acquiring languages , linguistic hope to find what properties all languages have common.And
weather those properties are somehow hard , wired in to human brain.If it’s true that babies
are born with a lots of language knowledge built in , that will help to explain how it’s
possible for a very small child with no teaching and regardless of intelligence level to quickly
and easily acquire a system of language so complex that no other animals or machines has
ever mastered it.

References
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Pecchi, J. S. (1994). Child Language. London.

Wardhaugh, R. (June 1971). THEORIES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION IN RELATION TO BEGINNING

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