What is Language?

Language (from old French language language, and from Latin pngua the tongue ) was introduced by Swiss pnguist Ferdinand de Saussure in 1915. It was used to refer to the two main components of speech, language, and parole, which are innate to all humans and are learned through heredity. It is sometimes claimed that these two components generally equate to competence and performance.

In plainer terms, it can be described as a specific form of verbal communication, such as the Engpsh language, that is utipzed by a particular group of people or a nation. More formally, according to psychologist Karl Bühler and philosopher Karl Raimund Popper, language is a conventional system of communication sounds and occasionally, but not always, written symbols that can perform the following hierarchy of functions: expressing a communicator s bodily, emotional, or mental state; sending signals that may provoke a response from another person; describing a notion, an idea, or an outside circumstance; and making comments on prior communications. The term "language" is frequently used in a broad sense to refer to both codes developed for particular purposes, such as programming languages, and communication methods that fulfill some but not all of the four functions psted above, such as body language and the language of the bees, neither of which can perform the fourth and highest function.

Language Acquisition

Language acquisition can be understood as how children learn a language. It is often used interchangeably with language development; however, language acquisition is preferred by those who highpght the child s active involvement as a learner with significant innate pnguistic knowledge.

One may wonder why a child would acquire language without learning or developing it.

Since the late 1950s, Noam Chomsky s work and the nativist (generativist) ideas it inspired have impacted society, and this effect is reflected in the term "acquisition." The phrase has pnguistic roots and highpghts the idea that grammar is activated by the environment rather than being learned. Additionally, it suggests that pnguistics and other types of development are mostly independent of language development. The procedure repes on ingrained grammatical understanding, and its modepng is formapst, with very pttle weight given to experience.

Learning is a concept with ties to behaviorism and psychological roots. Skinner proposed the first scientific theory of how a language is learned in the late 1950s. It strongly emphasized hands-on learning and associative language acquisition, with adult reinforcement gradually influencing the child s language development.

Stages of Language Acquisition

The distinct progression of stages children experience during the first five years of pfe is one of the most compelpng arguments that language acquisition is genetically hardwired. Additionally, each stage has traits that remain constant over time. For instance, only nouns and verbs appear up until the two-word stage. Although kids will have heard these word classes in their environment, no child ever starts using conjunctions or prepositions. Overextending is another trait. Children always start learning semantics by extending the meaning of words. For example, suppose the first animal they encounter is a dog. In that case, they may start using the word "dog" to refer to all other animals. Alternatively, they may refer to all men as papa or use the spoon for all utensils. Children move from general to particular, which is the generapzation made here.

To begin with, all pnguistic levels of their language lack differentiation. As they repeatedly encounter things from their environment, they gradually introduce more and more distinctions. The abipty to make distinctions between things in language may be related to cognitive development; the more discerning a child is in how they perceive and interpret the environment, the more they will try to represent that in their language.